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Will Humanoid Robots Take All the Jobs by 2050?
Anonymous writes "Marshall Brain (the guy who started HowStuffWorks) has published an article claiming that robots will take half the jobs in the U.S. by 2050. Some of his predictions: real computer vision systems by 2020, computers with the CPU power and memory of the human brain by 2040, completely robotic fast food restaurants in 2030 (which then unemploy 3.5 million people), etc. It's a pretty astounding article. My question: How many people on /. think he is right (or even close - let's say he's off by 10 or 20 years)? Or is he full of it?"
We may lose millions of McD jobs, but think about the jobs created building, maintaining and recycling these robots once they're through.
"When a ball dreams, it dreams it's a frisbee"
I am a robot developer in a new robot industry startup developing robot services and robot infrastructure. Our IPO launches on Monday...
The author of this article has completely failed to understand basic economics.
Maybe he never peeked outside an airplane window. There are lots of people whose ancestors were displaced by the airplane. Those people will still find work. His example of New York has a completely different cause than corporate layoffs... homelessness in this country comes from stupidity. Sorry if that's a little insensitive but it's true.
Laws are for people with no friends.
Let's play the math game with some arbitrary numbers.
N = number of jobs in 2003
X = number of jobs in 2050
X/2 = number of jobs (human) in 2050
If X = ( N * 2 ) then there is virtually no change in human employment. If X = ( N * J ) where J is greater than 2, then the number of jobs available to living, breathing humans will increase nominally.
"Jobs" is also an ambiguous term. For a software developer that makes $50K a year, McDonald's does not quantify as a job. So let's establish that a "job" is a fixed salary of $15K a year. A software developer consumes roughly 2.5 jobs a year at our established definition.
Here's a fact - there are more jobs (where job = $15K a year) available today than there was 50 years ago. This is because humanity is advancing, albeit in "concentrated" areas in the civilized world.
But with it comes revenue that is constantly being generated, consumed, and recycled. Were third world countries home to manufacturing facilities as they are now? No. It is a growing trend. Introduce a engine manufacturing facility in a "third world" country. The workers make $1K-$4K per year - sounds bad, but in their economy where the average family income is about $250, they are considered rich.
These "rich" people utilize the weak economy in their own country to bolster development, personal wealth, and benefit their community as a whole. Their country garners money from the new taxes generated and also the deal cut with the engine manufacturer. These third world countries slowly add to the job supply.
The rest of the industrialized world will work on replacing the $15K average salary for a job with jobs that pay more money, increasing the quality of the work performed. Research and development for emerging technologies will require more minds, more assistance, and more money - driving a company to not only hire and train the best, but to invest in new technologies to drive in more revenue to continue advancing their capabilities.
So what if we have a robot that will replace the cashier at McDonalds? Perhaps that individual will have instead been offered an internship with reasonable pay to study on actuators or hydraulic pumps or other technologies present in those robots.
I don't know if I believe the whole 50% of all jobs will be held by "robots" - I believe that a large amount of mundane (redundant, simple tasks) will indeed be handled by a computer (or another equivalent automated device). We have perfect examples today of such a feat (online shopping, ATMs, telco relay switchboard, etc...). I do believe, however, that with each advancement in the area of science and engineering will give birth to even better jobs as humans explore the different facets of a discovery.
Just my opinion...
Ayup
Like, duh. Half of the jobs available today will be taken by robots. This is called "industrialization," and it has been happening for hundreds of years. As machines become more capable, they take over in jobs that used to require humans. This has several consequences.
The global workforce is essentially bigger, since a machine was added, but the people it replaced were not removed. This surplus can cause a number of different results: unemployment, fewer working hours, or growth of production.
Fast change leads to unemployment. The situation changes more rapidly than the economy can adjust for. The human psychology seems to prefer working a full day, so while we really could probably be working only 1 hour a day and still maintaining sustenance levels of production, we are still working 8 (or more!) hours for a nice lifestyle. While we work less than most people did 100 years ago, the trend seems to be more for the surplus to move into growth of production.
Since we can only eat so much food, the production has to find more creative outlets. Computer Games, Themed Desktops, screen savers with flying toasters -- these are all technically unnecessary, yet somebody gets paid to make them.
So that is what happened to the jobs that were stolen by the tractor -- they were pushed out of the plow driver market and into the Video Game Industry. It took time, but that is where technology has gotten us.
So I'm not too worried. Yeah, I've got to keep sharp so that some AI doesn't steal my job. But I'm not too worried -- I'll hopefully have found something more fun to do when a computer takes over my current position.
Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
I ask because I'm old enough to remember when automation was viewed as the invention that would free us from the drudgery of grunt work, not the one that would bifurcate society. It's the ultimate dream of capitalism: cut the cost of production to the point where it's not worth a human's time to do it. Eventually (although we didn't like to put it like this), we'd be so labour rich that we would reach a socialist utopia via the back door.
Call me a crusty old curmudgeon, but every time I read "problem" in this article, I substitute "opportunity". Sure, maybe all those burger flippers are just going to go on welfare, but that doesn't mean that they have to lie around in trailer parks watching Oprah. Maybe some of them will go on to paint, or write, or sculpt, or grow and barter organic produce locally, or play music gigs at the mall, or help out disabled kids, or just plant trees and pick up trash because they want to and they have the time to do it. Not all of them, for sure, but hopefully enough to make life better for everyone.
I do think that we need to prepare for that future though. Specifically, we need to devolve power to local levels so that local needs can be met. We need to assert and accept that paying taxes to fund welfare and civic programs is more efficient than paying riot cops to suppress hungry, angry, hopeless people. We need to get it through our heads that working 12 hours a day to afford consumer toys that we don't need isn't a good use of our lives.
Oh, and we need to have a look at history. Students will note that emancipation for the peasant classes in Europe coincided with sharp population decreases after outbreaks of bubonic plague. Labour became short, populations become mobile, and the feudal system broke down as landowners became answerable to their workers rather than vice versa. With a glut of available labour and no jobs to go around, we are in danger of re-creating feudal baronies for the 21st century. Anglo-Saxons sold themselves into slavery during hard times, trading freedom for security. If you've read an employment contract recently, you might be wondering if we've come so very far since then.
It's a delicate balancing act. Capitalism demonstrably generates wealth for all. But if we let it get out of hand, it might make us rich and enslaved rather than comfortable and free. Some might say that it's already too late, and that we're doomed to a future of doffing our caps as our overlords zoom overhead in their robot piloted flying cars. I'm hoping that we go down a different route and accept that distributing wealth isn't just a failed communist experiment, or a crackpot liberal scheme to reward the shiftless, but instead a way of freeing up nascent talent that's currently (and increasingly) sitting around producing nothing.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
So sad for you to be so wrong at such a young age.
When you finally do wake up and take a long look around you, you will see that most of these dumb shitty employees drift from one retail place to another until they are either too old to work or they die. You, much like most people who follow the path of college/internship/good career/retirement, really have no idea of the overwhelming number of people in the world who never achieve anything, EVER. Why is it that 10% of the population has 99% of the wealth? It is not because the 10% have superpowers. It is because the 90% are SLACKASSES. Plain and simple, most people would rather fuck off all day and be poor than put in the work it takes to be successful.
This is not intended as a flame nor a troll. Truth hurts, peasants.
"I'm just here to regulate funkiness."