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?"

Comments

Maintenance?

[neosake]

We may lose millions of McD jobs, but think about the jobs created building, maintaining and recycling these robots once they're through.

"50%" of jobs is merely relative... ah capitalism

[aksansai]

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...