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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?"
I will make this prediction: by 2008, every meal in every fast food restaurant will be ordered from a kiosk like this, or from a similar system embedded in each table.
Yeah, I'm going to go with a no on this one. Everyone said the same thing when ATMs came around, "Oh no, they're going to replace actual tellers!" But it didn't, banks still hire quite frequently for bank tellers.
I'm not saying these kiosks aren't going to become more prevalent, but they won't replace actual human contact. Having previously worked in many service related jobs I know that people (especially older adults) will not allow this to occur. We all need to be able to talk to an actual human every once in a while. Computers don't care if you yell. Could you imagine the amount of complaints McDonalds would get?
With this being said, I love automated services such as "Pay-at-the-Pump" and especially self-checkout at the grocery stores. It's not that I'm some hermit who likes no human contact, but who wants to make idle chit-chat with some register jockey?
Mike
"Who will be the first large group of employees to be completely automated out of their jobs by robots? Chances are that it will be pilots."
Uh, uh. No way, no how. In case of an emergency onboard an aircraft I will literally bet my life on the instincts of a human being over the computational prowess of machine.
The arrival of humanoid robots should be a cause for celebration. With the robots doing most of the work, it should be possible for everyone to go on perpetual vacation. Instead, robots will displace millions of employees, leaving them unable to find work and therefore destitute. I believe that it is time to start rethinking our economy and understanding how we will allow people to live their lives in a robotic nation.
Does anyone else see Brave New World here? Artificial industries created in allowing humans to be free of worry and work...merely players in a game whose goal is to increase consumption.
Worrying stuff. Now where's my soma..
The problem with most of these predictions is that there are claims of robots taking over service jobs, which I find highly doubtful. People don't like interacting with robots-- that's why automated call answering systems piss people off so much when they call their favorite stores or businesses. I can see robotic technology taking over some other hard labor jobs once the intelligence is there, and perhaps assisting in some of the engineering areas, but not in the numbers he's talking about, and not as soon.
KappaStone
Pretty much all this analysis assumes that Moore's Law will keep going indefinitely. As soon as that runs out of steam, computer technology will advance far more slowly, and any advances that seemed to be just ten years off will be shunted off to the far future.
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
In other news, the estimate number of people in development, production and support of intelligent robots in the year 2030 is ... 3.5 millon people.
What bank do you use? Many of the banks in my area have reduced teller hours to the point where most working people can't use them. Some have instituted fees for seeing an actual person.
Others (my neighborhood Washington Mutual) have so completely automated the process of withdrawals and deposits with special kiosks, that actual human presence in a bank is much lower than it ever was when I was growing up. You go to one kiosk to prepare your deposit, and another to withdraw cash. The actual teller transaction, if necessary at all, is minimized. And tellers double as customer-service people, opening new accounts and the like-- one of the few remaining tasks that isn't machine automatable.
Then there are online banks like ETrade, which seem to do ok with no human contact at all.
So no, humans haven't been written out of the equation. But their numbers have been substantially reduced, and the process is a long ways from complete.
yeah, I'll buy this... they could automate 1/2 of what we do now.
it's the same automation story we've been hearing since the industrial age started (or before).
how many less jobs are there in the lumber industry now than there were 100 years ago? Farming? Metal workers? Technology, regardless of whether it is deemed 'intelligent' or not changes the face of the workplace.
The flip side of it is that there will be new jobs for humans... how many programmers were there 100 years ago? Just as my great great grandparents couldn't even imagine nor understand the concept of what I do for a living, we probably can't concieve some of the tasks that humans will be doing 50 or 100 years from now...
No man is an island, but Gary is a city in Indiana.
Is why anyone would care what a dot com god like this guy preticts about anything.
Yeah, advertising will make a lot of money and we can all retire. Thats going to work.
The question is, how do you not make this connection?
Ask yourself the following questions:
1) Is there a compelling reason to believe that computer/robot technology won't reach the point where most basic service jobs can be (almost) entirely automated? Think food service, janitorial, banking, etc.
2) Is there a compelling reason to believe that this technology will remain too costly or inconvenient for employers to adopt it?
3) If (1) and (2), is there some compelling reason why employers will choose not to adopt a cheaper, more convenient technology for these purposes, in order to increase their profits?
If you can't answer with confidence to any of these questions, then it's probably not a matter of whether robot technology will absorb these jobs, but of when it will happen. The 50 year prediction may be off by quite a lot. But over some reasonable time span (less than a couple of centuries, barring global disaster), the technology will be available and-- assuming our economic system remains similar to what we have today-- it will be in use.
Most people who have commented are saying "I'd never trust my life to a robotically controlled plane" and "Oh, no way will I want to interact with a robot". But what you're missing is that this already happens.
As for interacting with robots, all Al Gore jokes aside, it won't be that difficult. People interact with computers all day (for Gen Y it is as natural as breathing). Automated voicemail was mentioned, but while it may be frustrating, when well designed it is more efficient and cheaper (hence why businesses use it!)
And that brings up the other point: most posters have ignored the economic aspect of it. That same factor that is driving jobs to India is the one that will make it so that Marshall Brain is completely correct. Companies need to save money wherever possible, and replacing labourers with robots will be a very big way to do that.
libertarianswag.com
The author's premise is that an economy is a zero-sum game. If a robot takes a job, that means a human must lose a job.It's the same idea that many liberal politicians have. If one man gets rich, it's because another man has become poor.
The truth is, economies are not zero-sum. If robots do become a large factor in our economy, then people will move to other avenues to provide for themselves. Heck, the economy may even shift again. We used to be a manufacturing based economy. Now we are more a serviced based economy. Who knows, in a 100 years, if robots can do it all, our economies may focus around land (where we can live with all our robot servants), art, and knowledge and other things that are uniquely human.
You can tell a great deal about the character of a man by observing those who hate him.
Instead, what I think will happen is that the typical workweek will slowly get shorter and shorter, in part because there will be so many leisure activities and interesting things to do outside of work and that's what people will demand. Our quality of life will increase dramatically. Actual human labor will become very expensive, and we will only need to work a few hours a week to earn enough to reap the rewards of all the automation. Of course, there will be those who will still work 80 hours a week, if they want, and they'll probably become richer than most.
I guess there are alterate distopian possibilities, such as a massive imbalance of wealth concentrated in fewer and fewer people, which they article seems to be predicting. We should be wary to try to take steps, whatever they might be, to help prevent that from happening. Without draconian government measures that trample on freedom.
There's this thing called capitalism, which is what will get us the robots in the first place and it's an implementation of a thing called natural selection, which is what got us you in the first place. And what these things say is: if you choose not to use the robots, the world will choose not to use you.
All it takes is for a very small minority of humans to vote robot and by meme or by gene that small minority will become a big majority. (And believe me, no matter how taboo something is, you can always find a small minority who'll choose it for step 1 if step 3 is profit.) Then the robots take over.
Sorry, but the only way to prevent you being replaced by a robot would be to prevent your creation in the first place. The same forces that giveth, also taketh away.
I won't quibble over details (like number of years or if computers can ever be "smart" like humans") but the fundamental flaw in his argument is that while he acknowledges technology will continue to mutate and change, he assumes industry and jobs will remain stagnant through 2050. So as robots take over menial jobs nothing is created to take their place. It's like someone saying in the year 1950 "if textiles and commodity manufacturing moves to Mexico and China, then by the year 2000 50% of Americans will be unemployed." Sure, if no other industries are created to replace him. But changes in industry dynamics cause jobs to migrate from one industry to another, not vanish.
Wron on the unemployment factor. Automation is only implemented where it INCREASES output/dollar, AKA PRODUCTIVITY. Higher productivity is GOOD for the economy on the whole, it has a huge ripple effect. That money that would normally go to 'register jockeys' or tellers has gone to technicians for the automated systems and reduced costs for the store/bank. Reduced costs mean reduced prices, and that means more money in the economy for stuff people want, like better cars or computers. This is how it REALLY works, folks; Automation is our FRIEND.
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails