Rice Professor Predicts Humans Out of Work In 30 Years

kkleiner writes "Rice University professor Moshe Vardi has been evaluating technological progress in computer science and artificial intelligence and has recently concluded that robots will replace most, if not all, human labor by 2045, putting millions out of work. The issue is whether AI enables humans to do more or less. But perhaps the real question about technological unemployment of labor isn't 'How will people do nothing?' but 'What kind of work will they do instead?'"

Comments

This thought crosses my mind a lot.

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't wait to actually live! come on automation! we're ready for this!

Re:This thought crosses my mind a lot.

[Synerg1y]

Ideally, this professor needs to get to building these robots asap.

And then robots that maintain those robots...
and then...
robots that maintain those robot's robots.

Hopefully the 3rd generator of robots will exhibit more logic than the professor at which point skynet will be born.

Re:This thought crosses my mind a lot.

[alonsoac]

I am sure most people are ready for their boss to be replaced by a robot. And not some genius robot, just a competent one would do.

Re:This thought crosses my mind a lot.

[eyegone]

Hmm, fembots. I suppose the Apple model will be prettier, but much more expensive?

The real problem is that it will demand ecosystem monogamy.

Re:This thought crosses my mind a lot.

[HiThere]

I'm rather sure that Watson, after suitable training, could write better C++ code than I could. I consider the STL to be an abomination, and avoid C++ at every opportunity. Given the choice of C++ or Ada, I'd choose Ada, though if efficiency isn't important I'd prefer Python3. (Actually, the compiler language that I usually prefer is D, but there are severe limitations in library support, so I often choose something else. But I'd pick even Java over C++.)

Re:This thought crosses my mind a lot.

[Anonymous Coward]

Programmers don't just translate flow charts into code. Writing code is a deeply complex and creative task on a par with writing English prose. We're no more likely to replace programmers, in my opinion, than we are to replace Shakespeare. Very creative jobs like those will be the very last to fall to AI.

Re:This thought crosses my mind a lot.

[silentcoder]

Locke lived until 1632, Adam Smith was born in 1723.

If you believe in a linear concept of causality then it seems rather unlikely that Locke could have copied from somebody who wasn't even born until almost a century after he died.
That's like claiming Plato's work was based on Carl Jung's !
Mill was born in 1773 - long after Smith even.

The first and original labour theory of value was written by Locke. Locke's theory forms the basis of western property law, and it formed the basis in turn of much later economic theory. Smith wrote most of the basis of modern capitalism based on it (but capitalism existed well before Smith - hell the first corporation existed before Locke was even born), Marx's theory was based on it as well.

I never said all these things ARE Locke's theory, I said they are all BASED on it. All mere refinements of an idea that dates back to the 1600's.
There are many problems with Locke's theory - for example apart from the word "man" there is nothing in there that doesn't mean a beaver should be able to claim full ownership of it's dam, especially as it can probably show it's family lived on the land for centuries before the current owner arrived.
It is quite capable of supporting the contradictory conclusions drawn by Adam Smith and Karl Marx too.

But please dude, if you can't manage to not get your centuries confused you shouldn't be arguing history.

Re:This thought crosses my mind a lot.

[jlar]

"You could have said the same thing about mass production, and predicted that the world would still be full of serfs and slaves 200 years in the future, but you would have been wrong."

But the problem is that until now technology has generally acted as a productivity multiplier for the general population. What will happen at some point is probably that humans are in fact not needed any more. And we will therefore only be able to earn money by capital investment (in non-human based production). And that will have a tremendous effect on the distribution of wealth in the World and will probably lead to revolutions and worse.

Re:This thought crosses my mind a lot.

[tmosley]

Just because the robots took the productive jobs doesn't mean people won't have jobs. There will still be actors, writers, artisans, chefs, athletes, etc. There will be plenty of jobs. They just won't produce so many critical things.

Your argument is nothing but a rehash of Luddism. Industrialization destroyed vast swaths of unskilled labor, but it also allowed increased specialization that lead to an explosion in the number of people not directly involved in farming.

Increased production has never once in history lead to a war. Never.

Re:This thought crosses my mind a lot.

[tmosley]

FFS, learn what a serf is. There is no-one on the planet that is bound to the land by a feudal lord. There may be slaves, but they are vanishingly small in number, as opposed to, you know, 200 years ago.

Calling hard working people slaves just shows ignorance on your part. Those people are working to develop their industrial base, something that will improve the lives of their children. But you don't want to hear about that, because you want to return to the world as it was prior to industrialism. You know, where 99% of people were serfs or slaves, rather than 0.001%.

That is, unless you have some EVIDENCE that people are being held in bondage and forced to work on a massive scale somewhere. But you don't, because you act solely based on your feelings, which are more important to you than reality. It's disgusting.

What? Again?

[Jane Q. Public]

This was predicted back in the 1930s, too. How did that work out for them?

Re:What? Again?

[GameboyRMH]

I'd look at the last 30-40 years for an example of what will happen: Less jobs, stagnant pay, more ludicrous wealth for a select few.

Re:What? Again?

[CanHasDIY]

We would spend our time, doing art, music, entertainment, or any other leisure related activity/job

And who's gonna be paying you to spend your time doing art, music entertainment, or any other leisure activity?

That seems to be the mistake all the pie-in-the-sky thinkers make; they just assume that, with the elimination of work for humans, the elimination of a weighted financial system designed to separate us into differing economic classes will disappear with a magical POOF.

The more likely circumstance is that, as more and more people lose their jobs to robotic workers, endless riots and resource wars will become the new norm.

At least, until a significant portion of the population is killed off.

Re:What? Again?

[HeckRuler]

Uh, yeah, about that. It pretty much happened. Technology and machines took over the farm job and everyone moved to the cities. More so than they did in the past. You know, what with the improvements from crop rotation leading to people moving to cities and helping with the Renaissance.

So... it's not that there are no farmers any more, just SIGNIFICANTLY LESS. And that's really what sociologists, historians, and people that make policy care about. Nothing ever works in absolutes in these fields, but they care what 80% of the masses do.

Then in the 1960, the smart people at the time predicted that computers would take over the work and no-one would have to work. And lo and behold, the vast swath of meaningless paper pushers are gone, replaced with email, databases, and computers. And manufacturing took a massive hit. The plants are still there, but they don't employ nearly as many people.

The "if not all" clause is complete bullshit and the professor should be ashamed for making it, but it's not unreasonable that the trend of technology automating away jobs will continue. Duh. And if you had been paying attention in history class this would have been obvious.

Re:What? Again?

[Immerman]

Where are you getting your numbers? Among the white-collar class at least 40+ hours was fairly standard, and allowed a man to support his family comfortably. It's these days where 60+ hours is not uncommon, and typically both parents are working, so we're talking 100+ hours a week to support a family. Real wages have been falling for a long time. Yes all that technology has been making us more productive, but we're not earning correspondingly more, all the extra profit is accumulating to those few at the top of the heap, and they're not likely to start spreading the wealth around just because you ask nicely.

You offer a nice view of how extensive automation *could* play out, but so far I see little evidence that it *will* play out that way. The way things are going it seems more likely that most people will simply become obsolete and be fighting for a place in the welfare line. Because quite frankly most people aren't cut out for high-tech maintenance jobs, and if robots can do all menial and service jobs faster and cheaper than a human, what exactly are Joe and Jane Sixpack supposed to do to earn a living?

As for the reason this issue was brought up in the 30's, is that it was in fact imminent then. In the US at least it has in fact been *decades* since there's been any technological need for anyone to work more than a couple days a week to provide everyone with a comfortable lifestyle, the problem is that our economic model has yet to adapt to the new reality, if anything it's been going in the opposite direction. Current claims simply hilight the fact that things are likely to soon reach an critical level where they can't be ignored. Heck, factory robots are already becoming cheaper than Chinese laborers, and are beginning to take over service jobs as well.

Re:What? Again?

[Anonymous Coward]

He isn't entirely incorrect. But not for the libertarian reasons he thinks.

Good laws would force equitable pay for equitable work and reduce the mandatory work hours dramatically.

Re:What? Again?

[lgw]

That's what you take from the last 30-40 years? We're much better off now than the mid-70s, when we had all those things plus gas lines!

We're at the end of a long economic downturn, as happened in the 70s, and in the 30s, and so on. It's merely cyclic - like complaining in August "if this trend continues, the seas will boil!"

Almost everyone used to farm - now very very few do that work, thanks to automation (and food is amazingly cheap by historical standards), and most people now have non-farm jobs. A great many people used to do manufacturing work - now very few do that, thanks to automation (and soon enough it will be none), and most people will have non-manufacturing jobs.

We're just working our way up the hierarchy of needs. Once food was easy, everyone wanted a car, a washing machine, and a TV. Now cars, washing machines, and TVs are easy, and everyone wants entertainment and social interaction (and, yes, a few entertainers are ludicrously wealthy), as well as personal services and consulting.

Re:What? Again?

[eyegone]

And lo and behold, the vast swath of meaningless paper pushers are gone, replaced with email, databases, and computers.

You clearly haven't dealt with the U.S. healthcare system recently.

Re:What? Again?

[tmosley]

We are NOT better off than we were back then. The technological advances we have seen hardly make up for the drop in average worker production due to increasing numbers of non-productive workers (ie government workers, and those who must deal with them to keep businesses running). Even with the radical advances we have seen, the average family does, in fact, work 60-80 hours, and is only just getting by, if that, as they now have huge amounts of debt to pay off that they accumulated while trying to maintain their standard of living.

Re:What? Again?

[Dcnjoe60]

The group that saw the greatest amount of growth was government. They went from ~20% of GDP to greater than 40. That is why your pay is stagnating, and why there are so few jobs. Governments don't create goods that you can buy. They aren't PRODUCTIVE. Cut the government back down to 20% of GDP, and the purchasing power that was previously being distributed to people who didn't produce anything will largely find its way back to productive pursuits, and we will start to grow again.

That statistic is misleading as included in the government workforce are police, fire, teachers and numerous other groups that prior to 1960 where not classified as government workers.

But even taking those into account, the number of government workers have increased, but measuring against GDP is meaningless. But the real measure, the number of government workers compared to the total population is smaller today (after adjusting for professions that were not previously included) than it was in 1960. It would make sense that as the number of citizens increases, the number of workers to protect (police and fire), educate (teachers), heal (public health), construct (more people mean more roads and bridges) and even adminster (more people mean more clerks at the DMV are needed).

The number of workers the government has is not a problem anymore than the number of workers Microsoft has. It all depends what those workers are doing.

Re:What? Again?

[TubeSteak]

The educated reader would realize that productivity increases aren't distributed equally across the workforce.

Once upon a time, they were
http://exopermaculture.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/526916_10150870575016275_36774245_n.jpg

Then things changed (the bottom half of this graphic)
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2013/01/13/opinion/13greenhousech/13greenhousech-popup-v4.png

"likely able to" is just conjecture. Try again with facts.
The numbers are out there, see if they support your hypothesis.

Hmm...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

'What kind of work will they do instead?'

Well, that's a tricky one: If the worker-robots advance faster than the killer robots, it seems likely that the unemployed humans will find exciting new opportunities in either the 'rioting jobless masses' sector or the 'rentacops keeping the rioting jobless masses in their place' sector.

If the killer robots advance as fast or faster than the worker-robots, I predict a surge of new applicants in the organic fertilizer sector.

what will people get paid for?

[RichMan]

The question is not how will people "do nothing", the question is how will people get paid for "doing nothing".

There will be a small percentage of people who do actual physical work. There will be a small percentage of people who do mental work. Those people will be paid well.

What about the rest? McDonalds/Starbucks will be fully robotic.

Re:what will people get paid for?

[Anonymous Coward]

The factory of the future will have only two employees, a man and a dog.

The man will be there to feed the dog. The dog will be there to keep the man from touching the equipment.

Warren G. Bennis

Right

[hawguy]

I've heard that before. These new fangled PC's in everyone's home will make datacenters a thing of the past! Cloud computing will make home computers a thing of the past! New 4GL languages will make developers a thing of the past! New spreadsheets will make business software developers a thing of the past! New point-and-click GUI's will make web developers a thing of the past!

So far, things just seem to be getting more and more complicated, requiring more and more people to run them.

He's right and wrong...here's why

[MindPrison]

He is right when it comes to actual physical hard labor.

He is wrong when it comes to us being out of work, the biggest (and hardest challenge of all times) will be in entertainment. The lazier we become, the more entertainment we need, online series, drawings, animations, films, stories, interactive experiences etc. will be the biggest thing on earth.

We will NEVER be out of work. We'll just work DIFFERENTLY than what we do now.

Time to Retrain People to Ignore the "Work Ethic"

[srobert]

An economy so structured, with so little work for humans to do, will be a disaster if humanity continues insisting that there's an intrinsic morality in the "work ethic". For centuries we've tried to convince people that if they didn't work harder, they weren't morally entitled to a share of the aggregate sum of all that was produced through human labor. With almost nothing left that requires human labor, we'll be in bad shape if we don't replace the work ethic with entitlement ethic. (That will no doubt ruffle some conservative sensibilities). Want to see how the economy will have to work? Think "Star Trek Replicators"; that's why the Federation doesn't use money anymore in the 24th century.

Re:Professor Moron!

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I may be giving the professor too much credit; but my impression was that he was predicting a situation where advances in automation made robots more cost-effective than humans for essentially any task... Not that that would necessarily lead to especially pleasant outcomes for the redundant humans.

People who think that the benefits of increased automation will magically accrue to everyone are... questionably balanced... but the notion that an increasing number of tasks will be sufficiently well automated that even literal slave labor can't beat machines on price seems much harder to dispute.

Re:Professor Moron!

[girlintraining]

Yea because the average lifestyle is exactly the same now as it was 100 years ago or even 1000 years ago. Maybe I'm missing the sarcasm, but I read your post as if you actually believe it.

Did I hear something?
???*Woosh*???

Hmm... Let's see.
5000 BC: Iraq, Samarra. About the only thing we know is they did pottery. Beyond this point, there aren't any reliable records.
4000 BC: Mesopotamia. A few wealthy people and a large number of worker-slaves.
3000 BC: Mesopotamia. The Sumerian hegemony. A few wealth people and a large number of worker-slaves.
2000 BC: Egypt. The height of the Old Kingdom. A few wealthy people and a large number of worker-slaves.
1000 BC: China, Zhou Dynasty. A few wealthy people and a large number of worker-slaves.
0 AD: Roman Empire. A few wealthy people and a large number of worker-slaves.
1000 AD: Europe. Middle of the Dark Ages. A few wealthy people and a large number of worker-slaves.
2000 AD: United States. A few wealthy people, and a large number of worker-slaves.

Have I made my point yet?

Wrong question.

[Black Parrot]

The question that actually needs to be asked is, will the people who own the robots let the rest of us have any food?

They will do things we haven't thought of yet

[Dave Emami]

Back the late 1800s, agricultural work required about 3/4 of the US's population. Now it's about 3%. If, back then, you'd asked "what would happen if 96% of the farming jobs vanished?", you'd probably have gotten predictions of doom similar to this one. But what actually happened was that those people (or their descendants, rather, since this change didn't happen overnight) got employed doing other things, most of which people in the late 1800s couldn't have anticipated. The same thing will happen here. Human intelligence, creativity, and flexibility are valuable, and valuable stuff tends not to sit idle. People figure out something to do with it. There are temporary displacements and adjustments, but overall, automation doesn't idle people, it frees them up to do new things.

Note that I'm not talking about a situation where the machines are actually creatively intelligent, in contrast with something like Deep Blue being programmed ahead of time to do a highly-specific task. If we get to that point, all bets are off, but then we're venturing into singularity territory at that point, anyway.

Re:No problem

[Thruen]

1. People can own shares in companies that own robots. Those shares will pay dividends (or increase in value etc).

People can own shares in Google, too. It doesn't mean people just have shares in Google, they still need to earn money to buy them.

2. The government can tax the profits of the robot run factories. These profits can provide a dividend check to citizens who would hopefully invest wisely in the robot companies.

Ah, I see, you expect people of the world to endorse socialism. I'm not sure what sorcery you intend to use to force this, or how you think we can successfully transition to such a system, but I'm interested to hear it. Keep in mind, human nature has always been the big problem with things like socialism; in general, people don't want to be equal, they want more, and they certainly don't want to hand what they've earned to their neighbor who didn't earn it.

Re:No problem

[CanHasDIY]

The economy functions fine with workers and companies right? Why wouldn't it function with robotic workers and companies?

Uh... because robots don't buy stuff?

Re:Professor Moron!

[ArsonSmith]

Of course that "worker-slave" distinction you like to put in there as some overly pessimistic pronouncement is living so far above the few wealthy of the prior era that it is almost completely uncomparable.

robots are capital, labor is expenses

[Anonymous Coward]

The benefits accrue to those who have the capital. So increased automation has resulted in increased concentration of wealth (a fairly common cyclical behavior.. see gilded age, for example), because the value of the increased productivity over the last 30-40 years have paid the investor, not the laborer.

It's all about "who owns the means of production", because that's who gets the benefits of the production. When you are a tenant farmer, the landowner makes the money. When you own the land, your asset becomes more valuable.

When you are providing labor for a wage, you ARE in economic terms, no different than the machine that replaces you.

So.. "to the barricades"

Re:No problem

[mjwx]

The economy functions fine with workers and companies right? Why wouldn't it function with robotic workers and companies?

Uh... because robots don't buy stuff?

Erm. The printer at work already orders it's own toner.