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.

[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.

[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.

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?

[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?

[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?

[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.

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.

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

[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?

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"