Why Automation Won't Displace Human Workers (diginomica.com)

"There was never a job opening for a drone pilot until there was something to fly," writes the founder of market research firm Beagle Research Group, arguing that automation won't inevitably lead society to a universal basic income "free lunch" because new jobs arise when "new capabilities, technical and otherwise, innovate them into existence." Heck, computer programmers had no existence until computers. At one point a computer was just someone who was very good at math performing calculations all day...it took a year to check all of the calculations needed to produce the atomic bomb and that work was all done by humans. Imagine how history might be different if even one of them had a pocket calculator. You get the idea. New technology inspires new jobs.
He also argues that historically automation eliminates jobs that were "dull, dirty, and dangerous," and that automation also ends up performing previously-nonexistent jobs -- or work that was forced onto customers in self-service scenarios.

Comments

Finally

[sciengin]

Finally an article that goes against the nonstop doom and gloom tone of seemingly every single report on automation.
Its as if no one had learned anything from the past revolutions and evolutions in the industry in general.
Apparently people still think its a good idea to just linearly extrapolate from out current postion into the future without considering that maybe technology evolves into new branches, not just faster, harder, better.

No, I do not believe that every single person who will loose their jobs to robots will (immediately) find a new, equal or better job. But predicting that we will be seeing 95% unemployment in the future is just plain silly.

Re: Finally

[bistromath007]

This is how it has always worked before because previous technologies solved specific problems better than human hands alone.

We are on the cusp of general purpose automation. It won't work this way again.

Re:Finally

[HanzoSpam]

Sure, automation creates new jobs, But not everyone has the wherewithal to be a software developer. High-skill jobs will always exist, but how many will be available to all of the truck drivers displaced by self-driving trucks?

Re:Finally

[Anonymous Coward]

So everybody is going to be drone pilots now eh? Sure, I bet we're gonna see that amazing future, where not only people aren't jobless but their jobs are fun things people pay a premium to do now, like piloting drones. I bet that's what's coming.

Now a fact check - while there might be some minor new openings, there will be huge cuts. This is how it works - 10 robots replace 1000 workers, open 2 new positions for robot maintenance. We now have 998 unemployed people, whose jobs might have sucked big time, who will either have to find an-even-worse job or be deprived of income.

But the reality isn't really as grim as "(almost)everyone is unemployed", it is FAR, FAR WORSE. The reality is "almost everyone is suddenly no longer needed, and a pointless and useless liability". There is a reason there are so many people today - and that's TO WORK THEM. Having so much people on its own creates a lot more jobs, needed to maintain that population. And having such large populations was only made viable by the discovery and exploitation of readily available cheap and abundant resources, especially the various types of fossil fuels.

Now, the end of the game nears. Your workers have mined all the resources on the map and you have no further use of them, but still consume resources to maintain their population. What do you do with them? Kill them off, just send them marching into enemy territory and problem solved. That's what anyone would do in a simple game scenario.

In reality things will be much more gradual, but also much worse. Nobody's gonna build robots to take care after an idling and resource sucking population, which no longer represents a viable workforce. Today's robotizaton is just baby steps. In the future there will be 2 types of robots:

1 - the smaller group would be the robots who are producing stuff for the select few, which would be a subset of today's 1%
2 - the larger group would be killer robots who are keeping the select few safe from the wrath of the many, who are left to die off or killed when they resist

Fossil fuels have long peaked, the world's big arable plains are long depleted and rely on chemical fertilizers (made of fossil fuels) as they slowly turn into deserts. Rain patterns become less uniform, swapping frequent moderate rain with extreme drought and floods, ground water is being used up much faster than it can replenish, and much of it is now too polluted to be used for drinking or even farming. Antibiotics and pest control make up for super bugs, which are too nasty for anyone to handle without medication. The bulk of the population now consumes food that has very low nutritional value and is very damaging to the organism.

There will be a lot of suffering and death in the decades to come. But on the upside - there won't be 95% unemployment, those people won't stay hungry and cold, because they'd be dead.

And that future will have only one actual job in that future - robot maintenance, as robots will do pretty much everything. And it will shrink progressively, as robot maintenance hand itself to robotization quite well. There won't be any need to feed the working class, there won't be any need to entertain it, there won't be any need to police it, there won't be any need to milk with shiny toys, there won't be any need of bureaucracy, all services required by the remaining population will be automatized either by either software or hardware, as humanity is reduced into a footprint can be maintained in a sustainable way.

Re: Finally

[YouGotTobeKidding]

Sadly a large portion of workers are doing very easily automated tasks. Sadly a large portion of these people are also not creative enough.

Lets take a recent example of a spring factory that REopened in MI. In the 90s they employed 200 employees. They went over seas (out sourcing) but the QC was crap so they moved back. Just one problem. The new factory only employs 20 people as the other 180 were replaced by machines. So while YES there will 'always' be some human input needed its only 10% or less of what is needed now. Where do the other 90% go? Hell where does the 90% of 90% who are not that smart go when there are no more 'make work' jobs for them and they have neither the aptitude nor inclination to become 'creative'?

This article is pie in the sky, unicorns for everyone BS. Yes eventually humanity will figure out WTF to do... but as history has shown it takes a couple GENERATIONS for us to figure it out. Thats a lot of pissed off, hungry people with nothing to loose. That is a recipe for disaster.

Not automation

[altrent2003]

"There was never a job opening for a drone pilot until there was something to fly,"
A drone is not automation. A self driving drone that knows what to pick up and where to deliver it autonomously is automation. It doesn't need a pilot.
I'd be concerned ordering market research studies from this man's company.

There will be less jobs

[blackest_k]

I've automated a few production lines and the reasons for the automation was to reduce the number of people running the lines. What does happen is a skilled maintenance engineer is required to fix problems on that line and generally a few other similar lines. That can result in the loss of 100 jobs and the creation of 1.

Some processes can result in totally unmanned sites and people only are needed on site when the equipment reports a fault actually often not even then since a backup system tends to come online.

It's not a bad thing to automate jobs but there is a cost to communities when the jobs go.

Re:There will be less jobs

[Anonymous Coward]

Another important factor we tech people often ignore is time: it takes time to learn a new job, so even if automation does not affect the total number of jobs, the new jobs will require different skills. The pace of tech change is so rapid these days that it becomes challenging to retrain works quickly enough to take their new jobs without catastrophic loss of income. The U.S. offers minimal care for displaced workers, which is the real problem.

We need automation, even if it reduces the need for those workers, but we also need displacement care to help workers move into another productive job, rather than treat them as last week's expired egg salad.

Re:There will be less jobs

[NormalVisual]

Another important factor we tech people often ignore is time: it takes time to learn a new job, so even if automation does not affect the total number of jobs, the new jobs will require different skills.

And there's a non-zero cost to that retraining, which in the vast number of cases is expected to be borne by those that have been displaced. I'm guessing that most people that find themselves out of work aren't going to have the wherewithal to drop a few tens of thousands of dollars to learn what they need for a new career.

Re:Missing the point..

[KermodeBear]

Also, it is the easy, brain-dead jobs that are gong to go out of existence. The jobs that support the automation? Robotics engineers, software engineers, mechanics. These are higher end jobs that require education and training.

Sure, there's always going to be menial labor jobs, but they'll be fewer. Look at what is poised to happen in the fast food industry.

Essentially, if you are not reasonably intelligent, you are going to have some serious issues getting employment within 20-30 years. Maybe even sooner than that.

The GOOD thing is that with lower production costs, it will become less costly to live so maybe these things will balance out as they always have in the past. The future economy, though, looks like it will be vastly different than what we have today.

But, then again, to be fair... People said the exact same thing about the Industrial Revolution. Machines are going to take over! No jobs for anyone! But what really happened was jobs for everyone and things were great.

Based on history and evidence there isn't much to fear, but I just feel that things aren't quite the same this time around...

Extrapolation?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's exactly what the article did.

Automation has always been a net job destroyer and what created demand for workers in the past was labor intensive industries - like auto manufacturing in the late 19 th century.

The people who were and are displaced find themselves out in the cold. Retraining is a fairy tale to keep folks from revolting.

And as we have been seeing, there haven't been enough decent opportunites being created. New industries are starting fr heavily automated such as SpaceX. Their rockets are automated and the company as a whole is using a fraction of the employees that would have been necessary decades ago to accomplish the same thing.

As our population increases, we are boning to have to give them better options than working in retail or doing janitor jobs - which hasn't been automated yet.

Our economy and work are changing in fundamental and new ways ways that we have never experienced before. Looking back at the past as a template is horribly misguided.

Re: Extrapolation?

[khallow]

You mean?

Automation has always been a net job destroyer

That makes your position even more indefensible, if only because it has never been true!

Sure, we can look in isolation at an automated assembly line and see the oh, 100 jobs replaced with one job. 99 net jobs lost right? But that sort of analysis ignores a variety of things. The wealth created by far cheaper production goes to employing people in other areas (for example, the one person of the above example will still have needs). The 99 people are now free to do other jobs. And with that labor freed, we have opportunity for more assembly lines to make more things. Finally, it's worth noting that all this automation makes human labor more valuable.

And that's why, we've never, even to the present date, had a net loss in jobs from automation.

Re: Extrapolation?

[Hognoxious]

The wealth created by far cheaper production goes to employing people in other areas (for example, the one person of the above example will still have needs). The 99 people are now free to do other jobs.

They're free to do other jobs - if those other jobs exist. I don't see why it's a given that they will.

Re: Coal workers

[Anonymous Coward]

The EPA didn't put them out of work. That five hundred ton truck that hauls away the coal after the five ton bucket loader fills it up did.

You don't need ten thousand schmucks with picks and shovels when you have twenty thousand horsepower of machinery operated by three guys and a fee spotters.

They could offer to work for room and board and still not have jobs in the coal industry, unless its driving the trucks and those jobs are on their way out too. They still need one guy to take the blame for the coal ash and mine tailings spills, but Trump gutting the EPA will kill that job too.

true but missing the point

[cellocgw]

Yes, it's true that every automation, starting with steam engines to run mines, led to an explosion of new job categories.

But what he's missing is that the concept of "everyone should get a job" is just plain wrong. The increase in productivity, and in automation, ought to lead to a situation where goods are so plentiful that we do not need to work, or maybe only work 20 hrs/week for 15 years before retiring. The whole "work ethic" thing arose from two events. The first was humans drifting out of their natural habitat into regions hostile to survival, necessitating a "work or die" paradigm. The second was the development of communities with leaders & followers, in which sooner or later the leaders stop working but spread the gospel of hard work -- which the proles must do to support the leaders.

It's not silly.

[Zelig]

If you want to try out your analysis of silly, start by trying to answer "What employment sector can absorb the 3.5 million truck drivers who will be replaced with automated vehicles?". Apply your own biases for how quickly this will have to happen; I'm wild guessing ~5-7 years, starting ~5 years from now.

Then add a million bus and taxi drivers, and then add the job count you ascribe to the edges of trucking (convenience stores and such that cater to them) ... These are essentially unskilled jobs. All you need is a certain threshold of reliability and discipline; for that, you get a good, heretofore stable, career.

Re:It's not silly.

[Anonymous Coward]

Just because the cost to provide goods goes down doesn't mean the cost of the good goes down. If a company can lower their expenses but charge you the same amount, I'm pretty sure they're going to try just that. Competition doesn't always work as well as people seem to think it will.

And just because you consume things for free online doesn't mean somebody doesn't pay. It just isn't you, directly. There are still costs involved that have to be covered.

Re:Missing the point..

[Anonymous Coward]

Robotics engineers, software engineers,mechanics

Until they automate those jobs, too. I mean, why would you use a human engineer when you could get a robot to the same thing with far greater precision, speed and no bitching about pay-rises?

Basically, any job you think of could be automated/roboticized. This includes teaching, child-rearing, musical composition, interpretive dance, cosmologist, explorer, judge, farmer...

People said the exact same thing about the Industrial Revolution

We are still in the industrial revolution and it seems to be playing out exactly as feared.

"The same thing I want with the Kremlin. I'm bored with corporations. With the information I can access, I can run things 900 to 1200 times better than any human." - MCP

This isn't a mechanical loom we're talking about

[Opportunist]

The beginning of automation saw a replacement of human and animal muscle power with water and (later) chemical power. There was little displacement going on, and the increase in output was a necessity anyway due to there being severe shortages. No problems here, quite the opposite.

The next wave was the replacement of menial work with mechanical work. Especially in agriculture a lot of farmhands were replaced by machinery. Low skilled jobs were eliminated in favor of higher skilled jobs that again increased output. This did displace workers and was one of the reasons of the early problems with working poor in the early days of the industrial revolution, where farmhands that were out of a job now moved to the cities where industries offered them.

Next in line were industry jobs getting the same axing, with more streamlining and fewer low skilled jobs being replaced by mechanical workers. This was buffered by the emerging service industry that could gobble up the eliminated low education workforce. That we were fighting world spanning wars around that time sure also helped.

Fast forward to today. Again, jobs are being replaced by robots. This time around, though, none of the former buffering and mitigating factors come into play. We do not need more production. We already produce more than we can sell. By some margin and then some. We also cannot put more people into the service sector, 3 out of 4 people are already working there, and a service industry is highly dependent on people having spare spending money, so these people will not be moving towards another industry branch. They also cannot move anywhere because there is nowhere to go where jobs are being offered.

This time around this is going to sting.

This article is bullshit

[fluffernutter]

Fast food restaurants are going to be the first to automate. This alone will kill around 100 million jobs in the US. Furthermore, these aren't just 100 million 'generic' jobs like everyone tends to think of them as, but these are 100 million jobs that a student can do.. you know, the very kids that are supposed to be out there working hard to support their education so they can make it in the world. You can't tell me there will ever be 100 million drone pilots in the world, so this article has a long way to go to explain that.

Re:Missing the point..

[Half-pint HAL]

But, then again, to be fair... People said the exact same thing about the Industrial Revolution. Machines are going to take over! No jobs for anyone! But what really happened was jobs for everyone and things were great.

Based on history and evidence there isn't much to fear, but I just feel that things aren't quite the same this time around...

Of course they're not the same. The industrial revolution gave us carpet factories and fully carpeted homes. It made production cheap enough that we stopped gluing broken plates together. Over the last century, production has ramped up to the point that we have to be actively coerced to consume past satiation point -- your sports team's strip is updated every season so you'll replace something with several years of useful life left in its fabric.

We've displaced workers from job to job, rendering them more productive, but we've passed over the optimum of productivity vs population. There's nothing that we need all these people for.

Re:Coal workers

[Anne Thwacks]

Getting a 50 year old to retrain is hard

The problem is not that he/she can't learn. Its that he has zero confidence that "retraining" (to do something he already knows how to do) will get him a job when the actual problem is ageism.

I have learned to do several new jobs after the age of 50. The jobs are either unobtainable due to ageism, or the rate of pay has collapsed. (I am still doing another course - but expecting to work for myself this time).

Re:Missing the point..

[pipingguy]

Human thinking is now being replaced. This time it's different.