Pundits and experts seem to agree that the robots are definitely taking our jobs. Pictured: Baxter of Rethink Robotics.
Image: Flickr/Steve Jurvetson
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The Best Science Writing Online 2012
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Fifteen years ago Deep Blue beat Garry Kasparov in a game of chess, marking the beginning of what Massachusetts Institute of Technology economist Erik Brynjolfsson calls the new machine age—an era driven by exponential growth in computing power. Lately, though, people have been feeling uneasy about the machine age. Pundits and experts seem to agree that the robots are definitely taking our jobs. At last week’s TED conference, Brynjolfsson argued that the new machine age is great for economic growth, but we still have to find a way to coexist with the machines. We asked him to expand on a few points.
[An edited transcript of the interview follows.]
You’ve written a lot about what you call the new machine age, which you argue is fundamentally different from previous industrial eras. What’s so different about it?
The first and second industrial revolutions were defined by these general-purpose technologies, the steam engine and, later, electricity. The new machine age is defined by digital technologies, and those have a lot of unusual characteristics. First, you can reproduce things at close to zero marginal cost with perfect quality and almost instant delivery—that’s something you can’t do with atoms. Second, computers are getting better faster than anything else—ever. That’s something we’re not used to dealing with, and it’s happening year over year, relentlessly. Third, you can remix or combine technologies in a way that doesn’t use them up, but that instead allows for even more combinations. That means we’re in no danger of running out of ideas. Put those all together, and I’m very optimistic about the future of economic growth and productivity growth. And the data bear that out.
You’ve also said that productivity has become “decoupled” from employment. Can you explain?
Throughout most of modern history, productivity and employment have grown side by side. But starting about 15 years ago they started becoming decoupled. Productivity continued to grow, even accelerate, but employment stagnated and even fell, as did median wages for the people who were still working. This was an important milestone, because most economists, including me, used to be of the mind-set that if you just keep increasing productivity, everything else kind of takes care of itself.
But there’s no economic law that says everyone has to benefit equally from increased productivity. It’s entirely possible that some people benefit a lot more than others or that some people are made worse off. And as it turns out, for the past 10 to 15 years it’s gone that way. The pie has gotten bigger but most of the increase in income has gone to less than 1 percent of the population. Those at the 50th percentile or lower have actually done worse in absolute terms.
There are a lot of causes for this—some of it has to do with offshoring, tax policy and so on—but those are minor players compared with the big story, which is the nature of technology. It’s simultaneously allowing us to grow faster and leading us to a very different allocation of those benefits.
Exactly how is technology shifting the landscape of jobs and wealth—who wins and who loses?
In our book Race against the Machine [written with Andrew McAfee, principal research scientist at the Center for Digital Business in the M.I.T. Sloan School of Management], we describe three sets of winners and losers. The first is skilled versus less skilled workers, as a result of what’s called skill-biased technical change. As technology advances, educated workers tend to benefit more, and workers with less education tend to have their jobs automated. It’s not a perfect correlation, but there is a correlation.
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Add Comment"In a way, we were just kind of lucky during the 19th and 20th centuries that technology evolved in a way that helped people at the middle of the income distribution. There’s no economic law that says technology has to work that way."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisConsidering this is an interview with an economist, I'd like to have seen more attention paid to this point, which is really at the crux of what "robots coming for our jobs" means on a human scale. If the connection between productivity and employment continues to loosen, some fundamental social rules that date back to the Industrial Revolution will no longer make sense.
What happens when labor becomes more trouble than it's worth? Will factory owners benevolently feed us anyhow? Will we all make our living in the narrowing niches where tech is still less efficient than humans, playing Foldit to pay the rent?
There's some hand-waving at the end about "entrepreneurship", the magic dust that creates prosperity without significant change to the status quo, but it feels weak to me. If anything, smart businesses will be figuring out how to push tech further into human niches.
There are soon going to be billions of people living without even the limited structure and meaning of industrial busywork - what will they do with their lives? I'd love to see an article here that actually tries to come to grips with the "now what?" of the title.
The two political parties in the US fail to understand the truth of this article. One will tell you that if taxes are lowered more private sector jobs will appear. The other says if the government just spends more then more private sector jobs will appear. Neither of those "solutions" are addressing the root cause of the problem or what really needs to be done about it. But it's all they know.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs you said, the rithym things are happening is too fast and probably will still increase...These kind of desocupation of the workforce, is not something knew, as you said. But if we look at it, we can see that's what humankind has always searched for. We should make ways to build a net of comunication towards tourism, that implies such a ramification of the obvious construction to accelarate the moviment of masses. The problem seems to be a still strict rules inside a fisical empowerment as countries, that needs decrease its force, if such is no more clear of its benefits. But rather clear is its crescent dictatorial factor, when the expectations should sure be the opposite. We are living a remaking of conflicts that are merely of brutal force and anti-democratic, even though the contrary is projected, to cover the imorality of it. The controvercies are all gone!! The dualisc questions concerning what should be the main bias to govern are so artificialy inflated, the arguments are so old and it's a shame to see all this still happening...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt is so easy to let one's mind follow the argument of automation harming people because it takes their jobs. Let's understand one thing - it's NOT the loss of the "job" (most of which are lousy anyway) that matters; it's the loss of the income!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThose who see benefit to using unpaid robots to replace paid workers are assuming that those workers will find a source of income by finding other jobs and thus continue to be consumers/customers.
Now that it's clear that this automation is spreading over virtually all industries and services, we can see that there are simply less jobs for people. At a time - now - when our population is rising, the loss of jobs/income should lead us to design an economic system that allows the whole population an adequate income that is not connected to employment.
I'd suggest that the wealth of all should be returned to the society upon the death of those who manage to amass it instead of only to the heirs of those so favoured.
As to method of doing this, my personal choice would be in the form of a birthright inheritance of shares in public companies to each child born. This ought to be easy to manage, after all we have plenty of experience at doing so; the really wealthy have been obtaining their wealth in exactly this way for centuries.
Just as the wealthy now inherit profit earning shares of companies, so too should all children inherit such shares. That income would allow them to be good consumers and so keep the economy healthy with their spending. Instead of huge piles of wealth amassing and amassing in the ownership of a few super wealthy citizens, this would get the wealth back into circulation and let everyone share in the prosperity that automation and robotics might provide.
I call this concept "Citizens' Capitalism" and I think it can beat the pants off any kind of socialism you can name.
kinnikinick is right. The writing is on the wall in terms of how the benefits of technology have a biased distribution favoring the wealthy. The problem is that they have turned this wealth into a mechanism of control over the political system, which they then use to retard the reforms that a post-industrial population would need to thrive in the name of their own short term interest. If utilizing technologies creatively is the new standard of a modern workforce, then high quality humans are the ultimate asset in that workforce. It follows that a level of public expenditure to cultivate high quality citizens could moderate the divorce between production and employment, but progressive policies such as these are the very ones targeted by the new class of ultra-wealthy in Washington. To me, looking ahead, I see technology exacerbating class tensions, with the wealthy using technology to fasten their monopoly on production, and hoarding that value in stagnant caches, withheld tightly from general circulation. I see that wealth flowing into political campaigns and hijacking any policies that in any way threaten to curb that monopoly. I see people taking to the streets in ways that make occupy wall street look like a school parade. I hope it doesn't come to that, but then, but that is why I am investing in Robot-security guards now.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis and other recent reports indicate that competition from technology is not going to stop but only intensify going forward. What can't be cured must be endured. In other words, the strategy for aiding labor must be for adaptation. This is similar to the situation with climate change where the consensus is that it is too late to stop it and that while it might still be slowed a bit the main challenge will be to adapt.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWages are notoriously "sticky" and this helps to produce unemployment as demand for labor slackens. Two adaptations that help would be falling consumer prices and lower taxes on employment, income taxes and payroll taxes, especially at the low end. This will make it easier for workers to find work at lower wages while still maintaining a reasonable standard of living. Lowering the cost of medical care and getting away from employer provided health insurance fits particularly well with this strategy as would lowering consumption taxes generally. Tolerating some deflation, while contrary to accepted monetary policy of the past, may be a good idea under our new circumstances.
With the rise of automation, 3D printing and robotics there will be an increased need for designers. We will see new class of 21st century artisans make money though creative product design. Those who realize this will own design rights instead of working for a wage.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGood article, but I think it only scratches the surface. When you have to start looking for things that people are still better at than machines, the writing is on the wall: people are becoming obsolete. Not only do machines lack our physical limitations, they also lack our emotional baggage: impatience, irritability, fallible memories, being judgmental. I think it has been something like 20 years since psychologists found that people are more willing to admit to embarrassing things with a faceless computer than a person. Once computers get good enough at understanding speech, the decline in employment will accelerate.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf you want to see our future, look to countries like Saudi Arabia where most of the money comes from natural resources. Barring some fundamental change, that is what all industrial countries will look like fifty years from now.
I guess we can conclude 1 of 4 things: 1) the geeks shall inherit the earth; 2) plato's republic, where all sit about thinking over philosophical questions, is about to become reality; 3) the robot apocalypse is nearing fruition, long live our new overlords; 4) extreme prophecies have never been correct but they happen over and over because some people really, really fear change. Even the good kind which is always the case for any technology that provides better efficiency.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisbetter start learning how to fix robots, unless they make a robot that can do that.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOf course extreme prophecies have been correct. Vesuvius did erupt, the Romans conquered Carthage, WW I happened, WW II happened. If you are a tree frog and the trees all die, bad things can result.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHell they make robots that can make robots right from designing them to shipping them to the customers!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf we don't change our economic system to allow all members of a society to benefit from the wealth generated by that society then all the money is going to pool in the hands of the few at the top and the rest of us can go f**k ourselves as far as the elite are concerned.
This isn't "Free Money" by any means. It takes a whole society to create and maintain the conditions necessary that allow that few to amass such wealth. If the society breaks down that wealth won't be worth toilet paper.
At the end of the day, you are talking about money and its distribution. Henry Ford realised that to sell his production people had to have money. Both extreme Capitalism (example: The GFC) and Communism (Russia's failed economy) put all the power and money into very few hands, demand for products and services decline or move laterally to sources outside the establishment and the system fails.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs artificial intelligence improves you wont even have to think, music, sexual gratification and your every want can be stimulated by a computer; question; will this make you happy? What purpose will keep you living? The ongoing sixth extinction is a better end result.
scribblerlarry You get the point. First question. What is money & where does it come from. Most of it is debt money created by banks monetising assets of fictitious values to debt money on the grounds that it will be demonetised when the debt and interest is repaid. Problem, where is the interest going to come from when there is very little fiat (money printed by Govt. we have faith in) money to start with? Inflation is the answer, they call it growth.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThink "South Park" here: "They took our jobs!"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou are right about the parties. They have become self perpetuating.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisProbably computers will end up doing a lot of the work of government, and just wait until computers are able to establish citizenship.
I don't know if it will ever happen, but I think it's a possibility.
I don't see it happening. It would call for extracting wealth from the wealthy. They would be very strongly opposed.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI think the only solution is to create wealth, so everyone becomes wealthy.
Probably economically you are right, although I don't think obsolete is the correct term. People will always be people and computers will be computers.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisComputer's will displace people from work, but that doesn't mean the person is any less a person.
I have to agree with the gist of the article, that we are seeing a decline in employment due to increasing automation and computerization of the workplace and it probably is just starting.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt's almost inevitable that most labor type work people are doing, whether it is in the USA, Mexico, China, Vietnam or wherever the cheapest labor is, will be replaced by higher capacity automation which will be faster and cheaper than the cheapest rock bottom wage employee in the most dangerous and degrading sweatshop in the world.
It's the story of "John Henry and the Steam Drill", in the earliest stages of the industrial revolution, but computers are transitioning into a labor-replacing rather than a labor-saving device.
Then the workers are left out in the cold, or left out of the economic equation.
The only hope I see for a favorable outcome is for goods and services to increase exponentially due to increasing productivity, until everyone essentially has all the items and commodities they are able to use, and through supply and demand, essentially becoming cheaper and cheaper until they are available to everyone, just for the asking.
If productivity increases enough, and prices of items and commodities drop, which may happen in a manner similar to the exponential increase in memory and computing power of computers, then the price of goods and services become so cheap, they are easily accesable to everyone. Essentially free for the taking.
A hard concept to accept in our world of capatilistic opportunism with winner take all economics and losers condemned to bankruptcy and financial oblivion.
Otherwise, we are headed for the "Banana Republic" model of world economic affairs (Oligarchy) in which there is an extremely affluent, tiny ruling class, and vast masses of humanity struggling to make ends meet, an endless hustle for the next meal and the next warm bed. The great mass of humanity will be condemned to being the runts of the litter.
I hope it turns out for the better, but there aren't any guarantees.
Two remarks from France
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOver 50 years I’ve seen my extended family explode. We were poor but happy. Now we’re no longer a family. I may spend a lot of time on Internet, but I don’t think I’m happier I was then. Internet is an extraordinarily poor substitute to human interaction. Does value creation means happiness destruction?
I’m a management consultant. Companies are obsessed with (human) cost reduction. Is it really surprising if they invest in unemployment creating equipment? Is it a technological or a human trend?
Luddite meeting at 4 P.M.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDesign rights, inherited corporate shares point to the answer to Kurt Vonnegut's first novel 50 years ago, 'Player Piano' addressing this very issue. The end of labor saving devices must result in the end of labor. According to Kurzweil's books, the singularity's effects are not predictable. Perhaps MOOC - massive open on-line courses, will result in a Meritocracy on steroids, but it seems obvious that a negative income tax which will assure everyone of fulfulling basic needs must be forthcoming. The back half of Stephen Kotler and Peter Dimandis' book, 'Abundance' includes references to their own conclusions to a stable society.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNow machines are becoming more smarter , can they be outsourced , downsized unemployed laid off ? What happens when you give a machine the Pink Slip ? When they become sentient ....
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe fact is that when you you have enough unemployment,you no longer have people buying the products that creates wealth.It it at this point that the downward spiral begins.This will be the most trying time in human history.It will be a make or break turning point where we must come up with a new ways of doing things.In the end the more the rich resist the harder the fall will be.Complete collapse would end in the wealthy becoming as poor as the rest.It will take great men to forge this new society and the sooner it happens the less painful and better it will be for all of us.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis is an intuitive insight. I think you may be right.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAn economist, Ravi Batra I think, has written extensively and noted wages need to be equal to demand for a healthy economy, and if wages fall through unemployment, then the economy will be unhealthy. Extreme inequality will destroy the economy as well.
The robots are a different aspect to the equation in that if they keep improving, eventually they will dominate the productive part of the economy, and there will not be wage earners to take up demand. This will call for a transformation of labor, so that everyone is in the position of the capitalist, who doesn't actually earn wages, but earns the profit from capitalistic investments in industrial production.
If everyone can be transformed into a capitalist in some manner, and everyone shares in profit, since wage earners are replaced by new technology, there may be some hope for the future, otherwise, as you said, the fall will be particularly hard, and might fall on the wealthy, although ordinarily the wealthy are shielded from societal turmoil.
The last couple times in which the wealthy were ravaged was during the French revolution, which was against the monarchy and aristocracy, and also the Russian Bolshevik revolution, which originally started out as a revolution against the Czar and the aristocracy, and ended up being a war between the Red and White Russians, the Red winning and overcoming republican or democratic forces.
There is not necessarily a monarchy now but in the US, there is a great concentration of wealth by the wealthiest 1%, who comparatively may even have more wealth than the monarchy and aristocracy had in historic times.
I just saw a hot robotic mannequin sign spinner outside a store the other day. The first thing I thought when I saw it was "they took our jobs" :-)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe best solution is to end fractional reserve banking, return to the federal gov't the role of creating & destroying currency. NO DEBT MONEY. Money as a credit issued by the public Federal central Bank (not the privately owned Fed). So all the public Bank has to do is issue a negative income tax, created from new money, which puts spending power directly and equitably in the hands of the general populace.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSo this new money will filter upwards through the production chain, much of it captured by the wealthy owners of the robotic factories, as stated in the article. At this point the owners MUST be heavily taxed, and exchange controls imposed, None of that pro-Globalism SCAM which is just designed to protect the Super-Rich from Fair Taxation. So according to the level of Inflation(money supply expanding faster than production of goods & services), the Federal Gov't can retire some of the currency received in taxes or return it to the general populace as a negative income tax or add it to newly created money given to consumers. That will solve the problem of Robotic production.
Money as debt:
youtube.com/watch?v=jqvKjsIxT_8
Join the conspiracy. We plan to eliminate the need for any human labor and transition the economy to a fully automated system where everyone gets basic living requirements. Additional income and wealth will be gained by entertainment and research. This change will coincide with the decrease in global population and the "wealthy" class will find their value greatly reduced due to irrelevance. This isn't socialism, it transcends society and allows much greater personal development.
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