Not even stockbrokers’ jobs are safe in this brave, new, world
Stories of industrial robots, like Baxter the Blue-Collar Robot, taking factory jobs away from human beings are legion. But now the white-collar workers and professionals who have always believed their creative skills insulated them from automation need to be looking over their shoulders.
Even worse, if (or when) they lose their jobs to a robot, there will be no place for them to go but the soup kitchen.
Martin Ford, the author of “Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future,” believes the nation’s service sector, which has been the last resort of people moved off the farm by automation, then exiled from factories by robots, will be no sanctuary.
Ford wrote on Linked In the difference, this time, is that robots of the 21st century are smarter than we are and learn much faster.
“Today’s information technology, and its realization in areas like robotics and machine learning, is dramatically different in both the breadth of its impact and rate at which it continues to improve. Unlike specialized farm machinery, the computer revolution has produced a truly general purpose technology. Much like electricity, information technology can be viewed as a utility that has invaded every conceivable organization, industry and sector of the economy. And it is a utility that is advancing exponentially and carries with it an unprecedented cognitive capability: machines and software can now solve problems, make decisions, and—perhaps most importantly—learn,” Ford wrote.
It seems like humanity would have learned a lesson from the novels of Arthur C. Clark and Philip K. Dick, or movies like “Terminator” that showed how machines and, yes, robots, could take over the world.
But evidently not.
Even worse, Ford, who is one of the Silicon Valley brainiacs who has done this to humanity, warns it's too late to turn back the clock.
“The risk we face today is that we have passed a technological turning point, and as a result, a new kind of creative destruction will unfold. Technology in the form of robots, self-service systems and increasingly capable mobile devices will inevitably drive labor intensive industries like retail, fast food, and hospitality toward employing ever-fewer workers. At the same time, the new industries upon which we place our hopes for replacement jobs will rely instead on information technology. Companies like Google and Facebook, both of which employ tiny workforces but massive computing facilities likely offer us a preview of what most future industries will look like,” Ford wrote.
Darrell West, Vice President and Founding Director of the Brookings Center for Technology Innovation, wrote in his paper, “What Happens If Robots Take the Jobs?” that not even a stockbroker will be safe from robotic replacement.
“In the service sector, computer algorithms can execute stock trades in a fraction of a second, much faster than any human,” West wrote.” As these technologies become cheaper, more capable, and more widespread, they will find even more applications in an economy.”
Richard Susskind, a UK government advisor, and visiting professor at Oxford Internet Institute, and his son Daniel Susskind, a lecturer at Oxford University, also envision a society shortly in which there isn’t much for humans to do.
In their book, “Future of the Professions: How Technology will Transform the Work of Human Experts,” the Susskinds argue that even the professions of doctors and attorneys will be rebranded as “empathizer,” “knowledge engineer,” or “system provider.”
“It’s hard to escape the conclusion that there will be less for people to do,” Daniel Susskind told Quartz. “If machines and systems take on more and more tasks, as we see them doing, then it begs the question: What will be left for people?”
So, what’s a human to do?
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