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ROBOTS:  WILL THEY TAKE OUR JOBS?

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Apocalypse by Robots is a recurring theme in technical publications and science fiction. As our tools become more sophisticated and able to learn, the more alarmist writers tell us, they might attack us. A machine programmed to make paper clips might try to turn the entire world into a paper clip factory. Robots programmed to find their own power sources could deny us the power we need for survival. Robots could be deadly.

Some of the less excitable tech writers dismiss such alarms,. They still say, though, that say automation will foster mass unemployment. In fact, we’ll need a guaranteed minimum income to save the hordes of technologically unemployed from rioting in the streets because they can’t support themselves. MIT’s Technology Review, Wired, Gizmodo, The Verge, Singularity Hub, Mashable, Ars Technica- almost every technical rag echoes the same theme.

There are a few dissenting voices, but almost every article addressing the subject warns that automation will destroy far more jobs than it will create. In the past, technical development has only disrupted job markets for the short term, and in the long run has created far more jobs– and far more remunerative jobs-  than it has destroyed.

But this time it’s different, the alarmists say. We can’t use the Industrial Revolution or the dawn of the Information Age as our model. The big difference now is artificial intelligence or machine learning. As our tools learn from ’experience’, instead of just responding to specific inputs, the need for direct human control nearly vanishes. A small technical and financial elite will control almost everything, and will become fantastically wealthy. The rest of us will be mired in poverty, permanently shut out from the labor force.

How Have Robots Affected Job Markets Before?

This certainly is a grim prospect. But is it likely?

We doubt it. Suppose we concede that the distant past has nothing to teach us about out own futures. We’ll look into just the rise of robotics in the last sixty years. In all that time, robots have finally and irrevocably destroyed only one job category, elevator operators. But automation has created more jobs for elevator engineers and repairmen.

We’ve seen the same trend in other industries. Replacement of land lines with mobile phones has radically altered the work of telecom technicians, but has not made them obsolete. Replacing cathode ray tubes with LCD, LED, and OLED TV sets radically shrank the market for TV repairmen, but created new jobs for electronics designers and coders. The waning influence of broadcast TV networks has opened new markets in cable TV, satellite TV, and streaming video,. It has created more demand for content– and for content creators.

Automation has brought us an enormous blessing: assignment of the most dangerous, dirty, exhausting, and boring tasks to machines. This leaves us with far less onerous work, often in air-conditioned comfort. Machine learning will accelerate this trend. The tasks we handle in the future might not be what we call ‘work’ today. They might even seem like play. But suppose you could enter a time machine, and could talk with a farmer or a merchant living two centuries ago. If you describe your current job to him, will he understand it? Will he consider it work? Not likely. He’ll probably think you’re just playing.

What Can You Do?

This doesn’t mean you should be complacent. If you’re unprepared, a rapidly changing job market can hurt you badly. Your best job insurance is continually upgrading your skills.

Above all else, learn how to learn. We can’t always predict what occupations will be in demand. Students who spend years preparing for specific jobs in trendy fields often find, not long after they graduate, that their hard-won skills are obsolete. If you have solid communication, math, and reasoning skills, and if you know a fair amount about literature and history, you have a huge advantage over others. What you don’t know, you can learn quickly.

With a nimble mind and a solid work ethic, you probably don’t need to fear competition by robots.

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LIVING MORE CHEAPLY

Will your cost of living plummet in the next two decades? Peter Diamandis, the founder of the XPRIZE Foundation, says it probably will.

Diamandis says advancing technology will foster massive reduction in the cost of  living. If he is correct, food. fuel, housing, medical care, electricity, transportation, and education will cost a fraction of what they cost now. Internet services, robotics, artificial intelligence, 3D printing, and virtual reality will force revolutionary leaps in efficiency. All aspects of commerce: manufacturing, shipping, and personal services- to name a few- will be affected. The next great technological leap will leave no industry untouched.

As a percentage of income, the cost of food has dropped about 45% since 1960. This trend is likely to accelerate. Innovation in genetics and biology will multiply yields for a given plot of land, with far less water. Vertical farming will bring agriculture closer to the consumer’s home. Since 70% of the cost of providing food is in transportation, storage, and handling, vertical farming by itself will force massive price reduction.

Uber and Lyft are disrupting the mass transit industry. This is barely the beginning. Such services will soon be fully autonomous, meaning they won’t need human drivers. This development will lead to rapidly plummeting transportation costs. Much of your expense in car ownership is for insurance, repair, fuel, parking, and traffic tickets. When transport is a service, not something you own, you will be freed from these expenses. Diamandis estimates that this will reduce your cost of travel by five to ten times. In our view, he’s overly optimistic, but your costs certainly will drop sharply.

Fossil fuels are expensive chiefly because of the cost of extracting and shipping them. We soon may be able to do without them. Solar energy is becoming steadily more efficient. Inherently safe nuclear sources, such as thorium reactors, will provide extremely cheap energy, enough for thousands of years. Distributed energy sources, practical only with the newer fuel sources, will reduce our reliance on centralized grids. With fewer and shorter power lines, and with less maintenance expense, the cost of electricity will plummet.

Medical care is a big factor in the cost of living. Robotics, advanced biochemistry, and a faster internet will reduce costs dramatically. Artificial intelligence applications can diagnose patients more accurately than the best doctors can. They will have huge databases of patient history, genomics, and similar cases to draw from. They can analyze massive amounts of data in a few seconds, for only the cost of electricity. The best surgeons will be robots. They will be more accurate than any human surgeon, and they’ll have all the data from millions of previous surgeries. Automation will accelerate drug testing by several orders of magnitude. New drugs will reach the market much faster, and they can be customized for each patient. You are likely to have several diagnostic tools at home. You can diagnose most of your own ailments with sensors worn on your wrist.

Learning is necessary for living well. Education is expensive, though. Teacher salaries, buildings, bus routes, and an army of administrators add to the cost. Outmoded rules and outdated curricula add expense without adding value, so the student wastes time as well as money.

If you were in full control of your education, would that make a difference? How can you take control, though? How do you fit your classes around a busy work schedule? The internet can help. Skillsology, the Khan Academy, Coursera, and other online sources provide instruction and testing at your own pace. They are also far less expensive than standard college courses. Some universities have begun to adapt to the competitive threat. Harvard, MIT, and Stanford, among others, offer thousands of hours of online instruction. Online instruction is in its infancy, though. In the near future, your ‘professors’ are likely to be artificial intelligence apps. They will be the best instructors you’ve ever had. They will know your needs, abilities, weaknesses, desires, and personality almost perfectly. With this knowledge, they will teach exactly what you need, at the rate you can best absorb it, by the methods you respond to best. Automated education will cost almost nothing. The same schooling available to the billionaire’s child will be available to the pauper’s child.

These are only a few of the factors in the cost of living. Others, such as housing and entertainment, also will cost less as technology develops. If we can convince our public officials to leave markets alone so innovation can thrive, we can enjoy much higher standards of living- for much less money.

(To enhance your life, you need a reliable internet connection. To take advantage of the technologies that will reduce your cost of living, you need a reliable internet connection. Talk to us. We can help.)