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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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MACHINE PREDICTS HUMAN BEHAVIOR IN VIDEO

Most of us can predict what will happen just after we see two people meet: a handshake, a punch, a hug, or a kiss. We’ve honed this ability through decades of experience in dealing with people. Our ‘intuition’ is thoroughly trained.

A machine, no matter how competently programmed, has trouble evaluating such complex information.

If computers, though, could predict human action reliably, they would open up a host of possibilities. We might wear devices that will suggest responses to differing situations. We might have emergency response systems to predict breakdowns or security breaches. Robots will better understand how to move and act among humans.

in June, M.I.T.’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) announced a huge breakthrough in the field. Researchers there developed an algorithm for what they call ‘predictive vision’. It can predict human behavior much more accurately than anything that came before.

The system was trained with YouTube videos and TV shows, including The Office and Desperate Housewives. It can predict when two characters will shake hands, hug, kiss, or ‘high five’. It also predicts what objects will appear in a video five seconds later.

Previous approaches to ‘predictive vision’ have followed one of two patterns. One is to examine the pixels in an image. From this data, the machine tries to construct a future image, pixel by pixel. MIT’s lead researcher in this project calls this process “difficult for a professional painter, much less an algorithm”.

The second approach is for humans to label images for the computers in advance. This is practical only on a very small scale.

MIT’s CSAIL team instead offered the machine “visual representations”. These were freeze-frame alternate versions of how a scene might appear. “Rather than saying that one pixel is blue, the next one is red… visual representations reveal information about the larger picture, such as a certain collection of pixels that represents a human face”, the lead researcher said.

CSAIL uses ‘neural networks’ to teach computers to scan massive amounts of data. From this, the computers find patterns on their own.

CSAIL trained its algorithm with more than 600 hours of unlabeled video. Afterward, the team tested it on new video featuring objects and human action.

Though CSAIL’s algorithm was not as accurate as humans in predicting human behavior, it is a huge advance over what came before. Very soon, it’s likely to outperform humans. When it does, its impact on our lives could be revolutionary.

(Editor’s note: machine learning is another term for artificial intelligence. The enclosed image is the cast of ‘The Big Bang Theory’.)

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Will robots replace us in the labor market? With accelerating automation, it may sometimes seem that our jobs are doomed.

Robots deliver pizza. Google has developed cars that drive themselves. This is only the tip of an emerging iceberg.

Two years ago, Momentum Machines developed a robot that could provide freshly ground and grilled hamburgers to order, with freshly sliced vegetable toppings, and customized meat or seasoning combinations. If a customer wants a meat patty with one-third bison and two-thirds pork, the robot will provide it. And it can produce 360 custom burgers per hour.

A few years ago, the Los Angeles Times began using an artificial intelligence application to write weather and earthquake updates. Afterward, the AI app wrote sports articles. The newspaper tested the app by asking readers to compare articles written by the robot with articles written by human reporters. Very few could tell the difference.

If these examples aren’t daunting enough, some researchers believe that artificial intelligence, the internet of things, and virtual reality will make most human jobs obsolete within a decade or two. Robots, we are told, will handle so many of the tasks that now require human labor, very few jobs are likely to survive. Machines will be able to learn, and will constantly become more competent. Eventually, they will know so much that they won’t need human supervision. Some analysts argue that we’ll need a universal minimum income, so the hordes of displaced workers can survive.

These frightening prophecies, though, are out of touch with reality. We’ve been through technological revolutions before- and they’ve paved the way for more jobs, not fewer.

By inventing mechanical molds and the movable type press, Johannes Gutenberg drove thousands of European scribes out of their vocations. But his invention created new industries. It made the mass production of books and pamphlets possible, and without it the newspaper industry would never have existed. The movable type press killed thousands of jobs, and created millions more.

The automation of agriculture was even more disruptive to labor markets. In the nineteenth century, four out of five American jobs were on ranches or farms. Today, fewer than 3% are. Automated farming freed millions of people for other, less onerous work at higher wages.

We are at the verge of the next great leap in technology. It will, no doubt, destroy tens of millions of jobs. Some workers are likely to be displaced for months, some for years. Transitions to the new information-based economy are going to be difficult. For every job the robots destroy, though, they’ll create several more. A 2011 study by the International Federation of Robotics found that the use of one million industrial robots led directly to creation of three million jobs. Increased use of robots usually fosters lower unemployment

The jobs that survive the robot revolution are likely to be the ones requiring creativity, empathy and human connections, negotiation and persuasion- and repair and maintenance of robots. We are certain to see more job openings in science, technology, engineering, and math fields. As robots handle more of our repetitive tasks, we will have more opportunity for easier and more interesting work.

Welcome the robots. More than likely, they are your friends.

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