bcbm
7th March 2011, 19:51
Thats the topic du jour. As Paul Krugman writes (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/07/opinion/07krugman.html?_r=1&hp), the idea that modern technology eliminates only menial jobs, that well-educated workers are clear winners, may dominate popular discussion, but its actually decades out of date. Increasingly, were learning that the difference between what computers can do and what computers cannot do is not whether the job requires a college education, but whether doing the job can be broken into routine and repetitive tasks. Martin Ford, who has done some thinking (http://www.thelightsinthetunnel.com/)on these issues, draws out (http://econfuture.wordpress.com/2011/03/07/krugman-and-delong-on-automation/) the implications:
The key thing to understand here is that our definition of what constitutes a routine and repetitive job is changing over time. At one time a repetitive job may have implied standing on an assembly line. As specialized artificial intelligence applications (like IBMs Watson for example) get better, routine and repetitive may come to mean essentially anything that can be broken down into either intellectual or manual tasks that tend to get repeated. Keep in mind that its not necessary to automate entire jobs: if 50% of a workers tasks can be automated, then employment in that area can fall by half. When you begin to think in these terms, it becomes fairly difficult to make a list of jobs that (1) employ large numbers of people and (2) are completely safe from automation.
The obvious set of questions this raises is how will the economy adapt? Krugman argues that if we want a society of broadly shared prosperity, education isnt the answer -- well have to go about building that society directly, perhaps through things like unions and universal health care. Tyler Cowen offers some other suggestions (http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2011/03/what-to-do-about-wage-polarization.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+marginalrevolution/hCQh+%28Marginal+Revolution%29).
But Id pose a different question: How will we adapt psychologically?
A few years ago, I went searching for a science fiction story that Id read as a kid and never forgotten. It was about a society in which most of the work of production was handled by machines, and as such, most of the members of society were classified as artists. The story, Melancholy Elephants (http://www.baen.com/chapters/W200011/0671319744___1.htm) by Spider Robinson, turned out to be more pedantic and repetitive than Id recalled, but its asking the right question: How do you keep morale up in an economy when more people are simply less necessary than they used to be?
Thats a harder question to answer than how do you make sure everyone has access to medical care? But for a substantial fraction of the population -- not a majority, but certainly millions and millions of people -- its an increasingly pressing one. People get trained for a job in their 20s, and then, in their 40s, that industry gets disrupted by technology, or sent to China, and even if some of those people find jobs again, they tend to be at a lower level -- a drop in status and perceived usefulness thats psychologically devastating. This is a question for not only the future, but given the number of long-term unemployed in the economy right now, the present. And its not a question that we have any very good answers for.
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2011/03/our_depressing_robot_overlords.html
The key thing to understand here is that our definition of what constitutes a routine and repetitive job is changing over time. At one time a repetitive job may have implied standing on an assembly line. As specialized artificial intelligence applications (like IBMs Watson for example) get better, routine and repetitive may come to mean essentially anything that can be broken down into either intellectual or manual tasks that tend to get repeated. Keep in mind that its not necessary to automate entire jobs: if 50% of a workers tasks can be automated, then employment in that area can fall by half. When you begin to think in these terms, it becomes fairly difficult to make a list of jobs that (1) employ large numbers of people and (2) are completely safe from automation.
The obvious set of questions this raises is how will the economy adapt? Krugman argues that if we want a society of broadly shared prosperity, education isnt the answer -- well have to go about building that society directly, perhaps through things like unions and universal health care. Tyler Cowen offers some other suggestions (http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2011/03/what-to-do-about-wage-polarization.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+marginalrevolution/hCQh+%28Marginal+Revolution%29).
But Id pose a different question: How will we adapt psychologically?
A few years ago, I went searching for a science fiction story that Id read as a kid and never forgotten. It was about a society in which most of the work of production was handled by machines, and as such, most of the members of society were classified as artists. The story, Melancholy Elephants (http://www.baen.com/chapters/W200011/0671319744___1.htm) by Spider Robinson, turned out to be more pedantic and repetitive than Id recalled, but its asking the right question: How do you keep morale up in an economy when more people are simply less necessary than they used to be?
Thats a harder question to answer than how do you make sure everyone has access to medical care? But for a substantial fraction of the population -- not a majority, but certainly millions and millions of people -- its an increasingly pressing one. People get trained for a job in their 20s, and then, in their 40s, that industry gets disrupted by technology, or sent to China, and even if some of those people find jobs again, they tend to be at a lower level -- a drop in status and perceived usefulness thats psychologically devastating. This is a question for not only the future, but given the number of long-term unemployed in the economy right now, the present. And its not a question that we have any very good answers for.
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2011/03/our_depressing_robot_overlords.html