What I see in different shades of gray, from behind my reading glasses
A very interesting article by Tyler Cowen in the Politico titled “The robots are here“
“A modern textile mill employs only a man and a dog—the man to feed the dog, and the dog to keep the man away from the machines.” That is the world in which we now live.
Contrast the MIT Tech Review article wondering how a mass influx of robots affects human employment, to the International Labour Organisation’s report which warns of social unrest and growing unequality as number of unemployed people worldwide continues to grow.
Imagining the possible future scenarios for middle-class unemployment is a first step to considering ways in which we can preserve our quality of life given the robotic future that will meet us. Without doubt, robots can greatly improve many lives, offering everything from smart prosthetics to home care for the aging. But for humans, the robot future is a mixed bag. [MIT article]
“In advanced economies, unemployment spells have lengthened and more workers are becoming discouraged and dropping out of the labour market altogether. This not only has adverse consequences on individuals and their families, but also can weaken previously stable societies, as opportunities to advance in a good job and improve one’s standard of living become the exception rather than the rule” [ILO report]
Nicholas Carr picks up Christof Heyns’ report on Lethal Autonomous Robots (LAR) to the UN Human Rights Council.
LAR’s are “weapon systems that, once activated, can select and engage targets without further human intervention,” have not yet been deployed in wars or other conflicts, but the technology to produce them is very much in reach. It’s just a matter of taking the human decision-maker out of the hurly-burly of the immediate “kill loop” and leaving the firing decision to algorithms.
The question is will people take notice before this technology takes off big time.
More & more robots are getting into mainstream work, replacing humans at a fraction of the cost – an industrialist’s dream come true. They’re also becoming more human-like in their appearances, as Scott Adams points out, and asks the question: ‘Who has the right to kill a robot?’ But more importantly, as this other article about a 2007 research discovers, the way humans relate to ‘human-like’ machines is changing too – discover how
Scott Adams reckons its the middle managers, not the skilled manual labour, that will be replaced by robots. He observes that that the least skilled employees are promoted to management. You need your most skilled people doing interface design, engineering, and the hard stuff. Management is mostly about optimizing resource allocation, and that is something a robot can learn relatively easily, at least compared to most skilled jobs.