- Could your next co-worker be a robot?
(upbeat electronic music)
People are always asking me,
are robots going to take our jobs?
Well, first let's start at the beginning.
Pro-automation thinkers point out that
from human civilization to the industrial era,
pretty much everyone was a farmer.
But today in America, less than 2% of our population
are currently farmers or ranchers.
That means that automation and technology
have allowed us to grow vast amounts
of food with just a few people,
and folks who normally would have been farmers
can be something else, like software engineers
or video bloggers or robot ethicists.
There's no reason for this trend to dry up in the future.
In fact, we expect it will accelerate.
Look at Amazon and their Kiva robots
that move big packages around,
or the software that has replaced tax accountants
every year, or even robo-calls which can
replace the need for human operators.
And there's more on the horizon.
Just imagine how autonomous cars
could affect the trucking industry,
or even professional gamblers.
There's this one program called Cepheus that allegedly
can defeat any human player in a one-on-one
game of Limit Texas Hold 'Em.
Here's the point, anything that we humans do to make money
will one day be done by robots, better, cheaper.
So if you ask me, are robots going to take
our jobs away, the answer is actually really simple.
It's, yes, eventually they will.
But there are other questions
that I think are more important.
In 2014 the Pew Research Center asked a group of experts
in fields like economics, artificial intelligence,
robotics, what they thought automation
was going to do for the economy.
Would automation eliminate more jobs
than it created by the year 2025?
And the answers were split pretty much down the middle.
48% of the respondents said it would be
a net negative impact, that the economy would take a hit
and we would see unemployment rise
as a result of increased automation.
52% had a net positive outcome,
saying that we were going to see new,
higher-paid, more skilled jobs come out
because of automation, and things are going to get
less expensive and better for us all around.
So who is right?
Well, the truth is, with technology,
you are always going to get both good and bad effects.
So let's take a closer look.
On the one hand, human workers are going to be
replaced by machines, and they're not always going to be
able to re-train fast enough to get another job immediately.
On the other hand, automation will give us access
to better, cheaper, high-quality goods and services,
and it will create new jobs, jobs that might be
more fulfilling than our old jobs were anyway.
Some of the most optimistic thinkers say
that it's possible these machines will end up
creating all of our goods and services
and lead to a post-scarcity world
where we won't even need to buy anything,
everything will just be provided by machines.
It's a free ride!
But even if we do arrive at this idyllic future,
the truth is there's going to be a transition period
that could be very difficult for workers,
so we have to build that into our long term plans.
If your job is simple and repetitive,
if it can be described by a very straightforward list
of instructions, it's likely to be automated
earlier than jobs that require more innovation
and creativity and thinking outside the box.
You see, machines are really good at productivity,
producing something within a given amount of time.
But they're not so good at creativity, innovation.
So on the plus side, this could lead to a world
where human workers are not prized for productivity
but for innovation, creativity,
inventive ideas, which is pretty cool.
So how do we prepare?
Well first, when automation enters your field of work,
don't fight it, you're not gonna win that war.
Instead, become the machine whisperer.
Find a way to work with the machines,
not against the machines.
Second, education is key.
We have to make sure we teach rising generations
the skills they'll need to succeed,
so maybe instead of learning from work books,
which is all about productivity,
we should have project-based learning
which is all about creativity, and third,
there's some human institutions we may have
to prepare ourselves to let go of.
I'm talking about paying people for work.
Because if you have machines doing all the work for you,
that labor for pay model doesn't make sense anymore
and we have to find something new to replace it.
I've got a question for you guys this week.
What do you think we need to do to prepare
for the age of accelerated automation?
Let me know in the comments below.
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Or the robots will get me.
(upbeat music)