- Since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution,
fear of automation has been on the rise.
In the early-1800s, textile workers in England
got spooked by the rise of weeding machines
and sparked a rebellion so intense
that the military had to be called in to put it down.
When the automobile was invented,
people worried about what it would mean
for the horse industry.
And when the first computers were introduced,
office workers fretted about bookkeeping and other jobs
that had previously been done on pen and paper.
And who could blame 'em, really?
Those machines were coming for their jobs, man!
But if you think about it,
most of the great inventions of the past 200 years
have been designed explicitly to take our jobs.
And yet, the fraction of people in the workforce
is near an all-time high.
So, what gives?
If machines keep taking our jobs, and they do,
then why are there so many jobs left over?
What are we getting wrong?
The fear of machines goes back even further
than the Industrial Revolution.
When the printing press was invented in the 1400s,
people worried about the church scribes
that would be out of work.
Back in the 1500s, Queen Elizabeth vetoed a patent
on a knitting machine for fear
that her subjects would lose their jobs.
Whenever a new technology arrives,
we can easily see what jobs it might replace.
The problem is that we're really, really bad
at envisioning what kind of new jobs
might be born in the future.
For example, it's true that computers eliminated the need
for typesetters who used to place type by hand,
but they created demand for graphic designers
who set type, well, it's still technically by hand,
but it's fancier.
The idea is that when we passed off
some of the workload to machines,
it broadened the scope of what was possible.
We came up with new ideas,
new innovations, and new kinds of work.
In fact, many of the industries that are around today,
like electronics, health, medicine, finance, and insurance,
barely existed or didn't exist at all a century ago.
I mean, imagine trying to explain what an app developer does
to someone in the 1960s.
But focusing on machines that will replace jobs
doesn't appreciate how they might actually strengthen them.
For example, when ATMs started rolling out in the '70s,
they threatened to make human bank tellers extinct.
But banks quickly found that ATMs
made it cheaper to open new branches,
and the result was more branches and more tellers than ever.
Since the arrival of ATMs,
the number of bank tellers has doubled.
Why?
Well, once bank tellers were freed up from dispensing cash,
they started forging relationships with customers,
solving problems, and introducing them to new products
like loans and investments.
The net effect was that bank tellers
became more valuable to banking.
But that's the past.
What about the future?
Automation is accelerating and spreading
to more industries faster than we've ever seen before.
Machines are increasingly replicating skills
that we once thought were unique to humans.
AI algorithms are trading in the stock market,
recommending products to us,
and guiding airplanes through the sky.
Robots are being developed
that someday might be cooking your meals,
running warehouses, or performing surgery,
all by themselves.
So, is this time different?
Luminaries like Elon Musk seem to think so.
He's predicted that soon,
robots will be able to do everything better than us.
And Stephen Hawking has warned
that artificial intelligence will replace humans completely.
Lots of people seem to think it's only a matter of time
before these ever-smarter machines
make most of today's workers obsolete.
So, should we be worried?
So, it is different this time?
Well, yeah, it's different this time,
just like it was different
after the printing press was invented
or the assembly line or tractors or computers
or any invention that changed the world.
All of these new technologies transformed the way we work,
and adjusting to them wasn't simple, costless, or immediate.
But if the past is any indication,
this radical leap forward in technology
is at least as likely to create jobs
as it is to destroy them, even if these new jobs
might sounds as strange to us as an app developer does
to someone who's never seen a cell phone before.
Put simply, there's no way for us to understand right now
what those new jobs might be in the future
and, for many, that's a frightening leap to take.
So, what do you think?
Should we be worried?
Or is a fear of 21st-century automation
once again getting it wrong?