A warning from Bill Gates, Elon Musk, and Stephen Hawking
This Boston Dynamics robot can walk around and stock shelves like a human can.
“The automation of factories has already decimated jobs in traditional manufacturing, and the rise of artificial intelligence is likely to extend this job destruction deep into the middle classes, with only the most caring, creative or supervisory roles remaining.” — Stephen Hawking
There’s a rising chorus of concern about how quickly robots are taking away human jobs.
Here’s Elon Musk on Thursday at the the World Government Summit in Dubai:
“What to do about mass unemployment? This is going to be a massive social challenge. There will be fewer and fewer jobs that a robot cannot do better [than a human]. These are not things that I wish will happen. These are simply things that I think probably will happen.” — Elon Musk
And today Bill Gates proposed that governments start taxing robot workers the same way we tax human workers:
“You cross the threshold of job-replacement of certain activities all sort of at once. So, you know, warehouse work, driving, room cleanup, there’s quite a few things that are meaningful job categories that, certainly in the next 20 years [will go away].” — Bill Gates
Jobs are vanishing much faster than anyone ever imagined.
In 2013, policy makers largely ignored two Oxford economists who suggested that 45% of all US jobs could be automated away within the next 20 years. But today that sounds all but inevitable.
Transportation and warehousing employ 5 million Americans
Those self-driving cars you keep hearing about are about to replace a lot of human workers.
Currently in the US, there are:
- 600,000 Uber drivers
- 181,000 taxi drivers
- 168,000 transit bus drivers
- 505,000 school bus drivers
As of 2014, “Truck Driver” is the most common job in almost every state in the US.
There’s also around 1 million truck drivers in the US. And Uber just bought a self-driving truck company.
As self driving cars become legal in more states, we’ll see a rapid automation of all of these driving jobs. If a one-time $30,000 truck retrofit can replace a $40,000 per year human trucker, there will soon be a million truckers out of work.
And it’s not just the drivers being replaced. Soon entire warehouses will be fully automated.
I strongly recommend you invest 3 minutes in watching this video. It shows how a fleet of small robots can replace a huge number of human warehouse workers.
There are still some humans working in those warehouses, but it’s only a matter of time before some sort of automated system replaces them, too.
8 million Americans work as retail salespeople and cashiers. Many of these jobs will soon be automated away.
Amazon is testing a type of store with virtually no employees. You just walk in, grab what you want, and walk out.
A big part of sales is figuring out — or even predicting — what a customer will want. Well, Amazon grossed $136 billion last year, and its “salespeople” are its algorithm-powered recommendation engines. Imagine the impact that Amazon will have on retail when they release all of that artificial intelligence into brick-and-mortar stores.
US restaurants employ 14 million people.
Japan has been automating aspects of its restaurants for decades — taking orders, serving food, washing dishes, and even food preparation itself. And America is now getting some automated restaurants as well.
There’s even a company that makes delivery trucks that drive around and start baking pizzas in real time as orders come in.
Automation is inevitable. But we still have time to take action and help displaced workers.
Automation is accelerating. The software powering these robots becomes more powerful every day. We can’t stop it. But we can adapt to it.
Bill Gates recommends we tax robotic workers so that we can recapture some of the money displaced workers would have paid as income tax.
Elon Musk recommends we adopt universal basic income and give everyone a certain amount of money each year so we can keep the economy going even as millions of workers are displaced by automation.
And I recommend we take some of the taxpayer money we’re using to subsidize industries that are now mostly automated, and instead invest it in training workers for emerging engineering jobs.
The answer to the automation challenge may involve some combination of these three approaches. But we need to take action now, before we face the worst unemployment disaster since the Great Depression.
I strongly encourage you to do 3 things:
Educate yourself on the automation and its economics effects. This is the best book on the subject.
Talk with your friends and family about automation. We can’t ignore it just because it’s scary and unpredictable. We need a public discourse on this so we can decide as a country what to do about it — before the corporations and their bottom lines decide for us.
Contact your representatives and ask them what they’re doing about automation and unemployment. Tell them we need a robot tax, universal basic income, or more money invested into technology education — whichever of these best aligns with your political views.
If we act now, we can still rise to the automation challenge and save millions of Americans from hardship.
Thank you for reading this, and for caring about this. Help me raise awareness of this important issue that our politicians aren’t talking about. Share this article on Facebook or tweet it on Twitter.
I work as a geophysicist and early in my career, I (incorrectly) assumed that my job could never be automated. I didn’t believe an algorithm could perform the same fine-level interpretation of geophysical data as a human could.
In my last job, one of my duties was to automate the interpretation workflow. Myself and my… Abraham Samma Feb 19
And I recommend we take some of the taxpayer money we’re using to subsidize industries that are now mostly automated, and instead invest it in training workers for emerging engineeri...
You can combine this idea with Musk’s and Gate’s idea quite nicely into a basic income scheme directly funded by automation. This scenario might ultimately play out like in Iain Banks’ fictional “the Culture” where automation by superintelligent machines has lead to post-scarcity and anyone can live however they please, without want or care. All the… Michael Elliott Feb 19
Thanks so much Quincy for that distillation. I work as a school teacher. The implications of this for education are huge. But looking across the educational terrain we get this insane focus on how to drill facts into kids more efficiently within a traditional school curriculum. The inertia in schooling is terrifying. Lewis Belcher Feb 19
Personally, I think (and I’m sure anyone else that has been following the industry) that this is going to be one of the defining issues of our time. The unfortunate thing is that based on past events, humans are inherently greedy, and those in positions of power follow the path leading to the most profit (leading to industrial revolution, climate. Louis Chew Feb 19
It’s about time politicians all over the world develop the courage to explain and tackle the root of growing unemployment instead of engaging in beggar-thy-neighbour protectionist policies. That is populism at its worst, and we must do our best to ensure that our representatives are well…
Nathaniel England Feb 19
It is really frustrating that this isn’t a bigger issue in people’s minds. Not only will it affect people in the current job market, but also people about enter it. Glenn Melcher Feb 19
Just because we can’t see the future as clearly as your two guests, doesn’t mean it’s not a clear and present danger.. The head of Lehman Brothers also said everything was fine.. We all remember how that went.. Oksana Borukh Feb 19
Brilliant article! Investing in tech education is probably the best solution. Also people need to be educated to develop their talents and become entrepreneurs. People have always been conditioned to think about 9 to 5 jobs working for somebody else. Adorable Taco Feb 19
This is an awesome article — thanks, Quincy! It kinda makes me think what the hell are we doing. There is a this delusion that we can grow the economy by adding manufacturing jobs / skilled labor jobs, whereby the reality is that business are turning to automation because it increases their profit margins. What makes the problem worse for Americans…
Source: Stephen Hawking, Elon Musk, and Bill Gates Warn About Artificial Intelligence