60 Minutes Looks At The Race Against The Machine

 Technological Unemployment

When Andrew McAfee and Erik Brynjolfsson first released their book, "Race Against The Machine," their hypotheses about AI and robotics' affect on the economy were largely dismissed.  Now as technology continues its exponential advances, their concepts are entering the mainstream, as was exemplified by the authors appearing in a 60 Minutes feature this weekend.

By the time "Star Wars" trilogy arrived, the popular notion of robots with their computerized brains and nerve systems had been fully integrated into the public's imagination. Now the robots are here, but, as Steve Kroft from 60 Minutes found out recently, instead of serving us, they are competing for our jobs.

According to MIT professors, Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee authors of, Race Against The Machine: How the Digital Revolution is Accelerating Innovation, Driving Productivity, and Irreversibly Transforming Employment and the Economy, the new robotic revolution is one of the reasons for the jobless recovery.

McAfee tells Kroft, "Our economy is bigger than it was before the start of the Great Recession. Corporate profits are back. Business investment in hardware and software is bactk higher than it's ever been. What's not back is the jobs."

"Technology is always creating jobs. It's always destroying jobs. But right now the pace is accelerating. It's faster we think than ever before in history. So as a consequence, we are not creating jobs at the same pace that we need to," adds Brynjolfsson.

McAfee, "The fact that computers can now understand and respond to human speech, the fact that they can actually generate prose of decent quality, they can drive cars, they can win at Jeopardy. We're seeing technology demonstrate skills that it's never, ever done before."

Kroft points out that one of the few bright spots is a modest rise in U.S. manufacturing: an early casualty of automation that is making a comeback because it.
That thinking behind the strategy of Rodney Brooks and investors in his new start-up, Rethink Robotics, which is also featured in the report. With their Baxter robot, they see a potential market worth tens of billions of dollars, and believe that Baxter can help small U.S. manufacturers level the playing field against low cost foreign employment.

Robotics material handling systems like those created by Kiva Systems (now owned by Amazon) represent the tip of the iceberg in terms of the technological unemployment that AI and robotics will bring to the economy.  

"I think that those workers in China, in India, are more in the bullseye of this automation tidal wave that we are talking about than the American workers," says Brynlofsson. 

As Vivek Wadhwa pointed out last year,

What happens when you combine AI, robotics, and digital manufacturing? A manufacturing revolution, that will enable U.S. entrepreneurs to “set up shop” locally, and create a wide variety of products. As Kinko’s is for 2D digital printing on paper, we will have shared public manufacturing facilities like TechShop where you can print your 3D products. How is China going to compete with that?

 
However, as Kroft points out, "But even if offshore manufacturing returns to the U.S., most of the jobs will go to robots."

Following up on the ideas of Race Against The Machine, McAfee and Brynjolfsson are currently working on a new book about technology, growth, jobs and the economy, with help from the Digital Frontier Team at the MIT Center for Digital Business. It will be published by Norton in the Fall of 2013.

McAfee forecasts, "When I see what computers and robots can do right now, I project that forward for two, three more generations, I think we're going to find ourselves in a world where the work as we currently think about it is largely done by machines."

"And what are the people going to do?" asks Kroft.

McAfee replies "That's the $64,000 question. Science fiction is actually my best guide because I think we are in that time frame going to be in a very weird, very different place."

Weird and different indeed.

SOURCE  CBS News

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