Technological Unemployment  

While we can’t predict the future, we can imagine a world without work – one where those who own the tech get rich from it and everyone else ekes out a living, propped up by an increasingly fragile state. Meet Alice, holder of the last recognisable job on Earth, trying to make sense of her role in an automated world.

In “the last job on Earth” animation (embedded below), the worker Alice gets frustrated when the machine refuses to dispense her medicine. As society becomes increasingly automated we may well reach a point where real time epidemiology will use sensors to assess our health and tell our worker: you’re likely to get sick tonight, we put some medicine into the AC system of your home.

Frey and Osborne predicted in 2013 that 47% of US jobs were susceptible to automation by 2050, in a study that set off alarm bells all over the world..

As Paul Mason warns,

The automation revolution is possible, but without a radical change in the social conventions surrounding work it will not happen. The real dystopia is that, fearing the mass unemployment and psychological aimlessness it might bring, we stall the third industrial revolution. Instead we end up creating millions of low skilled jobs that do not need to exist.

Mason explains, low-work society is only a dystopia if the social system is geared to distributing rewards via work. In the early 19th century, the Utopian Socialists tried not only to imagine an alternative but to implement it, in slightly crazy closed communities inspired by the writings of philosopher Charles Fourier.

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"The automation revolution is possible, but without a radical change in the social conventions surrounding work it will not happen."

Fourier predicted work could become play – its qualities could absorb the qualities of aimlessness, humour, even eroticism. We would flit from one kind of work to another, oblivious of its productive function.

Utopias of the future based on work, such as Marxism, are now challenged by the possibility of its disappearance in the form of technological unemployment.

Now, as Mason writes, "the best you can say about the play versus work debate is: it’s complicated. Many of us work through a single handheld device which, on top of our contacts, emails, screenplays and so on contains much of our externalised self."

SOURCE  The Guardian

By 33rd Square

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 Economics  

Since the inception of this blog, Ray Kurzweil and Andrew McAfee (along with Erik Brynjolfsson) have been constant intellectual thought leaders for our readers.  Recently the two were interviewed on Radio Open Source.

On a recent interview on Radio Open Source, host Christopher Lydon talked to Ray Kurzweil and Andrew McAfee about the potential for a future jobless economy. This is a discussion this blog has anticipated for some time now, with two of the intellectual inspirations for 33rd Square sharing a dialog.

Along with Erik Brynjolfsson, McAfee, a principal research scientist at MIT and associate director of the MIT Center for Digital Business. has written two books on the future of work and economics: Race Against the Machine and The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies.

The conversation starts with what McAfee and Brynjolfsson call the “Great Decoupling,” the possibility that machines are beginning to destroy more jobs than they can create.

Between 2000 and 2014, the median U.S. income has actually dropped: from $55,986 to $51,017. "There is a lot of evidence that the middle class is getting hollowed out," McAfee tells Lydon.

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Over the same period corporate profits have more than doubled. The workforce participation rate in May of this year was 62.8%, the lowest since 1978. The level of investment in equipment and software bounced back to 95% of its historical peak just two years after the same recession that trashed all the jobs that have been so slow to come back.

The discussion looks at the questions about what Brynjolfsson and McAfee call the "superstar" economy, with big gains at the top, and stagnation and falling back at the middle and bottom. Increasingly too, automation—mechanical and now increasingly with artificial intelligence and machine learning is replacing jobs.  This replacement rate appears to be increasing too.

As the Great Decoupling continues, the replacement of human work with machines will only accelerate, for two reasons: computers will keep getting cheaper over time and digital labor will become cheaper than human labor not only in the United States and other rich countries, but also in places like China and India.

"Off-shoring is only a way station on the road to automation," write Brynjolfsson and McAfee.

For instance, the number of American routine jobs dropped by 11 percent between 2001 and 2011. A new study by Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael Osborne at Oxford University suggest that 47% of U.S. jobs might be vulnerable to loss by automation.

As a more optimistic view, Kurzweil looks at the great potential benefits of technological growth. He comments that education and our technologies help us to be smarter, and essentially race with the machines.

"Our horizons continue to change," he says.  "We are going to continue to change by making ourselves smarter."  Enhancing our abilities with technologies is a consistent theme with Kurzweil.

"The majority of jobs today didn't exist a quarter century ago," Kurzweil reminds Lydon.  He suggests that technologies like 3D printing are allowing our jobs to be more creative.  Looking further ahead he comments that, "the economy is going to become a coexistence of propriety forms of information, and open-source forms," he says.

McAfee is not quite so optimistic.  "There are some trends that are worrying."

He suggests the technologies of Abundance will come, but the transition period may be extremely difficult for the great majority of workers. Abundance is far from being a mass phenomenon he states.  Distribution is a core issue.

"This stuff called money still has an important role in the society," says McAfee.  "how we are going to make sure people have enough of it to buy the stuff that still cost money that is going to become a more pressing issue."

"I agree that we are going to see very little and less over time absolute physical misery—starving in the streets. I do still think there are things that are expensive, and are going to continue to be expensive, in the short to medium term, and ignoring that seems a little blithe."

Kurweil's response to this is a bit simplistic in that 3D printing will make things easier and less expensive in the future for people to seek and follow their passions.  "I agree that we are going to see very little and less over time absolute physical misery—starving in the streets," replies McAfee. "I do still think there are things that are expensive, and are going to continue to be expensive, in the short to medium term, and ignoring that seems a little blithe."

McAfee totally agrees with Kurzweil when the subject turns to transhumanism.  "Our humanity is not our biology," he reiterates.


SOURCE  Radio Open Source

By 33rd Square

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 Future of Work  

With technological unemployment increasingly a factor in almost every profession and job, what will the future of work be like, and how can you succeed?

Andrew McAfee and Erik Brynjolfsson call it the superstar economy, where globalization and technologies align to create winner-take-all scenarios.  In a world where 85 people are as wealthy as half of the world's population, and automation is increasingly taking over all jobs, both manual and mental, what does the future of work look like for the other 7,174,875,801* of us?

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With professions and middle-income positions now also the target of artificial intelligence, machine learning and even robotics, the reality of technological unemployment is already a fact for many.

As Oxford researchers Carl Frey and Michael Osborne found, about 47 percent of the total US employment is at risk. They concluded that, "as technology races ahead, low-skill workers will reallocate to tasks that are non-susceptible to computerization –i.e., tasks requiring creative and social intelligence. For workers to win the race, however, they will have to acquire creative and social skills."

Increasingly calls for drastic measures like a guaranteed income, wealth redistribution and other social engineering measures are being called for.  "As the rich and their robots start vacuuming up the world's jobs, it's social innovation we need now, far more than any technological gain," writes Vice's Brian Merchant.

Image Source -  Congressional Research Service (CRS) based according to U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data from the Current Employment Statistics program

"Until the age of Abundance, the economy is almost certainly going to be very turbulent and the ways we work will change dramatically."

Others, like Peter Diamandis point to the great abundance exponential technology will bring.  Genetics, robotics, artificial intelligence and perhaps especially nanotechnology offer a potential future where wants are met on demand by anyone, and jobs, work and money itself may be unnecessary.  What, for instance, will a diamond be worth to anyone if we can 3D print perfect diamonds on demand?  The question of why we work will increasingly be relevant.

However, until the age of Abundance, the economy is almost certainly going to be very turbulent and the ways we work will change dramatically.

Sara Horowitz, founder and CEO of Freelancers Union, writes that as of 2005, 30% of the workforce has participated in this “freelance economy,” and entrepreneurial activity has reached an all time high in 2010. According to her the jobless future is already here. "This transition is nothing less than a revolution," she writes.

Certainly gone is the notion that skills have a long shelf-life.  Continuous upgrading and re-education will be the norm.  Increasingly the way we acquire skills will change too.  Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) is only one way that technology is opening up the field of education, especially as university and college tuition rates continue to expand.

Ray Williams writes "Today, people need to gain “employability” rather than “secure employment.” To survive in a multi-career employees need to have multiple intelligences, resilience and employability—essentially survival tools. Jobs now are defined by expertise, multiple skills, not just uniform experience. Employees who continue to practice their skills repetitively without improvement or flexibility run the risk of making themselves obsolete. In that sense, static job mastery is a liability both for the individual and the organization."

He offers the following advice for future and current workers:

1. Take responsibility for managing your own career. Don’t wait until you’re fired, laid off, burned out or fed up to revitalize your career. Manage your career on an ongoing basis, particularly through the good times. This includes becoming your own benefits manager;
2. Realize that the old social contract—employee work in return from employer loyalty and job security-- is dead. Even if you work for someone else, think of yourself as an entrepreneur;
3. Become comfortable with change. It’s likely you’ll be in several careers during your lifetime, sometimes as a result of changes outside your control;
4. Establish and develop a strong social network. Connecting with people on an ongoing basis will strengthen your capacity to manage your career;
5. Create and develop your own personal brand. To be marketable in the workplace, you need more than experience and an education. You are more than your job, and being able to see and promote who you are in totality, makes you more marketable;
6. Establish and develop your professional reputation. It’s portable, and hugely affected by social media. A positive reputation can make or break individuals or organizations;
7. Accept that you are more than your job. Whether you love or hate your job, making it your identity is a big mistake. Reflect on what legacy you want to leave in life, and be happy with your definition of personal success.

Essentially what Williams is arguing is that each of us have to become futurists.  We have to imaging the future that we want, and chart our own path to attain it.  The traditional career is all but dead.

By 33rd Square

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 Technological Unemployment  

Will you soon lose your job to a robot, or even an algorithm? Dr Carl Frey and Dr Michael Osborne's recent working paper, "The Future of Employment: How susceptible are jobs to computerisation?", found that nearly half of US jobs could be susceptible to technological unemployment over the next two decades.

Earlier this year, Dr Carl Frey, James Martin Fellow, Oxford Martin Programme on the Impacts of Future Technology and Dr Michael Osborne, University Lecturer in Machine Learning, University of Oxford presented their research in the economics of technological unemployment at the university (video above).

Frey and Osborne's recent paper, "The Future of Employment: How susceptible are jobs to computerization?", concluded that nearly half of US jobs could be susceptible to computerization over the next two decades.

"Our findings thus imply that as technology races ahead, low-skill workers will reallocate to tasks that are non-susceptible to computerization – i.e., tasks requiring creative and social intelligence."

Like Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee, the pair found that more than just routing tasks are falling under the order of automation.  Algorithms for Big Data are more and more entering domains reliant upon pattern recognition and can readily substitute for labor in a wide range of non-routine cognitive tasks.  For instance, in the presentation, they discuss how Google's self-driving car is using Big Data to perform navigation and how the legal profession is becoming computerized at a great rate.

During the lecture, Frey and Osborne frequently cite The New Division of Labor: How Computers Are Creating the Next Job Market where authors Frank Levy and Richard Murnane show how computers are changing the employment landscape and how the right kinds of education can ease the transition to the new job market. The authors merge stories of working people with insights from cognitive science, computer science, and economics to show how computers are enhancing productivity in many jobs even as they eliminate other jobs--both directly and by sending work offshore. At greatest risk are jobs that can be expressed in programmable rules--blue collar, clerical, and similar work that requires moderate skills and used to pay middle-class wages.

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According to the authors, the loss of these jobs leaves a growing division between those who can and cannot earn a good living in the computerized economy. Left unchecked, the division threatens the nation's democratic institutions.

Frey and Osborne echo Levy and Murnane that the focus for the new economy has to be on jobs involving extensive problem solving and interpersonal communication, areas they feel are less susceptible to computerization. "Our findings thus imply that as technology races ahead, low-skill workers will reallocate to tasks that are non-susceptible to computerization – i.e., tasks requiring creative and social intelligence," they conclude.

Also, Moravec's Paradox is mentioned in the discussion.  The paradox is the finding by artificial intelligence and robotics researchers that, contrary to common-sense assumptions, high-level reasoning requires very little computation, but low-level sensor and motor skills require enormous computational resources.

The principle was articulated by Hans Moravec, Rodney Brooks, Marvin Minsky and others in the 1980s. As Moravec wrote in Mind Children: The Future of Robot and Human Intelligence, "it is comparatively easy to make computers exhibit adult level performance on intelligence tests or playing checkers, and difficult or impossible to give them the skills of a one-year-old when it comes to perception and mobility."

In their paper, Frey and Osborne were surprised find that a substantial share of employment in service occupations are highly susceptible to computerization.  This is despite the fact that this sector is where most US job growth has occurred over the past decades. Additional support for this finding is provided by the recent growth in the market for service robots and the gradually fading of the comparative advantage of human labor in tasks involving mobility and dexterity as robotics improves.

What do you think, will improving social and creative skills be enough to counter the robotic revolution, or will more drastic measures be required?

Image Source: The Economist, Jan. 18, 2014

Will society find itself, in the not-to-distant future in a position where staggering innovation gains continue exponentially, but widen the income inequality even more?At the end of the lecture, Frey presents what he considers lessons from the past.  He cites the chart above which statistically hints that wages now might follow the trajectory they did during the industrial revolution in Britain.In another interesting historical examples of today's Detroit versus New York.  According to Frey, both cities were in the same dismal economic situation in the mid-Twentieth century, but they took dramatically different paths.  Detroit invested in infrastructure; while New York invested in people claims Frey and the outcomes speak for themselves.  He does mention that the effects in New York have a significant price in terms of economic inequality.  

SOURCE  21school

By 33rd Square

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 Race Against The Machine  

Almost half of US jobs could be susceptible to ex over the next two decades, a study from the Oxford Martin Programme on the Impacts of Future Technology suggests.

Nearly half of US jobs could be susceptible to ex over the next two decades, a study from the Oxford Martin Programme on the Impacts of Future Technology suggests.

The study, echoing the book, Race Against the Machine, was a collaboration between Dr Carl Benedikt Frey (Oxford Martin School) and Dr Michael A. Osborne(Department of Engineering Science, University of Oxford), found that jobs in transportation, logistics, as well as office and administrative support, are at “high risk” of automation.

More surprisingly, occupations within the service industry are also highly susceptible, despite recent job growth in this sector.

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“We identified several key bottlenecks currently preventing occupations being automated,” says Dr. Osborne. “As big data helps to overcome these obstacles, a great number of jobs will be put at risk.”

The study examined over 700 detailed occupation types, noting the types of tasks workers perform and the skills required. By weighting these factors, as well as the engineering obstacles currently preventing computerization, the researchers assessed the degree to which these occupations may be automated in the coming decades.

The paper's authors make note of the fact that both machine intelligence and robotic dexterity are improving dramatically.  Moreover, sensor capabilities are also further extending the potential for automating tasks.

The authors conclude, "Our model predicts that most workers in transportation and logistics occupations, together with the bulk of office and administrative support workers, and labour in production occupations, are at risk."

What can we do to prepare for this?  Osborne and Frey suggest that, "as technology races ahead, low-skill workers will reallocate to tasks that are non-susceptible to computerisation [sic]–i.e., tasks requiring creative and social intelligence. For workers to win the race, however, they will have to acquire creative and social skills."


SOURCE  Oxford Martin School

By 33rd Square

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