. Just because robots don’t come in the form of authoritarian overlords doesn’t mean they won’t have a lasting impact on us. Awareness of the nearing revolution is increasing, but let me be clear. The scope of this exponentially impacting digital revolution is far beyond what any reasonable human can grasp. It literally goes beyond our wildest dreams. The digital revolution anticipates the influence and impact that robots and thus automation have on society. As these machines become more intelligent thanks to progress in machine learning and artificial intelligence, it becomes increasingly difficult to think of a job, which ultimately could not be executed by robots. Not only does the ability of robots to outperform humans increase over time in horizontal terms, but they are also already so much better in vertical means. This implies, that when compared to humans, they make fewer to no mistakes, never get tired and only cost the electricity they consume. But honestly, try coming up with a profession that robots would not be able to replace, aside from maybe Physics and Computer Science. Can robots drive cars? Check. Make coffee? Check. Fly drones to deliver your Amazon parcels? Check. Trade securities? Check. Create Music? Write articles? Conduct medical research? Check. Check. Check. The industrial revolution that took place during the 18th and 19th century can be remembered as an advancement , which pushed society forward. Sure, some jobs were lost in the short term, but even more jobs were created in the long term. Society was ultimately left better off. Of course there were unemployment problems and some workers may have no longer had work as a result, but the key point is that these problems could be dealt with. The majority of the labor force did not lose their jobs. This time, it will be different. In fact, the digital revolution may very well resemble previous structural disruptions. The distinction will lie in scope and scale. It would not be surprising to see the digital revolution majorly distort the jobs of 85-90% of the labor force. This precisely will be the major hurdle. We have no idea how we could deal with such a significant, unprecedented, global-reaching scale of unemployment.
Posted on: Thu, 23 Oct 2014 20:04:01 +0000
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