What if robots did all the work?

Hi, I’m Ryan Jenkins, a philosophy professor at Cal Poly. It’s clear how technological advancement has improved the plight of the worker in many ways, freeing hundreds of millions of people from dangerous, dirty, or unpleasant jobs. Efficiency increases in farming, for example, have meant that, for the same amount of labor previously required to simply sustain their own family, a single farmer can now produce enough food to feed over 100 people. And what’s true in farming has also held for manufacturing, transportation, banking, and other sectors of the economy. Let’s imagine a far-off world, a world where machines can do most of our work for us. Is this world coming? And should we welcome it? Two thousand years ago, Aristotle imagined a world where a loom could weave fabric by itself and a lyre would play by itself to make music. Karl Marx imagined the same thing in the mid-1800s: that in a future world of sufficient industrial advancement, labor would become “life’s prime want”, that is the thing we don’t have enough of, the thing that we miss in life! And the economist John Maynard Keynes in 1930 prophesied that we would all be working only 15-hour work weeks by now, and that it would be a huge problem for society to find new uses of labor, after machines took over most of the jobs we had to do to feed, clothe, and house ourselves. Over the last three centuries, people have moved from farms to factories, and then from factories to offices. We’re still waiting on the 15-hour work week… But now there’s a new transformation in work taking place: the shift to artificial intelligence and robotics. And a lot of people think that this time will be different. Why are they convinced that AI and robotics will have such an unprecedented impact on our work lives? Well, these technologies can be built and programmed to do such an incredible range of tasks that, it seems, with every passing year there are fewer and fewer jobs robots wouldn't be able to do at least as well as humans and at a much lower cost. We already see how robots have replaced humans in many forms of manual labor. This is obvious in manufacturing, where the process of assembling things like machinery, equipment, vehicles, and other products have been largely automated. But such automation has also already taken over much of our farming, mining, and construction work. And surprisingly, artificial intelligence is starting to be used for a lot of mental, or “cognitive,” labor, too. Many office jobs are cognitively demanding, but somewhat repetitive: filling out forms calculating budgets, and so on. Tax prep and accounting, for example, are at a pretty high risk of being automated. In fact, a lot of this work has already been handed off to machines. AI has even been used to write news stories about the stock market and recaps of sports games. What all this means is that having a high-paying job or an advanced degree isn't surefire protection against automation. According to some research, even professions like aerospace and nuclear engineering are susceptible to automation! To be sure, experts are split on what the impacts of automation will be in the near future. But a provocative analysis by two Oxford economists estimated that almost half of the jobs in the US could be automated away in the next few decades. Now you’re talking almost 100 million new unemployed people in the US alone. Some people are content to believe that for every one job that is eliminated by automation, another job is created, say, for a programmer or a roboticist, so that the gains and losses balance out. But there’s no reason to think that’s a law of economics that always holds up. This time could very well be different. Imagine a world where robots and AI have taken just about all of our jobs. A lot of people, I think, would welcome this world without question. But take a step back and think about how deeply ingrained work is in our individual psyche and in our larger society. Many people find their jobs unpleasant, yes. But many people also identify closely with their jobs; they consider it a calling. They appreciate having an opportunity to contribute to society and to develop their skills and talents in creative and challenging ways. When you think about the central place that work occupies in our lives, it’s not surprising that many people choose to work past retirement age. And people who are out of work, either because they are unemployed, or retired, or teachers who have summers off, often struggle with depression, listlessness, and ennui. Work provides structure, external expectations and accountability, and a readymade community of people with common interests to connect with. Work continues to be, for better or worse, a source of meaning for many, if not most of us. In a future without work, we may find that Marx was right, that work is something we miss because of its opportunities for fulfillment. Nowadays, when someone cannot work through no fault of their own, say, they are elderly or disabled, we excuse them from working and support them with programs like Society Security or welfare. But what if, in a future of automation, that population balloons to encompass most of society? How would we accommodate the swelling cost of the social safety net? And just as important, how would we find sources of meaning and fulfillment for all of those who are unemployable? This is not to say all work is enjoyable or pleasant most people don’t love their jobs; but a future without work might be even worse. All of these reflections press us to confront fundamental questions: What’s the role of technology in nurturing and structuring meaningful human lives? How can we ensure that when we introduce technology because of its efficiency gains, we don’t unexpectedly leave our lives impoverished in ways we might have overlooked? What does the ideal technological future really look like? What do you think?