Will robots cause global unemployment?

Once upon a time, the thought of robots that had firmly entered our lives was breathtaking and promised incredible accomplishments. “Forgetting troubles, running is stopped.” We were dreaming of a brave new world in which robots are faithful servants, and a person is enjoying the fruits of his scientific achievements.

However, in recent years, the increasing introduction of robots makes it necessary to rethink the sign of this phenomenon. “Robots stick, not man.” And this is precisely the root of the impending large-scale drama. What about a man? Does not stick and - does not earn. More and more voices are heard that the development and cheapening of robots will soon make the work of people in many professions unprofitable. And you can be sure that businessmen will make an unequivocal choice in favor of robots. This means that many people will have to look for a new job, relearn for other professions, a fall in the level of well-being, social tensions, an increase in crime and further down the list.
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Do we really expect such a joyless robotic future? Let's discuss.

Previously, for the sake of survival, people had to hunt or gather. But people were too lazy and smart enough, so they invented tools that facilitate their work. The development of tools made it possible to free the vast majority of the population from direct food production: in 1790 about 90% of the population was employed by this, in 1900 - about 35%, in 2010 - 2-3%. At the same time, we still live in abundance of food, and about 30% of the food produced does not reach the shelves, rot and deteriorate.

All this is true not only for agriculture. For several millennia, we have created new tools to facilitate all types of physical labor. Tools and machines are our mechanical muscles, stronger, more reliable and relentless. The use of all these funds has allowed billions of people to specialize in one thing, which was the key to economic growth and living standards. Some specialize in programming and engineering, creating artificial minds. And just as “mechanical muscles” made physical labor less demanding, so did artificial intelligence to make human labor less demanded. That is the work of our brain.

We are on the threshold of a new economic revolution. And if it seems to you that this has already happened once, then you are mistaken. This time is different.

Physical work

When it comes to automation, many seem to be huge, custom-made, expensive, efficient, but blind to the outside world robots, designed to perform only one or a few operations.



However, this is already an outdated approach to automation. A few years ago, the Baxter robot appeared, capable of independently learning actions that had never been performed before.



Unlike specialized industrial robots, which require specially trained operators, technicians and cash infusions for their operation, Baxter can simply observe the actions of a person and then repeat them. And its cost is less than the average annual salary of a worker in a developed country. Baxter was one of the first general purpose robots.

Here a comparison with computers comes to mind. At the beginning of their history, they were also big, expensive, and extremely specialized. But once appeared compact universal computers, and soon they became capable of doing anything. And thanks to the applicability in almost all spheres of life and industries, computers do not cease to increase their power and cheaper.

Now Baxter can be compared to a universal computer from the 1980s. Even in spite of his slowness, his hour of work costs a penny due to the small energy consumption. While its biological competitors need to pay a minimum wage. And even being 10 times slower, it will be more profitable if the cost of its operation is 100 times lower than the salary of a worker. At the same time, he is fully capable of performing many actions that do not require high qualifications.

There is already an example of how far less advanced robots than Baxter can take the place of man. Some new supermarkets in the US already use robotic cash registers.



Another illustration: hundreds of thousands of barista are now under threat around the world. Of course, the coffee expertly prepared by a person does not compare with the coffee machine selected on the screen. But most people do not need gourmet delights.



A very recent example of the onset of robots and on far more complicated professions than the preparation of coffee: aviation. No, it's not about the autopilot system, but about full-fledged self-control of the aircraft, starting from takeoff and ending with landing. Meet PIBOT, it was recently demonstrated at the international conference Intelligent Robots and Systems. This is a slightly modified very cheap robot Bioloid Premium from the company Robotics.



As you will see from the video below, he is able, without the help of a man, with the help of mechanical controls, to take off and fly en route in an aircraft simulator. The planting procedure still requires human help, but the developers claim that they are almost close to solving the problem of self-planting. The robot is oriented on the image on the screen using the contour recognition algorithm. The authors of PIBOT declare that its capabilities already satisfy a number of requirements set forth in the flight manual from the US Federal Aviation Administration.



Soon, the developers promise to publish a video in which the robot controls not a virtual plane, but a radio-controlled model.

Luddism

At the dawn of the 1900s, active development of motor transport began. From the point of view of the horses themselves, this was a great trend: you do not have to languish in hard work in the fields, lose your strength when delivering mail, and carry riders into battle. Today's supporters of the universal introduction of robots claim that people freed by mechanical assistants from many activities will gain new professions that have not yet been created. But by the example of the same horses, we know that this is self-deception. How many new, unseen applications have the horses found in the past 100 years?

There is no economic law, according to which new technologies create more new tasks for horses. It is even embarrassing to say it out loud. But it is worth replacing “horses” with “people”, as this phrase for some reason ceases to be absurd for the majority. But this is only a denial of the obvious. Just as cars at one time made horses unnecessary, so robots would make people unnecessary. Not immediately and not everywhere, but on a fairly large scale and rather soon. And if we do not prepare, it will result in enormous problems. You may now think that your profession cannot be replaced with robots. But technologies are getting better, cheaper and more productive. A striking example are all the same cars.

Cars

Self-driving cars from fiction have already become a reality. They are already quite able to navigate on the roads. And the question is not whether they will replace conventional cars, but how soon this will happen. And for this they do not need to drive perfectly, just enough to be better than live drivers. In the United States alone, about 40,000 people die in car accidents every year, and about 15,000 in Russia. Self-propelled cars do not fall asleep not go, do not write SMS, do not drive drunk and are not subject to attacks of the driver brainlessness. In fact, they are already better than us.

In general, to call them "cars" is wrong. It is as if the first cars were called mechanical horses. Perhaps in the future some new term will appear, and the word “automobile” will be used only in relation to a man-driven vehicle. Now imagine how many drivers of municipal and freight transport will lose their jobs thanks to the introduction of self-driving cars?

There is no need to hope for solidarity and protection from the trade unions. History knows many examples when representatives of certain professions in every way hampered the automation of their work. But technology has always won, because it was economically advantageous. For example, for the same transport companies the wage fund can reach a third of all expenses. At the same time, truck drivers should take a break for rest every few hours, which is time and money. Not counting the periodic accidents. And the low accident rate of self-driving cars will instantly attract insurance companies to their side.

So, robotic machines will probably be the first example of how robots are changing society. And we will be able to feel it pretty soon, already in the next ten years. Elon Musk, the founder of Tesla Motors and SpaceX, said he would be able to present a fully autonomous electric vehicle for 6 years.

What is it going

Using the example of Baxter and Google Mobile, we can reflect on how new technologies always destroy the most unskilled professions. People have to relearn, to raise their level. And we have a big problem ahead of the forced retraining of hundreds of millions of people who have lost their jobs. White Collars also cannot consider themselves safe today. The work of many office staff around the world today can perform special programs. But software bots are much faster and cheaper than full-fledged robots. In addition, one bot can replace several workers, and the return is higher than when automating low-skilled jobs. This further enhances the potential attractiveness of bots.



And here the ability to self-study will be especially useful. Why make a very smart specialized bot for each profession, if you can make a self-learning program? For millions of people it will be black that day when they create a program that will not need to be taught to do something, but which is enough to show something done right, and she will figure out how to come to it.

Bots to replace office staff

By the way, the securities market has long been dominated by specialized software. In the overwhelming majority of cases, these are bots that have “learned” to trade on the stock exchange with other, also self-taught, bots. These programs do not carry out the orders of people, they themselves make decisions to sell or buy stocks.

Already there are bots who write texts for the media. Most often, for newspapers. There are companies that specialize in the training of bots, journalists. For example, the company Automated Insights, which helps the Associated Press to implement an automatic service that can generate up to 4,400 third-party earnings reports per quarter. According to the representative of the AR, people-journalists during this time create only about 300 articles. At the same time, the good goal of introducing a bot service was voiced - the released journalists will be able to concentrate on reporting, analytics, identifying trends and searching for exclusive stories.

“Paperwork, decision making, writing texts” - many professions fall under these definitions. And specialized bots in the future will be able to replace people in most of these professions. For example, lawyers. For the most part, their job is to prepare documents and search for the necessary information in piles of papers, such as strange transactions or suspicious coincidences. All this is the real work for the bot. And data retrieval in many firms is already assigned to bots. They scan millions of emails, notes, and documents for hours, not weeks. And their advantage lies not only in speed, but also in accuracy.

Here is a much more complicated example. The IBM Watson artificial intelligence program is already coping with diagnostic tasks at the level of students at a medical college. As in the case of self-driving cars, robots do not need to be ideal doctors, it’s enough to be better than humans. And the share of erroneous diagnoses in modern medicine is still terrifying. In addition, robots will never forget and do not mess with the use of drugs, as well as with their mutual influence. Medical bots will be able to share with each other experience and knowledge, keep abreast of the latest research. They will be able to constantly collect and analyze medical statistics about all their patients. Of course, bots will not be able to replace all doctors, but a whole range of specializations - completely.

Bots to replace creative people

If your work is connected with creativity, then surely you consider yourself "invulnerable" for robots. Perhaps this is only partly true.

Many people compare the creative process with something magical, but this is still not the case. The brain is a very complex structure, perhaps the most complex in the universe. But this does not stop us from trying to model it.



And if we succeed in this, we will create a tool that will render our thinking abilities unnecessary. There is an opinion that having assigned boring routine to robots, mankind will be engaged in creative work in all its manifestations. Alas, no one needs hundreds of millions of artists, sculptors, photographers, writers, poets, actors, directors, singers, musicians and other creative personalities. Their real number is already very small. Their incomes depend on popularity and demand, therefore the number of such people in any society is always insignificant. There is no economy based on drawing or writing.

Returning to the bots - they are already writing music. A bot called Emily Howel can generate a huge amount of content in a day. And with blind testing, few people will be able to distinguish "her" works from those written by humans. Naturally, now there can be no question of the full-fledged creativity of artificial intelligence. The task of creating a mechanical mind still seems daunting. However, the above example already proves that the idea of ​​algorithms that assemble a finished “product” from some basic components is quite viable. It is possible that in the medium term there will be programs that can create quite tolerable pictures. The first steps in this direction have already been made:





Although in the literature in the foreseeable future, robots are unlikely to reach any heights. Despite the successes in creating newspaper notes, a full-fledged intellect, albeit an artificial one, is necessary for the deliberate and valuable in terms of the art of word folding into sentences. At least, I want to hope so.

Alas, but in some areas in the future we will be able to automate the creative process. Let not at the level of creating masterpieces, but within the framework of mass popculture - completely.

Psychological aspects

It is unlikely that the introduction of robots will be exclusively imposed by corporations. A recent study by experts at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has produced unexpected results: people-workers often prefer their immediate superiors to be ... robots, not people. As noted by the researchers, the test subjects, under the supervision of robots, worked more efficiently and expressed more satisfaction.



It's hard to say why people chose to obey the car. Psychologists will tell about the underlying mechanisms better, but several reasons can be suggested. For example, that this is a kind of rest from the need to constantly maintain social contacts. After all, we are confronted daily with dozens and hundreds of people, and in one way or another we have to communicate with them, from the overlapping views in the subway to close interaction on working issues. Not surprisingly, the desire to go on vacation to where there are as few biological species as possible is so popular for many people. The second reason why a robot is “better” than a person is the lack of the need to build personal relationships, try to please the boss, tolerate his unpleasant attitude towards himself. Although MIT experts believe that the reason for the higher efficiency of the "robot-man" bundle is the ability of robots to quickly generate instructions on the fly.
There is one more reason for possible romance favors. We are talking about the personification of cars, giving them the features of people or animals. This is generally characteristic of humans; many of us treat our cars or computers not just as mechanisms, we even give them names. This trend with respect to robots is confirmed by the results of a study conducted among American soldiers using military robots.

At the household level, we too will surely welcome joyfully the entry of robots into our life, and with pleasure we will begin to shift minor matters and concerns to them. Delivery of goods, use as a day planner for the whole family and home information portal (remember all sorts of artificial intelligence in science fiction films on spaceships, omnipotent, omniscient and communicating voice). Robots will become familiar and convenient, and the more inconspicuous for ourselves they will replace us in the labor market.

Small offtopic. An interesting point of view on our possible robotic future was voiced by Nel Watson (Nell Watson), an engineer, futurist and CEO of Poikos. True, this is not about unemployment due to the fault of robots, but about the traditional horror story from the “we all die” series. According to Watson, the development of artificial intelligence technologies may lead in the future to the creation of a sufficiently developed machine mind, which will independently or collectively with its own kind decide to destroy people from mercy . Or out of pity, if you like it more. Watson proceeds from the thesis that artificial intelligence, initially functioning on the basis of a system of rules, in the future will reach the level of the human mind, which cognizes the world through intuition.

We will not go into arguments about the problems of creating artificial intelligence and scenarios a la "Terminator". Interest is the proposed Watson solution to this hypothetical problem: the robots need to initially instill human values. She believes that "understanding" people with robots will prevent genocide out of pity.

Conclusion

Some readers will still assume that all the scenarios described above are idle inventions. Unfortunately, robots are already among us, and in the laboratories a lot of new ones are being created and driven around. Humanity has already passed through various economic revolutions, but the introduction of robots is quite another. They threaten not just any specific profession, but almost anyone. Soon, a lot of us will suddenly be in the place of horses, trying in vain to compete with cars.

In addition to unemployment, one of the possible consequences of the massive introduction of robots in various professional fields can be a gradual loss of knowledge. Having invested in the electronic assistants all the accumulated knowledge, having made perfect substitutes from them, we will gradually begin to lose the scientific staff and professional practitioners. In conditions when robots will do something good for us, and people of the same profession will have to be retrained, the continuity of knowledge transfer will simply be broken. The development of science will be the lot of a handful of people who feel their vocation.

Hope for the emergence of many new professions, which will be able to move millions of people, is not necessary. Now there are hundreds of professions, but the contribution of the new ones to the economy is small. The vast professional spheres, where about 45% of the US population is employed, have existed for many centuries, and almost all of them can be automated. For comparison, during the Great Depression, the unemployment rate in the United States reached 25%. Of course, this will not happen overnight, or even within a year or five. But this process will expand and intensify.

Probably, you got the impression that we are totally against robots and automation. This is not true. We only urge not to engage in self-deception in assessing the future, which will give us the mass distribution of robots, both physical and software. We need to think now what to do with the huge masses of the population who will lose their jobs through no fault of their own. What do we do in a future in which for most professions people are not required?

When writing the post were also used ideas from the video "Humans Need Not Apply"