Experts can’t agree:
On Wednesday, Pew Research and Elon University released a report titled “AI, Robotics, and the Future of Jobs.” The report compiles and summarizes the results of a sort of expert opinion survey in which the researchers asked 1,900 economists, management scientists, industry analysts, and policy thinkers one big question: “Will networked, automated, artificial intelligence applications and robotic devices have displaced more jobs than they have created by 2025?”
The results of the survey were fascinating. Almost exactly half of the respondents (48 percent) predicted that intelligent software will disrupt more jobs than it can replace. The other half predicted the opposite. The lack of expert consensus on such a crucial and seemingly straightforward question is startling.
Claire Cain Miller examines the split more closely:
On one side were the techno-optimists. They believe that even though machines will displace many jobs in a decade, technology and human ingenuity will produce many more, as happened after the agricultural and industrial revolutions. The meaning of “job” might change, too, if people find themselves with hours of free time because the mundane tasks that fill our days are automated. The other half agree that some jobs will disappear, but they are not convinced that new ones will take their place, even for some highly skilled workers. They fear a future of widespread unemployment, deep inequality and violent uprisings — particularly if policy makers and educational institutions don’t step in.
Adi Robertson reads through the report:
Few people in the survey seem outright opposed to the idea of automating work, but many are worried that the economic impact on most people will be negative. GigaOM Research head Stowe Boyd lays out an extreme scenario: “An increasing proportion of the world’s population will be outside of the world of work-either living on the dole, or benefiting from the dramatically decreased costs of goods to eke out a subsistence lifestyle. The central question of 2025 will be: what are people for in a world that does not need their labor, and where only a minority are needed to guide the ‘bot-based economy?'”
And, even if technology increases jobs overall, Adrienne LaFrance warns that the adjustment could be rough:
[J]ust because an industry survives a major transition doesn’t mean the workers who are trained in the old way of doing things emerge unscathed—especially for those who don’t have the skills or experience to adapt to new systems. In other words, humans may have figured out a way forward after the Industrial Revolution, but many of them suffered before society as a whole benefitted from the widespread innovation spurred by all that change. “There is great pain down the road for everyone as new realities are addressed,” said Mike Roberts, president emeritus of ICANN. “The only question is how soon.”
Heather Roff throws politics into the mix:
The future of AI and robotics is not merely a Luddite worry over job loss. This worry is real, to be sure, but there is a broader question about the very values that we want to create and perpetuate in society. I thus side with Seth Finkelstein’s view: “A technological advance by itself can either be positive or negative for jobs, depending on the social structure as a whole. This is not a technological consequence; rather, it’s a political choice.”
The Dish 