Smart machines and the future of jobs

["Dave Farber" <farber () gmail com>]

Begin forwarded message:

> From: Hendricks Dewayne <dewayne () warpspeed com>
> Date: October 10, 2016 at 7:44:11 AM EDT
> To: Multiple recipients of Dewayne-Net <dewayne-net () warpspeed com>
> Subject: [Dewayne-Net] Smart machines and the future of jobs
> Reply-To: dewayne-net () warpspeed com
>
> [Note:  This item comes from reader Randall Head.  DLH]
>
> Smart machines and the future of jobs
> By Jeffrey D. Sachs
> Oct 10 2016
> <http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2016/10/10/smart-machines-and-future-jobs/tPxRJvLpgw0W3SPrifpxTN/story.html>
>
> Since the early 1800s, several waves of technological change have transformed how we work and live. Each new 
> technological marvel — the steam engine, railroad, ocean steamship, telegraph, harvester, automobile, radio, 
> airplane, TV, computer, satellite, mobile phone, and now the Internet — has changed our home lives, communities, 
> workplaces, schools, and leisure time. For two centuries we’ve asked whether ever-more-powerful machines would free 
> us from drudgery or would instead enslave us.
>
> The question is becoming urgent. IBM’s Deep Blue and other chess-playing computers now routinely beat the world’s 
> chess champions. Google’s DeepMind defeated the European Go champion late last year. IBM’s Watson has gone from 
> becoming the world’s “Jeopardy’’ champion to becoming an expert medical diagnostician. Self-driving cars on the 
> streets of Pittsburgh are on the verge of displacing Uber drivers. And Baxter, the industrial robot, is carrying out 
> an expanding range of assembly-line and warehouse operations. Will the coming generations of smart machines deliver 
> us leisure and well-being or joblessness and falling wages?
>
> The answer to this question is not simple. There is neither a consensus nor deep understanding of the future of jobs 
> in an economy increasingly built on smart machines. The machines have gotten much smarter so fast that their 
> implications for the future of work, home life, schooling, and leisure are a matter of open speculation.
>
> We need to pursue policies so that the coming generation of smart machines works for us, and our well-being, rather 
> than humanity working for the machines and the few who control their operating systems.
>
> In a way, the economic effects of smarter machines are akin to the economic effects of international trade. Trade 
> expands the nation’s economic pie but also changes how the pie is divided. Smart machines do the same. In the past, 
> smarter machines have expanded the economic pie and shifted jobs and earnings away from low-skilled workers to 
> high-skilled workers. In the future, robots and artificial intelligence are likely to shift national income from all 
> types of workers toward capitalists and from the young to the old.
>
> CONSIDER ENGLAND’S Industrial Revolution in the first part of the 19th century, when James Watt’s steam engine, the 
> mechanization of textile production, and the railroad created the first industrial society. No doubt the economic pie 
> expanded remarkably. England’s national income roughly doubled from 1820 to 1860. Yet traditional weavers were thrown 
> out of their jobs; the Luddites, an early movement of English workers, tried to smash the machines that were 
> impoverishing them; and poet William Blake wrote of the “dark Satanic mills” of the new industrial society. An 
> enlarging economic pie, yes; a new prosperity shared by all, decidedly not.
>
> Looking back at two centuries of more and more powerful machines (and the accompanying technologies and systems to 
> operate them), we can see one overarching truth: Technological advances made the society much richer but also 
> continually reshuffled the winners and losers. Similarly, one overarching pattern was repeatedly replayed. The march 
> of technology has favored those with more education and training. Smart machines require well-trained specialists to 
> operate them. An expanded economic pie favors those with managerial and professional skills who can navigate the 
> complexities of finance, administration, management, and technological systems.
>
> Overall, better machines caused national income to soar and the man-hours spent in hard physical labor to decline 
> markedly. Seventy-hour workweeks in 1870 have become 35-hour workweeks today. An average of around six years of 
> schooling has become an average of 17 years. With increasing longevity, most workers can now look forward to a decade 
> or more of retirement years, an idea simply unimaginable in the late 19th century. It’s amazing to reflect that for 
> Americans 15 years and over, the average time at work each day is now just 3 hours 11 minutes. Those at work average 
> 7 hours and 34 minutes, but only 42.1 percent of Americans 15 and over are at work on an average day. The rest of the 
> time, other than sleep and personal care, is taken up with schooling, retirement, caring for children, leisure and 
> sports, shopping, and household activities.
>
> [snip]
>
> Dewayne-Net RSS Feed: <http://dewaynenet.wordpress.com/feed/>



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