The robotic economy and the economic impact of robotics #1

Productivity and the global economy will continue to grow in the future, but jobs are now being displaced at an enormous rate by machines. For thirty years, median income has stagnated in the West, even as average incomes have risen. The rich are getting richer since they control Information Technology and robotics.

This trend is going to DRAMATICALLY accelerate in the coming decade. In the end there will be two types of humans: designers and non-designers.

The bottom of the human pyramid will contain LOW IQ individuals who can’t understand technology, hence can’t design. The question is when and how this will happen, and what will be its impact. I suspect we’ll need a lot more psychologists in the future to deal with unemployed/unemployable humans.

In 2004 Frank Levy and Richard Murnane in their book The New Division of Labor wrote:

The … truck driver is processing a constant stream of [visual, aural, and tactile] information from his environment. … To program this behavior we could begin with a video camera and other sensors to capture the sensory input. But executing a left turn against oncoming traffic involves so many factors that it is hard to imagine discovering the set of rules that can replicate a driver’s behavior. …

Articulating [human] knowledge and embedding it in software for all but highly structured situations are at present enormously difficult tasks. … Computers cannot easily substitute for humans in [jobs like truck driving].

According to them computers couldn’t readily do complex jobs like driving. Well, they were wrong. In just 6 years, driverless cars were being tested.

Today, the driverless cars is a technology raring to go commercial.

In the meanwhile, machines are now available to replace most low-end human jobs. Not just in manufacturing but in services. Burgers can be made faster, quicker, and cheaper by machines. I’m sure McDonald’s (or some other fast food chain) is soon going to start rolling out robots.

I’ve written a fair bit on robotics, e.g.

• Robots are taking over manufacturing across the world
• The impending “take over” of production by robots
• Robots that will run after criminals and catch them in seconds
• India, be prepared to be replaced by robots.

It is time to start understanding how the robotic economy is going to look like.

Time permitting, I’ll review the literature/comment on this topic in the coming weeks/months.