Can robots take our jobs in the hottest intelligen

Intelligent age: can robots take away our "jobs"

computer automation, networking and artificial intelligence have begun to eliminate many jobs. The current situation is different from the industrial revolution. Automation has not only impacted many daily jobs, but also affected many jobs that need cognition and creativity. So, will robots rob human jobs? The British economist believes that VTT hopes to find a new process that can be comparable with expanded polystyrene in price and performance. To some extent, it will. However, the economist also pointed out that the new human-computer cooperation will allow people to work with more dignity and is expected to receive more economic rewards

productivity progress does not necessarily lead to large-scale unemployment

according to the British economist magazine, there is an unconfirmed anecdote: Little Hunter Ford led Walter Luthor, chairman of the United Automobile Union (UAW), to visit a new automated automobile manufacturing plant. The boss of Ford Motor Company laughed at Walter and said: Walter, how can you make these robots pay your union dues? Walter replied disapprovingly: Henry, how can you let them buy your car

whether this debate is true or not is not important. The key is that it points out that any form of productivity progress needs to be supported by a corresponding increase in consumption. Old Henry Ford believed in this. He never wavered in his determination to continuously improve labor productivity and reduce costs. Moreover, he insisted on paying double wages to workers so that they could afford his car

for Ford, this practice has also brought unexpected joy. By providing unprecedented high wages (US $5 a day in 1914), the world's best tool makers and machinists were all under forteau's command. The technology brought by these people has further effectively improved production efficiency and made Ford affordable to more people. With the introduction of its genius product Ford Model T, Ford has leapt to become the world's largest auto company, and its cars have also flown into the homes of ordinary people

economists take this as a classic case to illustrate how technological progress in the form of automation and innovation can promote productivity, which will lead to price decline, demand rise, employment increase and economic development. Since the beginning of the 19th century, this idea has been regarded as guigao by economists. However, at that time, there were some events that excluded machines: for fear that machines would make them unemployed, textile workers in Nottingham, England, inspired by the legendary hero of the British proletariat, Ned Luther, smashed the automatic textile machine they just bought at that time

of course, some people have lost their jobs because of mechanization. However, if the Luther fallacy (which has become very famous in Development Economics) holds, so far, we have all been unemployed due to the compound effect of productivity. Although technological progress may lead to the surplus and elimination of backward workers, the economic development of the past two centuries has proved that the so-called productivity progress will inevitably lead to mass unemployment is nonsense

insufficient economic growth leads to high unemployment rate

but the question now is: if the pace of technological progress is faster and faster, and now all the evidence shows that this is happening, then why is the unemployment rate still high after the profits of enterprises have rebounded to a record high? In the two and a half years since the great recession began in 2008 officially ended, the unemployment rate in the United States has remained at a high level of 9%, only 1% lower than that in the worst economic downturn three years ago

in the United States, the 80000 new jobs created in October 2011 are not enough to equal the growth of the unemployed population, let alone put 12.3 million unemployed workers back to work between 2007 and 2009. California, USA "Transformation and upgrading is easy to say. Lauratyson, a professor of economics and business administration at Berkeley University, served as an adviser to the president of the United States during Clinton's tenure and was the chairman of the Council of economic advisers. She said that even if the number of new jobs can be tripled on the existing basis, close to the level of 208000 jobs per month in 2005, it will still take ten years to make up for the huge employment gap caused by the recent recession.

The general explanation for the current difficulties facing the United States is that the annual economic growth rate of 2.5% in this quarter (the historical average is 3.3%), the economic growth rate is not fast enough to enable all the unemployed to return to work. Economists such as Tyson said that for companies, consumer demand has obviously not reached the level that can stimulate them to recruit again. Obviously, too many Americans who are living frugally need to constantly pay bills and plan carefully for their daily life, rather than spending a lot of money and buying goods they like but don't need

too rapid technological progress has made many jobs obsolete

although this statement is conclusive, it does not consider a key change that economists do not want to mention, and technologists have studied it for several years. This is a disturbing fact: in addition to the sluggish economic environment, the current employment dilemma in the United States also stems from a sudden but irreversible and eternal change, which is not caused by too little technological progress, but by too much and too fast technological progress. The evidence is undeniable: computer automation, networking, and artificial intelligence, including machine learning, language translation, and speech and pattern recognition software, are beginning to make many jobs obsolete

this is different from the cyclical changes of jobs that have existed since the industrial revolution. At that time, machines began to gradually replace the strong labor provided by people and horses; Today, the impact of automation is not limited to routine daily work, but also includes many jobs that need cognition and creativity. The tipping point seems to have arrived. From then on, automation based on artificial intelligence may replace a large number of middle-income white-collar mental workers

this will bring huge and disruptive differences. Artificial intelligence software is not only easier to install and run than mechanical automation software, but also a stronger incentive is that the use cost of mental workers is much higher than that of blue collar workers working in workshops, production lines, counters and fields

in many ways, the plight of the current white-collar class is the same as that of agricultural workers a century ago. In 1900, almost half of adults worked in the fields. However, with the emergence of tractors, combine harvesters, automatic harvesters and other mechanical equipment, agriculture now only accommodates slightly more than 2% of the working population

however, at that time, unemployed agricultural workers were able to wash away the soil, work in factories and earn higher wages. So where else could these white-collar workers go? Douglas losikov, a media theorist, said: it's no big deal. But to be honest, although people hope that the technology industry, innovation industry and better education quality can provide employment opportunities, as we all know, few new jobs are set up for these white-collar workers who are about to lose their jobs

people usually refute Luther's fallacy based on two points: first, machines are tools that people use to improve production efficiency; Second, most workers can become machine operators. But if these assumptions no longer apply, what happens when the machine is smart enough to work automatically? In other words, when capital becomes labor, Luther's fallacy seems less absurd

this is also the theme of Jeremy Rifkin, a social critic, in his book the end of work published in 1995. Although similar books have held this view before, Rifkin predicts that society is entering a new stage, when the demand of workers involved in the production of goods or services will be increasingly reduced. He wrote: in the next few years, more complex software technology will bring the entire human civilization closer to a world that requires almost no manpower

this shift has now begun. Moreover, not only white-collar workers and middle-level leaders are being eliminated by automation. With the software of data analysis, business intelligence and manufacturing decisions working better and at a lower cost, even professionals are not immune from this employment catastrophe. Pattern recognition technology is squeezing a large number of highly paid skilled workers out of the job market

in the United States, after 13 years of education, training and internship, a radiologist can earn 300000 dollars a year, and they will bear the brunt. Not only is the work of tumor slicing and X-ray scanning being outsourced to Indian laboratories at a cost of 1/10, the real threat is that the latest pattern recognition software can complete most of the work at a cost of 1/100

lawyers are no exception. Intelligent algorithms can search legal cases, evaluate cases and draw conclusions. Machines have proved that they are competent in judicial analysis, and their cost is not worth mentioning compared with manpower. Moreover, they can usually do it more thoroughly than human beings

in 2009, Martin Ford, the boss of a software enterprise in Silicon Valley, was enlightened. He noticed that new jobs created by new technologies, including page code programmers, sales, wind turbine mechanics, etc., accounted for only a small part of the job market. Although new technology can indeed create jobs, history has proved that new technology can also make jobs disappear immediately. For example, most of the IT jobs being outsourced or automated are new jobs created by technology during the technology explosion in the 1990s, he said

Ford pointed out that technology and innovation drive productivity to increase exponentially, while human consumption demand increases linearly. In his view, Lutheranism is indeed absurd when productivity growth is still in the slowly rising part of the exponential function; However, two centuries after the rapid development of technology, the growth rate of productivity has reached the inflection point and is rising rapidly along the vertical part of the index curve. One of the evidences is that the growth rate of productivity far exceeds the growth rate of consumption

another evidence is that the rate of new jobs created by new technologies cannot catch up with the rate of attrition in other areas of the national economy, which makes many jobs obsolete. Ford pointed out that about 40% of jobs in the U.S. economy will be more or less replaced by computer software. Many of these jobs may disappear in the next decade. Ford said: in order to replace human beings, the threshold of technology breakthrough is much lower than we thought

the views of ericbrinjolsson and Andrew McAfee, professors of MIT Sloan School of management, in their recent new book "running against the machine" are also consistent with Ford's analysis. In other words, the jobs lost after the great depression may be gone forever. They also agreed that the first victims would be middle-income knowledge workers, including those in the retail, legal and information industries. However, their views represent the ideas of many self-made Silicon Valley entrepreneurs rather than those in the ivory tower. In principle, the reform they proposed needs political support