The robots are here ?? and you should be worried
Source: Kathleen Elkins

It's no surprise that technology is getting better, faster, and smarter. But is it at the expense of its makers?

Anxiety has been building around the second machine age and its implications for our economic future, and it may have reached a tipping point.

Just last week, Silicon Valley venture capitalists and executives published an open letter on the digital economy, calling for public-policy changes and new organizational models to account for this era of drastic technological change.

The authors write, "The digital revolution is the best economic news on the planet."

But not everyone agrees. Several scholars have been sounding the alarm on the danger of technological progress.

During a presentation at the Carnegie Council for Ethics and International Affairs this week, researcher Wendell Wallach said technology is now destroying more jobs than it creates.

"This is an unparalleled situation and one that I think could actually lead to all sorts of disruptions once the public starts to catch on that we are truly in the midst of technological unemployment," said Wallach, a consultant, ethicist, and scholar at the Yale University Interdisciplinary Center for Bioethics.

Martin Ford, a software developer and Silicon Valley entrepreneur, recently published the book "Rise of the Robots" in an effort to generate a conversation around the prospect of a jobless future.

We're not worried enough, he says. Most people don't understand the "mind-boggling" speed that technology is advancing at.

"When people talk about robots, they're mostly imagining factories, but the factory jobs have been gone for decades," Ford tells Business Insider.


In May, Shenzhen Evenwin Precision Technology, a manufacturing company based out of Dongguan in southern China, announced it would soon be replacing 90% of its 1,800 employees with machines. The 200 employees not receiving pink slips will take on a new role ― overseeing the robotic workforce.

This is part of a larger trend in southern China, where robots are poised to invade several manufacturing companies.

If that isn't unsettling enough, consider the Oxford University study, "The Future of Employment: How Susceptible are Jobs to Computerization," which predicts that 47% of US jobs could be automated within one to two decades.

It's no longer just the "dangerous, dirty, and dull" jobs on the block. Technology is also poised to replace white-collar positions, like lawyers, reporters, and financial analysts, to name a few.

While certain sectors, such as healthcare and education, are safer than others for the time being, Ford believes most industries will eventually be at risk.

But it's not as much about what industry you work in, Ford explains, as it is the function you perform. Think about your job, he says, and consider whether or not any smart person could figure out how to do it if they watched you work or studied your past work patterns.

If so, then it's a pretty good bet that an algorithm will eventually be able to figure it out as well, he warns. "If you look far enough into the future, say 50 years and beyond, there aren't any jobs that you could say absolutely for sure are going to be safe."

With creative computing underway, even the most artful of jobs could be at risk. Algorithms can now write symphonies and paint original paintings, Ford tells us.



"We should be concerned," says Ford. "Primarily because we don't have an alternate for people to lose their jobs.

"I'm not arguing that the technology is a bad thing. It could be a great thing if the robots did all our jobs and we didn't have to work. The problem is that your job and income are packaged together. So if you lose your job, you also lose your income, and we don't have a very good system in place to deal with that."

The economic consequences could be dramatic, he says. Jobs drive consumption, and consumption drives our economy.