Automation Impact on Jobs

Petroleum-Zuid Antwerp (Photo credit: LHOON)

Robert Gordon’s essay “Is U.S. Economic Growth Over?” is very intriguing.  His thesis is that technological progress does not always yield the same growth and productivity for each major invention.  It could be that some technologies, such as Electricity, Engines, Petroleum and even mundane things such as running water and indoor toilets, may have yielded far greater growth through their introduction that current technologies such as computers and the internet.

These high growth technologies as well as the previous generation of modern agriculture and steam power, were very physical technologies.  They took up space and altered space.  They needed labor for their development, construction and even use.  They reshaped the physical world with railroads, roads, buildings, factories etc.

Are there any new technologies that have this sort of impact?  Maybe space travel and genetics, which both could create physical changes in our world (or bodies).  New power sources will still be delivered as electricity.  Cars may drive themselves, and the design may change, but they are still fundamentally vehicles for personal travel.  Factories may become robotic, but will the washing machine they make be fundamentally different?

It does seem in some way that these earlier physical technologies had greater ability to spur economic growth as they required so much labor and capital to develop.  Maybe current and future technologies, while exciting, won’t have the same impact on growth.

Robert J. Gordon has a new NBER working paper ‘essay that really should cite Tyler Cowen, since it’s all about a Great Stagnation in U.S. growth. Unlike Cowen, however, Gordon believes that the Stagnation will persist into the indefinite future. The paper is really two essays in one – the first part speculates that most of the big discoveries and inventions have already been made, and the second part identifies social and institutional constraints on U.S. growth. (Here are thoughts on the paper by FT Alphaville and Paul Krugman ). Although there are some parts of the paper with [...]

Click here to view original web page at noahpinionblog.blogspot.com

Great talk by Andrew McAfee who is the co-author of Race Against the Machine.  He sees a future where machines are replacing human work at an accelerating rate.  It is already happening and will spread to the most unexpected areas of the economy.  While it is hard not to agree with his rosy vision of a future where our minds are augmented with digital computing, the hard part is how we get there.

The advent of the industrial revolution was a brutal time of wars, subjugation, immense fortunes and immense poverty as we moved our whole population from agriculture to industry.  How can a fundamental change to the economy, of labor providing wages providing consumption, be upended without huge societal upheaval?

Robots and algorithms are getting good at jobs like building cars, writing articles, translating — jobs that once required a human. So what will we humans do for work? Andrew McAfee walks through recent labor data to say: We ain’t seen nothing yet. But then he steps back to look at big history, and comes up with a surprising and even thrilling view of what comes next.

Click here to view original web page at www.ted.com

I think Jim Pinto brings up some great points here about the ‘feel’ that people bring to an automated environment.  Robots and automated systems are fast and efficient, but they don’t have the adaptability and judgement to handle change and non-standard environments.

What this means for employment is that we increasingly need people who can recognize unusual conditions, react to them and make judgements and decisions.  Pushing this down to the factory floor (or the window observatory!) will mean that we need broadly educated and highly capable people.  Not a recipe for big employment gains.

While automation typically provides consistent performance, it lacks judgment, adaptability and flexibility under changing conditions. Humans provide the “feel” that makes them the most important element of production and control systems.

Enhanced productivity comes by optimizing the human element. People provide the peripheral vision; they fill in the gaps and create the broader context in ways that machines cannot. This partnership is the man/machine framework.

Click here to view original web page at www.automationworld.com