One of the more interesting
aspects of writing a column about the application of social philosophy to the
rapidly changing situation within modern technology is that I am forced to constantly think about these changes. Recently, I found an article online by
Anthonia Akitunde, editor of Federated
Media Publishing, Inc. that was titled “Why Robots Could Take Over Almost Half
of Human Jobs”. It was published on October
16, 2013, so it is truly very recent.
Akitunde writes about a study done by two researchers at Oxford
University. 702 types of jobs were analyzed across a wide range of industries
and 47% of them were found to be vulnerable to computerization. A whole bunch of jobs from manufacturing to
the movement of materials to even the legal professions were included in this
category. According to the researchers,
any job that could be “ restructured to remove the need for high-level
perception and manipulation, and creative and social intelligence” was
vulnerable to takeover by machines. In
other words, human jobs that had a large amount of routine tasks would be eliminated. This is the kind of job done by a lot of
average middle-class workers.
But
don’t worry. A company like Amazon uses
robots to transport items within its enormous warehouse, but it still needs
humans to take things out of the bins that are transported. 70,000 temporary workers are being hired for
this purpose and several thousand of these temporary workers may be converted
into permanent workers. What happens to
the other temps? Heaven will provide.
The
study, although done by researchers from a very fine famous university, is
still just one study. Nevertheless, the
trends uncovered by their research are certainly not counterintuitive, but
rather reflect changes that have been discussed in the writings of many people,
including yours truly. The only surprise
element for me in this study is the potential for this takeover to occur so
soon. Even when workers are needed for work that is not routine – work that can
be done in conjunction with the work of the computers and robots – there are
still an awful lot of jobs that will be eliminated. And the price for the short-term cut in costs
in various businesses through the increasing use of computers and robots is the
long-term cost of long-term mass unemployment.
This
is unfortunately a situation that does not lend itself to the voluntary actions
of individuals in order to deal with its effects. This is not a situation like when I suggest
it would be healthier for people to diminish their use of consumer technology,
to not always buy the latest model of something or the latest app. This is not a situation where going on a
personal technology diet will have any significant effect.
Many
workers are being put into an economic vacuum where they are unable to
meaningfully participate in the money-making activities that keep a society
running. They are also being put into an
experiential vacuum, where they are not grounded in or bonded to any part of
the flow of the important money-making social processes in which people have
traditionally spent a major part of their daily lives. Living in a vacuum, these long-term
unemployed workers become like ghosts – vacuumized free-floating figures that
are unable to leave meaningful imprints on the surfaces of their fields of
experience.
One
way that such ghost people might validate their existence and pull out of the
experiential vacuum would be through violence.
As I have discussed in previous articles, violence becomes a desperate
solution by people in modern technological society who want to pull out of
chronic numbness. Imagine if large-scale
violence started occurring as a result of mass unemployment from the takeover
by computers and robots of a significant percentage of jobs.
It
seems to me that just as we all have a vested interest now in protecting our
natural environment from being totally destroyed, so we all have a vested
interest in protecting our human vocational environment. Just as government has started creating laws
and rules that impose limitations on the
amount and the quality of pollution that businesses, homes and the government
itself can create, so the government should start creating laws and rules
protecting the amount and the quality of human jobs.. In the U.S., we have an E.P.A. – an
Environmental Protection Agency. Now we
need a V.P.A. – a Vocational Protection Agency that protects human jobs from
the encroachment of computers and robots.
Employers should not have the automatic right to use computers and
robots for jobs that humans can do. The
truth is that although basic tools like knives and hammers are helpers to human
beings, technology has now evolved to the point where we have work entities
that are competitors or rivals to human beings.
A
Vocational Protection Agency will not interfere when companies lay off workers,
for instance, when business is slow. Nor
will it get involved in wages, salaries, and benefits. It will simply concern itself with giving out
government permits or licenses to companies for the use of computers and robots
in such situations where humans are unable to do a particular kind of work, or,
at least are unable to do it safely.
Obviously, there are situations where computers still act as an aid to
human workers rather than a displacement of them. In addition, the agency will make sure that
humans are still doing all of the work of which they are capable.
Now
some of my readers might say such an agency will stop progress and slow down
growth. But what good is the progress
and growth, if such a large percentage of people are going to be prevented from
receiving the benefits. The economy is
not some abstract entity. At bottom, the
economy is made up of the people. – workers as well as managers and owners. When possible, people should be allowed to
keep their jobs. Computers and robots
can be introduced into a work situation provided that they either extend the
capacities of workers without replacing them, or else, they do completed tasks
by themselves that humans can’t do or, at least, can’t do safely. An example of the latter is robots that
handle radioactive materials.
Other
readers might say, I want to add another stultifying layer of bureaucracy to
government. There is no question that
government regulation slows down economic processes. In some countries, it practically paralyzes
them. But regulation is sometimes truly
needed to deal with aspects of human life that could get out of control in a
destructive way. Having masses of
unemployed workers, masses of ghost people floating around in a dangerous
vacuum, is a potentially very explosive situation that could lead to dire
consequences. By comparison, another
level of bureaucracy is simply an annoying discomfort.
Work
gives people a source of economic survival.
It gives people the opportunity to feel empowered and more secure by
being able to make and preserve organic imprints ( however meager these
imprints may be as a result of the
mediation between the worker and his working environment by modern technology ). And it allows people to use their work to
feel grounded in and bonded to their living environment. Work is not only important in economic terms;
it is also important in psychological and experiential terms.
The
accelerating displacement of human workers by computers and robots is but one
of many rapid changes occurring in human life today as a result of
technological evolution. Just as we have
developed a body of thought called bioethics to deal with the moral
implications of many aspects of modern medicine, so we now have to develop a
body of thought that we can call technoethics to deal with the moral
implications of the way modern technology impinges on human life. We have to start working on this body of
thought now, while we still have an opportunity to maintain some control over
the situation. We must do this before
it’s too late.
(c) 2013 Laurence Mesirow
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