You, Robot

Unexpected item in bagging area. These are the words that any shopper dreads to hear when standing at a self-service checkout machine. What follows is an often embarrassing encounter with whichever dull-eyed robot warden eventually makes their way over to assist us. This involves a performance of beguiling swiping and prodding motions that one can only presume is some form of futuristic sorcery. Magically, this relieves the beleaguered machine from whatever virtual illness our untrained hands had inflicted and we continue scanning our items until it inevitably happens again.

It begs the question – wouldn't you rather just take your shopping over to a human like back in the good old days? In any case, one can’t help but notice the gradual invasion of self-service checkouts upon supermarket tills across the nation. Indeed, jobs throughout the whole service sector seem to be progressively automated – from customer service assistants to Post Office workers – we increasingly interact with machines more than humans. How long will it be before all manned services will be replaced? What consequences will this have for our society? And is there anything we can do to halt the perpetual march of the machines?

The phenomenon of human labour being replaced by machines is broadly known as technological unemployment. This isn’t a new problem for humanity; we’ve been creating tools to help us carry out tasks with less manpower since prehistoric times, the invention of the wheel being the best example. But as time went on, we have gotten better and better at dong this, to the point where human labour today is almost obsolete. The upside is that we can now accomplish things far beyond what our bodies can achieve alone and at a much smaller cost. The downside is that, in a world where we depend upon selling our labour to society in order to survive, this can become a very big problem.

To understand this conundrum, we must look specifically at the development of technology and its effect on the economy so far. 200 years ago, our economy relied on agriculture as its primary driving force. Tools like the scythe and the plough massively decreased the amount of workers needed to tend the fields. But then the industrial revolution created millions of jobs in the manufacturing industry, so employment remained steady. Following this, the invention of the automated service line massively decreased the amount of workers required in industry. But this was also OK, because the digital revolution created millions of jobs in the service industry, working in shops and offices. 

Today, a large amount of service related jobs are being lost, because the augmentation of machines with computer processing chips now enables these jobs to be automated too. But where’s the next revolution to create new employment for those who are replaced? Although it’s true that the technology industry is ever expanding, the hard facts are that this really isn’t enough.

Meanwhile, no current job is truly safe from technological unemployment. Here’s why: in terms of running a competitive business, machines make better employees in almost every way. They are both cheaper to run, and incredibly more efficient: they can work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week; without ever needing food, or a fag break; with no risk of turning up late or throwing a wobbly and leaving mid-shift. Also, would anyone truly miss interacting with humans in the workplace? At least in the service scenario, I’d much rather deal with a machine than face the sullen, monotonous demeanour of most wage slave waiters or checkout assistants, for example. At least the machine won’t stare at me with masked irritation as I fumble around attempting to open the plastic bags, or utter an admonished groan when I ask to speak to their supervisor.

Technology isn't a limiting factor either. In theory, machines can carry out any function that a human can. Even the jobs that we class as representing the pinnacle of human skill – for example, brain surgery – could be automated; indeed, modern surgery is already being complemented by machines today. If this sounds at all unfounded to you, think about it this way: machines have been automatically building cars for years. Yes, the human body is far more intricate and complex than a car but, when it comes down to it, we’re not much more than a sack full of parts that can be repaired and replaced, just like fixing anything else.

So, that’s all the jobs that require any manual dexterity out of the way, but what about those that involve the more theoretical regions of the brain? This requires machines to become artificially intelligent. The subject of many a sci-fi story for decades; today, this idea is less science fiction and more science fact. For example, take the emerging utility of voice recognition on mobile phones – for instance, Apple’s ‘Siri’. Although anyone who has actually used Siri will know that the technology is far from perfect, this is still a form of artificial intelligence, i.e. a machine that mimics the human sense of hearing to intelligently respond to basic commands. 

This kind of technology is developing exponentially. Following Moore’s Law – the observation that computer processing power doubles approximately every two years – it is theorised that the creation of a computer with all the power and capabilities of the human mind will be achievable by the year 2020. In theory, this would mean that machines will have the capability to perform 100% of human jobs in just eight years’ time.

Why aren't we talking about this more? Inevitably, the current economic recession has brought to fore plenty of dialogue on the topic of unemployment recently; both in parliament and the mainstream media. Immigration, public sector cuts and higher education have been debated and discussed to the bone as potential problems and causes. It is surprising, then, that technological unemployment has received so little attention, when it is clearly accepted as a powerful contributing factor. Perhaps this is because no one really has an answer to this confusing economic conundrum.

Here’s the problem. On the one hand, the world economy is driven by big businesses, who must replace human labour with machines to achieve peak efficiency and profit. On the other hand, this system relies equally on consumption, the capacity for which is greatly reduced by unemployment. Put another way, if people don’t have jobs, then they don’t have as much money to buy things, ultimately resulting in a loss for business. Is this the only thing stopping corporations from pushing forward with automation? It’s hard to answer this question without having inside knowledge from a big corporate company, but suffice it to say that as jobs become more and more automated we can expect to see this becoming a huge problem - one that someone is going to have to answer.

If we continue as we are, we will be forced to choose between the certainty of growing unemployment through automaton, or the fundamental counter-intuition of repressing technological progress. Could this be the ultimate ‘catch 22’ in our economy? Some might interpret this phenomenon as evidence that our development as a species has outgrown the system. For me, at least, it seems clear that this choice is one that we shouldn't have to make. Having discussed just how rapidly progress is being made, if we embrace technology and maximise the potential to reduce costs, then we could potentially provide ourselves with the ability to feed, clothe and house the majority of the world’s population for little or no price. Critics will say that this would not work in our current free market economy. I think that we will have no choice but to make it work.