Yes, Workers Are Losing To Robots

The percentage of US national income in the US going to workers has dropped by a tenth over the past 20 years. Automation is partially to blame.

This observation comes from substantive research recently published by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, and it turns out the impact of automation on workers is doubly bad: Not only do robots take jobs once held by humans, but the threat of automation lets employers resist the efforts of the remaining fleshy bipeds to get pay increases.

I’m particularly intrigued by our need to evolve how we internalize and then talk about the issue, which I believe is something fundamentally and disruptively new. Robots that possess intelligence and can accomplish increasingly complex, general context tasks are not simply glorified looms.

The way they learn, in large part by literally watching how people do the work and then discovering their own solutions, means not only thato human beings need to train their replacements but then those robots don’t need human programmers to keep them humming along.

So, while experts wax poetic about the promises of a better future, this incomprehensibly consequential transformation of our lives and world is usually managed as a CapEx line on a company balance sheet. More people lose their jobs, and even more don’t see increases in their pay, as each day slips into tomorrow and a future that is lived in the here and now.

Maybe it’s time to shelve the Pollyanna case for the robot takeover and admit the giant electrified elephant in the room?

This essay originally appeared at DaisyDaisy