Speaking of technological unemployment, there’s a new Pew Research Center report, “AI, Robotics, and the Future of Jobs,” in which some technologists and analysts worry that many professions will be headed down the vortex of an automatic, sensor-activated crapper. In a post at the “Upshot” of the New York Times, Claire Cain Miller pulled a few the prognostications. Two sharply contrasting views follow.

_____________________________

Most utopian:

“How unhappy are you that your dishwasher has replaced washing dishes by hand, your washing machine has displaced washing clothes by hand or your vacuum cleaner has replaced hand cleaning? My guess is this ‘job displacement’ has been very welcome, as will the ‘job displacement’ that will occur over the next 10 years. This is a good thing. Everyone wants more jobs and less work.”

— Hal Varian, chief economist at Google.

Most dystopian:

“We’re going to have to come to grips with a long-term employment crisis and the fact that — strictly from an economic point of view, not a moral point of view — there are more and more ‘surplus humans.’  ”

— Karl Fogel, partner at Open Tech Strategies, an open-source technology firm.