Carl Benedikt Frey

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“America Is The High Ground When It Comes To Automation”

January 29, 2016 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

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An Economist article looks at the latest report on automation by Carl Benedikt Frey, Michael Osborne and Craig Holmes, which argues that poorer nations are more likely than, say, America, to be prone to technological unemployment despite the U.S. holding an advantage in AI.

Because such countries are not yet as widely engaged in information work, their Industrial Age could be interrupted mid-epoch before they arrive at the Information Age. It’s like being pushed down a ladder when you’ve only scaled it part of the way. The academics acknowledge, though, that everything from policy to consumer preference may forestall the rise of the machines in India and China others. After all, Foxconn’s promised one-million robots factory workforce has yet to be realized.

An excerpt:

BILL BURR, an American entertainer, was dismayed when he first came across an automated checkout. “I thought I was a comedian; evidently I also work in a grocery store,” he complained. “I can’t believe I forgot my apron.” Those whose jobs are at risk of being displaced by machines are no less grumpy. A study published in 2013 by Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael Osborne of Oxford University stoked anxieties when it found that 47% of jobs in America were vulnerable to automation. Machines are mastering ever more intricate tasks, such as translating texts or diagnosing illnesses. Robots are also becoming capable of manual labour that hitherto could be carried out only by dexterous humans.

Yet America is the high ground when it comes to automation, according to a new report* from the same pair along with other authors. The proportion of threatened jobs is much greater in poorer countries: 69% in India, 77% in China and as high as 85% in Ethiopia. There are two reasons. First, jobs in such places are generally less skilled. Second, there is less capital tied up in old ways of doing things. Driverless taxis might take off more quickly in a new city in China, for instance, than in an old one in Europe.

Attracting investment in labour-intensive manufacturing has been a route to riches for many developing countries, including China. But having a surplus of cheap labour is becoming less of a lure to manufacturers. An investment in industrial robots can be repaid in less than two years. This is a particular worry for the poor and underemployed in Africa and India, where industrialisation has stalled at low levels of income—a phenomenon dubbed “premature deindustrialisation” by Dani Rodrik of Harvard University.•

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“The Two [Fastest Growing Occupations] Are Zumba Instructor And Personal Trainer”

November 8, 2015 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

zumbaIn a dark, mostly serious 2010 Globe and Mail piece, Douglas Coupland wrote: “The middle class is over. It’s not coming back.” It seemed at the time the author may have been leaning too heavily on his sci-fi instincts the way he did in thinking the Segway the best thing since the invention of the wheel, but time seems to have been his friend.

In a Guardian essay, Charles Arthur has a go at the 2013 Frey-Osborne paper about automation that alarmed so many, arguing that while scarcity won’t likely be a problem of tomorrow, distribution may be in a big way. An excerpt:

So how much impact will robotics and AI have on jobs, and on society? Carl Benedikt Frey, who with Michael Osborne in 2013 published the seminal paper The Future of Employment: How Susceptible Are Jobs to Computerisation? – on which the BoA report draws heavily – says that he doesn’t like to be labelled a “doomsday predictor.”

He points out that even while some jobs are replaced, new ones spring up that focus more on services and interaction with and between people. “The fastest-growing occupations in the past five years are all related to services,” he tells the Observer. “The two biggest are Zumba instructor and personal trainer.”

Frey observes that technology is leading to a rarification of leading-edge employment, where fewer and fewer people have the necessary skills to work in the frontline of its advances. “In the 1980s, 8.2% of the US workforce were employed in new technologies introduced in that decade,” he notes. “By the 1990s, it was 4.2%. For the 2000s, our estimate is that it’s just 0.5%. That tells me that, on the one hand, the potential for automation is expanding – but also that technology doesn’t create that many new jobs now compared to the past.”

This worries Chace. “There will be people who own the AI, and therefore own everything else,” he says. “Which means homo sapiens will be split into a handful of ‘gods,’ and then the rest of us.

“I think our best hope going forward is figuring out how to live in an economy of radical abundance, where machines do all the work, and we basically play.”

Arguably, we might be part of the way there already; is a dance fitness programme like Zumba anything more than adult play? But, as Chace says, a workless lifestyle also means “you have to think about a universal income” – a basic, unconditional level of state support.

Perhaps the biggest problem is that there has been so little examination of the social effects of AI.•

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“Jobs That Required Great Deal Of Routine In Repeating The Same Task Over And Over Again Were Very Likely To Be Automated”

June 2, 2015 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

In a sidebar to Mary-Ann Russon’s International Business Times report about which jobs are least and most prone to technological unemployment, umpires are listed as having a 98.3% chance of being replaced by robots. I can’t speak to umpires in other sports, but I would assume in American baseball, sensors could already do as good or better a job calling balls and strikes.

An excerpt:

Jobs least likely to be automated

The jobs that are least likely to be automated include jobs in the science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) industries, such as engineers, scientists, astronomers, architects, surgeons, psychologists, dentists, chiropractors, opticians, electricians and dietitians.

Jobs where a greater amount of personal care and in-depth attention are required were also very unlikely to be automated, such as therapists, teachers, personal trainers, choreographers, air traffic controllers, archaeologists, fashion and set designers, the clergy, lawyers, vets, the police, dancers, journalists, firefighters, tour guides, public relation specialists and most computer-related professions.

Jobs most likely to be automated

In contrast, jobs that required a lot of data to be processed or a great deal of routine in repeating the same task over and over again were very likely to be automated, such as bank tellers, loan officers, administrators, insurance underwriters in the finance industry, as well as retail roles like cashiers, retail assistants, telemarketers, sales executives and waitressing.

Also most at risk of automation are most repairman jobs, and most types of clerks that handle administration, whether the clerk be working in a hotel, a brokerage, an office, the mailroom, handling payroll or managing files.•

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“Now Even Doctors Face The Looming Threat Of Possible Obsolescence”

June 15, 2014 in Excerpts, Science/Tech | Permalink

The opening of Tom Meltzer’s new Guardian article about the advent of upwardly mobile robots leaving the assembly line for information-rich jobs:

“Last year, reporters for the Associated Press attempted to figure out which jobs were being lost to new technology. They analysed employment data from 20 countries and interviewed experts, software developers and CEOs. They found that almost all the jobs that had disappeared in the past four years were not low-skilled, low-paid roles, but fairly well-paid positions in traditionally middle-class careers. Software was replacing administrators and travel agents, bookkeepers and secretaries, and at alarming rates.

Economists and futurists know it’s not all doom and gloom, but it is all change. Oxford academics Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael A Osborne have predicted computerisation could make nearly half of jobs redundant within 10 to 20 years. Office work and service roles, they wrote, were particularly at risk. But almost nothing is impervious to automation. It has swept through shop floors and factories, transformed businesses big and small, and is beginning to revolutionise the professions.

Knowledge-based jobs were supposed to be safe career choices, the years of study it takes to become a lawyer, say, or an architect or accountant, in theory guaranteeing a lifetime of lucrative employment. That is no longer the case. Now even doctors face the looming threat of possible obsolescence.”

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