I think it’s going to be a while before all human manual laborers are going to be replaced by robots.

So About That Whole Tech-Eating-Jobs Thing • 2015 Jul 4 • techcrunch

Robots Seem to Be Improving Productivity, Not Costing Jobs • 2015 Jun 16 • Harvard Business Review

Weirdly, a lot of the logically-constructed “robots will take our jobs!” arguments echo “immigrants will take our jobs!” arguments—the most obvious similarity being that neither hypothesis are particularly supported by empirical evidence.

I’ve just always had the sense that the “automate everything!” concept (1) underestimates how cheap human labor is compared to having to construct, manufacture, program, and maintain machines and (2) underestimates just how huge the gap in hardware and computational capability between the human brain/body and current computer/robotic technology is.

And I seriously doubt that (1) will change much until the majority of the world has attained the living standards of industrialized countries such that the price of human labor goes up spectacularly.

Perhaps worker “replacement” is the wrong paradigm, the wrong expectation. The data suggests rather that what really happens is “extension” and “augmentation”. You still need human workers to manufacture, program, maintain, and operate the machinery, but each human worker can produce far more than without robotic assistance.

(crossposted on Facebook)