These are not the robots you're looking for

IBM has a TV ad campaign going on right now that is touting the incredible capabilities of its Watson supercomputer (you remember, the cyborg that won on Jeopardy! four years ago). The TV spots all show the ways in which Watson is going to assist knowledge workers to do something incredible and thus make the future better. I wrote about this myself in the blog post “You can be smarter than you think.”

The commercial about radiology is typical of the Watson series. The message goes like this (I’ll paraphrase): “Radiologists have to analyze thousands of x-rays, looking for tiny indicators of abnormality. Now Watson can assist with that analysis, enabling them to do it faster, better, with less mistakes etc…” It sure sounds great.

But let me now tell you what is really going on in this commercial, and you’re not going to like it. Whether IBM admits it or not, or whether they’ve even thought through the consequences, Watson is learning the job of radiology not just to assist the radiologists, but to ultimately replace them altogether. Make no mistake: once Watson learns this very technical, complex skill, the supercomputer will be able to analyze not thousands of x-rays but millions per day, with a better accuracy rating and at a far lower cost per patient than can be done now by those slow, highly-educated (and highly-paid) radiologists, who do things like getting tired and going on vacation, and going home at the end of the day. Once Watson comes up to speed, which will be very soon, those radiology jobs – and the radiologists who fill them – will be… gone.

I’ve just finished reading a book that everyone should read. It’s called “Rise of the Robots” by Martin Ford, and it paints a very grim picture of our future, in which automation, robots and smart software take over job after job, and do things better and cheaper than the humans they’ll replace. The book’s subtitle says it all: “Technology and the threat of a jobless future.”

Now I know you’re nodding wisely, since we’ve seen for two hundred years how automation is slowly replacing manual labor. We’ve also bought into the concept that as manual jobs are eliminated, high-end knowledge jobs are created. After all, someone has to design and build and program and supervise all those smart machines, right? I nodded wisely too as I started this book.

But we should all stop nodding right now, because Ford makes a completely convincing case for why things are vastly different now. This is not your grandfather’s industrial revolution.

First of all, this is not a slow replacement process any more, with workers having time to retrain and reposition themselves; this is a rapid disruption that will be impossible for our workforce to adapt to, and with far fewer (if any at all) new jobs created to replace all those lost. Retraining is futile if your next job is also being replaced at the same pace as the last. And it’s not in the far future; it’s happening right now with machines that are not in the planning stages. They are up and running in the workplace, like Watson and its countless unnamed little siblings.

Second of all we’re no longer looking at blue collar, low-wage, repetitive jobs that are relatively easy to replicate with machines. We are talking about all categories of knowledge work, no matter how unstructured or creative they may be. We are talking about YOUR job being replaced, right now.

Ford gives example after example of jobs that are on the cusp of being done by machines, so many of them jobs that we would have never thought could be done by automation: physicians and the above-mentioned radiologists, airline pilots, writers and artists, engineers and designers, computer programmers, managers. This is not speculation; he’s describing a trend that is well under way.

The economic impacts of all this are the most disturbing aspects of the book. Automation is a profit-driven imperative, since in every case the replacement of people with machines will ultimately produce greater productivity at far lower costs. Cheaper/Better/Faster is a triple play that no company can resist and the robots have reached the tipping point over their human competition in all three categories. In no case does retaining a human workforce produce a product or a service that justifies the higher costs. More and more highly trained people will be put out of work, competing for a diminishing number of jobs and Ford shows that this applies now as much in the service economy as it ever did in manufacturing. Company owners and investors will be the few left still in the driver’s seats, which will only increase income inequality. Ford discards the metaphor of a career ladder and replaces it with a career pyramid: there is only so much room at the top.

Machines will ultimately design and build themselves, and further the process of automation. Moore’s Law will be relentless. There are already learning systems that can master even the most complex and unstructured jobs, simply by observing how experts do them. The process by which Watson will assist (then replace) the radiologists is one that will be repeated over and over again.

As I read the book, I kept hoping that Ford would provide a solution that would help us avoid this depressing future; after all, the last chapter was entitled “Toward a New Economic Paradigm.” But I hoped in vain. Ford’s best idea is for the government to establish a minimum guaranteed income for all citizens – a socialist-sounding proposal that I think has little hope of emerging from our currently toxic political environment. Ford’s other alternatives are no better.

This is not a problem that can be kicked down the road to a future generation, who, we may hope, will somehow solve it. If you’re young or in mid-career, this trend will impact your life. It will surely impact the futures of all our children.

The danger of a jobless future should be part of our national debate. The way technology impacts our society and lives is the responsibility of everyone who works in IT, and I consider this issue to be the most serious of our times.

Every technologist should read “Rise of the Robots”, and so should everyone else.

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Here is the book on Amazon, but keep your local bookstore in business and buy it there.