How Robots Will Steal Your Job

     An interesting article about the future of working in America.

    ------lee

  

from wired.com

Joanna Glasner

08.05.03 

     Marshall Brain, founder of the website HowStuffWorks and author of Robot Nation, has a theory that in the future most of us will be out of work, replaced by robots.

     Listening to Marshall Brain explain the future as he sees it, it's relatively easy to suspend disbelief and agree how plausible it is that over the next 40 years most of our jobs will be displaced by robots.

     After all, it only takes a typical round of errands to reveal how far we've come already. From automated gas pumps to bank ATMs to self-service checkout lanes at major retailers, service jobs already are being replaced by machines on a scale of obvious magnitude.

     Fast-forward today's innovations another few decades, and it doesn't require a great leap of faith to envision how advances in image processing, microprocessor speed and human-motion simulation could lead to the automation of most current low-paying jobs.

     Factor in the historical speed of technological advancement in the modern era, epitomized by Moore's Law of semiconductor power expansion, and it starts to sound like a no-brainer.

     At least that's how Brain (yes, that is his real name) sees things unrolling.

     "We aren't realizing it, but it's only going to accelerate and magnify as we go forward," he said, segueing into a lengthier discussion on why job loss due to robotic displacement will be one of the key economic issues facing future generations.

     According to Brain's projections, laid out in an essay, "Robotic Nation," humanoid robots will be widely available by the year 2030, and able to replace jobs currently filled by people in areas such as fast-food service, housecleaning and retail. Unless ways are found to compensate for these lost jobs, Brain estimates that more than half of Americans could be unemployed by 2055.

Dire, indeed. But Brain, a Raleigh, North Carolina, father of four and founder of HowStuffWorks, is probably not the kind of guy one would expect to see sounding the alarm bells over a futuristic robotic revolution.

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