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A World Without Work: Technology, Automation, and How We Should Respond
The most pressing economic problems in the post-epidemic era will eventually subside, and the accelerated automation due to epidemic prevention has not stopped. When the monstrous waves of technology continue to hit, will it create a prosperous utopia without work? Fall into a miserable world where most people have no jobs and uneven wealth? Oxford University economist's memo for the next technological prosperity. The world that does not work is about to come. Now all vocational skills may be replaced by machines. What will the future of the workplace look like? Human beings have no jobs, what is left?
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First published January 14, 2020
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December 15, 2021
Recently, I was asked to write a report for an organisation that was interested in how education could be used to better address employment issues – essentially how could education help prepare the youth of today for the future of work. I didn’t write the report the organisation was hoping for. You see, the problem is that I’m not at all convinced that there is a simple answer to what the future of work will look like and I certainly don’t have a clue what role education might play in that future – other than it is likely to be deeply contradictory.
The organisation was quite upset with me – they suggested that I should write them a report that was more ‘solutions focused’. It did occur to me that perhaps I could propose a civil war, as this might occupy the time of young people at least as effectively as teaching them resume writing skills – but I figured that if they didn’t see what I was saying about the problems we face in the future of work, sarcasm probably wasn’t going to help. What they really wanted me to say was that education will fix all of the problems currently facing young people, if only we tweak it a bit.
The problem is that in 1980, pretty close to when I left school, only 35% of students finished high school. Between 1985 and 1992 Australian school retention increased from 46% to 77%, and by 2020 it was 82%. It is over 90% in metropolitan areas – so, it has more than doubled since I left school. As this book points out, it is very hard to move above this rate of retention. I’m not saying we shouldn’t try, just that internationally when people have tried the 90% rate has remained stubbornly consistent.
All the same, doubling school retention isn’t to be sneezed at. In fact, given this incredible increase in the proportion of society receiving a completed high school education, if education is a panacea for social ills, then presumably young people today are much better off than young people were when I left school. Well, these things are hard to measure, obviously, but in terms of health outcomes (including mental health), job security, relationships, age at which they marry, age at which they have children or age at which they own a house, in each case young people today are worse off than they were in my generation. In Australia this has been blamed, by some conservative politicians, on young people having smashed avocado for brunch on the weekends.
This book explains why looking elsewhere, beyond the humble avocado, is probably worth the exercise. But I want to stress that the author agrees that we are unlikely to educate ourselves out of the current jobs crisis.
Of course, not all economists agree we are in a jobs crisis or that it will get worse. The main objection is summed up in a lovely line from an ‘eminent economist’ who said that while science fiction is fun, we can learn much more about the future of work from history. And what have we learnt from history? Well, the main argument is that machines make us more productive. That being more productive means we have more to spend. That having more to spend means buying more stuff (including services) and thus being more productive makes the pie bigger and more people get employed. Virtuous cycle.
And anyway, whole industries have collapsed before and things didn’t fall apart. In 1900 in the US two-in-every-five workers worked in agriculture. Today it is two-in-hundred. Those displaced people now work in other industries. The Luddites were wrong (well, as long as you don’t look too closely at the history of English industry as Thompson does in his masterful ‘The Making of the English Working Class’) – new jobs replace old.
There are a number of fallacies associated with these ‘standard economic responses’ to the fear of a collapsing labour market. The first is based on David Hume’s scepticism, where there is nothing in the fact that the sun has always risen before to prove it will rise tomorrow. The other problem here is that the patterns of unemployment we are witnessing don’t offer much hope for large sections of the population. What seems to be happening is a hollowing out of the middle. There might be more jobs at the top and at the bottom, but there has been a collapse of jobs in the middle. Others point out that some of the ‘entry’ jobs also no longer exist – so, getting into the labour market is increasingly difficult too.
A lot of the jobs at the bottom that are booming are what have been otherwise termed pink collar jobs. Jobs in child, disability, or aged care. Jobs in cleaning. Jobs serving in restaurants – jobs in the service industry. But since the war we have done much to convince working class males that the only jobs they can do that won’t emasculate them involve them doing things that we no longer need done. These are things that can be done far more effectively and cheaply by machines. As the author points out, this means that many men struggle to see any way back into the labour market once they lose their job, since ‘working’ in ‘girls work’ is out of the question. As Lois Weis points out in her wonderful book ‘Class Reunion’ (following on a decade later from her research into high school students in a deindustrialising US city called ‘Working Class Without Work’) many of the young girls in her first study had gone on to further education and better jobs – but this was almost never the case with the young boys.
In large part, the solutions offered here are associated with providing a universal basic income. This is something that has received some support over the years from both the right and left of the political spectrum. It would seem to me that to fund such a scheme we would need to tax corporations, and that doesn’t seem particularly likely. I mean, this week Time announced Elon Musk their person of the year. I believe he pays 3.27% tax and has 66 million followers on Twitter. He is the reverse of Robin Hood, but considered a hero all the same. Such facts hardly inspire confidence that we will be able to afford anything like a universal basic income anytime soon.
This was a better book than I thought it was going to be. I think it is clear that even if the predictions of mass unemployment are not realised, that we are witnessing structural changes to the labour market that are not going to be easy to address. I’m going to end by taking us back to the Luddites for a minute. People tend to laugh at them now. Smashing machines – they are made to look like horse and buggy drivers smashing cars. But the Luddites were not in any sense simply smashing machines because they were afraid of progress. Rather, they saw the harm that was being caused by the unregulated introduction of technology. There were ample cases where they smashed the machines in one factory, but left those alone in a factory beside it, since the owner of the second factory was treating their workers fairly. Their basic argument was that if labour had become more productive, maybe workers should receive a share of that increased profit. The Luddites were highly skilled workers being displaced and deskilled by the introduction of technology. Other things I’ve read have shown that the introduction of that technology helped depress wages for decades, that is, caused a world of human misery for the majority of the population.
We are standing at a similar time. We have seen how this has played out before. Perhaps we could learn from our past mistakes, although, admittedly, that is about the least likely thing we humans normally to do.
The organisation was quite upset with me – they suggested that I should write them a report that was more ‘solutions focused’. It did occur to me that perhaps I could propose a civil war, as this might occupy the time of young people at least as effectively as teaching them resume writing skills – but I figured that if they didn’t see what I was saying about the problems we face in the future of work, sarcasm probably wasn’t going to help. What they really wanted me to say was that education will fix all of the problems currently facing young people, if only we tweak it a bit.
The problem is that in 1980, pretty close to when I left school, only 35% of students finished high school. Between 1985 and 1992 Australian school retention increased from 46% to 77%, and by 2020 it was 82%. It is over 90% in metropolitan areas – so, it has more than doubled since I left school. As this book points out, it is very hard to move above this rate of retention. I’m not saying we shouldn’t try, just that internationally when people have tried the 90% rate has remained stubbornly consistent.
All the same, doubling school retention isn’t to be sneezed at. In fact, given this incredible increase in the proportion of society receiving a completed high school education, if education is a panacea for social ills, then presumably young people today are much better off than young people were when I left school. Well, these things are hard to measure, obviously, but in terms of health outcomes (including mental health), job security, relationships, age at which they marry, age at which they have children or age at which they own a house, in each case young people today are worse off than they were in my generation. In Australia this has been blamed, by some conservative politicians, on young people having smashed avocado for brunch on the weekends.
This book explains why looking elsewhere, beyond the humble avocado, is probably worth the exercise. But I want to stress that the author agrees that we are unlikely to educate ourselves out of the current jobs crisis.
Of course, not all economists agree we are in a jobs crisis or that it will get worse. The main objection is summed up in a lovely line from an ‘eminent economist’ who said that while science fiction is fun, we can learn much more about the future of work from history. And what have we learnt from history? Well, the main argument is that machines make us more productive. That being more productive means we have more to spend. That having more to spend means buying more stuff (including services) and thus being more productive makes the pie bigger and more people get employed. Virtuous cycle.
And anyway, whole industries have collapsed before and things didn’t fall apart. In 1900 in the US two-in-every-five workers worked in agriculture. Today it is two-in-hundred. Those displaced people now work in other industries. The Luddites were wrong (well, as long as you don’t look too closely at the history of English industry as Thompson does in his masterful ‘The Making of the English Working Class’) – new jobs replace old.
There are a number of fallacies associated with these ‘standard economic responses’ to the fear of a collapsing labour market. The first is based on David Hume’s scepticism, where there is nothing in the fact that the sun has always risen before to prove it will rise tomorrow. The other problem here is that the patterns of unemployment we are witnessing don’t offer much hope for large sections of the population. What seems to be happening is a hollowing out of the middle. There might be more jobs at the top and at the bottom, but there has been a collapse of jobs in the middle. Others point out that some of the ‘entry’ jobs also no longer exist – so, getting into the labour market is increasingly difficult too.
A lot of the jobs at the bottom that are booming are what have been otherwise termed pink collar jobs. Jobs in child, disability, or aged care. Jobs in cleaning. Jobs serving in restaurants – jobs in the service industry. But since the war we have done much to convince working class males that the only jobs they can do that won’t emasculate them involve them doing things that we no longer need done. These are things that can be done far more effectively and cheaply by machines. As the author points out, this means that many men struggle to see any way back into the labour market once they lose their job, since ‘working’ in ‘girls work’ is out of the question. As Lois Weis points out in her wonderful book ‘Class Reunion’ (following on a decade later from her research into high school students in a deindustrialising US city called ‘Working Class Without Work’) many of the young girls in her first study had gone on to further education and better jobs – but this was almost never the case with the young boys.
In large part, the solutions offered here are associated with providing a universal basic income. This is something that has received some support over the years from both the right and left of the political spectrum. It would seem to me that to fund such a scheme we would need to tax corporations, and that doesn’t seem particularly likely. I mean, this week Time announced Elon Musk their person of the year. I believe he pays 3.27% tax and has 66 million followers on Twitter. He is the reverse of Robin Hood, but considered a hero all the same. Such facts hardly inspire confidence that we will be able to afford anything like a universal basic income anytime soon.
This was a better book than I thought it was going to be. I think it is clear that even if the predictions of mass unemployment are not realised, that we are witnessing structural changes to the labour market that are not going to be easy to address. I’m going to end by taking us back to the Luddites for a minute. People tend to laugh at them now. Smashing machines – they are made to look like horse and buggy drivers smashing cars. But the Luddites were not in any sense simply smashing machines because they were afraid of progress. Rather, they saw the harm that was being caused by the unregulated introduction of technology. There were ample cases where they smashed the machines in one factory, but left those alone in a factory beside it, since the owner of the second factory was treating their workers fairly. Their basic argument was that if labour had become more productive, maybe workers should receive a share of that increased profit. The Luddites were highly skilled workers being displaced and deskilled by the introduction of technology. Other things I’ve read have shown that the introduction of that technology helped depress wages for decades, that is, caused a world of human misery for the majority of the population.
We are standing at a similar time. We have seen how this has played out before. Perhaps we could learn from our past mistakes, although, admittedly, that is about the least likely thing we humans normally to do.
April 24, 2021
This is a newly published book by a British economist that focuses on the potential for technological change and its application via automation to eventually eliminate or at least seriously reduce that amount of economically valuable work that is available for people to do. Is it possible that technology is finally going to succeed in destroying the potential for gainful employment and leaving those who cannot find work with reduced resources and few places to go to support themselves? Hmmm ... perhaps, but the story is a bit more complicated.
This is a debate with a long history. Since the time of the Luddites, there has been a concern that new technologies will eliminate existing jobs and leave those displaced former employees in greatly reduced circumstances if not outright poverty. Along with fear, this concern has also generated hostility and even violence to resist the force of technological progress. The threat has cropped up at regular intervals since the mid-19th century and is still with us today. Most recently, Robert Shiller has provided a rich account of this in his book “Narrative Economics”. All is not negative. The demise of work has not yet happened and even if/when it does, all is not lost. As Susskind explains, while new technology is in part a substitute for employees, it also may be a complement to jobs and tasks that ends up expanding work possibilities for many, although not all.
So is this just another instance of an economics and policy wonk crying “wolf” only to have the dire future refuse to show up?
Susskind argues NO - this time is different. Really - that is a clever ploy to get you to read the book. No, seriously, the situation is really different. Why? Because the second wave of Artificial Intelligence research has made breakthroughs in solving problems that we previously thought impossible. Technology researchers have stopped trying to imitate human thinking and instead have focused on figuring out how to get machines to solve hard problems by any means possible - and succeeded. This breakthrough can be seen in the well publicized triumphs of AI in beating the world champions of chess and go, among other triumphs. If this part of the argument is accepted or at least plausible, then Susskind may have a point and the future is not entirely rosy and positive. AI may well provide the basis for automating a much wider range of jobs and tasks than was previously thought. The change will not be complete and will not happen overnight, but it is coming.
Susskind spends the second half of the book discussing what to do and how to think about the world where continuous work starts to go away. It is a fascinating discussion and quite different from the typical discussions of technology, work, inequality, government policy options, and the meaning of work that are common in the broad and increasing literature. How can one discuss the unemployed as lazy slackers if there is little or no work to be had? Much in current popular culture regarding work and society presumes the necessity and value of working and ties it to social stability and personal meaning for many in the workforce. What happens when the demand for workers goes away?
Susskind writes well and supports his work thoroughly. This is a careful, thoughtful, and highly plausible analysis. It gets a bit repetitious and reiterative at times, as well as covering much familiar ground in the process of laying out his arguments. That is not a major problem, however.
This is a good book and well worth reading if one is interested in work and automation. While it covers some familiar ground, it is well crafted and adds to the general discussion.
This is a debate with a long history. Since the time of the Luddites, there has been a concern that new technologies will eliminate existing jobs and leave those displaced former employees in greatly reduced circumstances if not outright poverty. Along with fear, this concern has also generated hostility and even violence to resist the force of technological progress. The threat has cropped up at regular intervals since the mid-19th century and is still with us today. Most recently, Robert Shiller has provided a rich account of this in his book “Narrative Economics”. All is not negative. The demise of work has not yet happened and even if/when it does, all is not lost. As Susskind explains, while new technology is in part a substitute for employees, it also may be a complement to jobs and tasks that ends up expanding work possibilities for many, although not all.
So is this just another instance of an economics and policy wonk crying “wolf” only to have the dire future refuse to show up?
Susskind argues NO - this time is different. Really - that is a clever ploy to get you to read the book. No, seriously, the situation is really different. Why? Because the second wave of Artificial Intelligence research has made breakthroughs in solving problems that we previously thought impossible. Technology researchers have stopped trying to imitate human thinking and instead have focused on figuring out how to get machines to solve hard problems by any means possible - and succeeded. This breakthrough can be seen in the well publicized triumphs of AI in beating the world champions of chess and go, among other triumphs. If this part of the argument is accepted or at least plausible, then Susskind may have a point and the future is not entirely rosy and positive. AI may well provide the basis for automating a much wider range of jobs and tasks than was previously thought. The change will not be complete and will not happen overnight, but it is coming.
Susskind spends the second half of the book discussing what to do and how to think about the world where continuous work starts to go away. It is a fascinating discussion and quite different from the typical discussions of technology, work, inequality, government policy options, and the meaning of work that are common in the broad and increasing literature. How can one discuss the unemployed as lazy slackers if there is little or no work to be had? Much in current popular culture regarding work and society presumes the necessity and value of working and ties it to social stability and personal meaning for many in the workforce. What happens when the demand for workers goes away?
Susskind writes well and supports his work thoroughly. This is a careful, thoughtful, and highly plausible analysis. It gets a bit repetitious and reiterative at times, as well as covering much familiar ground in the process of laying out his arguments. That is not a major problem, however.
This is a good book and well worth reading if one is interested in work and automation. While it covers some familiar ground, it is well crafted and adds to the general discussion.
January 27, 2020
There’s a pretty big gap in the thesis that Susskind lays out in a future of going from more advanced AI to the depletion in large numbers of jobs such that it will have a significant effect on society. Early in the book he brings up historical examples of new job creation over time (agricultural jobs for the majority of people shifting to other work the most well-known example, to the bank teller roles that never went away with the advent of the ATM). However, somehow we’re to believe that advanced AI will have such a large effect and render so many jobs obsolete with no concomitant increase in new roles that we have to start preparing for that nightmare scenario now. After a bit of background on AI development (much better handled recently in Human Compatible) he goes on to explain how this ‘frictional unemployment’ will evolve as a real issue, but again it’s never entirely clear why there will not be an associated development of new and different complementary roles. In other words, there’s some smoke here but very little fire. It’s almost as if the thesis of the book is more about creating an interesting hypothetical, and perhaps more cynically having an scary thesis to discuss on talk shows and podcasts.
A bit more cynical still – has Susskind ever worked long term in business or industry? I had the unfortunate firsthand experience of working for a few months at the world’s largest software firm that boasts cutting edge AI development tools, and in the department I was in they regularly ignored use of their own products deeming them unusable or impractical. Granted this could be early adoption pains, but it seems that Susskind is overestimating the successful implementation of AI and resulting job displacement. He also never touches on the future scenario where if AI is so successful and advanced, that there would not also be implementation of man-machine interfaces and enhancements as surely this would be more optimal than a machine or AI solution alone? To be fair, in spite of the criticism here (and there’s a lot to be critical about) it’s still a thought provoking and well written book.
A bit more cynical still – has Susskind ever worked long term in business or industry? I had the unfortunate firsthand experience of working for a few months at the world’s largest software firm that boasts cutting edge AI development tools, and in the department I was in they regularly ignored use of their own products deeming them unusable or impractical. Granted this could be early adoption pains, but it seems that Susskind is overestimating the successful implementation of AI and resulting job displacement. He also never touches on the future scenario where if AI is so successful and advanced, that there would not also be implementation of man-machine interfaces and enhancements as surely this would be more optimal than a machine or AI solution alone? To be fair, in spite of the criticism here (and there’s a lot to be critical about) it’s still a thought provoking and well written book.
October 30, 2019
Technological unemployment isn't just coming, it is here now. Manufacturing jobs have been lost to automation and countless others have fallen to algorithms and apps and a need for cheaper and faster everything. The question is not how to stop it, but how to adapt to this unstoppable change. Susskind has written an accessible, important book. For fans of Yuval Harari and anyone who expects to keep living through the next few decades.
November 8, 2020
While the concept of less or different work in the future is real, his conclusions are laughable and absurd. He believes a benevolent State will come provide meaning in your life. He apparently is not much a student of history.
There are several other flawed assumptions, really too many to discuss. Not worth reading as much as I thought the concept was worth exploring.
There are several other flawed assumptions, really too many to discuss. Not worth reading as much as I thought the concept was worth exploring.
August 10, 2020
Pretty repetitive with few action oriented steps. Feel like I could summarize this book in less than a page. Bottom line is that humans complement machines and humans must be willing to learn new skills when machines takeovers certain industries. The author does provide many examples that are helpful that I learned from.
April 6, 2023
Well documented and relevant. Recommended.
June 21, 2023
Dr. Susskind, a prominent economist, predicts that AI will bring about a new era of humanity. The age of labour, where paid work is the foundation, will no longer be viable due to task encroachment by AI.
The new era of AI will require society to reorganize around communal contributions with no economic value attached. It will be up to each community to determine what counts as a valued contribution to qualify for the CBI (conditional basic income).
It was an interesting read, but I think I have a bit of boy who cried wolf syndrome about this. People have been warning that automation would bring about mass unemployment for generations, and they have always underestimated the economy's ability to transform and adapt. Who knows, definitely good food for thought.
The new era of AI will require society to reorganize around communal contributions with no economic value attached. It will be up to each community to determine what counts as a valued contribution to qualify for the CBI (conditional basic income).
It was an interesting read, but I think I have a bit of boy who cried wolf syndrome about this. People have been warning that automation would bring about mass unemployment for generations, and they have always underestimated the economy's ability to transform and adapt. Who knows, definitely good food for thought.
January 15, 2020
Didn't finish, but didn't take long before I was disturbed by not entirely subtle white nationalist themes? Yikes. After I started worrying there was a theme (author has a big love for Western Europe, protected property rights, German efficiency ...), it didn't take many pages before "rule of law" got trotted out. If you're not sure how that's related, it's time to look up dog whistles and "rule of law."
This man is in a position of power at Oxford University and probably has at least some power related to the world economy. Again, I must say: Yikes.
A great alternative for the automated workplace and UBI pieces of this book is Give People Money: How Universal Basic Income Could Change the Future--For the Rich, the Poor, and Everyone in Between.
This man is in a position of power at Oxford University and probably has at least some power related to the world economy. Again, I must say: Yikes.
A great alternative for the automated workplace and UBI pieces of this book is Give People Money: How Universal Basic Income Could Change the Future--For the Rich, the Poor, and Everyone in Between.
February 27, 2021
While parts of this were interesting, and it was clearly written, it didn't hold my attention. He eventually came around to saying all the things I hoped he would (mainly that people may not necessarily want work; they just want an income and health care) I wish this had been part of the introductory premise of the book rather than just mentioned in the last chapter. Similarly, while I am glad he talked about economic inequality, and the fact that wealth is determined more by how much capital someone has than what their job is, I think there are more significant reasons for growing inequality than automation. (e.g., financialization, and a low minimum wage). The ideas he suggested all made sense but seemed rather obvious - a wealth tax, universal basic income, government-funded public works. The areas in which I did learn something new were when he talked about how automation works, why previous ideas of what machines could and couldn't do were incorrect, how automation increases demand for some jobs and decreases others.
March 14, 2020
As an author myself, I freaking hate it when people finish reading your book, and then fail to alert you of a mistake, so here I am letting you know that I found a mistake in your book, so that you may fix it. The error is referenced below:
Page: 114
Third "New" Paragraph
"This will no longer the case."
Other than that, I thought the book was pretty good, and I especially like how the author toed an albeit fine line when it came to what his own opinions are on the matter of "A World without Work", which I know as an author is a very hard thing to do.
He presents you with the facts, and allows you as the reader to come to your own conclusions on all of the matters he presents in his book.
Oh, and the notes section is very extensive, and I could definitely tell that Daniel spent an awful lot of time doing his research before ever putting pen to paper, which is something I totally respect and appreciate as a reader.
Page: 114
Third "New" Paragraph
"This will no longer the case."
Other than that, I thought the book was pretty good, and I especially like how the author toed an albeit fine line when it came to what his own opinions are on the matter of "A World without Work", which I know as an author is a very hard thing to do.
He presents you with the facts, and allows you as the reader to come to your own conclusions on all of the matters he presents in his book.
Oh, and the notes section is very extensive, and I could definitely tell that Daniel spent an awful lot of time doing his research before ever putting pen to paper, which is something I totally respect and appreciate as a reader.
June 14, 2020
The first half reads like a text book and the second half is a weird mix of political debate, the author‘s obsession with ancient wisdom and random issues somewhat related to the future of work. It’s a characterless book with zero charm, or humour. Most of all it has a dark undertone, and offers little insights into what’s actually going on.
October 5, 2020
Extremely interesting, thought provoking and stimulating read about risks of technological changes on modern society. I applaud this author for the courage to come up with ideas to address issues affecting the working population now and in the near future. Susskind proposes radical solutions to problems of inequality, power and meaning are quite outside the square, and likely to cause controversy and attract criticism. Can UBI (Universal Basic income) be the successful answer in a future where an increasing number of people will find themselves without work?
I’m giving this book a high rating not because I agree with everything that the author states within it, on the contrary, there are a number of points on which I and Susskind disagree, but because I found this a thought provoking book with interesting premises, well supported arguments (even if Susskind’s solutions are debatable) and extensive list of notes for the reader to dig deeper.
I reckon this book would be an excellent choice for a group read. I personally found myself recommending it to other people and wanting to discuss the book contents with friends.
4.5 stars rounded up.
I’m giving this book a high rating not because I agree with everything that the author states within it, on the contrary, there are a number of points on which I and Susskind disagree, but because I found this a thought provoking book with interesting premises, well supported arguments (even if Susskind’s solutions are debatable) and extensive list of notes for the reader to dig deeper.
I reckon this book would be an excellent choice for a group read. I personally found myself recommending it to other people and wanting to discuss the book contents with friends.
4.5 stars rounded up.
Read
February 7, 2020God = things not explained, i.e. God of the gaps. p. 62
certain uniquely human characteristics such as empathy, creativity, judgment, or critical thinking will never be automated p. 77
legal automation examples. p. 82
Catholic church in 2011 issued an imprimatur (official license for religious texts. to a mobile app. p. 85
. . . countries that are aging faster tend to invest more in automation. p. 94
. . . more robots were installed in China in 2016 than in any other country. * * * To adapt the old saying , nothing in life can be said to be certain, except death, taxes, -- and this relentless process of task encroachment. p. 97
. . . participation rate . . .the percentage of the entire working age population who are employed p. 108
. . . in 2016, 7.6 milliuon Americans -- about 5 percent of the US workforce -- who spent at least twenty seven weeks of the year in the labor forced still remained below the poverty line. * * *
proletariat. . . term for lowest social class . . . . today the term precariat . . . more and more work is not just poorly paid but also unstable and stressful. p. 109
. . . what happened to horses will happen to people. p. 120
John Stuart Mill: " demand for commodities is not demand for labour. p. 122
. . . the world of work comes to an end not with a bang, but a withering -- a withering in the demand for the work of human beings, as the substituting force gradually overrruns the complementing force and the balance between the two no longer tips in favor of human beings. ***
As Leontief put it, lowering worker's wages could "postpone [their] replacement by machines for the same reason that a reduction of oats rations allocated to horses could delay their replacement by tractors. p. 127
All human societies, small and large, simple and complex, poor and affluent have had to figure out how best to share their unevenly allocated prosperity with one another. p. 133 !!!!!
human capital * * * When some people find themselves with human capital that is of no value in labor market -- that is, when no one wants to pay them to put their skills and talent to use. p. 135 !!!!!!
the world's eight richest men appeared to have as much wealth as the entire poorest half of the global population. * * * Piketty notes that in most countries, the richest 10 percent tend to own half or more (often much more) of all the wealth, while the poorest half of the country's population "own virtually nothing." * * *
poorest 50 percent of Americans own only 2 percent of the country's wealth.* * * the top 0.1 percent holds the same amount of wealth as the poorest 90 percent combined. . . . p. 145 !!!!!!
... rule for the moment: do not prepare people for tasks that we know machines can already do better or a activities that we can reasonably predict will be done better by machines very soon. p. 18 !!!!!!
. . . Homo Deus. . . Harari . . . economically useless people. * * *
contemplating the search for meaning in a world with less work. p. 166
Almost everyone has a bundle of talents and skills, their human capital * * * the prospect of a world of less work is so disconcerting : it will put the traditional mechanism for slicing up the economic pie out of use, and make the familiar response of more education far less effective than it once was. * * * the question of how we share out our prosperity, p. 168 !!!!!
. . . Giant Evils (of Beveridge report) of want, disease, ignorance, squalor, and idleness. . . p. 173
identifying exactly where income (in AI world) is tending to gather. . . 3 likely places
Taxing Capital taxing big business income sharing state to conditional basic income CBI to p. 183
[ AI will produce] a stuttering decline in the demand for the work of human beings, beginning in small corners of the labor market and spreading as time goes on. p. 193
Economic success is not a free pass to run roughshod over our political lives. p. 213
We need a new institution, stafed by political theorists and moral philosophers, to watch over individuals as citizens in a society not simply as consumers in a marketplace. That is what this new authority must do. p. 214
. . . the threat of technological unemployment has another face to it. It will deprive people not only of income, but also of significance. p. 215
. . . in feudal times, at least those at the top knew that their economic fortuens were a fluke of birth. . . p. 219 !!!!!
Bertrand Russell In Praise of Idleness. . conspicuous leisure. p. 224
. . . there is no country and no people, I think, who can look forward to the age of leisure and of abundance without a dread. For we have been trained too long to strive and not to enjoy. p. 225 !!!!!!
. . . I have spoken about a world with less work. what I have really meant, though, is a world with less paid work. po. 231
. . . activities that they dchoose and others that their community requires them to do. * * *
a worker's worth is the wage that they receive. p. 233
. . . if we adopt a CBI we will be driven to do exactly that: to take activities that the invisible hand of the labor marker has marked down as worthless, and with the visible hand of the community to hold them up as being valuable and important. p. 234
The problem is not simply how to live, but how to live well. We will be forced to consider what it really means to live a meaningful life. p. 236
"Golden Age of Security." p. 237
Not that many generations ago, almost all human beings lived on or around the poverty line. p. 238
certain uniquely human characteristics such as empathy, creativity, judgment, or critical thinking will never be automated p. 77
legal automation examples. p. 82
Catholic church in 2011 issued an imprimatur (official license for religious texts. to a mobile app. p. 85
. . . countries that are aging faster tend to invest more in automation. p. 94
. . . more robots were installed in China in 2016 than in any other country. * * * To adapt the old saying , nothing in life can be said to be certain, except death, taxes, -- and this relentless process of task encroachment. p. 97
. . . participation rate . . .the percentage of the entire working age population who are employed p. 108
. . . in 2016, 7.6 milliuon Americans -- about 5 percent of the US workforce -- who spent at least twenty seven weeks of the year in the labor forced still remained below the poverty line. * * *
proletariat. . . term for lowest social class . . . . today the term precariat . . . more and more work is not just poorly paid but also unstable and stressful. p. 109
. . . what happened to horses will happen to people. p. 120
John Stuart Mill: " demand for commodities is not demand for labour. p. 122
. . . the world of work comes to an end not with a bang, but a withering -- a withering in the demand for the work of human beings, as the substituting force gradually overrruns the complementing force and the balance between the two no longer tips in favor of human beings. ***
As Leontief put it, lowering worker's wages could "postpone [their] replacement by machines for the same reason that a reduction of oats rations allocated to horses could delay their replacement by tractors. p. 127
All human societies, small and large, simple and complex, poor and affluent have had to figure out how best to share their unevenly allocated prosperity with one another. p. 133 !!!!!
human capital * * * When some people find themselves with human capital that is of no value in labor market -- that is, when no one wants to pay them to put their skills and talent to use. p. 135 !!!!!!
the world's eight richest men appeared to have as much wealth as the entire poorest half of the global population. * * * Piketty notes that in most countries, the richest 10 percent tend to own half or more (often much more) of all the wealth, while the poorest half of the country's population "own virtually nothing." * * *
poorest 50 percent of Americans own only 2 percent of the country's wealth.* * * the top 0.1 percent holds the same amount of wealth as the poorest 90 percent combined. . . . p. 145 !!!!!!
... rule for the moment: do not prepare people for tasks that we know machines can already do better or a activities that we can reasonably predict will be done better by machines very soon. p. 18 !!!!!!
. . . Homo Deus. . . Harari . . . economically useless people. * * *
contemplating the search for meaning in a world with less work. p. 166
Almost everyone has a bundle of talents and skills, their human capital * * * the prospect of a world of less work is so disconcerting : it will put the traditional mechanism for slicing up the economic pie out of use, and make the familiar response of more education far less effective than it once was. * * * the question of how we share out our prosperity, p. 168 !!!!!
. . . Giant Evils (of Beveridge report) of want, disease, ignorance, squalor, and idleness. . . p. 173
identifying exactly where income (in AI world) is tending to gather. . . 3 likely places
Taxing Capital taxing big business income sharing state to conditional basic income CBI to p. 183
[ AI will produce] a stuttering decline in the demand for the work of human beings, beginning in small corners of the labor market and spreading as time goes on. p. 193
Economic success is not a free pass to run roughshod over our political lives. p. 213
We need a new institution, stafed by political theorists and moral philosophers, to watch over individuals as citizens in a society not simply as consumers in a marketplace. That is what this new authority must do. p. 214
. . . the threat of technological unemployment has another face to it. It will deprive people not only of income, but also of significance. p. 215
. . . in feudal times, at least those at the top knew that their economic fortuens were a fluke of birth. . . p. 219 !!!!!
Bertrand Russell In Praise of Idleness. . conspicuous leisure. p. 224
. . . there is no country and no people, I think, who can look forward to the age of leisure and of abundance without a dread. For we have been trained too long to strive and not to enjoy. p. 225 !!!!!!
. . . I have spoken about a world with less work. what I have really meant, though, is a world with less paid work. po. 231
. . . activities that they dchoose and others that their community requires them to do. * * *
a worker's worth is the wage that they receive. p. 233
. . . if we adopt a CBI we will be driven to do exactly that: to take activities that the invisible hand of the labor marker has marked down as worthless, and with the visible hand of the community to hold them up as being valuable and important. p. 234
The problem is not simply how to live, but how to live well. We will be forced to consider what it really means to live a meaningful life. p. 236
"Golden Age of Security." p. 237
Not that many generations ago, almost all human beings lived on or around the poverty line. p. 238
March 7, 2025
Full of insight that I needed to understand the labor implications of AI automating jobs.
June 29, 2022
لولا الفصلُ الأخير لكنت قيّمته بنجمةٍ واحدة .. كتابٌ مرهق
February 15, 2021
“A World Without Work”, sans any semblance of doubt has to be one of the most influential and powerful books penned in the 20th Century. Addressing a topical issue, the author, a Fellow in Economics at Balliol College, Oxford, sets out in a measured, methodical and meticulous style, the attendant challenges and the probable solutions. The issue dwelt by Daniel Susskind in his book is that of “technological unemployment.” The displacement of humans by machines is neither a novel concept nor an ingenious postulation. Right from the time, mankind has evolved as an intelligent species, convulsions of technology has played a seminal role in both development and displacement. However, to paraphrase Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff, this time it may be different. An unimaginable surge in the esoteric realm of artificial intelligence has spawned a veritable ecosystem that is ripe for automation. Automation, that ensures that not only can machines perform more adroitly than human beings, but also exploit an exponential degree of bottom-up intelligence attribute to exacerbate productivity as well. A frightening case in point – the extraordinary exploits of Alpha Go that beat the prevailing board game “Go” champion Lee Seedol.
John Maynard Keynes is credited with popularizing the “technological unemployment”. The “Manure crisis” that plagued the United States during the 19th century and early parts of the 20th century amplified the tumultuous changes that technology could birth. 21 million horses trampling the streets of America plunged an entire nation under a stinking pile of manure. Just when it seemed that the nation would suffocate from the perils of ‘horseshit’, the motor car made an appearance. At the time of writing this review the number of horses in the US hardly exceeds the 2 million mark. Similarly, the Industrial Revolution changed the very lexicon of work. The innovations in England during this period procreated a whole new form of technology that was hitherto unimagined. The inventions and innovations also led to disgruntlement and despair, when workers worried about their jobs being ‘taken away’ by technology began disrupting businesses and destroying machines. The terminology “Luddites” is a direct result of an apocryphal worker named Ned Ludd, who as an apprentice allegedly smashed two stocking frames in 1779 and thus became emblematic of machine destroyers.
But as Susskind illustrates with searing quality while technology is responsible for a substitution effect, it also produces a complementary force. This complementary force has three preternaturally beneficent effects, namely, the productivity effect, the bigger pie effect, and the changing pie effect. For example, bank tellers were in the dread of the havoc that automated teller machines or ATMs could wreak on their jobs. But as Susskind illustrates, the ATMs actually spurred customers to use banks more, thereby increasing the number of bank branches and also the number of bank tellers, who were freed up to do tasks other than dispensing cash.
This complementarity of technology was elucidated in great detail by the economists David Autor, Frank Levy, Richard Murnane. Their postulation now commonly known as the ALM Hypothesis, after the names of the proponents, highlights the fact that jobs are not colossal, but an agglomeration of tasks. Where the nature of the jobs are routing, they are ripe for being automated. Non-routine tasks are usually not amenable for automation. However, as Susskind informs his readers in a world characterized by rampant technology, the lines between routine and non-routine stand blurred. Lots of office jobs for example are assumed to be routine. This prompted the former Bank of England Governor and currently, Vice Chairman and Head of Impact Investing at Brookfield Asset Management, Mark Carney to exclaim that it was time for a “massacre of the Dilberts.” Machines of the modern era are not just capable of performing routine activities, but as AlphaGo illustrated in searing detail, are also extremely capable of executing tasks that require cognitive skills and affectations, traits that are ‘non-routine’ by all stretches of imagination. As the founder of Netscape founder and world renowned venture capitalist Marc Andreessen immortally said, “software is eating the world” and that in the end, there will be only two types of people left: those who program the machines, and everyone else. Susskind writes, “economists had thought that to accomplish a task, a computer had to follow explicit rules articulated by a human being — that machine capabilities had to begin with two-down application of human intelligence.” But machines are “now deriving entirely new rules, unrelated to those that human beings follow. This is not a semantic quibble, but a serious shift. Machines are no longer riding on the coattails of human intelligence.” However, pioneers in the field of technology and communication seem to be oblivious to this fact whether intentionally or in ignorance. When IBM’s Watson beat the reigning champions at ‘Jeopardy’, American scholar of cognitive science, physics, and comparative literature, and the Pulitzer Prize winner of the bestseller, “Gödel, Escher, Bach”, Douglas Hofstadter pooh poohed the achievement alleging that Watson was ‘vacuous.’ The philosopher John Searle, the mind behind the famous Chinese room experiment lamented that that by developing Deep Blue, IBM was giving up on the science of Artificial Intelligence.
Or take the example of the black-taxi drivers of London. The advent of GPS tools such as Waze have made the prodigious bank of “Knowledge” that is a pre-requisite for such drivers to procure a license, almost redundant. Having said that, Susskind argues that the pace of automation would neither be uniform nor harmonious. The progress of automation will take place at different paces in different places, not least because the cost of the alternative to automation will vary. Countries aging faster will automate faster, while legislation and cultural proclivities will exert a huge influence in setting the automation pace. But in the end analysis, there is no eliding automation. “Nothing is certain in life except death, taxes, and the relentless process of task encroachment.”
Such a “task encroachment”, Susskind opines, leads to two kinds of unemployment: frictional, and then structural. Frictional technological unemployment refers to a paradoxical situation where while there are still jobs, not everybody is adequately equipped to handle them. Structural technological unemployment on the other hand arises when a human is replaced in one job, and even though the productivity effect, the bigger pie effect or the changing pie effect means that another job is created, that new job is performed by a machine, and not by the displaced human. David Schloss, a British economist, presciently predicted way back in 1892 that there is no guarantee that the additional work will always be done by humans instead of machines.
Susskind labels himself as a technological realist, and not an apologist for technological determinism. Hence his exhortation that technology would lead to positive progress in so far as alleviation of poverty and income inequality go. But what should be the strategy to be adopted by economies when almost 25% of the workforce is expected to be permanently displaced and dislocated even? One potential solution could be the role that a ‘Big State’ could possibly play to alleviate the tumultuousness caused by unemployment. Such a Big State will take on the responsibilities of redistributing income and wealth. The State can also raise taxes steeply, and clamp down on siphoning of wealth to tax havens.
Another solution could be Conditional Basic Income (“CBI”) instead of the commonly advocated Universal Basic Income (“UBI”). He expresses an understandable degree of skepticism when he writes that he cannot envisage the futility involved in making available a sum in the form of UBI to say, a Mark Zuckerberg. Susskind also calls for restricting the economic might and political power of the disruptive “Big Tech”. Most importantly, Susskind proposes that we would need to alter in a paradigm manner, the concepts of how, when and what we teach. Embellishing the taken for granted “STEM” skills or a targeted focus on the liberal arts would prove to be helpful to address the issue of frictional unemployment. The need of the hour is an education system that makes even leisure productive.
Susskind has all his tracks covered – and much more!
John Maynard Keynes is credited with popularizing the “technological unemployment”. The “Manure crisis” that plagued the United States during the 19th century and early parts of the 20th century amplified the tumultuous changes that technology could birth. 21 million horses trampling the streets of America plunged an entire nation under a stinking pile of manure. Just when it seemed that the nation would suffocate from the perils of ‘horseshit’, the motor car made an appearance. At the time of writing this review the number of horses in the US hardly exceeds the 2 million mark. Similarly, the Industrial Revolution changed the very lexicon of work. The innovations in England during this period procreated a whole new form of technology that was hitherto unimagined. The inventions and innovations also led to disgruntlement and despair, when workers worried about their jobs being ‘taken away’ by technology began disrupting businesses and destroying machines. The terminology “Luddites” is a direct result of an apocryphal worker named Ned Ludd, who as an apprentice allegedly smashed two stocking frames in 1779 and thus became emblematic of machine destroyers.
But as Susskind illustrates with searing quality while technology is responsible for a substitution effect, it also produces a complementary force. This complementary force has three preternaturally beneficent effects, namely, the productivity effect, the bigger pie effect, and the changing pie effect. For example, bank tellers were in the dread of the havoc that automated teller machines or ATMs could wreak on their jobs. But as Susskind illustrates, the ATMs actually spurred customers to use banks more, thereby increasing the number of bank branches and also the number of bank tellers, who were freed up to do tasks other than dispensing cash.
This complementarity of technology was elucidated in great detail by the economists David Autor, Frank Levy, Richard Murnane. Their postulation now commonly known as the ALM Hypothesis, after the names of the proponents, highlights the fact that jobs are not colossal, but an agglomeration of tasks. Where the nature of the jobs are routing, they are ripe for being automated. Non-routine tasks are usually not amenable for automation. However, as Susskind informs his readers in a world characterized by rampant technology, the lines between routine and non-routine stand blurred. Lots of office jobs for example are assumed to be routine. This prompted the former Bank of England Governor and currently, Vice Chairman and Head of Impact Investing at Brookfield Asset Management, Mark Carney to exclaim that it was time for a “massacre of the Dilberts.” Machines of the modern era are not just capable of performing routine activities, but as AlphaGo illustrated in searing detail, are also extremely capable of executing tasks that require cognitive skills and affectations, traits that are ‘non-routine’ by all stretches of imagination. As the founder of Netscape founder and world renowned venture capitalist Marc Andreessen immortally said, “software is eating the world” and that in the end, there will be only two types of people left: those who program the machines, and everyone else. Susskind writes, “economists had thought that to accomplish a task, a computer had to follow explicit rules articulated by a human being — that machine capabilities had to begin with two-down application of human intelligence.” But machines are “now deriving entirely new rules, unrelated to those that human beings follow. This is not a semantic quibble, but a serious shift. Machines are no longer riding on the coattails of human intelligence.” However, pioneers in the field of technology and communication seem to be oblivious to this fact whether intentionally or in ignorance. When IBM’s Watson beat the reigning champions at ‘Jeopardy’, American scholar of cognitive science, physics, and comparative literature, and the Pulitzer Prize winner of the bestseller, “Gödel, Escher, Bach”, Douglas Hofstadter pooh poohed the achievement alleging that Watson was ‘vacuous.’ The philosopher John Searle, the mind behind the famous Chinese room experiment lamented that that by developing Deep Blue, IBM was giving up on the science of Artificial Intelligence.
Or take the example of the black-taxi drivers of London. The advent of GPS tools such as Waze have made the prodigious bank of “Knowledge” that is a pre-requisite for such drivers to procure a license, almost redundant. Having said that, Susskind argues that the pace of automation would neither be uniform nor harmonious. The progress of automation will take place at different paces in different places, not least because the cost of the alternative to automation will vary. Countries aging faster will automate faster, while legislation and cultural proclivities will exert a huge influence in setting the automation pace. But in the end analysis, there is no eliding automation. “Nothing is certain in life except death, taxes, and the relentless process of task encroachment.”
Such a “task encroachment”, Susskind opines, leads to two kinds of unemployment: frictional, and then structural. Frictional technological unemployment refers to a paradoxical situation where while there are still jobs, not everybody is adequately equipped to handle them. Structural technological unemployment on the other hand arises when a human is replaced in one job, and even though the productivity effect, the bigger pie effect or the changing pie effect means that another job is created, that new job is performed by a machine, and not by the displaced human. David Schloss, a British economist, presciently predicted way back in 1892 that there is no guarantee that the additional work will always be done by humans instead of machines.
Susskind labels himself as a technological realist, and not an apologist for technological determinism. Hence his exhortation that technology would lead to positive progress in so far as alleviation of poverty and income inequality go. But what should be the strategy to be adopted by economies when almost 25% of the workforce is expected to be permanently displaced and dislocated even? One potential solution could be the role that a ‘Big State’ could possibly play to alleviate the tumultuousness caused by unemployment. Such a Big State will take on the responsibilities of redistributing income and wealth. The State can also raise taxes steeply, and clamp down on siphoning of wealth to tax havens.
Another solution could be Conditional Basic Income (“CBI”) instead of the commonly advocated Universal Basic Income (“UBI”). He expresses an understandable degree of skepticism when he writes that he cannot envisage the futility involved in making available a sum in the form of UBI to say, a Mark Zuckerberg. Susskind also calls for restricting the economic might and political power of the disruptive “Big Tech”. Most importantly, Susskind proposes that we would need to alter in a paradigm manner, the concepts of how, when and what we teach. Embellishing the taken for granted “STEM” skills or a targeted focus on the liberal arts would prove to be helpful to address the issue of frictional unemployment. The need of the hour is an education system that makes even leisure productive.
Susskind has all his tracks covered – and much more!
January 22, 2020
Automation and AI mean that the problems of scarcity are being replaced with problems of inequality, concentrated political power, and questions of purpose and identity.
The book in the end wishes to defy Leontief’s fears that humans will go the way of horses, rendered obsolete by machinery.
Nicely balanced realism about the radical transformations in store without succumbing to either fantasies of technoutopian cornucopia or to the dystopian dread of mass exclusion. In the end, Sussking rightly says it will depend on politics whether the world of rising automation spreads the wealth around so that we can all have an opportunity to achieve toward self-actualization, autonomy and dignity.
Susskind’s final call for a “meaning creating state” strikes me not as hopeful but as utterly terrifying, because it assumes that the meanings that the state will seek to promote are inclusive and decent ones, despite much historical and contemporary evidence to the contrary which he completely ignores.
The book in the end wishes to defy Leontief’s fears that humans will go the way of horses, rendered obsolete by machinery.
Nicely balanced realism about the radical transformations in store without succumbing to either fantasies of technoutopian cornucopia or to the dystopian dread of mass exclusion. In the end, Sussking rightly says it will depend on politics whether the world of rising automation spreads the wealth around so that we can all have an opportunity to achieve toward self-actualization, autonomy and dignity.
Susskind’s final call for a “meaning creating state” strikes me not as hopeful but as utterly terrifying, because it assumes that the meanings that the state will seek to promote are inclusive and decent ones, despite much historical and contemporary evidence to the contrary which he completely ignores.
July 20, 2021
I really enjoyed this book. I've read a number of books in the AI space from more technology focused authors vs. an economist POV (though they all come to similar conclusions). If AI and future of work/employment and impact on society is of interest suggest reading AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order, The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies, and The Industries of the Future along with this one.
January 22, 2020
Another academic leech who is not content with how much tax money the state is pushing his way and gets a second job as a fear monger. Welcome the academic prophet.
February 4, 2020
Daniel Susskind, Economics don at Balliol Oxford, leads the reader through a persuasive well-structured argument that the automation that we are seeing today will be profoundly different from technological change in the past. The consequence of this is that we need to rethink the status of work and look to new ways to shape our society in a ‘world without work’.
The Context
Ch.1. A History of Misplaced Anxiety
A survey of the effect of technology on work over the past three centuries is characterised by two rival forces: a harmful substituting force which displaces human beings from performing particular tasks because the technology is faster or cheaper; and a helpful complementing force which raises demand for the work of humans to perform other tasks (e.g. the rollout of ATM machines did not replace bank tellers, but it meant that their role changed to provide customers with a better service p.26)
The helpful complementing force to date has done this in 3 ways:
the Productivity Effect: machines have made displaced workers more productive at other activities;
the Bigger Pie Effect: technology has made economies and incomes around the world much bigger;
the Changing Pie Effect: technology changed how consumers spend their incomes and how producers make goods and services available.
“Up until now, in the battle between the harmful substituting force and helpful complementing force, the latter has won out and there has always been large enough demand for the work that human beings do” (p.28)
Ch.2. The Age of Labour
“a time when successive waves of technological progress have broadly benefited rather than harmed workers.”
Autor-Levy-Murnane ALM Hypothesis: Machines could readily perform the ‘routine’ tasks in a job, but would struggle with the ‘non-routine’ ones (p.39)
Technological progress is neither skill-biased or unskilled-biased it was task-biased (p.40).
Ch.3. The Pragmatist Revolution and Ch,4. Underestimating Machines
Greek Poet Archilochus: ‘The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.’ p.64 – “we should be wary not of one omnipotent fox, but of an army of industrious hedgehogs” p.67)
AI Purists (cognitive scientists) closely observe human beings acting intelligently and try to build machines like them. This approach and the quest for Artificial General Intelligence AGI, to date, has failed. (c.f. the omnipotent fox remains illusive)
AI Pragmatists (computer scientists) take a task that requires intelligence when performed by a human being and build a machine to perform it in a fundamentally different way – relying on advances in processing power and data storage. The quest for Artificial Narrow Intelligence ANI is proving quite fruitful (c.f. the army of industrious hedgehogs).
“The temptation is to say that because machines cannot reason like us, they will never exercise judgement; because they cannot think like us they will never exercise creativity; because they cannot feel like us, they will never be empathic. All that may be right. But it fails to recognise that machines might be able to carry out tasks that require empathy, judgement or creativity when done by a human being – but doing them in some entirely different fashion.” (p.72-73)
“We do not need to solve the mysteries of how the brain and mind operate to build machines that can outperform human beings.” (p.74)
The Threat
5. Task Encroachment
Technology is encroaching on all areas of work: Manual capabilities (agriculture, driverless cars, car manufacturing, construction industry, 3D printing); Cognitive capabilities (Law, Medicine, Education, Finance, Insurance, Botany, Journalism, Military – “Computational creativity”) Affective Capabilities (“affective computing”, “social robotics”)
Task encroachment will be taken up at different paces. Because
“some tasks are far harder to automate than others”;
in some industries the cost of human labour is low and complexity of automation is high (e.g. cleaning, hairdressing, table-waiting);
different cultures and jurisdictions will have different attitudes and regulations.
Ch.6. Frictional Technical Unemployment
“There is still work to be done by human beings; the problem is that not all workers are able to reach out and take it up” (p.99).
Three reasons for this:
A Skills Mismatch (work available for much more qualified or more skilful);
An Identity Mismatch (work available but doesn’t fit will self-image – not a graduate job, or a man’s job – jobless lorry drivers may not want to do “pink collar” work such as child care);
A Place Mismatch (the work available may be in a different part of the country/ world)
There will be 3 consequences of Frictional Unemployment: the “technological overcrowding, with people packing into a residual pool of whatever work remains within their reach” (p.109):
there will be downward pressure on wages;
there will be downward pressure on the quality of the work;
there will be downward pressure on the status of the work available (rich-poor, master-servant divide).
Ch.7. Structural Technical Unemployment
In the future the Complementing Force is likely to be much weaker: 1) The Productivity Effect – “As task encroachment continues, human capabilities will be come irrelevant . . . for more and more tasks” (p.114); 2) The Bigger-Pie Effect – “a growing demand for good may mean not more demand for the work of human beings, but merely more demand for machines” (p.116); 3) The Changing Pie Effect – for consumers, “As task encroachment continues, it becomes more and more likely that changes in demand for goods will not turn out to be a boost in demand for the work of humans, but of machines” (p.119); and for producers, “As task encroachment continues, will it not become sensible to allocate more of the complex new tasks to machines instead?” (p.121).
“It is a mistake to think that there is likely to be enough demand for them [human beings] to keep everyone in work” (p.124).
For Susskind, at present there is an assumption that human beings are superior to machines; in future we may need to assume that we are inferior.
“Just as today, we talk about ‘horsepower’ harking back to a time when the pulling power of a draft horse was a measure that mattered, future generations may come to use the term ‘manpower’ as a similar kind of throwback, a relic of a time when human beings considered themselves so economically important that they crowned themselves as the unit of measurement” (p.130).
Ch. 8. Technology and Inequality
“The largest economic pies, belonging to the most prosperous nations, are being shared out less equally in the past” (p.137)
The longstanding relationships between traditional (33.3%) and human capital (66.6%) is changing: Traditional Capital “is everything owned by the residents and governments of a given country at a given point of time, provided that it can be traded on some market” (p.133). Human Capital is “the entire bundle of skills and talents that people build up over their lives and put to use in their work” (p.134).
Susskind identifies three trends (p.146):
“human capital is less evenly distributed”;
“human capital is becoming less and less valuable relatively to traditional capital”;
“traditional capital is distributed in an extraordinarily uneven fashion”.
“Today many people lack traditional capital, but still earn an income from the work that they do, a return on their human capital. Technological unemployment threatens to dry up this latter stream of income as well, leaving them with nothing at all” (p.149).
The Response
Ch.9. Education and its Limits
“’More education’ remains our best response at the moment to the threat of technological employment."
We can do this in 3 ways:
What we teach: “do not prepare people for tasks that we know that machines can already do better; or activities that we can reasonably predict will be done better by machines very soon” (p.158)
N.B. “Many tasks that cannot yet be automated are found not in the best-paid roles, but in jobs like social workers, paramedics and schoolteachers.”
How we teach: non traditional blended-learning and online learning methods need to become more commonplace.
When we teach: we need to move to a world of life-long learning: “People will have to grow comfortable with moving in and out of education, repeatedly, throughout their lives. We will have to constantly re-educate ourselves” (p.160).
BUT
“Even the best existing education systems cannot provide the literacy, numeracy and problem-solving skills that are required to help the majority of workers compete with today’s machines” (p.165).
“Some people may cease to be of economic value: unable to put their human capital to productive use, and unable to re-educate themselves to gain other useful skills” (p.166).
“Education will also struggle to solve the problem of structural technological unemployment. If there is not enough demand for the work that people are training to do, a world-class education will be of little help” (p.166).
Ch. 10. The Big State
The role for the state in the C21 world without work is to deal with the looming disparities and inequalities in society. It will do this through taxation and redistribution of income and wealth.
Taxation:
1) taxing workers who have managed to escape the harmful effects of task encroachment;
2) taxing capital – taxing “the income that flows to owners of increasingly valuable traditional capital” (p.176);
taxing big business – this needs to be tackled at a global level.
Redistribution: Susskind rejects the idea of Universal Basic Income (UBI) which has no strings attached. He has an excellent critique of the problems associated with membership criteria for UBI. He argues instead for a Conditional Basic Income (CBI) which requires recipients to contribute in some way (to be defined) to society. This is based on a view of ‘contributive justice’ whereby everyone feels that their fellow citizens are giving back to society. His vision is for a ‘Capital-sharing State’ and a ‘Labour-supporting State’.
Ch. 11. Big Tech
For Susskind, Big Tech companies are here to stay for two reasons:
Expensive Resources: it costs enormous amount to develop new technologies – huge amounts of data, world-leading software, and extraordinarily powerful hardware. Small firms cannot compete and talented ones just get bought out.
Network effects – networks are more rewarding the bigger they get.
Susskind rejects the economic arguments against large monopolistic firms – most are not abusing their monopoly economically. Instead he questions their political and social influence. Here he argues for new regulatory institutions which can insist on greater transparency and ensure that liberty, democracy and social justice are not under threat.
Ch,12. Meaning and Purpose
A world without work throws up philosophical questions about how human beings find meaning; and practical questions of how people will spend their leisure time: volunteering, unpaid work, community required activities (see Conditional Basic Income above).
“A job is not simply a source of income but of meaning, purpose and direction in life as well” (p.215).
In the C21 “Work is the opium of the People”. Work has meaning beyond the purely economic.
“The problem is not simply how to live, but how to live well” (p.236).
Revisiting Education. Spartan King Agesilaus: ‘the purpose of education is to teach children the skills that they will use when they grow up.’ Perhaps schools should prepare young people for a world of leisure: character, virtue, life skills education.
“If free time does become a bigger part of our lives, then it is likely also to become a bigger part of the State’s role as well” (p.234)
A world without work throws up three fundamental problems:
the problem of inequality;
the problem of political power;
the problem of meaning.
This is an important book - essential reading for anyone who is interested in preparing young people for the future.
May 5, 2020
Book review of Daniel Susskind’s “A World Without Work: Technology, Automation and How We Should Respond” (2020)
This was a sobering read by an Oxford economist of what the future might hold — a world with less work. The effect of technology is often viewed as an interaction between two rival forces— a harmful substituting force and a helpful complementing force. Susskind argues that machines are increasingly taking on more and more tasks once performed by people (task encroachment), and the substituting force is gathering strength and will at some point overwhelm the complementing force. This is not least because even if the complementing force raises the demand for human labour elsewhere, “friction” in the labour market prevents workers from moving freely into whatever jobs might be available (i.e. a skills, identity or simply geographical mismatch).
We imagine that humans are special, but this assumption looks increasingly dubious as task encroachment continues. Demand for commodities, goods and services is not always demand for the work of human beings, but only demand for whatever tasks have to be carried out to produce those commodities. Even if there are residual tasks for humans (ie tasks impossible to automate, tasks which are possible but unprofitable to automate, and tasks which are both possible and profitable to automate but remain restricted to human beings due to regulatory or cultural barriers, or tasks that remain out of reach because we value the fact that they are done by human beings), these tasks are dwindling in number and there is unlikely to be enough demand for such tasks to keep everyone in work.
Susskind also argues that we should not mistakenly assume that the growth in work due to technological advances necessarily involves tasks that human beings - not machines - are best placed to perform. Machines are growing increasingly capable (of learning by themselves), and we would be wrong to assume that their limits are human intelligence.
Susskind then moves on to say that the threat of technological unemployment is an extreme form of something already affecting us now- rising inequality. He distinguishes between human capital and traditional capital: the former being the entire bundle of skills and talents that people build up over their lives and put to use in their work and the latter being ownership of some kind of property, like stocks and shares, real estate and patents. He points out three distinct trends behind growing inequality: 1) human capital becoming less and less evenly distributed with people’s different skills getting rewarded to very different degrees; 2) human capital becoming less and less valuable relative to traditional capital; and 3) traditional capital being distributed in extraordinarily uneven fashion. He says that technological progress will make the distribution problem even more severe and harder to solve in future—many people lack traditional capital today but still earn an income from their work, a return on human capital. Technological unemployment threatens to dry up this latter stream of income as well, leaving them with nothing.
As for how we should respond, Susskind argues that education has its limits. Some people may simply cease to have “economic value”: unable to put their human capital to productive use, and unable to re-educate themselves to gain other useful skills. Not everyone will necessarily be able to learn to do whatever is left to be done, or even if it were possible, it might not make financial sense for older workers who may not have enough productive time left in the labour market to recoup the expense of training. Note: we should not conflate economic value with human value.
Susskind argues that the Big State should take over the labour market’s role in solving the distribution problem. It will have to significant tax those who manage to retain valuable capital and income in the future, and figure out the best way to share the money raised with those who do not. Susskind identifies three main places to tax: workers, capital and big business.
Susskind further argues that there should be a conditional basic income - available only to some people. In a world with less work, many members of the community will not be able to contribute economically, but have to rely on the productive effort of others. How do we keep a split community together? The point of imposing conditions is not to support the labour market, but to support the community. The problem with a universal basic income is that it ignores the contribution problem of making sure that everyone feels that their fellow citizens are in some way giving back to society— workers see it as a “recipe for exploitation of the industrious by the lazy”.
If some people cannot contribute through work, they will be required to do something else for the community— we can speculate but these tasks might include certain types of intellectual or cultural toil, caring for and supporting fellow human beings, teaching children how to flourish, etc.
Apart from playing the role of income-sharing, the Big State could also share out traditional capital and support labour (ie by supporting workers during the transition and making sure that the remaining jobs are high paid and high quality).
Susskind also points out that our future economies are likely to become dominated by large technology companies who will also grow in political power. He says we will need a new authority distinct from our traditional competition authorities to have oversight over such companies
Finally, Susskind touches on how the threat of technological unemployment will deprive people not only if income but of significance and meaning in their lives. He argues that the state might want to step in and support people’s use of their time in a meaningful way, though not in direct pursuit of a wage. Beyond recreational and political activities, educational, household and caregiving activities should be recognised as important as well. A meaning-creating state should step in to guide whatever floods in to fill work’s place. This is the most unfamiliar role for the Big State- we often think of our politicians as managers and technocrats whose role is to solve esoteric policy problems, but not as moral leaders. In a world with less work, we have to revisit the fundamental ends again- to reconsider what it really means to live a meaningful life.
This was a sobering read by an Oxford economist of what the future might hold — a world with less work. The effect of technology is often viewed as an interaction between two rival forces— a harmful substituting force and a helpful complementing force. Susskind argues that machines are increasingly taking on more and more tasks once performed by people (task encroachment), and the substituting force is gathering strength and will at some point overwhelm the complementing force. This is not least because even if the complementing force raises the demand for human labour elsewhere, “friction” in the labour market prevents workers from moving freely into whatever jobs might be available (i.e. a skills, identity or simply geographical mismatch).
We imagine that humans are special, but this assumption looks increasingly dubious as task encroachment continues. Demand for commodities, goods and services is not always demand for the work of human beings, but only demand for whatever tasks have to be carried out to produce those commodities. Even if there are residual tasks for humans (ie tasks impossible to automate, tasks which are possible but unprofitable to automate, and tasks which are both possible and profitable to automate but remain restricted to human beings due to regulatory or cultural barriers, or tasks that remain out of reach because we value the fact that they are done by human beings), these tasks are dwindling in number and there is unlikely to be enough demand for such tasks to keep everyone in work.
Susskind also argues that we should not mistakenly assume that the growth in work due to technological advances necessarily involves tasks that human beings - not machines - are best placed to perform. Machines are growing increasingly capable (of learning by themselves), and we would be wrong to assume that their limits are human intelligence.
Susskind then moves on to say that the threat of technological unemployment is an extreme form of something already affecting us now- rising inequality. He distinguishes between human capital and traditional capital: the former being the entire bundle of skills and talents that people build up over their lives and put to use in their work and the latter being ownership of some kind of property, like stocks and shares, real estate and patents. He points out three distinct trends behind growing inequality: 1) human capital becoming less and less evenly distributed with people’s different skills getting rewarded to very different degrees; 2) human capital becoming less and less valuable relative to traditional capital; and 3) traditional capital being distributed in extraordinarily uneven fashion. He says that technological progress will make the distribution problem even more severe and harder to solve in future—many people lack traditional capital today but still earn an income from their work, a return on human capital. Technological unemployment threatens to dry up this latter stream of income as well, leaving them with nothing.
As for how we should respond, Susskind argues that education has its limits. Some people may simply cease to have “economic value”: unable to put their human capital to productive use, and unable to re-educate themselves to gain other useful skills. Not everyone will necessarily be able to learn to do whatever is left to be done, or even if it were possible, it might not make financial sense for older workers who may not have enough productive time left in the labour market to recoup the expense of training. Note: we should not conflate economic value with human value.
Susskind argues that the Big State should take over the labour market’s role in solving the distribution problem. It will have to significant tax those who manage to retain valuable capital and income in the future, and figure out the best way to share the money raised with those who do not. Susskind identifies three main places to tax: workers, capital and big business.
Susskind further argues that there should be a conditional basic income - available only to some people. In a world with less work, many members of the community will not be able to contribute economically, but have to rely on the productive effort of others. How do we keep a split community together? The point of imposing conditions is not to support the labour market, but to support the community. The problem with a universal basic income is that it ignores the contribution problem of making sure that everyone feels that their fellow citizens are in some way giving back to society— workers see it as a “recipe for exploitation of the industrious by the lazy”.
If some people cannot contribute through work, they will be required to do something else for the community— we can speculate but these tasks might include certain types of intellectual or cultural toil, caring for and supporting fellow human beings, teaching children how to flourish, etc.
Apart from playing the role of income-sharing, the Big State could also share out traditional capital and support labour (ie by supporting workers during the transition and making sure that the remaining jobs are high paid and high quality).
Susskind also points out that our future economies are likely to become dominated by large technology companies who will also grow in political power. He says we will need a new authority distinct from our traditional competition authorities to have oversight over such companies
Finally, Susskind touches on how the threat of technological unemployment will deprive people not only if income but of significance and meaning in their lives. He argues that the state might want to step in and support people’s use of their time in a meaningful way, though not in direct pursuit of a wage. Beyond recreational and political activities, educational, household and caregiving activities should be recognised as important as well. A meaning-creating state should step in to guide whatever floods in to fill work’s place. This is the most unfamiliar role for the Big State- we often think of our politicians as managers and technocrats whose role is to solve esoteric policy problems, but not as moral leaders. In a world with less work, we have to revisit the fundamental ends again- to reconsider what it really means to live a meaningful life.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
October 30, 2020
Let me begin with who, according to me, should read this book.
-those who are worried about Robots and AI taking up our jobs
-those who are worried about rising income inequality
-parents who are worried about the children’s future careers
-those who are concerned about the present and future trajectory of our education system
-those who know to code and those who don’t know to code
The author raises pertinent questions about current notions on which jobs or professions are likely to disappear due to increased automation. However, the book moves forward on the premise that work itself would be less in the future.
How do we then bridge the economic inequality, handle the power struggles and find meaning in a workless life? These are the key hypothetical problems discussed in the book. The author provides a cogent argument on how or why we might face these issues in the future.
As for the possible solutions - the author throws a plethora of ideas into the mix, from better taxation to reinventing education and also, introduces the concept of Conditional Basic Income as opposed to a Universal Basic Income.
The language is as simple as an economist could probably use for a socially, technologically, and economically relevant topic such as these. It might help to brush up some of your data interpretation abilities as the author uses data to prove a point when required. However, even if you are the kind of person who prefers to stay away from numbers, this book can give you enough points to ponder upon.
It is a book worth reading at the turn of the decade, especially this year, when we have grappled with things beyond our comprehension. It is a book one must read if one does not want to be asked ‘What are you good for?’ and answer, ‘Absolutely nothing.’
-those who are worried about Robots and AI taking up our jobs
-those who are worried about rising income inequality
-parents who are worried about the children’s future careers
-those who are concerned about the present and future trajectory of our education system
-those who know to code and those who don’t know to code
The author raises pertinent questions about current notions on which jobs or professions are likely to disappear due to increased automation. However, the book moves forward on the premise that work itself would be less in the future.
How do we then bridge the economic inequality, handle the power struggles and find meaning in a workless life? These are the key hypothetical problems discussed in the book. The author provides a cogent argument on how or why we might face these issues in the future.
As for the possible solutions - the author throws a plethora of ideas into the mix, from better taxation to reinventing education and also, introduces the concept of Conditional Basic Income as opposed to a Universal Basic Income.
The language is as simple as an economist could probably use for a socially, technologically, and economically relevant topic such as these. It might help to brush up some of your data interpretation abilities as the author uses data to prove a point when required. However, even if you are the kind of person who prefers to stay away from numbers, this book can give you enough points to ponder upon.
It is a book worth reading at the turn of the decade, especially this year, when we have grappled with things beyond our comprehension. It is a book one must read if one does not want to be asked ‘What are you good for?’ and answer, ‘Absolutely nothing.’
July 26, 2023
3.5 stars
This is a well-written book that contemplates the future of work in midst of the AI revolution. Although it was just written in 2020 some of the technology references are already dated, but a lot of his descriptions and arguments still make sense. This book has definitely helped me better understand more of the complexity that surrounds this issue and I think the points he makes are worth considering for everyone.
However, I feel like the book leans more on philosophy than economics, at least in its best parts. And for its economics I find that it dramatically undersells the international effects on inequality both within and across countries. A lot of the analysis here makes sense when you read it from a micro perspective of American or British life, but once you imagine how it affects less well-off global markets and their difficult ways of living it’s hard to apply the same lessons to those cases. In a sense it’s idealism packaged as realism, with so much of the cross-country socioeconomic complexities washed over and left unaddressed. It’s especially disappointing because the book does have a lot of insightful sections too.
I learned a lot from this book but I think a much better one will likely be written in the coming years. It’s still worth reading if taken as more of a philosophy book and not an economic one.
This is a well-written book that contemplates the future of work in midst of the AI revolution. Although it was just written in 2020 some of the technology references are already dated, but a lot of his descriptions and arguments still make sense. This book has definitely helped me better understand more of the complexity that surrounds this issue and I think the points he makes are worth considering for everyone.
However, I feel like the book leans more on philosophy than economics, at least in its best parts. And for its economics I find that it dramatically undersells the international effects on inequality both within and across countries. A lot of the analysis here makes sense when you read it from a micro perspective of American or British life, but once you imagine how it affects less well-off global markets and their difficult ways of living it’s hard to apply the same lessons to those cases. In a sense it’s idealism packaged as realism, with so much of the cross-country socioeconomic complexities washed over and left unaddressed. It’s especially disappointing because the book does have a lot of insightful sections too.
I learned a lot from this book but I think a much better one will likely be written in the coming years. It’s still worth reading if taken as more of a philosophy book and not an economic one.
August 29, 2022
Yazarımız Teknolojik gelişimin ne tür bir işsizliğe neden olacağını açıklamak istediği bu kitabında ilk önce teknolojinin gelişimini sorguluyor. Gerçi hikayemize (kitabımıza) başlarken XIX yüzyıldaki "Great Manure Crisis" (Büyük At Pisliği Krizi) örneği ile bizleri geleceğe karşı pozitif olmaya yönlendiriyor gibi bir umuda kapılıyoruz. Ama Yapay Zeka teknolojisini ve "Great Manure Crisis" örneğini kıyaslayarak bizlere belki de o kadar pozitif olmamamız gerektiğini ima ediyor. Zira atların arabalar ile yer değiştirmesini insanların Yapay teknolojiler ile yer değiştirmesini birebir kıyaslamak fazlasıyla saçmalık denecek bir örnektir.
Peki Yapay Zekanın gelişimi ve iş hayatında yaygınlaşması insanlar için hansı sonuçları doğuracaktır ? Teknoloji yüzünden çalışamayan insanlar ne yapacak ? Yazarımız sonrakı bölümlerde bu soruları irdeliyor. Ekonomik gelişimin insanlık tarihi boyunca yalnızca son iki yüzyılda hızlandığını ve dah önceki dönemlerde neredeyse salyangoz hızında arttığını örneklerle açıklayan yazarımız Yapay Zeka tarafından iş yerinden olmuş insanlara ne olacağına dair fikirlere hiç öyle naif iyimserlikle yaklaşmıyor. Zira yazarımız eserini geniş kaynakça kullanarak bolca örnek ve öngörü ile süslemiş. Bu yönü eserin benim hoşuma giden kısmı oldu.
Peki Yapay Zekanın gelişimi ve iş hayatında yaygınlaşması insanlar için hansı sonuçları doğuracaktır ? Teknoloji yüzünden çalışamayan insanlar ne yapacak ? Yazarımız sonrakı bölümlerde bu soruları irdeliyor. Ekonomik gelişimin insanlık tarihi boyunca yalnızca son iki yüzyılda hızlandığını ve dah önceki dönemlerde neredeyse salyangoz hızında arttığını örneklerle açıklayan yazarımız Yapay Zeka tarafından iş yerinden olmuş insanlara ne olacağına dair fikirlere hiç öyle naif iyimserlikle yaklaşmıyor. Zira yazarımız eserini geniş kaynakça kullanarak bolca örnek ve öngörü ile süslemiş. Bu yönü eserin benim hoşuma giden kısmı oldu.
June 14, 2023
It is clear that Daniel Susskind is an expert in the future of work and employment. His case for a future without jobs is clearly laid out and supported with research. While he is rarely hyperbolic about the mass disruption of technology and its consequences for jobs (which I appreciate), he overhypes his solutions to a world without work.
Quite frankly, the book left me more informed about the potential technology pathways towards a world where there is no employment, but still have no idea on how we can decouple employment and living on a societal scale. The solutions proposed in the book are abstract, not actionable, nor grounded in reality.
So don’t see this book as the answer all your questions, but its an easyish way to read yourself into the topic of automation and the future of work.
Quite frankly, the book left me more informed about the potential technology pathways towards a world where there is no employment, but still have no idea on how we can decouple employment and living on a societal scale. The solutions proposed in the book are abstract, not actionable, nor grounded in reality.
So don’t see this book as the answer all your questions, but its an easyish way to read yourself into the topic of automation and the future of work.
April 3, 2021
Interesting perspective on what the labour market may look like in the “near-ish” future. Our world is surely changing, and to deny that would be naive. To be able to appropriately navigate this sometimes bleak-looking future, corporations, governments, and individuals need pay attention and work together. As always, easier said than done.
May 28, 2021
There's work in the future. But not what we think it is. There's more of a role that the govt and us as individuals need to play to ensure we're relevant, sustained in the future where most of the tasks will be automated. It's a great book with relevant examples and anecdotes.
March 27, 2022
Thought provoking book about how to think about "work" in a post work society. Uses a lot of Piketty's ideas
December 28, 2023
This book is solid! Highly recommended for anyone interested in how AI is likely to impact all of us in the next 20 years.
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