Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future

by Martin Ford

Collapse: How Societies Choose to Succeed or Fail,

On January 2, 2010, the Washington Post reported that the first decade of the twenty-first century resulted in the creation of no new jobs.

It is an era that will be defined by a fundamental shift in the relationship between workers and machines.

that machines are tools that increase the productivity of workers.

Instead, machines themselves are turning into workers, and the line between the capability of labor and capit...

While most people are by now familiar with Moore’s Law—the well-established rule of thumb that says computing power roughly doubles every eighteen to twenty-four months—not everyone has fully assimilated the implications of this extraordinary exponential progress.

While lower-skill occupations will no doubt continue to be affected, a great many college-educated, white-collar workers are going to discover that their jobs, too, are squarely in the sights as software automation and predictive algorithms advance rapidly in capability.

The upshot of all this is that acquiring more education and skills will not necessarily offer effective protection against job automation in the

The unfortunate reality is that a great many people will do everything right—at least in terms of pursuing higher

education and acquiring skills—and yet will still fail to find a solid foothold in the new economy.

The virtuous feedback loop between productivity, rising wages, and increasing consumer spending will collapse.

Two sectors in particular—higher education and health care—have, so far, been highly resistant to the kind of disruption that is already becoming evident in the broader economy.

No one doubts that technology has the power to devastate entire industries and upend specific sectors of the economy and job market.

Industrial Perception, Inc.,

that designed and built the robot, believe the machine will ultimately be able to move a box every second. That compares with a human worker’s maximum rate of a box roughly every six

Tesla’s new plant in Fremont, California, uses 160 highly flexible industrial robots to assemble about 400 cars per week.

According to the International Federation of Robotics, global shipments of industrial robots increased by more than 60 percent between 2000 and 2012, with total sales of about $28 billion in 2012. By far the fastest-growing market is China, where robot installations grew at about 25 percent per year between 2005 and

November 2006, when Nintendo introduced its Wii video game console. Nintendo’s machine included an entirely new type of game controller: a wireless wand that incorporated an inexpensive device called an accelerometer. The accelerometer was able to detect motion in three dimensions and then output a data stream that could be interpreted by the game console. Video games could now be controlled through body movements and gestures.

PrimeSense. The Kinect sees in three dimensions by using what is, in essence, sonar at the speed of light: it shoots an infrared beam at the people and objects in a room and then calculates their distance by measuring the time required for the reflected light to reach its infrared sensor. Players could now interact with the Xbox game console simply by gesturing and moving in view of the Kinect’s camera.

Researchers working in robotics instantly realized the potential for the Kinect technology to transform their field. Within weeks of the product’s introduction, both university-based engineering teams and do-it-yourself innovators had hacked into the Kinect and posted YouTube videos of robots that were now able to see in three

Baxter, a lightweight

humanoid manufacturing robot that can easily be trained to perform a variety of repetitive tasks. Rethink was founded by Rodney Brooks, one of the world

ROS—or Robot Operating System—was originally conceived at Stanford University’s Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and then developed into a full-fledged robotics platform by Willow Garage, Inc., a small company that designs and manufactures programmable robots that are used primarily by researchers at universities.

Because ROS is free and also open source—meaning that software developers can easily modify and enhance it—it is rapidly becoming the standard software platform for robotics

Willow Garage, for example, sells a complete mobile robot kit called TurtleBot that includes Kinect-powered machine vision for about

RoboBusiness

Grabit Inc. demonstrated an innovative electroadhesion-powered gripper that allows robots to pick up, carry, and place nearly anything simply by employing a controlled electrostatic charge.

While a robot like Baxter can certainly eliminate the jobs of some workers who

perform routine tasks, it also helps make US manufacturing more competitive with low-wage countries.

Factory reshoring dramatically decreases transportation costs and also provides many other advantages. Locating factories in close proximity to both consumer markets and product design centers allows companies to cut production lead times and be far more responsive to their customers. As automation becomes ever more flexible and sophisticated, it’s likely that manufacturers will trend toward offering more customizable products—perhaps, for example, allowing customers to create unique designs or specify hard-to-find

find clothing sizes through easy-to-use online interfaces. Domestic automated production could then put a finished product into a customer’s hands within days.

robots continue to get more capable and dexterous and as new technologies like 3D printing come into widespread use, it seems likely that many factories will eventually approach full automation.

Manufacturing jobs in the United States currently account for well under 10 percent of total

In fact, advancing technology has already had a dramatic impact on Chinese factory jobs; between 1995 and 2002 China lost about 15 percent of its manufacturing workforce, or about 16 million

One of the biggest challenges for a transition to robotic assembly in the Chinese electronics industry will be designing robots that are flexible enough to keep up with rapid product lifecycles. Foxconn, for example, maintains massive facilities where workers live onsite in dormitories. In order to accommodate aggressive production schedules, thousands of workers can be woken in the middle of the night and set immediately to work. That results in an astonishing ability to rapidly ramp up production or adjust to product design changes, but it also puts extreme pressure on workers—as evidenced by the near epidemic of suicides that occurred at Foxconn facilities in 2010. Robots, of course, have the ability to work continuously, and as they become more flexible and easier to train for new tasks, they will become an increasingly attractive alternative to human workers, even when wages are low.

San Francisco start-up company Momentum Machines, Inc., has set out to fully automate the production of gourmet-quality hamburgers.

The machine, which is capable of producing about 360 hamburgers per hour, also toasts the bun and then slices and adds fresh ingredients like tomatoes, onions, and pickles only after the order is placed.

McDonald’s alone employs about 1.8 million workers in 34,000 restaurants

Japan’s Kura sushi restaurant chain has already successfully pioneered an automation strategy.

the ability to provide immediate gratification after a purchase.

Kiva robot simply zips under an entire pallet or shelving unit, lifts it, and then brings it directly to the worker packing an order.

The second transformative force is likely to be the explosive growth of the fully automated self-service retail sector—or, in other words, intelligent vending machines and kiosks.

Vending machines make it possible to dramatically reduce three of the most significant costs incurred in the retail business: real estate, labor, and theft by customers and employees.

While the proliferation of vending machines and kiosks is certain to eliminate traditional retail sales jobs, these machines will also, of course, create jobs in areas like maintenance, restocking, and repair.

limited than you might expect.

The third major force likely to disrupt employment in the retail sector will be the introduction of increased automation and robotics into stores as brick and mortar retailers strive to remain competitive.

Mobile devices will also become an ever more important self-service tool. Future shoppers will rely more and more on their phones as a way to shop, pay, and get help and information about products while in traditional retail settings.

Google announced support for cloud robotics in 2011 and provides an interface that allows robots to take advantage of all the services designed for Android

Cloud robotics is sure to be a significant driver of progress in building more capable robots, but it also raises important concerns, especially in the area of security.

“Skynet,” the controlling machine intelligence in the Terminator