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Maybe We Should Move from Techno-panic to Techno-exuberance
Here’s quite the headline and deck from the UK’s The Sun tabloid:
Scientists create Terminator-style robot with self-healing ‘flesh.’ In a terrifying new advance for machine-kind, robots are now able to heal themselves.
Further down in the piece, much further down, patient readers would find that this technological advance “could also play an important role in creating human-like prosthetics.” That, I would argue, is the actual news here. But in our emerging technopanic, the more clickable angle won out. I mean, of course it did.
And it’s often a similar case with advances in AI and robotics. Rather than creating new jobs and industries and supplying new products and services, it’s usually “Will a robot steal your job?”
Now no doubt advancing automation may well present historic challenges and opportunities to workers, business, and policymakers. But let’s keep some perspective here, as does James Surowiecki in Wired. In “Robopocalypse Not,” the journalist explains that data undermine the gloomy case. If technology was right now massively disrupting labor markets and the economy, a) productivity would not be growing at the slowest pace since World War II, b) the job market would not be at full employment with wages rising faster than productivity, and c) there would not be historically low job switching. Indeed, we need more innovation and disruption.
Going forward, technology may well be deeply disruptive in a way that shows up in these aggregate measures. That, especially as AI, robotics, and other technologies continue to advance, get used by leading-edge companies, and then diffuse throughout the broader economy. (Two relevant posts here and here.) But the result will be higher living standards if enough technology is of the “enabling workers” sort rather than the “replacing workers” sort (though both sorts have their place), as defined by economist Daron Acemoglu.
And if you are looking for a happy ending, I think this very optimistic Accenture report, cited by Surowiecki, would qualify:
From the report:
Driven by a massive increase in data, soaring computational power at decreasing costs and breakthroughs in technology, AI is becoming a commercial reality. More than a productivity enhancer, we view AI as an entirely new factor of production that can reverse the trend of falling profit growth in three ways: by optimizing processes with intelligent automation systems, by augmenting human labor and physical capital, and by propelling new innovations.
For a more modest flavor of optimism, you can check out my The Week column, “America’s imminent productivity boom.”
Published in Culture, Economics, Science & Technology
Well said.
Sorry James . . . but that picture . . .
Life is rough enough now without going to my sanctuary for civilized discussion and inspiration and encountering that horror.
Geeze :(
Back in the dot-com days, there was an extremely non-CoC compliant nickname for Accenture that started with a part of the anatomy and ended with “enter.” Needless to say, Accenture is not universally well regarded.
Actually, the stuff Petho and the other think tanks produce is closer to toxic chemicals destroying life than fertilizer.
Unless, of course, someone from the future built a time machine and returned to tell these reporters exactly how things are gonna play out. And then swore them to secrecy… Yeah – that’s it.
Beware of Techno-Trousers.
GASP! I knew something was up! James Pethokoukis is a Robot!
Resistance is futile!
The Hoover Institution has an optimistic viewpoint as well (from Instapundit):
The take in the full article is very bullish. And it’s a much better source than the Sun or Accenture.