Whatever happened to the future? Back in the 1950s they said we’d be taking our holidays on the moon by now. Instead, we’ve got Fruit Ninja.
Still, at least one feature of the promised space age is coming to pass: robots! Not so much the humanoid, we’re-taking-over-the-planet variety, but more the industrial, where-would-you-like-that-rivet kind. Of course, we’ve had robots in factories for some while, but according to John Markoff in the New York Times, we’re now entering a new phase:
The application of robotics may become more important than outsourcing to low cost labour regions like China as a means of organising production. Indeed, Chinese manufacturers are planning to replace their own workers with robots:
One assumes that being described as "animals" doesn’t do much for worker morale either. Still, Mr Gou has a point. Unlike people – or, for that matter, animals – robots don’t need to be fed or watered, nor do they sleep or complain or get sick or indulge in any number of other inconvenient organic activities.
They don’t require wages either, which provides the west with a major opportunity. Whereas, say, an American worker costs a lot more than a Chinese worker – robots cost much the same the world over. In fact, given the wage differential, western employers have a stronger incentive to invest in robotics. John Markoff runs some numbers:
That’s great. But what will all those replaced workers do?
It’s a frightening analogy, but a misleading one. Whereas the human appetite for food is limited by the size of the human stomach; our consumption of manufactured goods (and the associated services) is less constrained. Even if many fewer human workers are required per unit of production, there will be enough jobs if we can figure out how to use this capacity to achieve a balancing increase in the overall amount we produce.
This will require some creative thinking – which, if nothing else, is one area where we humans still rule supreme.