The Robots Are Coming!
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Also, the shift from mass production to individualized production with 3-D printers will trigger a greater demand for product designers. Today, a shoemaker produces hundreds of thousands of copies of the same shoe in China. But in the future, many of us will download a custom shoe design we like on our computer and produce it using a 3-D printer in our own home. Instead of one designer for hundreds of thousands of shoes, there will be thousands of them.
And designers won’t just be creating looks, they’ll be creating lifestyles. Thanks to the Internet of Things and smart homes in which all the devices and appliances are interconnected, lifestyle designers will be needed to create our own environment. They will help us coordinate the intensity of the lights in our foyer with the music we might like to hear when we enter our homes, with the air conditioning’s temperature, with whatever task we want to assign to our robotic home assistant. The supply of interconnected devices will be so immense that most of us will feel too overwhelmed to set up all our machines without the help of a professional lifestyle designer.
10. Spiritual counselors: Priests, imams, rabbis, and all sorts of spiritual gurus will enjoy job security for quite some time because our existential questions will not go away. As we have already seen happen for several years now, the disintegration of families and the growing loneliness of many people despite—or because of—an increasingly connected digital universe will generate a greater need for spiritual guides who can help us find meaning in life. It will be hard for robots and algorithms—regardless of how much information they might have—to replace the warm, personal touch of a spiritual guide. Spiritual retreats and mindfulness classes will keep growing and multiplying. And they won’t be led by virtual assistants, but by real people, many of whom will be relying on stories and words of wisdom that have been around for thousands of years.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to thank my editors Cristóbal Pera, Ricardo Cayuela, and Juan Ignacio Boido for the excellent recommendations they gave me after reading the first draft of this book; my Miami Herald editor, Nancy Ancrum, for her support; and my colleagues Juan Camilo Gómez, Ismael Triviño, Gaston Volpe, and many others who helped me in the research process over the past five years. My agent Kris Dahl from ICM in New York gave me excellent advice, and Angelina Peralta in Mexico and Annamaria Muchnik in Argentina supported me with ideas and contacts. My friends Ezequiel Stolar and Juan Carlos Parodi reviewed the book or parts of it before it went to press, and Alberto Ibargüen of the Knight Foundation helped me open several doors. My son and biggest source of pride, Thomas Oppenheimer, a partner with a major U.S. law firm, helped me navigate the chapters about lawyers and bankers. And Dr. Sandra Bacman, my wife, a scientist at the University of Miami, helped me understand many of the latest scientific discoveries and saved me from making more mistakes than I would have otherwise done. To all of them and many others, my deepest gratitude!
NOTES
PROLOGUE
“today, technology and automation”: Hayley Tsukayama, “Mark Zuckerberg Tells Harvard Grads That Automation Will Take Jobs, and It’s Up to Millennials to Create More,” Washington Post, May 25, 2017, www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2017/05/25/mark-zuckerberg-tells-harvard-grads-that-automation-will-take-jobs-and-its-up-to-millennials-to-create-more/?utm_term=.a460e968567e.
“technology over time”: Julie Bort, “Bill Gates: People Don’t Realize How Many Jobs Will Soon Be Replaced by Software Bots,” Business Insider, March 13, 2014, www.businessinsider.com/bill-gates-bots-are-taking-away-jobs-2014-3.
1. A JOBLESS WORLD?
“the clearest indication yet that Google”: John Markoff, “Google Adds to Its Menagerie of Robots,” New York Times, December 14, 2013, www.nytimes.com/2013/12/14/technology/google-adds-to-its-menagerie-of-robots.html.
new technologies would leave: McKinsey Global Institute, “Disruptive Technologies: Advances That Will Transform Life, Business, and the Global Economy,” www.mckinsey.com/~/media/McKinsey/Business%20Functions/McKinsey%20Digital/Our%20Insights/Disruptive%20technologies/MGI_Disruptive_technologies_Full_report_May2013.ashx.
this will change the world: Lin Wells, “Better Outcomes Through Radical Inclusion,” November 1, 2014, quoted in Thomas L. Friedman, Thank You for Being Late: An Optimist’s Guide to Thriving in the Age of Accelerations (New York: Picador, 2017).
“It worked great”: Michael Osborne, interview with the author, Oxford, England, July 8, 2016.
“We were surprised to see that servers”: Ibid.
“Anything that relies on storing and processing information”: Carl Benedikt Frey, interview with the author, May 23, 2016.
“the probability of automating an occupation”: Frey, interview with the author via Skype, May 23, 2016.
“if your job can be easily explained”: Anders Sandberg, interview with the author, Future of Humanity Institute, Oxford, July 18, 2016.
the number of people working in agriculture: McKinsey Global Institute, “Jobs Lost, Jobs Gained: Workforce Transitions in a Time of Automation,” December 2017, www.mckinsey.com/~/media/McKinsey/Global%20Themes/Future%20of%20Organizations/What%20the%20future%20of%20work%20will%20mean%20for%20jobs%20skills%20and%20wages/MGI-Jobs-Lost-Jobs-Gained-Report-December-6-2017.ashx; and McKinsey Global Institute, “A Future That Works: Automation, Employment and Productivity,” January 2017, www.mckinsey.com/~/media/McKinsey/Global%20Themes/Digital%20Disruption/Harnessing%20automation%20for%20a%20future%20that%20works/MGI-A-future-that-works-Executive-summary.ashx.
There were only 700,000 farmers: World Bank Development Report, 2016, http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/896971468194972881/pdf/102725-PUB-Replacement-PUBLIC.pdf.
singularity—that moment in time: Alec Ross, The Industries of the Future (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2016).
“I would bring a hammer”: Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee, The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies (New York: Norton, 2014), 189.
“Uber moment”: Steve Slater, “World’s Banks May Halve Jobs and Branches Within 10 Years—Barclays Ex-Boss,” Reuters, November 24, 2015.
Whereas in 2004 there were twenty-five banks: Citi GPS, “Digital Disruption: How FinTech Is Forcing Banking to a Tipping Point,” March 2016, ir.citi.com/D%2F5GCKN6uoSvhbvCmUDS05SYsRaDvAykPjb5subGr7f1JMe8w2oX1bqpFm6RdjSRSpGzSaXhyXY%3D.
“The return on having a physical network”: Ibid.
REX Real Estate Exchange: “Artificial Intelligence Is the Last Competition for Real Estate Agents,” Helen Zhao, CNBC, March 20, 2018.
an automatic sedation system called Sedasys: Ross, Industries of the Future.
a pharmaceutical robot: Christopher Steiner, Automate This: How Algorithms Came to Rule Our World (New York: Penguin, 2012).
This is no joke: Shai Danziger, Jonathan Levav, and Liora Avnaim-Pesso, “Extraneous Factors in Judicial Decisions,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 108 (17), 6889–6892, http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1018033108.
“My ultimate dream for the world”: Hugh Herr, interview with the author on CNN’s Oppenheimer Presenta, June 7, 2016, www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZeIgIm3DjFU.
“But very soon we will be replacing them”: Junku Yuh, interview with the author in Seoul, March 31, 2017.
“Turn back,” it says: Simon Parkin, “Killer Robots: The Soldiers That Never Sleep,” BBC.com, July 16, 2015, www.bbc.com/future/story/20150715-killer-robots-the-soldiers-that-never-sleep.
it took humanity 119 years: Citi GPS Global Perspectives and Solutions, “Disruptive Innovations: Ten More Things to Stop and Think About,” 2016, https://privateclientsolutions.citi.com/globalassets/pcs/insights/downloads/161013_citi_usa_insights_citi_gps_disruptive_innovations_iv.pdf [inactiv
e].
While the United States began using electricity: Ibid.
In the 1980s, 8.2 percent of U.S. jobs: Charles Arthur, “Artificial Intelligence: ‘Homo Sapiens Will Be Split Into a Handful of Gods and the Rest of Us,’ ” The Guardian, November 7, 2015, www.theguardian.com/business/2015/nov/07/artificial-intelligence-homo-sapiens-split-handful-gods.
In 1964, when AT&T: Derek Thompson, “A World Without Work,” The Atlantic, July 2015, 53. The Alphabet’s employment data are from the 2017 Fortune 500 Ranking.
Even in the United States: World Bank, World Development Report 2016.
“While innovations in robotics produce”: Martin Ford, Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future (New York: Basic Books, reprint ed., 2016), 108.
“The predictions that can be extracted”: Ibid., 94–95.
According to data from the United Nations: “World Bank: ‘Extreme Poverty’ to Fall Below 10% of World Population for First Time,” The Guardian, October 4, 2015, www.theguardian.com/society/2015/oct/05/world-bank-extreme-poverty-to-fall-below-10-of-world-population-for-first-time.
“That’s the outcome that”: Martin Ford, interview with the author on CNN’s Oppenheimer Presenta, October 30, 2015.
the number of textile workers actually quadrupled: The Economist, Special Report: “The Return of the Machinery Question,” June 25, 2016, https://www.economist.com/special-report/2016/06/25/the-return-of-the-machinery-question.
“the means of labour passes through different metamorphoses”: Karl Marx, Grundrisse: Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy, trans. Martin Nicolaus (New York: Penguin, reprint ed., 1993), 614.
A 1928 headline in The New York Times: Evans Clark, “March of the Machines Makes Idle Hands,” New York Times, February 26, 1928.
“due to our discovery of means of economising the use of labour”: John Maynard Keynes, “Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren,” in his collection Essays in Persuasion, 1931, cited in “The Future of Employment: How Susceptible Are Jobs to Computerization,” by Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael A. Osborne, Oxford University, 2013, page 2, https://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/downloads/academic/The_Future_of_Employment.pdf.
“to maintain full employment”: President John F. Kennedy, News Conference 24, February 14, 1962.
“This stream of innovation”: McKinsey Global Institute, “A Future That Works,” 31.
in 1985, there were 60,000 ATMs: “Are ATMs Stealing Jobs?” The Economist, July 15, 2011: www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2011/06/technology-and-unemployment.
“Why didn’t employment fall?”: James Bessen, “How Computer Automation Affects Occupations: Technology, Jobs, and Skills,” November 13, 2015, www.bu.edu/law/files/2015/11/NewTech-2.pdf.
When news of this broke: Vanessa Bates Ramirez, “How Robots Helped Create 100,000 Jobs at Amazon,” SingularityHub.com, February 10, 2017, singularityhub.com/2017/02/10/how-robots-helped-create-100000-jobs-at-amazon/#sm.001tjanh93bldio11bc1q1wj3dxe2.
“There is good news”: Michael Mandel and Bret Swanson, “The Coming Productivity Boom,” Technology CEO Council, www.techceocouncil.org/clientuploads/reports/TCC%20Productivity%20Boom%20FINAL.pdf.
“With a 3-D printer in our house”: Author’s telephone interview with Bret Swanson, April 14, 2017.
“Today 99 percent of Americans”: Peter H. Diamandis and Steven Kotler, Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think (New York: Free Press, 2012), 13.
“People are concerned”: Peter Diamandis, “Why the Cost of Living Is Poised to Plummet in the Next 20 Years,” SingularityHub.com, July 18, 2016, https://singularityhub.com/2016/07/18/why-the-cost-of-living-is-poised-to-plummet-in-the-next-20-years/#sm.0014mrsd312ucetuwrj19ml3zr0f4.
“In the U.S., in 2011”: Ibid.
“When Uber rolls out”: Ibid.
“automation is very good for growth”: Andrew Berg, Edward F. Buffie, and Luis-Felipe Zanna, “Should We Fear the Robot Revolution? The Correct Answer Is Yes,” IMF Working Paper, May 2018.
“a future of continued polarization”: Carl Benedikt Frey, interview with the author via Skype, May 23, 2016.
“when we examined which jobs”: Ibid.
The number of horses in the United States plummeted: Nick Bostrom, Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014).
“My main fear”: Nick Bostrom, interview with the author, Oxford, July 8, 2016.
Apprehensions of undocumented immigrants along the Mexico border: U.S. Customs and Border Protection, Stats and Summaries, www.cbp.gov/newsroom/media-resources/stats.
“The swing to Republicans between 2008 and 2016”: Daron Acemoglu, quoted in Thomas B. Edsall, “Robots Can’t Vote, but They Helped Elect Trump,” New York Times, January 11, 2018.
2. THEY’RE COMING FOR JOURNALISTS!
the number of reporters, correspondents, and editors: Alex T. Williams, “Employment Picture Darkens for Journalists at Digital Outlets,” Columbia Journalism Review, September 27, 2016, www.cjr.org/business_of_news/journalism_jobs_digital_decline.php.
“in 2005, for every one digital-only journalist”: Ibid.
“The algorithm changes”: Sapna Maheshwari and Sydney Ember, “The End of the Social News Era?” New York Times, January 11, 2018, www.nytimes.com/2018/01/11/business/media/facebook-news-feed-media.html.
“The A.I. system had demonstrated overnight improvements”: “The Great A.I. Awakening,” Gideon Lewis-Kraus, New York Times, December 14, 2016, www.nytimes.com/2016/12/14/magazine/the-great-ai-awakening.html.
“computer keyboards will disappear”: Claudio Muruzábal, interview with the author, July 8, 2017.
“We need to rely less on expert judgments and predictions”: Andrew McAfee and Erik Brynjolfsson, Machine, Platform, Crowd: Harnessing Our Digital Future (New York: Norton, 2017).
A similar study: Ibid., 40.
“used 5,200 computer equipment purchases”: Ibid., 38.
“a small group of scientists and thinkers”: Michael Linhorst, “Can a Robot Be President?” Politico.com, July 8, 2017, www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/07/08/robot-president-215342.
“came with the clarity”: Joe Keojane, “What News Writing Bots Means for the Future of Journalism,” Wired, February 16, 2017, www.wired.com/2017/02/robots-wrote-this-story/.
“From staff and wire reports, powered by Heliograf”: “Rep. Darrell Issa Elected to Represent California 49th Congressional District,” Washington Post, updated on November 28, 2016, www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/2016-race-results-california-house-49th/?utm_term=.29793664cb22.
“the purpose of Heliograf”: Jeremy Gilbert, director of strategic initiatives at The Washington Post, interview with the author, July 7, 2017.
“We’re adding dozens of journalists”: Ken Doctor, “Profitable Post Adding More Than Five Dozen Journalists,” Politico.com, December 27, 2016, www.politico.com/media/story/2016/12/the-profitable-washington-post-adding-more-than-five-dozen-journalists-004900.
“This is the face of a modern newsroom”: Ibid.
“In the twentieth century, the notion of journalism”: John Bracken, interview with the author, July 10, 2017.
“Our goal is to significantly shift the balance”: Daniel Victor, “New York Times Will Offer Employee Buyouts and Eliminate Public Role Editor,” New York Times, May 31, 2017, www.nytimes.com/2017/05/31/business/media/new-york-times-buyouts.html.
“did a very, very good job”: Kinsey Wilson, interview with the author, July 21, 2017.
“TV as a delivery channel”: Joi Ito, interview with
the author, July 14, 2017.
“Today, I’m happy to announce”: “YouTube Says Its Primetime Audience Is Bigger Than the Top 10 TV Shows Combined,” Ben Popper, TheVerge.com, May 6, 2016, www.theverge.com/2016/5/6/11608036/youtube-bigger-than-tv-brandcast-sia.
The most successful YouTube star: Nathan McAlone, “These Are the 18 Most Popular YouTube Stars in the World,” Business Insider, March 7, 2017, www.businessinsider.com/most-popular-youtuber-stars-salaries-2017/#no-4-smosh-226-million-subscribers-15.
“This is going to revolutionize the industry”: Matthew Caruana Galizia, interview with the author, July 28, 2017.
“technology changes, journalism doesn’t”: “The Future of Augmented Journalism: A Guide for Newsrooms in the Age of Smart Machines,” Associated Press, insights.ap.org/uploads/images/the-future-of-augmented-journalism_ap-report.pdf.
3. THEY’RE COMING FOR SERVICE WORKERS!
“it does wonders”: Leslie Patton, “Sushi Robots and Vending Machine Pizza Will Reinvent the Automat,” Bloomberg, June 7, 2016, www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-06-07/vending-machine-pizza-made-fresh-for-you-is-coming-to-america.
In 2018, four recent: Luke Dormehl, “In Boston’s Newest Restaurant, All the Chefs Are Robots,” Digitaltrends.com, May 30, 2018.
“Our device isn’t meant to make employees”: Jason Dorrier, “Burger Robot Poised to Disrupt Fast Food Industry,” SingularityHub.com, August 10, 2014, singularityhub.com/2014/08/10/burger-robot-poised-to-disrupt-fast-food-industry/#sm.00001r7lrz1dkmeycpt9dfp3cwm5a.
“we want to help the people”: Ibid.
“What we are doing is leveraging”: “Is a Pizza Chain Run by Robots the Future of Fast Food?” Gretel Kauffman, Christian Science Monitor, October 2, 2016: www.csmonitor.com/Business/2016/1002/Is-a-pizza-chain-run-by-robots-the-future-of-fast-food.