Given that we're not in the
habit of thinking too much where our technological passions might lead us, I've
been heartened over the past year to see an unusual willingness to confront the
potentially devastating impact of the robotics revolution on human employment.
It was a question that was
hard to avoid, given the global recession and the widening gap between rich and
poor. It's obvious that rapid advances in automation are offering employers
ever-increasing opportunities to drive up productivity and profits while
keeping ever-fewer employees on the payroll. It's obvious as well that those
opportunities will continue to increase in the future.
Some credit for opening up
the conversation on the implications of this progression goes to two professors
at MIT, Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee. Their book Race Against the Machine, published late in 2011, had a man-bites-dog
quality that attracted a lot of attention. We don't necessarily expect experts
from the temple of technology to question whether technology might be leading
us in directions not entirely favorable to humankind.
"The tone of alarm in
their book is a departure for the pair," said the New York Times, "whose previous research has
focused mainly on the benefits of advancing technology."
Also in December, the
perennial technological enthusiast Kevin Kelly weighed in with his views on the
automation revolution in a Wired cover
story ("Better Than Human," published online in December, in
print in January). Although Kelly skipped over the short-term challenges that worry
Brynjolfsson and McAfee, in the end his conclusion was the same as theirs: The
future for workers depends not on competing with machines but on learning to
leverage the advantages they offer to get ahead. As Kelly put it, "This is
not a race against the machines. If we race against them,
we lose. This is a race with the machines….Let the robots take the jobs, and
let them help us dream up new work that matters."
Probably the oddest recent entry
in this discussion, and the one that intrigued me most, came not from an
economist or journalist, but from a press release issued by a company hoping to
capitalize on the robot revolution. I'd like to dwell a bit on the details of
that release here, seeing as how it had some outstanding man-bites-dog
qualities of its own.
The release was issued in
November by a San Francisco-based startup called Momentum Machines. It
announced the arrival of a hamburger-making machine that will revolutionize
fast food as we know it. (The robot pictured at the top of this piece is from a
different company.)
The surprise isn't that the
release promises a product with revolutionary benefits. The surprise is that it
acknowledges those benefits might be accompanied by some troubling side
effects. In doing so the release embodies with unusual clarity the tension that
exists between those two conflicting outcomes.
Momentum Machines claims its
hamburger machine can churn out 360 fully prepared and packaged hamburgers an
hour. Not just ordinary burgers, but gourmet
burgers, expertly cooked and seasoned to order. The quality of the product,
however, isn't the principal value the release seeks to promote.
Its headline centers instead
on the machine's astonishing economic benefits. "The Restaurant Industry
Is The Most Labor Intensive Industry In The Country," it reads. "Our
Technology Can Save The QSR [Quick Service Restaurant] Industry $9 Billion/Year
In Wages."
The release goes on to
promise that Momentum Machine's machine (they've yet to come up with a name for
it) "replaces all of the hamburger line cooks in a restaurant. It does
everything employees can do except better."
The unexpected twist appears
in a three-paragraph statement at the release's end.
Apparently recognizing that
its earlier promise to replace every line cook in the business carries some
unpleasant implications, for line cooks if not their employers, the company
expresses a desire to help retrain people displaced by its technology. To help
smooth their "transition," it promises to offer opportunities
for technical education at a discount. The suggestion is that fry cooks will be
transformed into engineers, after which they will participate in further
automating the fast food industry.
The release then ventures
into territory seldom explored in the annals of public relations: economic
theory.
"The issue of machines
and job displacement has been around for centuries," it says, "and
economists generally accept that technology like ours actually causes an
increase in employment."
This increase is the result,
the release says, of three factors: New employees are hired to build the
robots; the robots allow the company to expand its "frontiers of
production," which requires more employees; and automation produces
savings that can be passed along to customers, thereby stimulating the economy.
"We take these issues
very seriously," the release says, "so please feel free to tell us
how we can help with this transition."
The release also encourages
anyone with questions to get in touch, so I did. I asked for any references the
company could provide to support its contention that economists "generally
accept" that technologies increase employment, and also for more
information on the retraining assistance the company planned to offer displaced
employees.
To my surprise, a couple of
weeks later I received a response from the Founder and President of Momentum
Machines, Alexandros Vardakostas. His
note was cordial, but not very enlightening.
It provided no direct answers to my questions, only a link to a Wikipedia article on technological unemployment, aka "the Luddite Fallacy."
"Hi
Doug. Hope all is well you," Vardakostas wrote. "Read this to learn
more. Warm regards. Alex."
True
enough, Wikipedia's article does describe the theories of a number of
economists who agree that technological advance ultimately leads to an increase
in employment. It can't be considered an unqualified endorsement of that
position, however, given that Wikipedia says its "factual accuracy"
is disputed, and that it needs "additional citations for
verification." The article also pays little attention to whether today's
revolutionary advances in automation may be creating changes in the economics
of labor that render previous theories, even if they were historically true,
obsolete. That's the question asked by most of the articles I've cited above.
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| Amazon warehouse (Reuters) |
As
we rush toward a super-automated future, plenty of other questions remain
unanswered. Brynjolfsson and McAfee, for example, propose innovation through
entrepreneurship as a leading solution to employment stagnation, and toward
that end recommend various deregulatory measures that will allow new businesses to flourish
unencumbered.
I'm no economist, but it seems fair to ask whether measures of
the sort they prescribe might simultaneously open the way for even greater exploitation or
elimination of labor. Automation typically puts more power in the hands of management, after all, and there's no guarantee that the vast majority of post-automation
jobs will be any more satisfying, economically or spiritually, than the jobs they replace.
For
example, Brynjolfsson and McAfee cite as
models for the future the thousands of entrepreneurs now exploiting the new
opportunities for employment offered by the likes of eBay, Amazon Marketplace,
Apple's App Store, and Android Marketplace. Even if we take for granted that
such traditional benefits as health insurance, vacation pay, maternity leave, and
pensions are off the table, one wonders how many of those entrepreneurs are
making what used to be considered a middle-class income.
Not many, at least in the
apps market, according to a recent article in the New York Times. The
article makes it clear that winning big in that race with the machines is only
slightly more likely than hitting it big in the lottery, and that the people
who are really cashing in on the app market are the stockholders of
Apple and Google. The headline tells the story: "As Boom Lures App
Creators, Tough Part Is Making a Living."
That article demonstrates
perfectly a phenomenon Brynjolfsson and McAfee do address: The emergence, due to the unprecedented economies of
scale offered by various technologies, of a super-star marketplace, one in
which a few people become fabulously wealthy while everyone else scrambles desperately
to break into their golden circle. Kevin Kelly's
vision in this regard is positively Panglossian. Let the machines take over the
jobs, he says, while we dream of new work that matters. Take it from one who
knows: You don't get paid for dreaming.
Perhaps the most pressing question is whether an economy shaped by super-automated techno-entrepreneurs will be sustainable. We have an abundance of evidence today that another historical truism of economic theory
– that growth solves every problem – may also be obsolete. Certainly the
environmental disasters we've created suggest that perhaps the time has come to
consider a different option: restraint.
Momentum
Machines, for example, believes that technologies like its hamburger machine will
open new "frontiers of production." Forgive
me, but I'm not sure the frontiers of production opened by
previous advances in fast food technology have proved entirely salubrious.
These are some of the
reasons why I was hoping Momentum Machines might provide more detailed
answers to my questions. I've sent Alex
Vardakostas a second email, asking for elaboration and passing along links to
the aforementioned articles. So far no response, which could mean he's
disinterested in further discussion, or simply that he's too busy opening new frontiers of production to entertain
quarrelsome emails from bloggers.
(Note: I've posted an update on Momentum Machines' revised press release.)
©Doug Hill, 2013
