jobs will the robots take away from us?” Understandably, the persistence of this question stems from the accelerating pace of technological change and the specter of a future without work. Such fears are widespread: 82 percent of the United States thinks robots will take over much of the work currently done by humans, according to a recent Pew Research Center survey.37 Relatively few adults surveyed saw an upside for workers as a result of automation and new workplace technologies.
One of the aims of this book is to persuade you that this is not the most important question or where we should direct our energy and focus. First, no one knows just how many jobs will be threatened by robots and other forms of automation. Second, it is not how many that matters. What matters is how we will navigate the new job and business opportunities created by technology and new ways of working.
“Clearly, a world in which five percent of jobs are eliminated by automation is very different from a world in which 50 percent of jobs are eliminated,” noted Gideon Lichfield, the editor-in-chief of MIT Technology Review. “But regardless of the numbers, we're going to face a lot of the same kinds of issues, just in differing degrees.”38 Of greater interest than any number or percent is how automation, and not only robotics but also cognitive technology and AI, natural language processing, and machine learning will change our jobs and how we work.
Though we have been creating machines to do our work for us for centuries—including tractors, assembly lines, and computers—the proportion of adults in the United States with a formal full-time job has consistently risen during this time. Technology has not made human labor redundant and our skills obsolete. A 2018 report by the World Economic Forum projected that although nearly 1 million jobs may be lost to automation, another 1.75 million will be gained.39
Economists are quick to point out that although new technology may displace certain types of work, history has shown us that technology has created more jobs than it has taken.40 The challenge has often been the transition paths for workers to have access to the skills required for new jobs. Over the past 200 years, technology has changed human work but has not eliminated it. Department of Labor data shows that over the past two decades, many of the tasks that make up a job have changed. Though some tasks have disappeared, job growth has continued. This scenario includes groups of remote and diverse teams working together, productive collaboration between people and machines, and workers continuing to be employed by learning new capabilities throughout their lives.
Economists are quick to point out that while new technology may displace certain types of work, history has shown us that technology has created more jobs than it has taken.
What is new is the accelerated rate of the changes, which makes thinking about the future more important than it has ever been. The transformation from an agricultural economy to an industrial economy was linear, happening at a steady rate, where you add the same amount again and again over time. The current acceleration is exponential, which means you multiply the same amount again and again.41 Though technological advances are moving quickly, they can be more complicated to implement than we realize. Take autonomous cars. Who can forget the relentless hype around self-driving cars? Predicted to be the greatest disruptors to transportation since Henry Ford's Model T, autonomous-driving cars were said to be only months away from being tried out by the general public.42 It turns out that few understood what was required to complete one of these cars. Navigating unpredictable traffic and weather patterns, as well as knowing how to react to distracted pedestrians in danger of being hit, added to the complexity of bringing self-driving cars to a street near you. When a few test vehicles crashed, it became clear that deploying robot cars was far more complex than many envisioned just a few years earlier. In addition to technology challenges, liability issues had to be addressed. Some now say it may be many years before self-driving cars replace human drivers on our highways. But they are coming.
Why ATMs Did Not Replace Bank Tellers
The surprising story of automated teller machines (ATMs) and bank tellers offers a fascinating illustration of how new technology, if properly harnessed, can change individual jobs—or the tasks that make up the job—without eliminating the worker. The transformation of bank tellers provides a useful counterpoint to arguments by automation alarmists. When ATMs were first introduced in the 1970s, many predicted that bank tellers would lose their jobs. After all, ATMs took over their basic job functions, making it possible to deposit a check or withdraw cash from a machine.43 This new “automatic” teller seemed to be able to do everything the human teller did. So what happened to bank tellers? Since ATMs appeared on the scene, the number of human bank tellers in the United States has roughly doubled, according to Boston University economist James Bessen. He has noted that the adoption of ATMs did not, in fact, reduce the number of teller jobs—it changed their jobs.44 Indeed, their jobs evolved. New skills were needed. Bank tellers took on different roles, learning to assist customers with loans, open new accounts, market financial products, troubleshoot, and more—jobs that machines were unable to do.
Bessen reports that between the mid-1990s, when about 400,000 ATMs were introduced, and the year 2000, the number of teller jobs grew faster than the labor force as a whole. And while that may eventually change, the near-term impact of ATM technology actually created more jobs.45 The ATM created more full-time teller jobs at banks because it allowed banks to open more branches, since each branch could operate with fewer tellers, which also meant banks could hire more tellers overall. It should be noted that the jobs of bank tellers are not forever secure, however, due to continued industry consolidation and technological changes. And let's not forget about mobile banking, which also involves automation of work previously handled by humans. However, it is interesting to note that the evolution of bank tellers' jobs is similar to what happened in the nineteenth century with the textile industry. Though most of the work suddenly was automated, the number of weavers continued to grow for decades.46 More automation meant the price of cotton cloth fell, and people used more of it.
Projections that the future of work will usher in mass unemployment rest upon several flawed assumptions. The first is that a job consists of a single task. Most jobs consist of many tasks, not all of which can be automated. The second is that technology is a substitute rather than a complement to human labor. In most cases to date, technology augments but does not wholly eliminate human workers. What we tend to forget is that technological innovation could create jobs that we have not yet imagined. Changes in how we work have been underway for decades, as the activities in most occupations have shifted from basic and repetitive tasks to more advanced tasks. This means we spend less time collecting data and more time solving problems.
Elevator operators have the distinction of being one of the very few occupations in the past 60 years that has been eliminated from the Census Bureau logs due to automation.47 Add to this list the switchboard operator and the bowling alley pinsetter. Meanwhile, new job titles like app developer, social media director, and data scientist have emerged. A rule of thumb today is that if your job is repetitive, routine, and predictable, and you can easily describe it, chances are large portions of it can be automated. If someone can write a script that describes the job, or create a set of algorithms or rules, then a machine
