Robots and Jobs

Last week the New York Times informed us that there is a race ongoing to build robots more like us so that they can fold laundry and care for the elderly.  I hadn’t heard.  The only robot I knew up close and personal was the one I saw a few years ago caroming off the walls of a friend’s lake house, doing the vacuuming.  I thought it was great that she no longer had to drag the Hoover around herself up there.  The robot was quite amusing, really.  And it was only a few inches off the ground, and cute!  How nice. 

Now my sister and I employ a battery of women to provide 24/7 care for our 97 year old father in Florida.  For those of you who do not have a very aged parent in need of such care, you may be surprised to learn that the annual cost is in six figures.  The idea that a robot could eliminate that huge expense is pleasant to contemplate. 

But I was also uneasy at the implications of this robot technology we are striving so hard to develop.  There are a lot of folks employed caring for the elderly.  And a good number who fold laundry for a living.  Even if we were not faced with persistently high unemployment from the financial crisis and recession which has lingered in its wake, we would have to be concerned about the inexorable pace of technology taking jobs, not only in factories where robots and other machines have taken the jobs of assembly-line workers, but also in service sectors of the economy, like law firms where computers have decimated clerical jobs and reduced the number of lawyers needed as well  (I hear many of you clapping, but as a lawyer myself I will ignore you). 

How long will it be before buses, trains and even planes drive themselves, and bus drivers, trainmen and pilots are a thing of the past; or before investment bankers and traders in financial firms are replaced by supercomputers with algorithms so good that they can trade on their own without human supervision?  (Yes, I am talking about so many of our kids who populate the business departments of colleges and graduate schools who want to go into finance).  Why are we racing so fast to kill so many jobs, and with them, the opportunity for gainful employment for so many?  What are we all going to do for a living when these machines we are trying so hard to create take over our jobs?

Now there are “good” robots, which do not substitute for a human being on the job, but rather enhance that human’s ability to do the job.  When a friend needed prostate cancer surgery recently, he went to a surgeon who specializes in robotic surgery.   Now there’s a robot I like.  Still need the surgeon to do the surgery; the robot enhances the hands.  But can’t we do without the “bad” robots which replace home health care workers?  Can’t we emphasize the good ones in our technological research and development? 

I would be more sanguine about this if we lived in a society which recognized that technological progress is a community plant whose fruit should be shared.  Such a society would recognize that when people lose their jobs because of such developments, which increase productivity that benefits everyone, everyone has an obligation to help out those who directly bear the burden of the unemployment which results.  But we are not there yet.  Despite a disintegrating infrastructure, not one real jobs program has been put in place to put people to work.       

I am not sure a robot is ever going to be able to try a case to a jury, but who knows?  What I do know is that, when a lot of private sector working and middle class jobs were lost, few of us spoke out.  Then, when the jobs and pensions of public sector working and middle class folks, like the teachers, the first responders, and the state and local governmental employees, were threatened or lost, few of us spoke out.  When they come for the jobs of the lawyers and bankers, who will be left to speak out?