At Amazon's annual robotics conference, "Jeff Bezos looks a little too happy piloting a giant mechanical robot," observed THE VERGE. The reporter referred to the Amazon CEO as the fifth richest person in the world. Days later, Bloomberg declared that Jeff Bezos has leapt past Warren Buffett, among others, to become the world's second richest person.
Already world-famous for founding Amazon and Blue Origin, a private company in the vanguard of commercializing space exploration, Mr. Bezos has also placed himself in the forefront of the animated debate over robots in the workplace and their potential to displace workers.
Robots could take over 38% of U.S. jobs within about 15 years, according to an analysis conducted by accounting and consulting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC). Moreover, its report found that in the U.S., 38% of jobs could be at risk of automation,
compared with 30% in Britain, 35% in Germany and 21% in Japan. (Be aware that the terms, "robots", "automation" and "artificial intelligence" are often used interchangeably but imprecisely.) Per the report, the U.S. could suffer more job losses because more U.S. jobs in certain sectors are potentially more vulnerable than, say,
British jobs in the same sectors. For example, the U.S. financial and insurance sector has much
higher possibility of automation than its British counterpart because American finance workers are less educated than
British ones.
Former Microsoft chairman and CEO Bill Gates is concerned enough about the possibility of robots taking human jobs that he's proposed taxing robots like humans. Mr. Gates points out that if a worker does $50,000 worth of
work, that is taxed. He says "you'd think we'd tax the robot at a
similar level." Robots will be depriving humans of work, the rationale goes, so to support those humans the
company deploying them will continue to pay tax for their employment. The proceeds would then be used as a means to support the rest of society.
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said recently that he wasn’t worried about artificial intelligence taking over American jobs. “I think we’re so far away from that that it’s not even on my radar screen,” he told Axios Media. “I think it’s 50 or 100 more years.” Mr. Mnuchin
also said automation would enable human workers to do more productive
jobs at higher wages. “It’s taken jobs that are low-paying,” he said.
“We need to make sure we are investing in education and training for the
American worker.”
For his part, Jeff Immelt, CEO of General Electric, a major producer of factory automation gear, is also trying to calm what he considers overblown fears of robot-driven joblessness.
Former Treasury Secretary and Harvard president Lawrence Summers believes the impact of artificial intelligence on wages and employment will come much sooner than Mr. Mnuchin anticipates. Insofar as Mr. Gates proposing a tax on robots to cushion worker dislocation and limit inequality, Mr. Summers cannot see any logic to singling out robots as job destroyers, compared with, e.g., word-processing programs that accelerate the production of documents. You could cut and paste the irony.
Worries about imminent massive job losses due to automation seem to have gotten ahead of themselves. As far as job creation and retention go, Amazon, founded in 1994, currently employes over 341,000 people - as well as quite a few robots in its warehouses. But against the backdrop of rising executive pay, stagnating wages for most others in the work force, excluding, that is, record numbers of Americans currently not in the work force, a high-profile executive might not want to be cast in the role of the Terminator.
Robert Stead
No comments:
Post a Comment