As robots take our jobs, is resistance useless?

Forget humanoid robots: instead be scared of well-paid, middleclass jobs being wiped out

Am I worried about a robot taking my job? The question triggers in my imagination (and probably yours) the vision of a shiny plastic humanoid, possibly bearing a Honda logo, whirring smoothly into my study, sitting down in my typist’s chair and tapping out this column on the keys of my laptop. But, of course, this isn’t what happens at all.

Much of my job has already been automated. 200 years ago I’d be writing this in ink with a dip pen and forming each letter by hand. Now I press a key and the firmware of my computer forms each letter: I just choose the words and put them into order. When I finished 200 years ago I’d probably roll up the paper and hand it to a boy who would run it round to the editorial office – robots had his job long ago. Now I press another key or two to instantly send it by email. I’m just a word chooser and, a crucial point, I get paid to do it.

Since we’re such a social species it’s hardly surprising that we’re obsessed by humanoid robots, but they really aren’t the biggest threat. They will continue to improve in capability, and find roles in many service industries and social care where the more human they seem, the better. However, such applications raise deep ethical questions, and some able people are already working on answers. My friend Professor Alan Winfield ( alanwinfield.blogspot.co.uk) works with the EPSRC (Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council), IEEE and other bodies on a code for ethical regulation of robotics, based on principles such as:

Robots should not be designed solely or primarily to kill or harm humans

Robots should be designed to comply with existing laws, rights and freedoms

Humans, not robots, are responsible agents, so a person must be attributed legal responsibility for every robot

Robots should not employ a deceptive appearance to exploit vulnerable users: their mechanical nature should remain obvious.

No, the main threat isn’t a robot taking your job, but of your job disappearing through less visible automation. “Moravec’s paradox” (named for AI researcher Hans Moravec) observes that it’s easier for AI to imitate the advanced cognitive skills of a chess grandmaster than the perceptual and motor skills of a two-year old child. The hardest part of my opening scenario isn’t writing this column, but walking through the door and sitting in the chair. It’s cheaper and more efficient to generate this column using an AI program that scrapes all my 20 years of previous columns and does some inferring (although I do flatter myself that you might notice the difference).

In a powerful recent Guardian article ( pcpro.link/278ell) Larry Elliot proposes a scenario in which increasingly polarised Western capitalist societies fragment further still. A tiny rich minority purchases the technology to automate away middle-class jobs, then redeploys the labour so displaced to cheaply perform manual and service tasks that can’t profitably be performed by machines. Automating those tasks would also have caused mass unemployment and destroyed the market for products, whereas paying a minimal universal wage might keep the whole shebang running after a fashion, with 1% living in extreme luxury and 99% still living, but in extreme drudgery.

Last Sunday, I booked our winter’s worth of concert tickets online – no box-office clerks were employed, even on the phone. When the various days arrive, we’ll travel, say to the Wigmore Hall, by bus (in five years’ time that might be driverless) to watch very talented people make unamplified music on acoustic wooden instruments designed over a century ago. And I’m prepared to pay and travel to hear this even though I could listen to “the same” music on Spotify. That evening I watched on TV a BBC Prom of Indian classical music, and noticed that one trio was using an electronic drone box in place of a human tanpura player, saving a quarter of their labour cost.

These are the sorts of decision that automation will increasingly face us with. I think I’m pretty good at choosing words and putting them into the right order, but the market may eventually not agree. However, if we keep listening only to the market, then sooner rather than later we may find life is no longer worth living. What kinds of skills do we wish to preserve, regardless of efficiency or profit?

It’s easier for AI to imitate the advanced cognitive skills of a chess grandmaster than the motor skills of a two-year-old child