The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Humans must prepare for automation
Automation is a competitor you do not wish to face in the world of economic competition, while at the same time expecting to win with a human solution.
I was reminded of this during a recent trip to Las Vegas. In one of the countless bars on the famous Las Vegas strip was an automated bartender. The automated bartender had a rack of bottles above the working surface and the technology, by robotic standards, was relatively straightforward. The drink, when completed, was delivered to the end of the preparation area by a short conveyor belt, where a human waitress delivered the drink to the customer’s table.
News headlines across the country are reporting of the advances being made with driverless cars. The reports often center on the features and benefits of driverless passenger cars. However, the big economic driver and job eliminator potentially will be the driverless trucks that currently deliver all of the goods we consume on a daily basis.
I say “currently” because some companies are attempting to leapfrog the vehicles and deliver small packages by drone.
It was not that long ago that the first automated teller machines (ATMs) appeared. During those early days of the ATM, very similar concerns were aired about safety of use and security of the transactions. Today most of us use ATMs without a second thought.
Remember when the Internet was scary because we did not want our credit card information moving electronically across the country and around the world? Additionally, I remember hearing concerns about buying clothes and food online because people believed that if they could not touch the items, they could not make the best selections.
If the various cybershopping days are any indication, we have moved past those concerns. Additionally, brick-and-mortar and salespeople are exposed to significant reductions in numbers. And as for food, we not only accept delivery from grocery stores, but there also is a growing business of pre-prepared food plans brought to us by meal plan companies.
The concern that I want to bring to your attention is not that automation is bad or that it can be stopped. The issue is, what do we do for human jobs when the robotics capabilities continue to improve with lower costs? What happens to people when the computers’ artificial intelligence capabilities increase to near-human levels?
To those who say that there will be new positions that will arise for those displaced workers, I say they are partially correct. There is a new team of developers who wrote the applications for the automated bartender. However, they were perhaps a team of 10 who by their labor could displace hundreds of bartenders. Also the application development team shrinks to four because it does not take as many people to maintain the application as it did to originally develop the code.
To my knowledge, there is increased automation in nearly every occupational field except politicians. We need our politicians to address real job issues because we know that retraining, if possible, takes time and money. Let’s have a real debate with real numbers about jobs.
I, for one, liked the world of George Jetson; but I also remember the story of John Henry, the steel driving man. The drumbeat of automation continues. Let’s be prepared.