Humans, robot revolution is coming. Be patient
new york — Amid all the fear of robots taking human jobs, sceptical voices have been asking: where are these robots?
Machine-learning systems — commonly marketed as artificial intelligence, but really closer to fancy statistical algorithms — are beating humans at games, improving search algorithms and transforming industry in countless small ways. But so far, the machinelearning boom hasn’t done anything to reverse the slump in productivity growth.
Now, it’s possible that productivity gains are just being mismeasured. But the slowdown seems to be worldwide, including in developing countries. That’s inconsistent with the theories about sweeping robotisation. As economist Larry Summers has pointed out, a robot boom would raise both pro- ductivity and business investment, as companies rushed to install the new machine-learning systems. That hasn’t happened.
In a new paper, economists Erik Brynjolfsson, Daniel Rock and Chad Syverson have an answer: Wait. It’s coming.
Often, when a very versatile new technology comes along, it takes a while before businesses figure out how to use it effectively. Electricity, as economist Paul David has documented, is a classic example. Simply adding electric power to factories made them a bit better, but the real gains came when companies figured out that changing the configuration of factories would allow electricity to dramatically speed production.
Machine learning, Brynjolfsson et al say, will be much the same. Because it’s such a general-purpose technology, companies will eventually find whole new ways of doing business that are built around it. On the production side, they’ll move
On one hand, that would make the economy even more fantastically productive than it is today. But it could also lead to the widespread displacement of human labour that many fear
beyond obvious things like driverless cars, and create new gadgets and services that we can only dream of. And machine learning will also lead to other new technologies, just as computer technology and the internet led to machine learning.
If Brynjolfsson et al are right, then those who have dismissed the rise-of-the-robots story are in for a nasty shock. That phenomenon could just be getting started. On one hand, that would make the economy even more fantastically productive than it is today. But it could also lead to the widespread displacement of human labour that many fear.
During the Industrial Revolution, there was deep anxiety that new technologies would make human labor obsolete, sending wages, employment and living standards crashing. Instead, the opposite happened — humans learned to do much more productive tasks by cooperating with machines instead of competing with them. A weaver displaced by power looms could now oversee a team of workers operating the very machines that put them out of business. The shift took a long time, and it wasn’t painless, but eventually most workers got much richer.
Techno-optimists like to recall the misplaced fear of industrialisation when arguing that machine learning will be a good thing for human workers. But there’s no reason history has to repeat itself. It might be the case that people simply have two kinds of skills — physical and cognitive. In the Industrial Revolution, technology replaced many human physical skills, but we learned to use our brains to complement the dumb machines. But now, if machine learning replaces human cognitive skills, what skills will humans have left that machines lack?
Some say that social skills will be the next frontier — humans will complement machines by dealing with other humans, via marketing, management and so forth, with machines doing all the technical thinking. But what if machine learning also manages to replicate humans’ ability to interact with each other? — Bloomberg