Automation, Robots and The Pink Collar Future

ByWayne Caswell Updated:
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Editor’s note: Last night I participated in “I am Robot. Hear me roar,” an online discussion hosted by HuffPost Live and using Google+ Hangouts to support several people connected via webcam. The discussion questioned how automation can make human workers obsolete. Will robots make your own job as a caretaker obsolete? I was asked to participate because of my interest in tech futures that include Healthcare Robots. Jamais Cascio also participated and offered some quite interesting insights. He shared the following article with the audience and gave me permission to republish it here.

Different perspectives: Following the article are two videos.
First is a PBS report that looks at robots and automation as replacing human workers. It’s what many Democrats worry about, and many unemployed workers complain about.
Second is a heart-warming movie trailer from Robot and Frank, which opens in theaters this month and gives a rosier view of technology that’s more like a friendly assistant than a job killer. This optimistic view is similar to the picture Republicans paint, but with no worry about those left behind and unemployed.
So which is it? Just as futurists consider different scenarios and what may lead to their preferred version of the future, you too can decide which version you like and either help make it happen for yourself, or prevent it from happening to others. As you think about this, realize that technology won’t slow down, but its impact on society can be controlled with smart policy decisions. Add your own perspectives below.

Robot Images

The Pink Collar Future

By Jamais Cascio, futurist, writer, speaker and founder of Open The Future

The claim that robots are taking our jobs has become so commonplace of late that it’s a bit of a cliché. Nonetheless, it has a strong element of truth to it. Not only are machines taking “blue collar” factory jobs — a process that’s been underway for years, and no longer much of a surprise except when a company like Foxconn announces it’s going to bring in a million robots (which are less likely to commit suicide, apparently) — but now mechanized/digital systems are quickly working their way up the employment value chain. “Grey collar” service workers have been under pressure for awhile, especially those jobs (like travel agent) that involve pattern-matching; now jobs involving the composition of structured reports (such as basic journalism) have digital competition, and Google’s self-driving car portends a future of driverless taxicabs. But even “white collar” jobs, managerial and supervisory in particular, are being threatened — in part due to replacement, and in part due to declining necessity. After all, if the line workers have been replaced by machines, there’s little need for direct human oversight of the kind required by human workers, no? Stories of digital lawyers and surgeons simply accelerate the perception that robots really are taking over the workplace, and online education systems like the Khan Academy demonstrate how readily university-level learning can be conducted without direct human contact.

With advanced 3D printers and more adaptive robotic and computer systems on the near horizon, it’s easy to see that this trend will only continue.

Except for one arena, that is, and it’s a pretty interesting one. Jobs where empathy and “emotional intelligence” can be considered requirements, often personal service and “high touch” interactive positions, have by and large been immune to the creeping mechanization of the workplace. And here’s the twist: most of these empathy-driven jobs are performed by women.

Nursing, primary school teaching, personal grooming — these jobs require varying levels of education and knowledge, but all have a strong caretaker component, and demand the ability to understand the unspoken or non-obvious needs of patients/students/clients/etc. We’re years — perhaps even decades — away from a machine system that can effectively take on these roles; a computer able to demonstrate sufficient empathy to take care of a crying kindergartener is clearly approaching True AI status. As a result, we appear to be heading into a future where these “pink collar” jobs — empathy-driven, largely performed by women — are the most significant set of careers without any real machine substitute, and therefore without the downward wage pressure that mechanization usually produces.

This raises some big questions, of course, and not the least of which is how this will affect the social and economic status of these professions. Nurses may be more valued than surgeons; kindergarten teachers paid better than university professors. Would this lead to a shift in the gender composition of these jobs? In a culture that remains beholden to the concept that men are the “breadwinners,” might we see efforts to “masculinize” these roles? Recall that in the United States after World War II, there was a great deal of pressure on women to give up the “Rosie the Riveter”-type jobs they held during the war.

Conversely, if accelerating mechanization of jobs triggers the emergence of large-scale social support systems (like the Basic Income Guarantee) paid for by “robot taxes,” does this mean that outside-the-home jobs are largely performed by women, while men stay at home?

What I’m saying is this: there is a terrible habit that many of us in the futures game seem to have of generalizing potential disruptions. That is, if robots are taking our jobs, then they’re taking all of our jobs (except, ideally, for the jobs of futurists) and we start thinking through the implications from there. But disruptions aren’t so easily flattened; when Gibson said that the future’s here, it’s just not evenly distributed, he wasn’t just talking about geography, or even class. Big sociotechnoeconomic shifts don’t just appear and redraw the landscape, they have to adapt to the existing conditions, and will themselves be disrupted by deeply-rooted cultural forces. We also have a habit of expecting that the most well-off financially are the most likely to resist big changes — but what happens when the underlying notions of value themselves are changing?

About the Author

Selected by Foreign Policy magazine as one of their Top 100 Global Thinkers, Jamais Cascio writes about the intersection of emerging technologies, environmental dilemmas, and cultural transformation, specializing in the design and creation of plausible scenarios of the future. His work focuses on the importance of long-term, systemic thinking, emphasizing the power of openness, transparency and flexibility as catalysts for building a more resilient society. He also speaks about future possibilities around the world, and i 2006 he started Open The Future.

PBS Report

PBS Report: Is Automation Replacing Human Workers?

Robot and Frank movie trailer

 

How Safe is Your Job?

How will you make a living when automation takes over your job?

Universal and Unconditional Basic Income (UBI) is one way we might cope with the future of tech innovation. It has profound political implications, but because this future is coming quickly, we should start the debates now.

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5 Comments

  1. OTHER RELATED ARTICLES:

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    Universal Basic Income, Questions Answered (Futurism.com)
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    Robot revolution: rise of ‘thinking’ machines could exacerbate inequality (The Guardian, I commented)
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    In pursuit of empathetic machines (TechCrunch)
    What If Artificial Intelligence Was Enlightened?
    Why Learning to Code Won’t Save Your Job (FastCompany)
    Automation Can Actually Create More Jobs (WSJ) This article looks at history but ignores the effect of the exponential and continuously accelerating pace of tech innovation enabled by Moore’s Law.
    Will Robots Save the Future of Work? (TechCrunch, I commented)

    COMMENT: Assigned Tasks or Assumed Tasks — The shift away from task-specific, rules-based programming of robots, to neural networks and AI and learning, will change everything, because it’s not just about automating repetitive and mundane tasks.

    Enabled by Moore’s Law and the exponentially accelerating pace of tech innovation, robots are beginning to learn, recognize problems and opportunities for improvement on their own, and learn from the past mistakes of others around the world. Soon they’ll thirst for more knowledge, access resources like Wikipedia and YouTube, and even summon advice and assistance from other robots.

    As fixed-function robots become more flexible, they’ll be able to “assume” tasks autonomously when they can do a better job than humans. They’ll even start assuming human-like traits like creativity, trial & error curiosity, and empathy (or not). That’s where the important field of machine ethics comes in.

    As you can see in my article (https://www.mhealthtalk.com/automation-robots-and-the-pink-collar-future/), some work is easier to automate than other work, but who knows what centuries of machine evolution will bring since it’s evolving much, much faster than human evolution.

    Better Than Human: Why Robots Will — And Must — Take Our Jobs (WIRED)

    COMMENT: To help speed the transition from agriculture to manufacturing, and to accommodate displaced farm workers, government offered free education through high school. Then to help people prepare for the information age and serve the needs of business, government offered public universities and community colleges with low tuition. But now that’s not nearly enough, and we need affordable lifetime education offerings and social programs, knowing that jobs and careers don’t last as long and people need ways to develop new skills as automation obsoletes 70% of today’s work.

    Just as in the past, the role of government must change to prepare for a vibrant future, and that’s just as important for the 0.1% as for the average worker, because (1) they need a healthy, skilled and productive workforce; and (2) without a strong middle class, demand for goods & services is limited.

    This is just some of the justification for a much more progressive taxing system to help fund public investments in education, research, healthcare, and infrastructure. As in the past, the biggest beneficiaries of these public investments are the wealthiest individuals and companies.

    Humans Need Not Apply (YouTube video about how quickly we/re becoming unemployable. I commented)

    OK. I admit it. I’m a futurist, and I worry about stuff than most people don’t even think of. … This video is about the exponentially accelerating pace of tech innovation that is quickly replacing human jobs with automation. But so what? Won’t more new & exciting jobs appear to take the place of those lost? Well, no.

    So what then will result from this? And what must we do about it? To start, automation relies on capital investment, so profits gained from AI, robots and automation will flow upward to the wealthy capitalists who can invest in the disruptive technologies, thus further widening the wealth gap. That will leave everyone else with less income and needing constant retraining at an ever faster rate, even as robots will be able to learn faster than us.

    The social implications are profound and imminent, prompting a call for public policies that can cope and protect, but our policy-making process in Congress, state legislatures and government agencies is slowing down just as they need to speed up. No one in politics is talking about this, but some of us in the 99% who will be affected are. We’re already talking up things like Basic Income, which is not dependent on what work you do but is like giving the horses shelter and food even though they are no longer needed.

    But with population doubling every 60-100 years, and people living longer, this too seems unsustainable. I’m sure the 1% is thinking about this problem too, but from a different perspective. And their solutions may include some form of population control or selective genocide. It may not just be your job that is eliminated. Could it be YOU?

    Automation and the Future of Work (Forbes)

    COMMENT: “History tells us that technology and automation tend to create more jobs than they destroy.” While true during the Agricultural and Industrial Eras, that’s not true any more, because the pace of tech innovation in the Information Age is advancing exponentially, enabled by Moore’s Law. The result is a widening wealth gap that favors capital investments in tech to replace labor.

    But how unequal has that wealth gap become? Most people have no idea, so I point you to this GREAT VIDEO INFOGRAPHIC with summary of Robert Reich’s documentary, “Inequality For All.” As former Labor Secretary under Clinton, Reich knows the issues as well as anyone.

    So what can be done if lifelong learning programs aren’t enough? And how do we expect families to survive each time they are between jobs and need to develop new skills?

    Start by shifting more of the burden toward capitalists at the top who benefit most from investments in labor-reducing technologies. Then develop social safety net programs and experiment with Basic Income to see how it may be implemented without harming ambition and the will-to-work.

    Is your job safe from Artificial Intelligence? (I commented)

    This reminds me of “The Pink Collar Future,” an article I wrote 4 years ago. (https://www.mhealthtalk.com/automation-robots-and-the-pink-collar-future/) As I explored the issue of technology replacing jobs at an ever-faster rate, and the challenges of retooling skillsets, I argued that pink-collar jobs are more difficult to automate.

    Unlike physicians and college professors (jobs requiring expensive doctorate degrees), nursing and primary school teachers need less formal training (and less student debt). These jobs have a strong caretaker component and demand the ability to understand the unspoken needs of patients/students/clients/etc. They tend to be more well suited for women; hence the term Pink Collar worker.

    The problem with knowledge work in the Information Age is that it’s based on computer technology that advances exponentially in accordance with Moore’s Law. The accelerating pace of tech innovation, and the convergence of science and technology (Info + Nano + Bio + Neuro), will have a profound effect as computing systems gain the ability to learn and adapt on their own and become “smarter” than humans. (See https://www.mhealthtalk.com/moores-law-and-the-future-of-healthcare/)

    The political problem I see for the Trump administration is his promise to Create jobs without realizing that “more than 50% of existing jobs [are set] to be eliminated by 2025.” Trump’s worldview is based on profits from escalating real estate value, rather than from developing or managing technology; so I don’t expect him to have the perspective needed to craft public policies that can cope with the disruptive force that this article foretells.

    This year’s World Economic Forum focused on social problems from jobs eliminated by tech innovation, the widening wealth gap, and the need for coping policies as the human population grows but without meaningful employment. While there was initial discussion of the Universal Basic Income concept, I worry that people who aren’t contributing (to the economy and wealth creation) might be considered an excess burden and eliminated through some sort of genocide.

    Already, public health officials have seen differences in average longevity of more than 20 years between poor and affluent neighborhoods on opposite sides of the same town, according to the HBO documentary, “The Weight of the Nation.” (See https://www.mhealthtalk.com/us-healthcare-system-has-cancer/) We’ve also seen examples politicians adjusting voting rights to marginalize the impact of populations that traditionally vote for social programs at the expense of corporate profits and executive wealth. That includes gerrymandering, voter suppression, and voter intimidation.

    Bill Gates: the robot that takes your job should pay taxes (Quartz video)

    Bill Gates is promoting the concept of a robot tax that could finance jobs taking care of elderly people or working with kids in schools, for which needs are unmet and to which humans are particularly well suited. I describe these as “pink collar” jobs, because they’re mostly done by women. (See http://mHealthTalk.com/automation-robots-and-the-pink-collar-future/.)

    Gates also argues that governments must oversee such programs rather than relying on businesses, in order to redirect the jobs to help people with lower incomes. I agree with that too and think it could eventually help fund universal basic Income.

    How do Americans feel about automation? (CBS News & Wired magazine) — A world where robots and computers take away our jobs at once seemed like the far-off future, but that future appears to be gaining on us. According to some recent polls in Wired magazine, American workers are growing increasingly concerned about it. Wired’s site director Jason Tanz joins “CBS This Morning: Saturday” to discuss why Americans are still apprehensive about self-driving cars and the economic impacts of automation on the job market.

    A.I. Will Enable You To Find Purpose In Life Instead Of Just Flipping Burgers All Day — I agree with almost all of the ideas in this interview with Martin Ford, Futurist, Speaker, A.I. Expert. Here are some additional thoughts I’d add:

    ACCELERATING PACE – Following Moore’s Law, the pace of tech innovation related to electronics is exponential, and because A.I. is based on ever-faster computer chips (in devices or remote services), I see this technology progressing faster than most people realize.

    FABRICATION – One thing that acted as a damper in the transition from Agricultural age to Manufacturing was the time it took to make the parts for the machines used to automate the process. 3D printing can greatly accelerate the move to specialized robots and speed next-gen automation.

    GOVERNANCE – My biggest worry is political, because policy makers are already unable to keep up with the pace of change, and while change is happening faster, lawmaking is slowing, and so is corporate decision making. So one potential A.I. application I hope to see is to serve as a virtual Board member or Legislator. But that trounces on the whole democratic idea of electing officials rather than appointing them, or creating them.

    Top 10 Jobs That Are Safe From the Robots COMMENT: Jobs where empathy and “emotional intelligence” can be considered requirements, often personal service and “high touch” interactive positions, have by and large been immune to the creeping mechanization of the workplace. And here’s the twist: most of these empathy-driven jobs are performed by women.

    Reply

  3. Robots are not the immediate issue.  However, automation using computers, hand held devices is.  The combination of algorithms, voice technology, and storage capacity advances allows 50% of the white collar jobs to be automated with today’s technology.  They will be in the next 10 years and the technology will get much better.  

    While we’ve had shifts like this in the past, nothing so fast and dramatic as this.

    While the soothsayers claim there will be new jobs created, not a one can tell me what they might be or that they can be created anywhere as fast as people will be displaced.

    So what are the social implications of this??

    Reply

    1. Thanks for visiting Modern Health Talk and commenting on the article on robots and automation replacing jobs faster than creating new ones. You’re right – there will be immense social issues, starting with education and skills development. Even with the Kahn Academy and universities like MIT posting course materials online, I feel they are completely missing the opportunity, and the rising costs of getting an accredited degree is a problem. We need to rethink the value of the degree entirely and find new ways for employers to gauge how qualified job candidates are. Looking forward, I envision a whole new set of qualifications that employers should be looking for, starting with soft skills like imagination, personal networking, empathy, etc.

      From a resulting email exchange with John…

      I’m with you, John. The Industrial Age brought workers into cities or company towns to work in factories as almost slave labor until collective bargaining through unions. The investor class learned from that and is now at work destroying unions through state legislatures. The widening income, wealth and opportunity gaps are not sustainable.

      Companies would normally notice this decline of the middle class as a decline of their customer base, as Henry Ford did when he decided to pay his factory workers a competitive wage so they could earn enough to buy the cars they made. But today the trend is consolidation into huge multinationals with enough political influence to distort the playing field for competitive advantage and drive smaller players out of business. They don’t much care about the U.S. middle class if they can sell globally into emerging markets for decades to come.

      The OECD forecasts economic growth globally and shows US share of GDP dwindling, compared to that of China, India and other non-OECD countries. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Look at what South Korea was able to do in just two decades by (1) deciding that it wanted to be a world leader in certain industries and (2) developing a strategy to get there that included investments in STEM education and broadband infrastructures. Today South Korea is ranked #1 in the speed, affordability and adoption of broadband, while the US has fallen from #1 to #27.
      See http://www.oecd.org/eco/economicoutlookanalysisandforecasts/lookingto2060.htm for a good video and charts.

      Reply

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