#2 Will networked, automated, artificial intelligence (AI) applications and robotic devices have displaced more jobs than they have created?

So, if half of today’s jobs disappear, will they be replaced by new types of jobs?  Expert are split down the middle on this.

http://www.elon.edu/e-web/imagining/surveys/2014_survey/2025_Internet_AI_Robotics.xhtml

Robotic and AI experts participated in answering an eight-question survey fielded by Elon University and the Pew Internet Project from late November 2013 through early January 2014. Some 1,896 experts responded to the following question:

The economic impact of robotic advances and AI – Self-driving cars, intelligent digital agents that can act for you, and robots are advancing rapidly. Will networked, automated, artificial intelligence (AI) applications and robotic devices have displaced more jobs than they have created by 2025?

Half of these experts (48%) envision a future in which robots and digital agents have displaced significant numbers of both blue and white-collar workers—with many expressing concern that this will lead to vast increases in income inequality, masses of people who are effectively unemployable, and breakdowns in the social order. Their arguments are:

• Displacement of workers from automation is already happening—and about to get much worse
• The consequences for income inequality will be profound
• For those who expect AI and robotics to significantly displace human employment, these displacements seem certain to lead to an increase in income inequality, a continued hollowing out of the middle class, and even riots, social unrest, and/or the creation of a permanent, unemployable “underclass”.

The other half of the experts who responded to this survey (52%) expect that technology will not displace more jobs than it creates by 2025. To be sure, this group anticipates that many jobs currently performed by humans will be substantially taken over by robots or digital agents by 2025. But they have faith that human ingenuity will create new jobs, industries, and ways to make a living, just as it has been doing since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution. Their arguments are:

• Throughout history, technology has been a job creator—not a job destroyer 
  (Editor's note:  In the past Technology destroyed labor intensive jobs and created labor intensive jobs. In the future Technology will not create labor intensive jobs, quite the contrary)
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• Advances in technology create new jobs and industries even as they displace some of the older ones
• There are certain jobs that only humans have the capacity to do
• A number of respondents argued that many jobs require uniquely human characteristics such as empathy, creativity, judgment, or critical thinking—and that jobs of this nature will never succumb to widespread automation.
• The technology will not advance enough in the next decade to substantially impact the job market
• Our social, legal, and regulatory structures will minimize the impact on employment

Point of agreement: The education system is doing a poor job of preparing the next generation of workers

• A consistent theme among both groups is that our existing social institutions—especially the educational system—are not up to the challenge of preparing workers for the technology- and robotics-centric nature of employment in the future.

Point of agreement: The concept of “work” may change significantly in the coming decade

• On a more hopeful note, a number of experts expressed a belief that the coming changes will allow us to renegotiate the existing social compact around work and employment.
• Possibility #1: We will experience less drudgery and more leisure time
• Possibility #2: It will free us from the industrial age notion of what a “job” is
• A notable number of experts take it for granted that many of tomorrow’s jobs will be held be robots or digital agents—and express hope that this will inspire us as a society to completely redefine our notions of work and employment.
• Possibility #3: We will see a return to uniquely “human” forms of production
• Another group of experts anticipates that pushback against expanding automation will lead to a revolution in small-scale, artisanal, and handmade modes of production.

Point of agreement: Technology is not destiny…we control the future we will inhabit

• In the end, a number of these experts took pains to note that none of these potential outcomes—from the most utopian to most dystopian—are etched in stone. Although technological advancement often seems to take on a mind of its own, humans are in control of the political, social, and economic systems that will ultimately determine whether the coming wave of technological change has a positive or negative impact on jobs and employment.