ME, ROBOT?

Dick Pountain/Idealog 278/04 September 2017 09:57

Am I worried about a robot taking my job? The very question triggers in my imagination (and probably yours too) the vision of a shiny white 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 away. 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 (were I foolish enough to turn on predictive text, the computer would try to bugger that up too). 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 send it by email. I'm just a word chooser and orderer and I get paid to do it, a crucial point.

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 certainly continue to improve in capability, and find roles in many service industries and social care where the more human they seem the better. Such applications raise deep ethical questions, and some very able people are already working on answers My old friend Prof 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 like:

~ 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, including privacy.
~ Humans, not robots, are responsible agents, so a person must be attributed legal responsibility for every robot.
~ Robots are industrial products that must meet industry standards of safety and security.
~ Robots should not employ deliberately deceptive appearance to exploit vulnerable users: their mechanical nature should remain obvious.

No, the main threat is not 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 simple 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, which makes a humanoid robot hopelessly inefficient and far too expensive for the job. Cheaper and more efficient instead to generate this column using an AI program that scrapes all my 20 years of previous columns and does some inferring (though I do flatter myself that you might notice the difference...) 

In a powerful recent Guardian article (https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/aug/20/robots-are-not-destroying-jobs-but-they-are-hollow-out-the-middle-class) 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 re-deploys the labour so displaced to perform cheaply those 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 online our winter's worth of concert tickets - no box-office clerks were employed, even on the telephone. When the various days arrive, we'll travel, say to the Wigmore Hall, by bus (in 5 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 marvellous Indian classical music, and noticed that one trio was using an electronic drone box in place of a human tanpura player, thus saving one 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?