Please Don't Downplay the Pain of Robotics

I see more technologists pushing back against the fear that robots will create unemployment. They talk of all the beautiful things that make us human (like feelings, dreams, etc.), which robots can't replace. Tell that to everyone who has lost a job because they've been replaced by technology. Do you think it'll make them feel better? The following excerpts from Paul Krugman's new op-ed in the New York are instructive:

• Will technological progress lead to mass unemployment? People have been asking that question for?two centuries, and the answer has always ended up being no. Technology eliminates some jobs, but it has always generated enough new jobs to offset these losses, and there’s every reason to believe that it will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.
• But progress isn’t painless. [Some] may talk glowingly about the virtues of 'creative destruction,' but the process can be devastating, economically and socially, for those who find themselves on the destruction side of the equation. This is especially true when technological change undermines not just individual workers but also whole communities.
• This isn’t a hypothetical proposition. It’s a big part of what has happened to rural America. This process and its effects are devastating, terrifying and baffling?because the political backlash to this hardship poses a clear and present danger to our democracy.
• Technology is the main driver of rural decline. [It]?has made America as a whole richer, but it has reduced economic opportunities in rural areas. So why don’t rural workers go where the jobs are? Some have. But some cities have become unaffordable, in part because of restrictive zoning — one thing blue states get wrong — while many workers are also reluctant to leave their families and communities.
• While Federal programs bring aid to some of these communities, they don’t restore the sense of dignity that has been lost along with rural jobs. And maybe that loss of dignity explains both white rural rage and why that rage is so misdirected — why it’s pretty clear that this November a majority of rural white Americans will again vote against Joe Biden, who as president has been trying to bring jobs to their communities, and for Donald Trump, a huckster from Queens who offers little other than validation for their resentment.
• Prime working-age men outside metropolitan areas are?substantially less likely?than their metropolitan counterparts to be employed — not because they’re lazy, but because the jobs just aren’t there. Quite a few rural states also have high rates of?homicide,?suicide?and births to?single mothers?— again, not because rural Americans are bad people, but because social disorder is, as the sociologist William Julius Wilson argued long ago about urban problems, what happens?when work disappears.

So please, while your job as a technologist may well be guaranteed, this may not be the case for everyone. Please show some kindness and empathy the next time you tell people not to worry about robots stealing our jobs. The consequences of these job losses ultimately affect all of society.