Robots are coming - can we save mankind?

We know the robots are coming.

Follow any major tech news feed and you’ll find a huge amount of articles announcing the arrival of new specialized robots, Artificial Intelligence (AI) solutions and amazing technology innovations.

It all seems very positive, except there’s a darker side – the huge impact this brave new world is predicted to have on our jobs. Scarily, researchers at McKinsey have recently suggested that a massive 49% of work time globally could be automated with current technology alone. At a macro level, not good.

The alarm bells have started ringing in Government institutions as diverse as the Bank of England and the European Parliament. Even the great and the good such as Bill Gates, Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk are firing warning shots. The problem is that the current generation of automation has the potential to upend numerous industries simultaneously and quickly. Many traditionally secure knowledge-based occupations such as medicine and law are also no longer immune.

But is this nightmare scenario of mass unemployment and destruction of the middle class inevitable as automation continues to proliferate? Here are some reasons why it may not come to that, at least in our lifetime:

The human touch

Many consumers value human interaction in the way they are serviced. There is already an emerging negative reaction to even relatively modest retail automation in the form of self-service checkouts and it’s noteworthy that Airbnb has just felt it necessary to assure its community of 'hosts' that automation will never replace what they do. This raises the obvious question of whether people will ultimately accept anything other than a fellow human being as their primary carer, the pilot on their flight or the face of their trusted legal advisor, let alone their host for an evening’s stay in a guest room.

Limits of the human mind

There is a natural limit to the pace at which we can assimilate change 

Our brains evolved for a much simpler linear world and not the world of exponential innovation we find ourselves in today. There is a natural limit to the pace at which we can assimilate change and our emotional and psychological limitations may act as a counterbalance to the escalating adoption of technology – witness the debate about social media causing isolation and depression in children or the reported rise in accident rates due to technology-laden cars.

Survival instincts

As the impact of automation gathers pace and more and more jobs are affected, it seems feasible that there will eventually be some sort of backlash against the growing encroachment of automation. The question is whether the economic interests of the few corporate giants that will inevitably come to increasingly dominate will prevail, or whether the very consumers on whom they depend for their profits will ultimately call the shots.

The issue of trust

Automation puts huge power in the hands of the very few organizations that control the technology and the data it stores and generates. It would probably not take many public scandals around misuse of this power to cause consumers to reject outright, or demand strict limits on, that power and by implication the technology it wields. We have already seen seemingly indestructible brands hit hard as a result of consumer mistrust in recent years; it is likely this effect will still apply in our new age of automation.

 Bringing it together

The accelerating pace of technology innovation is both exhilarating and terrifying at the same time. No one truly knows how it will all ultimately play out, but human nature will surely play a part in shaping the outcome. My view, based on what I currently see, is that we’ll probably survive the rise of the robots, although it might of course be a very different story for our grandchildren.

What do you think?