IF COMPUTERS TAKE OVER MANY OF OUR TASKS, WHAT WILL HUMANS DO?

IF COMPUTERS TAKE OVER

MANY OF OUR TASKS, WHAT
WILL HUMANS DO?

NIMESH AGARWAL

JAGANNATH UNIVERSITY

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IF COMPUTERS TAKE OVER MANY OF OUR TASKS, WHAT WILL HUMANS DO?

ABSTRACT
This research paper involves understanding the problem on this future problem that is going
to be aroused. The goal is to highlight that it is one of the major problem of upcoming future
which is being neglected and only emphasizing on technology. If our technologists or leaders
will not think on this then in the coming year we will witness the most disastrous view of our
economy as there will no jobs to do for the lower level people. I have also presented some
graphs to make this more understanding.

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IF COMPUTERS TAKE OVER MANY OF OUR TASKS, WHAT WILL HUMANS DO?

1. Understanding Problem

Robots have emerged over the future of labor for decadesat least since robotic arms started
replacing auto workers on the assembly line in the early 1960s. Optimists say that more
robots will lead to greater productivity and economic growth, while pessimists complain that
huge swaths of the labor force will see their employment options automated out of existence.

Each has a point, but there's another way to look at this seemingly inevitable trend. What if
both are right? As robots start doing more and more of the work humans used to do, and
doing it so much more efficiently than we ever did, what if the need for jobs disappears
altogether? What if the robots end up producing more than enough of everything that
everyone needs?

The redefinition of work itself is one of the most intriguing possibilities imagined in a
recent Pew Research report on the future of robots and jobs. Certainly, the prospect of a
robot-powered, post-scarcity future of mandatory mass leisure feels like a far-off scenario
and an edge case even then. In the present, ensuring that everyone has enough often seems
harder for humans to accomplish than producing enough in the first place. But assuming a
future that looks more like Star Trek than Blade Runner, a lot of people could end up with a
lot more time on their hands. In that case, robots won't just be taking our jobs; they'll be
forcing us to confront a major existential dilemma: if we didn't have to work anymore, what
would we do? [1]

The answer is both a quantitative and qualitative exercise in defining what makes human
intelligence distinct from the artificial kind, a definition that seems to keep getting narrower.
And in the end, we might figure out that a job-free roboticized future is even scarier than it
sounds. [1]

1.1 Humanity as a Service

One prevailing answer kind of dodges the question, but it also seems like one of the most
plausible outcomes. Maybe many jobs can't be automated in the first place. Several
respondents canvassed by Pew believe that the need for human labor will persist because so
many of our basic human qualities are hard to code. "Truth be told, computers are not very
smart. All they are is giant calculators," game designer and author Celia Pearce told Pew.
"They can do things that require logic, but logic is only one part of the human mind."

Humans will continue to be useful workers, the argument goes, because of things like
empathy, creativity, judgment, and critical thinking. Consider the all-too-common experience
of calling customer service reps whose employers force them to follow a scripta kind of
pseudo-automation. When made to follow a decision tree the way a computer would, all four
of those qualities are sucked out of the interactionno opportunity to exercise creativity,
empathy, judgment, or critical thinkingand the service provided tends to stink.

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"Detecting complaints is an AI problem. Sending the complaints to the correct customer

service entity is an AI problem," said one unnamed Pew respondent described as a university
professor and researcher. "But customer service itself is a human problem.

Overall, the kinds of jobs that respondents predicted humans would still be needed to do
involved interactions with other people. Healthcare, education, and caring for the elderly and
children were all seen as occupations that would still require a human touch. "Those areas in
which human compassion is important will be less changed than those where compassion is
less or not important," said Herb Lin, chief scientist on the Computer Science and
Telecommunications Board at the National Academies of Science.

Future job options may even extend beyond the caring professions to include work that the
fluid integration of body and mind still make it most efficient for humans to perform. In a
piece looking at the "instant gratification" economy of same-day delivery, San Francisco UPS
driver Rafael Monterrosa tells Recode he's not worried about a self-driving car taking his
place. "As far as delivery goes, you still need someone to carry something up the stairs.

Other Crucial Reasearches

In March of 2013, four economics researchers from the New York Federal Reserve published
a report on job polarization the phenomenon of routine task work disappearing and only
the highest and lowest skilled work still available. The authors stated:

An occupation is routine if its main tasks require following explicit instructions and obeying
well-defined rules. These tend to be middle-skilled jobs. If the job involves flexibility, problem
solving or creativity, its considered nonroutine. Job polarization occurs when employment
moves to nonroutine occupations, a category that contains the highest- and lowest-skilled
jobs.

They based their analysis on data from the U.S. Census Bureau, which demonstrates that
around 2005, the U.S. passed a threshold where more than 50 percent of all occupations are
non-routine. In fact, extrapolating from the relatively straight line on the graph, at this point
we should be over 60 percent nonroutine.

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These researchers also broke out the four quadrants of the work sphere, with routine versus
nonroutine work arrayed against cognitive versus manual work.

The central take away from this exposition is that routine jobs have been decreasing in both
cognitive and manual forms, and nonroutine jobs have been increasing largely in cognitive
form. Again, heres the census data:

The indications are fairly stark. The work in routine occupations is trending toward zero. This
fall lines up fairly well with the rise of automation of various kinds. For example, computer
programs are doing the work of paralegals and x-ray technicians, and factory robots are
displacing large numbers of automobile assembly line workers. There are applications that
can write sports newspaper articles, based simply on the scoring history in the game.

Of course, for those who consider science fiction as the best oracle for an unknowable future,
consider this shot in the dark from Isaac Asimov, who wrote in 1964 about a visit to the
Worlds Fair of 2014:

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The world of A.D. 2014 will have few routine jobs that cannot be done better by some
machine than by any human being. Mankind will therefore have become largely a race of
machine tenders.

Soon, all that will be left for human beings will be the non-routine, creative work. How many
of our occupations will our software overlords steal away from us? Many more than today,
according to Carl Benedict Frey and Michael A. Osborne, two researchers at Oxford who
looked at 702 current occupations.

Soon, all that will be left for human beings will be the non-routine, creative work.

The researchers found that approximately half of current occupations (47 percent) are at risk
of going the way of the telephone operator within just a decade or two. These two researchers
relied on the same matrix of work as the Federal Reserve team, and examined how quickly
robotic dexterity and A.I. cognition would hollow out jobs that seem to be the preserve of
humans today:

Our findings could be interpreted as two waves of computerization, separated by a

technological plateau. In the first wave, we find that most workers in transportation and
logistics occupations, together with the bulk of office and administrative support workers,
and labour in production occupations, are likely to be substituted by computer capital.

Note that the transportation and logistics sector includes many occupations that will be
slammed by autonomous vehicles, like truckers (the number one occupation for men in the
U.S. currently), taxi drivers and warehouse workers. Administrative support is the number
one job for women in the US, so our robot overlords are equal opportunity, at least.

Frey and Osborne suggest that the second future wave of displacement will come at some
later date, when A.I. gains the secrets of creativity and social intelligence. That may take a
longer time, but at some future date, lawyers, engineers, brain surgeons and even actors might
be displaced by bots. In fact, one venture capital firm, Deep Knowledge Ventures, has
already appointed an algorithm to its board of directors.

Lawyers, engineers, brain surgeons and even actors might be displaced by bots.

So, we are confronted with the critical question of 2025, as I stated in the recent Pew Internet
report, AI, Robotics, and the Future of Jobs:

What are people for in a world that does not need their labor, and where only a minority are
needed to guide the bot-based economy?

While it is likely that for the next few decades the educated, creative and inventive will find
avenues to gainful employment, that will not be the case for all. How will we organize our
world if machines can provide goods and services at lower and lower costs while fewer and
fewer have income enough to buy anything?

Can we educate our way out of this mess, or will people be forced into a return to the land,
tending 40 acres with the help of several mechanical mules? Can we legislate a Luddite

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future, where the new levels of automation are made illegal? Or will the techno utopians be
vindicated by new sorts of work as yet unseen emerge to engage the surplus workers
now being displaced?

The end state is uncertain, but we are headed toward a disruption of our society on the same
order of magnitude as the rise of agriculture and industrialism, but in a much more
compressed time frame: decades, not generations or centuries. And that question what are
people for? will taunt us because its unclear if there is an answer or whether it is just an
irresolvable dilemma.

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REFRENCES

1- https://www.wired.com
2- https://www.huffingtonpost.com
3- www.google.com
4- https://en.wikipedia.org
5- http://www.computersthatbyte.com.au

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