PROGRESS AND UNEMPLOYMENT

WILL SMART MACHINES CREATE A WORLD WITHOUT WORK?

By PAUL WISEMAN and BERNARD CONDON

WASHINGTON (AP) — They seem right out of a Hollywood fantasy, and they are: Cars that drive themselves have appeared in movies like "I, Robot" and the television show "Knight Rider."

Now, three years after Google invented one, automated cars could be on their way to a freeway near you. In the U.S., California and other states are rewriting the rules of the road to make way for driverless cars. Just one problem: What happens to the millions of people who make a living driving cars and trucks — jobs that always have seemed sheltered from the onslaught of technology?

"All those jobs are going to disappear in the next 25 years," predicts Moshe Vardi, a computer scientist at Rice University in Houston. "Driving by people will look quaint; it will look like a horse and buggy."

If automation can unseat bus drivers, urban deliverymen, long-haul truckers, even cabbies, is any job safe?

Vardi poses an equally scary question: "Are we prepared for an economy in which 50 percent of people aren't working?" . . . . 

Full story: bigstory.ap.org

Peter’s Piece

Moshe Vardi is an alarmist.

But he will probably be a popular alarmist because he is predicting something that many people will find easy to believe.

This same theory has been peddled many times since the beginning of the industrial revolution when the Luddites went around smashing up machines in the mistaken belief that they were saving jobs.

However, the history of industrialization and its relationship to employment is clear. Industrial efficiency stimulates employment while inefficiency puts people out of work.

In the early 1800s less than half London’s population was in regular, legitimate, paid employment. The rest of the population was made up of child labor, criminals trying to survive and others starving on their way to an early grave.

Slowly, mechanization changed that. As products began to be produced more efficiently, more people could afford to buy them, demand increased and more products became available, and with them more job opportunities appeared.

That’s how the economic merry-go-round works and, as the ride gathers momentum, more and more people are able to join in.

Many occupations disappeared with horse-drawn transport, but many more new occupations were created by the huge auto industry that replaced it. Town crier was another job that vanished, but look at the huge numbers of people working in radio, television, newspapers and now internet businesses.

People no longer manufacture and sell the office machines of the early 20^th century, but look at the size and efficiency of the computer industry that has replaced them.

Every time an additional new product or service reaches the market it can only succeed if people have the money to buy it. The number of new products and services that have been developed and successfully sold during our lifetime is a sure indicator that more people are now in employment and getting a worthwhile share of the economic cake.

I don’t see anything on the horizon to indicate that this will change anytime soon.