March 5, 2021 - 2:09pm
Some new technologies are forever ‘ten years away’ until, that is, they suddenly arrive. That’s how it was with mobile phones and flat screen TVs: an expensive niche product went mainstream within the space of a very few years, changing our lives forever.
Driverless vehicles are still stuck in ten-years-away mode, but their time is coming. The revolution is likely to start not on the road, but on the pavement — with delivery robots. According to a report for Axios by Jennifer A Kingson, it’s beginning to get political:
You may have seen these robots being tested in your town or city already — they’re basically a box on wheels and roughly knee-high. However, what’s a novelty now may become a nuisance. Imagine hundreds of the things whizzing around on the one remaining part of the streetscape reserved for pedestrians. Above you, imagine a sky full of buzzing — and, on occasion, crashing — aerial drones.
Among those unhappy at the prospect is Steve Hilton — who was once David Cameron’s right hand man, but more latterly a fixture at Fox News. He’s particularly outraged by the state legislatures that have legally classified the delivery robots as ‘pedestrians’.
how much did Jeff Bezos bribe state legislators to allow his stupid, dangerous robots to be classified as "pedestrians"
we need to make our neighborhoods #MoreHuman not less!https://t.co/RUNtUACc7r
— steve hilton (@SteveHiltonx) March 4, 2021
I’d imagine he might find an ally in his fellow Fox News host Tucker Carlson. In an interview with Ben Shapiro, Carlson expresses deep disquiet over the impact that driverless truck technology would have on truck drivers’ jobs. There are something like 3.5 million truck drivers in America — so full scale automation would have a devastating impact on livelihoods across the country, especially in communities already devastated by the loss of manufacturing jobs to China.
Carlson doesn’t hesitate when asked whether he’d restrict the technology in order to artificially preserve jobs — he’d do it “in a second”. Presumably that means that as well as clamping down on driverless trucks, he’d also target the delivery robots that would bridge the gap between the distribution centre and the home.
What we have here is the makings of a new political divide: Tech-supporting liberals and libertarians versus the pro-job populists of the Trump-haunted Republican Party.
But is this over-cooking it? Will the sheer convenience of the robotised future overcome popular resistance? Just look at the way that the western electorates consented to the offshoring of all those manufacturing jobs. Voters might not have liked de-industrialisation, but our mouths were stuffed with cheap Chinese imports.
Except that a populist backlash did eventually occur, concentrated in the worst-affected parts of each country. In any case, the next wave of disruption — i.e. focused on automation as opposed to offshoring — is going to have a much wider impact: literally bringing the brave new world to your door.
The creators of these new technologies had better watch their step. The more obnoxious their new creations, the bigger the coalition for their prohibition.
Peter Franklin is Associate Editor of UnHerd. He was previously a policy advisor and speechwriter on environmental and social issues.
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SubscribeParking the political arguments over machines, it is easy to show that ever accelerating tech driven change is undoubtedly going to hurt huge tranches of humanity. That does not mean the option to opt out of that change exists. Any nation that does not fully embrace tech and participate in tech advance is at instant risk from those who don’t self-suppress in the same way. And once you fall behind in the tech war, you are open to predation by those more technologically advanced. Which advanced nation (apartment from Belgium) will allow that?
Robocops? There bridges too far at every fork on the AI path. You do not sell your soul because every one is doing it.
Ah, but the point is that they can and will steal your soul if you don’t.
Sadly, I think you’re right about the Catch 22 between the on-going job losses to tech but the disadvantage a nation will experience if it refuses to keep up with technology.
Medical AI currently exists (at the development stage) that is 96% as accurate as an experienced physician at diagnosing disease. How long before many physicians find themselves obsolete? Currently, much prostate surgery is done by a surgeon guiding robotic arms. How long before a machine is developed that can perform the surgery without the surgeon?
Not so long ago, it was just assumed that a licensed physician diagnosed disease and prescribed treatment. When the number of doctors becoming primary care physicians dwindled, ‘nurse practitioners’ were allowed to provide primary medical care in the US. Since the pandemic, many of us have become used to telehealth where we speak to a physician we’ve never met on the phone. This system is used to manage even complex medical conditions such as heart disease. The physician’s role dwindles year by year.
The outstanding question is, when so many good-paying jobs are gone, who is left to pay for services provided by all this fancy technology?
J Bryant, the answer to your question is well given by JP Sears in his comedy form of cnn style news cast, ‘you will own nothing and like it’ sort of Saturday Night Live news parody from the Right leaning lifestyle guru.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bEQcyIGH_vQ
He hoveres close to the edge of being kicked off youtube and I am always surprised to see him remain allowed – like many he was threatened with banning but by scaling it back, and viewer input, saved him. Much like unherd seems to have moderated its broadcasts for what I guess is the same reason.
“The outcome will depend on how things are distributed Everyone can enjoy a life of luxurious leisure if the machine-produced wealth is shared,or… most people can end up miserably poor if the machine-owners successfully lobby against wealth redistribution. So far, the trend seems to be toward the second option,with technology driving ever-increasing inequality.”
–Stephen Hawking
“….How long before a machine is developed that can perform the surgery without the surgeon?..”
I reckon this is about a decade away. High precision mechanics that can mimic human fine control is advancing fast. You may have seen this recent Boston Dynamics video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fn3KWM1kuAw
Humanity is just half a step away from anthropomorphising machines.
The whole point of automatisation is that the services end up being reduced in cost – this is toddler level economics supply up, demand equal, price falls – just as manufactured goods were. In that sense their costs will become trivial to even those without well paying jobs.
Where you’ll see the effects of income gap though will be in things that will remains forever outside of automatisation, especially real estate which will become increasingly out of the reach of those who fall behind. Why do you think its relative value compared to everything else keeps increasing?
What we have here is the makings of a new political divide: Tech-supporting liberals and libertarians versus the pro-job populists of the Trump-haunted Republican Party.
THIS is the talking point to be advanced? Seriously? That’s a bad take all around. If the Repubs are pro-job, then the left becomes anti-job, which is curious considering the left’s push for a higher minimum wage, which will ironically result in more automation.
Strangely, I see this switch in roles everywhere. The traditional Right has morphed into the party of the working man and the Left now represents the middle classes. It is easy to see why. Trump and Twitter and his gaffes seemed to make him more approachable whereas the Democrats are the archetypal grey men in power, representing the rich middle men and bankers.
Another role switch (from the European angle) is that Trump in opposition now seems more important than Trump as President.
Trump also was not one of “them.” The same people who happily took his campaign donations and the same media that could not interview him often enough as a businessman suddenly got the vapors over this interloper threatening to expose the grifter class.
Nothing strange – all well covered by Piketty.
The Left is 100% anti job! In USA I work in construction and the open border for unskilled workers since the 1980s utterly destroyed the class of American unskilled workers. You almost never see a White guy on a roof crew or framing crew, most are unskilled migrants sleeping many to a house with almost zero costs and destroying the pay in the industry.
The entire goal of the Left is all on UI, all made to be sheep dependent on the shepherd and fallowing the tame bellwether.
Yep, that’s correct. The left is pro-dole and anti-job these days, regarding the nonworking underclass as the ‘deserving’ proletariat, and the workers as the privileged ‘bourgeoisie’ leeching on the poor, poor underclass. The push for higher minimum wage is just a transitional rhetoric, to achieve the ultimate goal of UBI.
As i recall the AOC-penned “New Green Deal” (or whatsitscalled) pushed for paycheques for those who choose not to work at all.
So why isn’t mass repatriation instead of mass immigration the goal of Western governments?
What are the Western elites saying to European-descended peoples when the whole thrust of socio-economic policy over the last years has been to engineer their economic redundancy and demographic replacement. It’s inexplicable to keep the demographic pressure on when robotisation is here, unless the real object is to generate a global order without the one race of Man with the love of freedom to overthrow it?
Well around here, they won’t make the footpaths flat, level and continuous enough to negotiate comfortably with a bicycle, so how are they going to get the necessary asphalt upgrades for these tonka toys?
Secondly, what can they do to prevent enterprising youth taking potshots at them from afar? Or stealing the wheels or somehow disabling them? Putting down wedges on the path would be a good test, too. Gilet Jaunes and 70% of French speed cameras being wrecked springs to mind.
For this model of delivery to be made to work for the good of the capitalist, they will need a very high order of surveillance to secure the route. Do we want that, and who pays?
Why don’t we tell the operators of these machines to fix the paths – then it will be better for me on my eTrike.
Arm them?
seriously, I can see a lot of people having fun with this. Robot muggings, kids hitching a ride, barriers set up to trick the robots. What if something goes viral that shows how to mess with their visual system.
Rome, that first fully urbanized city, was all 4-6 story high apartments and buildings with shops on the ground. The city streest too full to allow vehicles during day time, the entire city only allowed wagons on the streets at night. (One side issue was it is said no one in Rome ever actually got a full night sleep because of this.) This is the only answer to these shopping wagons.
If it were not for the cameras these monstrosities must be covered with, if I was the old guy with the stick from the picture, I would hit it, everyone would, it just begs for it.
I would sit on it for a free ride.
I’m still in thrall of clever little machines buzzing around on their own volition; i have a small fleet of toy drones to play with which is not a good look for a middle-aged woman. It’s difficult to find deserted terrain where they are not prohibited to fly, the vast common here is National Trust property = no fly zone. 🙁
I have been thinking about the coming robots & even more importantly the AI revolution that is already here.
Firstly, in the past it was always the working class that were hit by new technology but although old industries died, more jobs were created in the new ones.
This time is did it’s different, AI is going to hit the middle professional classes massively & the advent of robots will guarantee that the multinationals no longer need many people.
But, the problem then becomes, ‘who can afford to buy the goods produced’, the only way out of this that I can see is UBI.
Great article. Makes one wonder whether or not the psychology of the free market will lead us into an increasingly less humane (or human, for that matter) world? One wonders…. If, for efficiency’s sake, we interact less and less with humans and more and more with machines, we not only will become more machine-like, we will become more lonely, more self centered and less capable of meaningful relationships? Might an unfettered free market make us less free?
I’m sure China will be delighted by the idea of Western countries banning new technological developments. All the more easy to defeat them in the next war.