The last time I spoke at West Point, I was asked by a cadet if I worried that increased automation would lead to an eventual robot war. I joked that I wasn’t worried about the Cylons from “Battlestar Galactica” or Skynet from the “Terminator” movies. The reason I’m not scared of these scenarios is because everyone else is.
For decades sci-fi authors have been bombarding us with images of robots rising up against their human masters. Those images resonate because they tap into a much deeper anxiety towards thoughts of becoming “robot slaves.” Keep in mind the original Slavonic word “rabota” literally means slavery.
And that’s why we don’t have to worry about a robot uprising. The idea is just too scary to ignore. That’s why we made it through the Cold War without nuking each other. The nightmare images of Hiroshima kept our fingers off the button. That’s why the global response to Ebola rivaled Operation Desert Shield. Greater fear means greater response.
But what about the threats that aren’t obvious, the ones that creep slowly and silently below our psychological radar? Too often these threats are indirect. Think of them as “Catalytic Threats,” harmless on their own, but setting off a chain reaction to eventual, direct harm. Catalytic Threats are the kind that keep me up at night, because too many of us miss the links in their chain reaction. They can’t see how the connection between biofuels and the rise of ISIS, or family land rights and the Rwanda Genocide, or the coming robot revolution and its potential cause for World War III.
The so-called ‘experts’, the folks who are paid to think for a living, are well aware of the first even second step in automation’s chain reaction. Whether it’s Columbia Business School’s Bruce Greenwald predicting a retreat from globalization or Stephen Hawking warning of “ever increasing inequality,” forecasters are not shy about picturing tomorrow’s workplace. But the workplace is where it stops.
No one seems willing to take that next step, to envision what a world of robot displaced workers looks like. In an article for The Atlantic, Stanford Fellow Jerry Kaplan warned of a future where “men struggle with the emotional upheaval of no longer having a place in the world of work.” But that’s the last sentence in the article. What are all these unemployed, confused, frustrated men going to do with their lives? It doesn’t take a next-gen supercomputer to imagine what some, or a lot of those struggling men will do next.
If we want to get specific, the most glaring example is that economic powerhouse across the Pacific. The engine of China is manufacturing, and the fuel of that engine is abundant, cheap, submissive labor. Its laborers work so hard and make so little trouble that you could even compare them to robots. But what happens when the real robots start replacing them?
What happens to hundreds of millions of people who suddenly find themselves laid off by automated factories, driverless cars, 3d printers and AI services? Even worse, what happens to a system of government that has never had to deal with this kind of upheaval? The country itself might be a thousand years old, but the current ruling system hasn’t even reached 100. They’ve never had to endure the kind of massive, disruptive shocks we in the west regularly take for granted. They’ve tried to micromanage everything on their terms and in so doing have made themselves as vulnerable to a robotic revolution as OPEC is to alternative energy.
What will they do? How will they survive? The people of this country have an ancient saying, “Rich country, Strong Army”. What if they lost one but still retained the other? Would they use that strong army to crack down on their own people? They’ve done it before (e.g. Tiananmen Square in 1989). Or would they use it instead to distract their people with a foreign adventure? They’ve done it before (e.g. Chinese invasion of Vietnam in 1979).
That’s what scares me: a desperate, panicked leadership class backed into a corner by a hungry, angry, equally desperate populace. The scenario isn’t new, but the catalyst is. When we think about the disruptive potential of automation, we can’t forget the social, political, and eventual military outcomes of that disruption. When we imagine a coming robot war, we need to think less about a war against robots and more about a war because of them.
I think most are concerned where their jobs or their children’s jobs will be someday due to our robotic future. At the same time, there’s excitement towards our next invention which usually have some robotic or some sort of machine handling a task for us. I’m not sure that we will ever stop that curiosity and therefore never stop the drive to create it. Kind of a juxtaposition.
Either way, I believe in the resilience of all of us in that windows will be open to new opportunities. Whether creative or whatever more of what these machines cannot do, we will make ourselves better and find new opportunity. Unfortunately I’m not smart enough to know what that will be, but I do believe it. We always have, haven’t we?
An old notion around since the days of Ned Ludd.
Any hard evidence to support the argument that trends are headed in this direction?
How about Uber looking in to driverless cars to disrupt the Taxi industry? Travel sites disrupting the travel industry (yes, not physical robots but they do make travel agents less necessary)? The military using drones for an entire kill mission (that's takeoff, flight, kill, and landing, the human only authorizes the firing of the weapon in some instances)? GPS guided farm equipment? GPS guided commercial aircraft (the plane can fly itself the entire way but they don't let it because it will make folks uncomfortable and cost them ticket sales) The ubiquitous use of robots in manufacturing for the last 50+ years? It'll start with the lowest paid jobs and things that overlap with military applications. Then it will work its way all the way up the ladder as machines start to design their next generation. They will get smart and more capable very quickly. Then they will surpass us.
Economic impact analysis could help to better identify how the automation of factories would also lead to decreased prices which would help absorb some of the impact of displaced thousands. This post could also imply that while factory jobs may be taken over, customer service jobs and jobs requiring innovation may be flooded and create new opportunities for work that automation can’t quite grasp.
You also seem to imply that the only war that would break out would be civil, and I’m curious if there is any indications that these types of conflicts could cross national borders and for example, turn the spurned working class of Malaysia against Indian technology developing groups.
The increased role of robots in manufacturing processes or otherwise has the potential to increase overall productivity of our country. If handled correctly, it could cause those displaced by automated machines to create new industry or pursue fields of science instead of the position they once held.
We must also consider the increase in inter-connectivity between automated machines and our society. It will allow for hackers to breach into nuclear power plants, electric power grids, and various industries that are automated in today’s society. In order to protect American public from such “cyber attacks” that could cause physical harm, America needs a bigger cyber force than solely relying on the NSA DHS.
Interesting read and good insight for me looking into the future of the cyber branch.
The threat caused by the completeness of the digital footprint captured by various sources I think are part of the threat that we don’t fully understand the ramifications of and could potentially creep up on us.
I think we need to examine the idea of a federal minimum income if we are serious about the threat of automation replacing jobs. In the USA, I think something like that would be difficult to pass, given the conflict over even just raising the minimum wage, but it would be something that would allow people to live despite the fact no work really exists for them to do.