Completely Reasonable To Worry

What I’m suggesting is that there’s a self-fulfilling element to conversations about automation.  It’s not so much that machines are relieving us of activities that are intrinsically rote and mechanical;  it’s more that a skill comes to seem rote and mechanical when a machine learns to do it.  An ability only begins to appear “worthless,” as you put it, when it can be executed by highly profitable technologies.  At the moment, our talents and aptitudes are being made obsolete at such a rate that many people, like you, are uneasy about where this trajectory might end.
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We consumers are not asked to vote or weigh in on the new devices, features, and apps that will inevitably shape our lives.  It’s completely reasonable to worry that you might look up at some point and find yourself at a historical destination that you never consciously chose.
All of which is to say, you’re right to pause and question this technology.  Given how quick we are to adapt to and assimilate novel forms of automation, it’s doubly important to consider whether a given skill is something you’re willing to relinquish.  In that spirit, I’m going to avoid prescribing anything concrete (what is advice but one more automated solution?) and instead encourage you to continue thinking about what you are prepared to give up.  Are there certain boundaries that you’re not willing to cross?  Or is your humanity just a moving target, its definition staked on whatever remains after the rest has been offloaded onto devices?  The willingness to think through these questions, consider their consequences, and commit to a course of — literal — action is itself virtuous and worthwhile.  It’s one thing, at least for the time being, that we alone can do.
—   Meghan O’Gieblyn
From her “advice” column:  “Dear Cloud Support: My Car Is Making Me Feel Useless!“
Appearing in:  Wired Magazine;  dtd:  May 2021
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On This Day In:
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2022	Completely Reasonable To Worry
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Good Business

The problem arises, however, of what one is to do with those workers who are replaced by the robots.
It is not that there will be an overall diminution of jobs.  If the past is to be a guide, technological advances create more jobs than they destroy.  Thus, the automobile industry employs far more people than the buggy industry ever did.  Nevertheless, there is a change in the kind of jobs that will be available.  The repetitive jobs of the assembly line will tend to disappear.  The dull jobs of paper-shuffling and button-pressing will disappear.  In their place will be such jobs as computer-programming and robot maintenance.
On the whole, the jobs that will come into existence will be far more creative and will take far more education and training than will those that have disappeared.
It will therefore be part of the responsibility of the corporation of the future to see to the re-education of the workforce.  This could be done out of pure feelings of humanity and philanthropy, but it is more practical to suppose that it would be done out of a very natural desire to preserve the stability of society.  It might save money, in the short run, simply to cast out the displaced, but it would not be good business to have hordes of hungry and angry people ready to change, by force, the economic system that reduced them to misery.
—    Isaac Asimov
From his book:  “The Roving Mind“
[Asimov is referring to the responsibility of the corporation replacing the worker with automation.  In today’s political climate, it is the unemployed who must retrain themselves (at their own expense).  It is nice when the government can assist, but there is no “legal” responsibility.  And, of course, the corporation has no responsibility to their workers.  It will be interesting to see if this remains a tenable relationship between worker, government and corporation.  I believe it will not be tenable and we will end up with a voter imposed (via government) “New Deal” for workers which will shift some of the costs of retraining / re-education back onto the businesses / corporations of our economy.    —    kmab]
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