[ed. See also: And So It Begins.]
A cheerily written op-ed in the New York Times proclaims: “It’s time for robot caregivers”.
Why? We have many elderly people who need care, and children—especially those with disabilities—the piece argues, and not enough caregivers.
Call in the machines, she says:
This is not just an inhuman policy perspective, it’s economically destructive and rests on accepting current economic policies and realities as if they were immutable.
Let me explain. When people confidently announce that once robots come for our jobs, we’ll find something else to do like we always did, they are drawing from a very short history. The truth is, there’s only been one-and-a-three-quarters of a machine age—we are close to concluding the second one—we are moving into the third one.
And there is probably no fourth one.
Humans have only so many “irreplaceable” skills, and the idea that we’ll just keep outrunning the machines, skill-wise, is a folly. (...)
But wait, you say, there’s a next set of skills, surely?
That has been the historical argument: sure, robots may replace us, but humans have always found a place to go.
As I recounted, there are really only one and a maybe two thirds examples of such shifts, so far, so forgive me if I find such induction unconvincing. Manual labor (one), mental labor (still happening) and now mental skills are getting replaced, we are retreating, partially into emotional labor—i.e. care-giving.
And now machines, we are told, are coming for care-giving.
We are told that this is because there aren't enough humans?
Let’s just start with the obvious: Nonsense.
Of course we have enough human caregivers for the elderly. The country –and the world— is awash in underemployment and unemployment, and many people find caregiving to be a fulfilling and desirable profession. The only problem is that we –as a society— don’t want to pay caregivers well and don’t value their labor. Slightly redistributive policies that would slightly decrease the existing concentration of wealth to provide subsidies for childcare or elder care are, unfortunately, deemed untouchable goals by political parties beholden to a narrow slice of society.
Remember: whenever you hear there’s a shortage of humans (or food), it is almost always a code for shortage of money. (Modern famines are also almost always a shortage of money, not food). Modern shortages of “labor” are almost always a shortage of willingness to pay well, or a desire to avoid hiring the “wrong” kind of people. (...)
Next, consider that emotional labor is all that’s left to escape to as humans workers after manual and mental labor have been already been mostly taken over by machines.
(Creative labor is sometimes cited as another alternative but I am discounting this since it is already discounted—it is very difficult, already, to make a living through creative labor, and it’s getting harder and not easier. But that’s another post).
US Bureau of Labor Statistics projects the following jobs as the ones with the largest growth in the next decade: Personal care aides, registered nurses, retail salespersons, home health aides, fast-food, nursing assistants, secretaries, customer service representatives, janitors…
It’s those face-to-face professions, ones in which being in contact with another human being are important, that are growing in numbers—almost every other profession is shrinking, numerically.
(No there won’t be a shortage of engineers and programmers either—engineers and programmers, better than anyone, should know that machine intelligence is coming for them fairly soon, and will move up the value chain pretty quickly. Also, much of this “shortage”, too, is about controlling workers and not paying them—note how Silicon Valley colluded to not pay its engineers too much, even as the companies in question had hoarded billions in cash. In a true shortage under market conditions, companies would pay more to that which was scarce).
Many of these jobs BLS says will grow, however, are only there for the grace-of-the-generation that still wants to see a cashiers while checking out—and besides, they are low-paid jobs. Automation plus natural language processing by machines is going to obliterate through those jobs in the next decade or two. (Is anyone ready for the even worse labor crisis that will ensue?) Machines will take your order at the fast-food joint, they will check out your groceries without having to scan them, it will become even harder to get a human on the customer service line.
What’s left as jobs is those transactions in which the presence of the human is something more than a smiling face that takes your order and enters into another machine—the cashier and the travel agent that has now been replaced by us, in the “self-serve” economy.
What’s left is deep emotional labor: taking care of each other.
by Zeynep Tufekci, Medium | Read more:
A cheerily written op-ed in the New York Times proclaims: “It’s time for robot caregivers”.
Why? We have many elderly people who need care, and children—especially those with disabilities—the piece argues, and not enough caregivers.
Call in the machines, she says:
“We do not have anywhere near enough human caregivers for the growing number of older Americans.”This how to fail the third machine age.
This is not just an inhuman policy perspective, it’s economically destructive and rests on accepting current economic policies and realities as if they were immutable.
Let me explain. When people confidently announce that once robots come for our jobs, we’ll find something else to do like we always did, they are drawing from a very short history. The truth is, there’s only been one-and-a-three-quarters of a machine age—we are close to concluding the second one—we are moving into the third one.And there is probably no fourth one.
Humans have only so many “irreplaceable” skills, and the idea that we’ll just keep outrunning the machines, skill-wise, is a folly. (...)
But wait, you say, there’s a next set of skills, surely?
That has been the historical argument: sure, robots may replace us, but humans have always found a place to go.
As I recounted, there are really only one and a maybe two thirds examples of such shifts, so far, so forgive me if I find such induction unconvincing. Manual labor (one), mental labor (still happening) and now mental skills are getting replaced, we are retreating, partially into emotional labor—i.e. care-giving.
And now machines, we are told, are coming for care-giving.
We are told that this is because there aren't enough humans?
Let’s just start with the obvious: Nonsense.
Of course we have enough human caregivers for the elderly. The country –and the world— is awash in underemployment and unemployment, and many people find caregiving to be a fulfilling and desirable profession. The only problem is that we –as a society— don’t want to pay caregivers well and don’t value their labor. Slightly redistributive policies that would slightly decrease the existing concentration of wealth to provide subsidies for childcare or elder care are, unfortunately, deemed untouchable goals by political parties beholden to a narrow slice of society.
Remember: whenever you hear there’s a shortage of humans (or food), it is almost always a code for shortage of money. (Modern famines are also almost always a shortage of money, not food). Modern shortages of “labor” are almost always a shortage of willingness to pay well, or a desire to avoid hiring the “wrong” kind of people. (...)
Next, consider that emotional labor is all that’s left to escape to as humans workers after manual and mental labor have been already been mostly taken over by machines.
(Creative labor is sometimes cited as another alternative but I am discounting this since it is already discounted—it is very difficult, already, to make a living through creative labor, and it’s getting harder and not easier. But that’s another post).
US Bureau of Labor Statistics projects the following jobs as the ones with the largest growth in the next decade: Personal care aides, registered nurses, retail salespersons, home health aides, fast-food, nursing assistants, secretaries, customer service representatives, janitors…
It’s those face-to-face professions, ones in which being in contact with another human being are important, that are growing in numbers—almost every other profession is shrinking, numerically.
(No there won’t be a shortage of engineers and programmers either—engineers and programmers, better than anyone, should know that machine intelligence is coming for them fairly soon, and will move up the value chain pretty quickly. Also, much of this “shortage”, too, is about controlling workers and not paying them—note how Silicon Valley colluded to not pay its engineers too much, even as the companies in question had hoarded billions in cash. In a true shortage under market conditions, companies would pay more to that which was scarce).
Many of these jobs BLS says will grow, however, are only there for the grace-of-the-generation that still wants to see a cashiers while checking out—and besides, they are low-paid jobs. Automation plus natural language processing by machines is going to obliterate through those jobs in the next decade or two. (Is anyone ready for the even worse labor crisis that will ensue?) Machines will take your order at the fast-food joint, they will check out your groceries without having to scan them, it will become even harder to get a human on the customer service line.
What’s left as jobs is those transactions in which the presence of the human is something more than a smiling face that takes your order and enters into another machine—the cashier and the travel agent that has now been replaced by us, in the “self-serve” economy.
What’s left is deep emotional labor: taking care of each other.
by Zeynep Tufekci, Medium | Read more:
Image: Kyodo via AP Images
