38 4 JANUARY 2019 • VOL 363 ISSUE 6422 sciencemag.org SCIENCEPHOTO: RICK MADONIK/TORONTO STAR/GETTY IMAGESI
n the conference room of a popular San
Francisco–based magazine, journal-
ists and editors walk through the door,
gathering for a staff meeting. One col-
league, however, rolls in on two large
motorized wheels.
“EmBot” is a human-sized robot that
shows live video of Emily Dreyfus, a staff
writer who lives 3000 miles away. But
EmBot is more than a face on a screen. It
can turn toward whomever is speaking or
chase a colleague of Dreyfus’s down the
hall. EmBot is an example of the telep-
resence technology that Richard
Baldwin, author of The Globotics
Upheaval, believes will cost many
workers in wealthy nations their
jobs, allowing them to be replaced
with “telemigrants” from abroad.
But even telemigrants face stiff
competition in the emerging econ-
omy. EmBot has software-based
cousins that use artificial intelli-
gence (AI) to perform tasks we once
thought required highly skilled hu-
mans, from searching for the legal
precedents of a patent dispute to
spotting cancer in a magnetic reso-
nance image.
Baldwin’s thesis is that globaliza-
tion and AI robots constitute a “glo-
botics” tidal wave that will shake the
foundation of middle-class prosper-
ity in wealthy nations. This, he ar-
gues, will lead to social upheaval, just
as 19th-century steam engines and
mechanical looms created workplace
disruptions that brought workers to
the streets in sometimes violent protest.
Although globotics will improve produc-
tivity and create new jobs, by some estimates
cited in the book, it could also replace more
than half of current jobs in a developed econ-
omy. The effects will be uneven.
Some skilled workers will prosper as they
gain the ability to compete for jobs across
the globe; others will become obsolete. An
accountant whose primary competitive ad-
vantage is that she lives within easy driving
distance of a commercial hub, for example,will now have to compete with accountants
around the world. An accountant whose
primary advantage is the ability to detect
complex patterns in financial data will have
to compete with machine-learning software
that never sleeps or asks for a raise.
For people hoping to choose a profession
that won’t soon be replaced, Baldwin recom-
mends those that require physical proximity
and that take advantage of distinctly human
qualities, such as creativity, social awareness,
ethics, and empathy. AI robots cannot (yet)
write articles for Science, for example, and
they are terrible preschool teachers.
Disruptive change can lead to backlash.Baldwin argues that 2016 vote outcomes
favoring Brexit in the United Kingdom
and Donald Trump in the United States
were backlashes to globotics. Although
this was not a period of high unemploy-
ment—Trump was elected after 7 years of
solid economic growth that drove the U.S.
unemployment rate from 10 to 4.6%—it is
possible that globotics could have contrib-
uted to low growth in wages.
Although the book offers valuable in-
sights into the long-term impact that glo-
balization and AI will have on workers,
the case that globotics will bring upheaval
is less convincing. Upheaval occurs when
technology advances at a pace that is toofast for society to absorb. Baldwin portrays
the progress of telepresence and AI as sud-
denly becoming rapid, but these technolo-
gies have been progressing for decades.
Thanks to the vast expansion of un-
dersea fiberoptic cables in the 1990s,
widespread adoption of the Internet, and
continuous improvement in col-
laboration software, we already live
with many effects of telepresence.
Multinational companies routinely
hire the most competitive workers
anywhere in the world and use this
technology to move jobs to work-
ers rather than moving workers to
jobs. Similarly, AI algorithms have
already replaced humans in many
endeavors, including monitor-
ing everything from surveillance
video to credit card purchases, just
as websites have all but replaced
travel agents.
So far, there has been workplace
change but little true upheaval. Both
telepresence and AI technology are
still making impressive progress,
but The Globotics Upheaval pro-
vides no way to judge whether the
pace of advancement will eventually
exceed what society can absorb.
Nonetheless, Baldwin presents
a compelling view of the future
of work and the serious challenges ahead
while there is still time to prepare. He
wisely argues that we must protect work-
ers, without necessarily protecting specific
jobs as they become outdated, and that we
must do more to help those who’ve been
displaced by technology reenter the work-
force and offer such individuals a strong
safety net along the way.
I would add education reform to the
prescription: Moving forward, schools and
universities should teach students to work
with emerging technology rather than
compete against it. j10.1126/science.aav6273ECONOMICSBy Jon PehaRobots, telework, and the jobs of the future
Globalization and AI are primed to disrupt tomorrow’s workplace, argues an economist
A remote reporter for the Toronto Star greets a co-worker.The reviewer is at the Department of Engineering and Public
Policy and the Department of Electrical and Computer
Engineering, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA 15213,
USA. Email: [email protected]The Globotics Upheaval
Globalization, Robotics,
and the Future of Work
Richard Baldwin
Oxford University Press,- 300 pp.
INSIGHTS | BOOKSPublished by AAASon January 3, 2019^http://science.sciencemag.org/Downloaded from