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next-generation program AlphaGo Zero was given
nothing more than the rules of the game. After three
days of playing millions of games against itself, it
demolished the original AlphaGo. In just a few years,
this pragmatic approach enabled machines to compete
with humans, defeat the best of them, and then
supplant them entirely.
Susskind provides a wealth of supporting claims
for the idea that automation will render people
redundant. Already, machines can generate in three
minutes documents that it takes a skilled financial
lawyer three hours to produce. Algorithms can write original music so pleasing
to classical music aficionados that it is nearly indistinguishable from Bach. The only
possible end point, Susskind argues, is structural technological unemployment,
whereby machines are sufficiently better than humans at so many tasks that it is
impossible to employ many (or most) members of the workforce. This process,
he acknowledges, will take place at different speeds, depending on the composition
of economies and the products and services they produce.
For a sneak peek at that future, Susskind cites the U.K.’s agriculture sector.
Over the past 150 years, technology has pushed up agricultural output almost
fivefold, but the number of people employed has fallen. He notes that greater
efficiencies create new demand, but that eventually this will generate more work
for machines, not humans. A startling
study of industrial robots in the U.S. a
decade ago found that the introduction
of one new robot per 1,000 workers
cut 5.6 jobs from the economy and
suppressed wages.
Susskind warns that a world
without work will also be a vastly more
unequal one. As the tasks many workers perform become automated, they will
see the value of their human capital fall to zero. Meanwhile, the value of capital
income, or the profits created through the work done by robots, will flow to the
As the tasks many
workers perform become
automated, they will see
the value of their human
capital fall to zero.