Recommended: Work in the Age of Robots

I have written a number of  times in this blog about the risk that automation will put a lot of people out of work, and especially that we might develop an underclass of technologically-challenged people who would find it hard to earn a living in a more technological world. And I have by no means been the only one to worry about this issue, though it seems not yet to have reached the political class.

Mark Mills has written a short book, Work in the Age of Robots, which argues against this worry. As he points out, the history of disruptive technologies (the car replacing the horse, the power loom, mechanized agriculture, the steam engines, etc) shows that thus far such productivity enhancers produce more jobs than they destroy. The problem for forecasters at the time is that while it is clear what jobs might be lost, it is very hard to predict in advance what new jobs, and whole new fields,  might emerge as a result of the technological advance. It was easy to see how the automobile would put out of work all those people who bred, maintained and fed horses, but it was hard at the time to predict the emergence of all those jobs in the automobile supply chain, or the oil exploration and refining industry, or the road building industry. Mills argues, persuasively, that there is no reason to believe the pattern will be any different this time with the advent of AI and automation. Yes, people will lose jobs and have to retrain themselves, but he predicts there will be plenty of new jobs available for them.

Again, for those not inclined to find and read the book, there is an interview with Mark Mills on YouTube here in which he talks about the book.