This year ended with our travel being resumed – albeit in a different avatar. So, like caged beings let out after a long incarceration, we did multiple road trips, staying in independent villas (thanks, airbnb!) instead of hotels.
As a result, got to use the Fast Tag extensively for the first time – and saw that at each toll gate, every booth actually has 4 people, plus some floats – one inside the kiosk, one chatting with him/her, one holding a manual device outside the booth (for the many cases when the automated scanner doesn’t work), one to signal – go ahead/ reverse as you drive; and then of-course, in a typically Indian scenario, many overall hangers on….
My husband was highly amused by this, his point being that the whole thing was counter intuitive – the “automation” technology was leading to MORE manpower deployed, and not less. (Also I think a bit thankful – much like Roosevelt’s New Deal, this was making sure our 130 billion strong country was retaining/ growing employment stats, specially in a year gone crazy). This situation prompted some thoughts on the whole automation/ employment deal.
As far back as 1929 Keynes had predicted reduction in demand for labour and thus job loss, as a natural consequence of the rapid advance of technology. Much debate has happened on this (I read somewhere that “impact of tech on employment” is the most popular topic for Group Discussions for entrance exams and job interviews).
History and media has played its own part over the years. In England, tradesmen known as the Luddites had reacted to the introduction of industrial looms by destroying the machines that threatened to supplant their profession and put lower skilled workers in their place. I remember an old Bollywood movie – Naya Daur – which was about the fight by rickshaw pullers in a village against introduction of a new bus. After many tear jerking shenanigans, romantic and otherwise, the rickshaw pullers won! I was a young urban kid when I watched it, and even then kept thinking why was the bus introducer the bad guy??? Wouldn’t it be cheaper/ faster to take the bus?
Nevertheless, the distillation of most debates on this topic is:
A) Yes, job loss will happen as a natural impact of automation – A report estimated that almost 85% of the jobs that will exist in 2030 haven’t even been invented yet. Another report by Mckinsey states “We find that about 60% of all occupations have at least 30% of activities that are technically automatable, based on currently demonstrated technologies”. In addition, “On a global scale, we calculate that the adaptation of currently demonstrated automation technologies could affect 50% of the world economy, or 1.2 billion employees and $14.6 trillion in wages. Just four countries—China, India, Japan, and the United States—account for just over half of these totals”. The World Economic Forum’s “The Future of Jobs Report” affirms that 75 million jobs may be lost as companies shift to more automation. Researchers at Oxford university have predicted that, twenty years from now, machines may be able to perform half of all American jobs.
B) There is a skill bias in technology – So, tech will take away the most repetitive jobs (The 3 Ds – dull, dirty, dangerous), and will lead to polarisation of skilled vs non skilled labour.
C) Most of this job loss, however, will be in the nature of creative destruction (old replaced by new), not sheer loss. And the redeployment/ reorganisation will result in economic growth eventually. As Dr Seamus McGuinness, research professor at The Economic and Social Research Institute in Dublin, says, “Improved technology tends to eliminate more routine tasks and, in doing so, raises both productivity and wages, thus creating the demand for additional services and jobs as incomes and wealth rise.” The Future of Jobs Report affirms 133 million new jobs may emerge by 2022 since tech developments will arrive in tandem with broader trends, such as the expansion of the middle class in developing countries and new energy policies. Innovations will create 58 million more jobs than they displace.
D) There will be side effects – The repercussions that America, as an example, faces as a result of the decline in manufacturing run deeper than just unemployment—in many of the areas that were once hubs of industry we can now observe a surge of opioid use and opioid related deaths. Klaus Schwab, Founder and Executive Chairman of the World Economic Forum suggested that digitisation and technology could lead to greater inequality, which could escalate social tension.
E) Economies and industries therefore have the onus to retrain/ reskill employees; and maybe introduce fiduciary measures. In 2019 Andrew Yang in the U.S. advocated the Universal Basic income/ Freedom Dividend for the millions destaffed due to automation – basically 1000 dollars each. NYC mayor De Blasio, proposed not only a hotly debated ”robot tax” but also the creation of a new federal agency to “oversee” automation and issue permits to businesses who want to increase their automation levels. Not saying this is what is required, but efforts to mitigate the negative impact of skill reorganisation will have to be thought of.
F) It’s NOT happening overnight. Even in 2018, 90% of workers in the U.S. were employed in jobs that existed 100 years before that, and only 5% of the jobs created in the twenty-year period between 1993 and 2013 came from high tech sectors. As per Mckinsey, automability doesn’t mean actual adoption. Implementation of automation is a function of — technical potential, cost of software and hardware, labour supply and demand dynamics (obviously critical in India), benefits of automation beyond substitution like higher levels of output, better quality and fewer errors, and capabilities that surpass human ability. And finally, regulatory and social aspects, i.e., acceptability of machines. Factors 3 and 5 specially mean that countries such as India will automatically be late adopters.
In addition, automation itself doesn’t necessarily lead to job loss. Boston University’s 2015 study said, “Technology rarely automates major occupations completely…Many occupations were eliminated for a variety of reasons. In many cases, demand for the occupational services declined (e.g. boardinghouse keepers); in some cases, demand declined because of technological obsolescence (e.g. telegraph operators). This, however, is not the same as automation. In only one case — elevator operators — can the decline and disappearance of an occupation be largely attributed to automation.”
This fact of adoption velocity being dependent on the country/ culture is what makes our fast tag toll booths employ so many people. Or, our “automatic” parking meters have people working it! Or, as happened in my housing apartment only yesterday, the floor cleaning machine be worked by 4 people!
Ofcourse circumstances, or larger force majeure type events is another factor one has to add – witness how Covid has hastened this adoption of automation technology, both in Industry and at Home – There were multiple instances of job losses globally due to Covid lockdowns – jobs that were replaced by robots. Floor cleaning, temperature taking, serving food (Chowbatics’ Sally, a salad-making robot), security patrolling (Knightscope’s security-guard robots to patrol empty real estate) and ofcourse manufacturing saw robots deployed. Companies closed call centers and turned to chatbots like those by LivePerson or to AI platform Watson Assistant. (Apparently roughly 100 new clients started using the software from March to June, says Rob Thomas, senior vice president of cloud and data platform at IBM). Robots could replace as many as 2 million more workers in manufacturing alone by 2025, according to a recent paper by economists at MIT and Boston University.
At home, even in India, a long lockdown saw the urban households used to domestic help for daily chores struggling to sweep, swab, clean, mop, cook. Apparently vacuum cleaners of all kinds, and dishwashers, saw stock-outs across the country. When I visited my cousin post long lockdown, my cousin’s dad in law proudly showed me “kautuk” (which means curiosity – their robot cleaner) as a thing of pride.
I bought a vacuum cleaner too – and then had to retrain my help to use it when they resumed work post covid (it took a month of stern monitoring and mandating use of the vacuum cleaner before they grudgingly agreed to use it). Even now, when they feel I’m not looking, out comes the jharu pocha. (Reminded me of the resistance we faced at work when a complex data entry project was made much more accurate (and I would like to say simpler) by a new tool which had been developed in-house by the team. But it took back breaking work to get teams to migrate to it and realise the benefits – it’s another mater that the tool helped retention of that client and probably added substantially to the valuation of the company overall).
My mum incidentally totally believes that a dishwasher is more work. I do suspect however that she enjoys labour – she belongs to the generation where work was virtuous – which is a point of view very different from mine (I am a firm subscriber to Russell’s praise of idleness).
Actually that brings me to the point of another factor that tech adoption depends on – Age. I remember old-time bosses printing out emails, and making remarks on the margins, and then getting their secretaries to type out those remarks in email responses when email was first introduced. I was recently reading Nora Ephron’s essay – I can’t feel my neck, and this part I felt was specially relevant.
All of this, brings me to think that while AI is powering collaborative robotics, and digitisation has made much more than the Fourth Industrial revolution possible, there is still a long way to go before the man vs. machine scenario becomes one where man is subsumed by machines (how sci-fi that sounds!), or even before we start wondering “who belongs to who”! Which means, we ain’t seeing Indian Toll Booths be truly automatic anytime soon!
joshsang 
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