The Robots Are Coming!

by Andres Oppenheimer

  THE SPORTS-RELATED JOBS OF THE FUTURE

  The sports of the future—along with the new sports bars and gyms—will give rise to several new jobs that don’t exist today. There will be a need for robot engineers and technicians to look after athletes’ artificial limbs, as well as doctors and nurses specializing in bionic medicine. The boundary between the human and the artificial parts of the athlete will be increasingly blurred as bionic prostheses—like the robotic legs being developed by Hugh Herr at MIT that we discussed in chapter 1—become more popular.

  And sports medicine will no longer be a profession limited to working for professional teams with injured athletes. It will have a much broader appeal as more athletes will be using physical enhancers and new products derived from biomedical breakthroughs to improve their physical or psychological conditions. In the beginning, over the next five to ten years, these products will be used mostly by professional athletes. But later on, maybe in ten or twenty years, there will be a distinction between natural athletes and those who have been enhanced. In a prediction that might seem a bit farfetched—but perhaps is not—the Delaware North study suggests that natural athletes and those who have been “perfected” will play in separate leagues, the way amateurs and professionals do today. “But there will be a Super Bowl,” the study says, because “who wouldn’t pay to see if natural-born humans can beat ones we ‘perfected’ in the lab?”

  THE RISE OF TOURISM

  The widely expected increase in people’s free time will also boost the tourism industry. According to the World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC), the industry will generate 30 million new jobs over the next ten years, bringing the total number of jobs directly involved in tourism to 100 million worldwide by 2027. That will translate into 6.5 million new jobs in India, 4.5 million in China, 1.6 million in the United States, 934,000 in Mexico, 741,000 in Brazil, 390,000 in Germany, 248,000 in France, 218,000 in Great Britain, 153,000 in Spain, 102,000 in South Korea, and 94,000 in Japan.

  WTTC president Gloria Guevara told me that the boom in tourism will take place not only because people will have more free time and a growing population of retirees will be looking to travel, but also because millennials—people born between 1980 and the start of the new millennium—are more excited about exploring the world than previous generations. “When you ask millennials about their personal wishes in life, ‘traveling’ is always one of the top three things they mention. In the past, when you asked people what their top priorities were, they would say paying off their house or buying a car. That’s why the tourism industry is now growing at 4 percent a year,” she said.

  But won’t people prefer to stay in the comfort of their homes and see the world through their virtual reality headsets? I asked her. “On the contrary, virtual reality is going to motivate and inspire people to travel more,” Guevara replied. “Augmented and virtual reality will allow you to improve on your travel experience. You will be able to visit the Colosseum in Rome, for example, put on your VR viewer, and watch gladiators fight in that same place just as they did in ancient times.” Guevara also told me that when she took her young son to the Colosseum, he was disappointed. “Mom, this is just a bunch of rocks,” he said. Once children can combine the experience of being in a physical place with access to historical images through augmented reality—like visiting Mayan ruins and seeing how the people once lived—the whole travel experience will be much richer, she explained.

  TRAVEL WILL BE MUCH EASIER

  What about the threat of terrorism? Won’t that, and the long lines at airport security checkpoints, quash people’s desire to travel? I asked the WTTC president. Guevara conceded that “traveling has become increasingly complicated and invasive,” but added that the industry is working with various governments to solve the problem. Over the next ten years, biometric face-recognition systems will be put in place in most airports so that people can enter and exit without the need to show a boarding pass or even a passport, making the whole travel experience much less tedious, she said.

  Cameras with facial recognition technology will take your picture and compare it with your fingerprints, a technology that is already being tested among others in New York, Atlanta, Boston, and Chinese airports. Databases with the faces of billions of people will be able to identify passengers as they enter and leave airports. “Your face and your fingerprints will be your ID,” Guevara said. “Nobody can forge that. Biometric data will revolutionize the tourism industry and make traveling a much more pleasant experience.”

  And you won’t have to carry around heavy suitcases, because much of what you’ll be wearing in the future—including clothes from the most famous designers—will be printed anywhere. “In the future, instead of carrying your shoes around in your luggage, you will be able to print them on a 3-D printer at your hotel room. You will download your shoes from your computer and print them out right there,” Guevara assured me. “It’s already happening,” she added, pointing out that many of the shoes worn during 2017 Milan Fashion Week were produced by 3-D printers.

  Asked whether business travel won’t be hurt by new high-quality videoconferencing technologies—why travel if you can talk with a life-size hologram?—she told me that “on the contrary, business tourism is growing and will continue to grow.” During the last six years, global spending on business tourism—which makes up nearly a quarter of world tourism—grew by 33 percent. And it’s expected to continue growing by an average of 3.7 percent per year between 2017 and 2026, according to WTTC projections. While videoconferencing is on the rise and Skype is basically free, it will be a long time before technology can replace personal contact, Guevara said. People will continue to travel so they can look each other in the eye and close a deal in person, and will continue attending business conferences and conventions, because “there’s an element of trust that can only be measured with personal contact,” she added. “Once the deal is closed, you can use videoconferencing to follow up, but the initial deal will most likely continue to be made in person.”

  FUTURE CRUISES WILL BE BIGGER THAN EVER BEFORE

  The demand for travel on cruise ships is growing so fast that “if this was Christmas and you were Santa Claus, I’d ask for nothing,” said Frank J. Del Rio, president and CEO of Norwegian Cruise Lines Holdings, at a 2018 industry convention. According to the Cruise Lines International Association (CLIA), the industry is setting new passenger records every year, and was projected to serve 27 million people in 2018.

  There are currently more than a hundred cruise ships under construction or on order to be built by 2028, and they are getting bigger than ever. Many are capable of handling over 6,000 passengers and are adding ever more amenities. When Del Rio was asked at the conference if ships will have new and unexpected features, like a racetrack, he said, “No idea is absurd anymore. These ships are big. Anything can fit on them, and they are only going to get bigger.” And there are companies that are getting into the cruise business for the first time, like Ritz-Carlton, whose 300-passenger luxury ships will target the wealthiest tourists.

  According to the United Nations World Tourism Organization, by 2030, international tourism—measured in international flights—will grow by 50 percent over its current levels, reaching 1.8 billion trips per year. And as with the film, music, and sports industries, the expansion of tourism will give rise to all kinds of new jobs. There will be a demand for developers of augmented reality content to complement the physical experience of tourism with scenes from either ancient times or the distant future, as well as for historians, political scientists, or experts in local cuisine who will be with us virtually or in person, ready to answer any tourist’s question while walking the streets of Paris, visiting the ruins of Machu Picchu, or exploring the pyramids of Egypt.

  Granted, there will always be some unemployed actors, musicians, sports commentators, and tour guides, but these will not be among the high-risk professions in the
future. There will be fewer parents who will be concerned about their children’s future when the kids inform them that they want to pursue a career in the entertainment business.

  *1 There are previous cases of actors whose images were used to create computer-generated scenes after their deaths, like Brandon Lee in the final minutes of The Crow. But Walker’s case is considered a milestone because it was the most technically complex at the time.

  *2 The MPAA data account for all occupations connected to the film industry, including indirect jobs. According to more specific data from the U.S. Department of Labor, there were 250,000 people working specifically on movies and videos in 2016, up from 146,000 in 2009.

  10

  THE JOBS OF THE FUTURE

  When I was finishing this book, something happened to me that—while it may not seem extraordinary—momentarily left me in a state of shock. It was the overnight disappearance of the lady who worked as the cashier at the parking garage of the 200 South Biscayne Boulevard building in downtown Miami. She was a Cuban lady named Irma—I remember her name because it was embroidered on her uniform—and she was replaced by a machine from one day to the next. My brief chats with Irma had become part of my weekly routine, when I would go out for lunch with my son every Thursday and leave my car in his office building’s garage. Irma had recognized me from television, and after meeting me in person, she had become a loyal viewer of my TV show, or so she said. Every Thursday, she had a comment about something she had seen in one of my shows or a question about the news of the day.

  At first, when I was spiraling down the parking ramp toward Irma’s ticket booth, I would be awaiting her comments with a mixture of resignation and curiosity. But as time went on, I realized that even her most sarcastic comments about the guests on my show or a particular tie I had worn on TV were all in good fun. And soon enough, I began to enjoy our regular little conversations. It even got to the point where I started asking her about what topics interested her, turning her into an informal one-woman focus group for my show or my newspaper columns. Until one day, after I circled my way down the parking ramp, ready for my weekly meeting with Irma, I found that she had vanished, along with the glass booth where she worked. In their place was a tower-shaped machine into which I had to insert my ticket and credit card.

  The sudden automation of Irma’s job shouldn’t have caught me by surprise because I had been seeing it happen all over for several years. Cashiers, phone operators, receptionists, and even cameramen had been disappearing around me for a long time. But almost all of them had made their exit more gradually, with prior warning signs. Usually they were reassigned to perform a different task, and then another, before they finally disappeared without a trace. But Irma had been replaced by a machine overnight. The suddenness of it shocked me, and it led me to see more clearly than ever what is happening to millions of other people around the world.

  THE NEW CONSENSUS ABOUT THE FUTURE OF JOBS

  During the five years I spent researching this book, there has been a major shift in the consensus among tech leaders and futurologists about the future of jobs. In 2013, when I started interviewing leading experts on this subject, there was a general sense of optimism that technology would create more jobs than it destroyed, as had always been the case. At around that time, Peter Diamandis, cofounder of Singularity University and one of the most passionate Silicon Valley techno-optimists, had published his book Abundance. The subtitle said it all: The Future Is Better Than You Think. In that book, Diamandis and his coauthor, Steven Kotler, predicted that—as has been the case since the Industrial Revolution—robots would not have a negative effect on employment. On the contrary, they will take some of the thankless tasks that humans are currently doing—like repetitive and physically demanding factory work—and allow us to devote ourselves to new and much more rewarding occupations. For every parking lot attendant like Irma who is replaced by a machine, new and more pleasant job opportunities will crop up, they argued.

  Nowadays, Diamandis still has a largely positive view of the future, but he isn’t as convinced as he once was that technology will create more jobs than it will destroy. In fact, he is concerned that the speed of automation could result in a social earthquake. When I saw him at a conference at Singularity University, four years after I had first interviewed him, Diamandis had significantly changed his tune. To my surprise, after reiterating his optimistic view of the future—he recalled that the average human life-span has nearly doubled in the last hundred years, and that the cost of food is now thirteen times cheaper than it was thanks to technological advancements—Diamandis pointed out that “technological unemployment is coming fast, and it has the potential to lead to significant social unrest.”

  Furthermore, he added, “while the magnitude of the coming change doesn’t bother me, it is the speed of the change I’m worried about. A lot of people are going to be very upset, a universal basic income will probably have to be created, but that won’t be very helpful if people’s mentality is still centered on their jobs. The truth is that I don’t have an answer. All I can say is that I’m very concerned about the issue.” Diamandis was openly accepting what Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, and Stephen Hawking, among others, had recently acknowledged: that technology is advancing at such a dizzying pace that—unlike what has happened in the past—it will kill millions of jobs before they can be replaced with new ones.

  MARK ZUCKERBERG: “WE LIVE IN AN UNSTABLE TIME”

  In his commencement speech to the Harvard graduating class of 2017, Zuckerberg highlighted the growing concern shared by other Silicon Valley tech moguls about the social impact of automation. “We live in an unstable time,” the Facebook founder told the young graduates. “When our parents graduated…purpose reliably came from your job, your church, your community. But today, technology and automation are eliminating many jobs….Many people feel disconnected and depressed, and are trying to fill a void.”

  During his travels, Zuckerberg said, “I’ve met factory workers who know their old jobs aren’t coming back and are trying to find their place.” To counter rising unemployment, he suggested that we “explore ideas like a universal basic income to give everyone a cushion to try new things.” And his advice to the young graduates was to find a purpose in their lives, to take on “big meaningful projects,” and to be both idealistic and persistent.

  Just as other generations went down in history for putting a man on the moon, immunizing children against polio, building the Hoover Dam, and countless other public accomplishments that required millions of workers, the upcoming generations should take on challenges like finding a way to end global warming through the use of solar energy and overcoming preventable diseases, he said. “I know, you’re probably thinking: I don’t know how to build a dam, or get a million people involved in anything,” he continued. “But let me tell you a secret: no one does when they begin. Ideas don’t come out fully formed. They only become clear as you work on them. You just have to get started.”

  DEVELOPING COUNTRIES WILL BE THE MOST AFFECTED BY AUTOMATION

  Contrary to what many might believe, the countries that will be most threatened by the automation of jobs won’t be the United States, Germany, Japan, and other highly industrialized countries. Rather, it will be developing countries in Asia, Southeast Asia, Latin America, and Africa. The reason for this is that developing countries tend to have the highest percentage of workers in manufacturing jobs, doing manual labor that will be increasingly automated. As wages continue to rise in China, Mexico, and other manufacturing nations, and the price of industrial robots continues to fall, it will be increasingly profitable for U.S. and European multinationals to replace these workers with robots in their own territories, closer to their home markets.

  In 2017, as noted earlier, Adidas announced that it would be closing up a factory in China and shifting production of its footwear there to automated factories in the Uni
ted States and Germany. This announcement came nearly thirty years after Adidas and many other manufacturing firms started moving their factories to Asia to take advantage of cheap labor. In its new roboticized factory in Bavaria, Germany, Adidas can churn out shoes in five hours, whereas in Chinese factories with human workers it took several weeks. It should be no surprise, then, that the company decided to pack up its plant in China.

  Even Bangladesh, which became a magnet for the global textile industry thanks to its supply of cheap labor, is automating its factories. According to The Wall Street Journal, the Mohammadi Group, located in that nation’s capital, has already laid off around 500 workers and replaced them with robots. At the Mohammadi Fashion Sweaters factory, which produces pullovers for Zara, H&M, and other department stores around the world, there are now just a few dozen workers who oversee a fleet of 173 robots imported from Germany. They are much more efficient than human workers, and “it doesn’t make sense for us to slow ourselves down,” said Rubana Huq, managing director of the Mohammadi Group.

  This new generation of textile robots can do very intricate tasks, like sewing belt loops to trousers, that only human workers were able to do until recently. “Even inexpensive workers in the world’s developing countries are vulnerable to automation, now that machines and robots are reaching into trades that previously seemed immune,” the newspaper said.