You’re highly educated. You make a lot of money. You should still be afraid.
1st October 2011
At this moment, there’s someone training for your job. He may not be as smart as you are—in fact, he could be quite stupid—but what he lacks in intelligence he makes up for in drive, reliability, consistency, and price. He’s willing to work for longer hours, and he’s capable of doing better work, at a much lower wage. He doesn’t ask for health or retirement benefits, he doesn’t take sick days, and he doesn’t goof off when he’s on the clock.
What’s more, he keeps getting better at his job. Right now, he might only do a fraction of what you can, but he’s an indefatigable learner—next year he’ll acquire a few more skills, and the year after that he’ll pick up even more. Before you know it, he’ll be just as good a worker as you are. And soon after that, he’ll surpass you.
As computers get better at processing and understanding language and at approximating human problem-solving skills, they’re putting a number of professions in peril. Those at risk include doctors, lawyers, pharmacists, scientists, and creative professionals—even writers like myself.
That’s okay. I do data warehousing — and Microsoft’s got my back; half of my job consists of getting their shit to do what it’s supposed to do, and doesn’t. (We call ourselves CSI SQL Server.) Let’s see a robot do that.
The problem is that many people want a job sitting at a desk pushing paper, and those jobs are going away. Those are precisely the jobs that can be automated. And such people are unwilling to accept the perceived loss of status inherent in the sort of jobs that automation just can’t do: policeman, fireman, plumber, electrician, tree trimmer, truck driver, florist. If I had kids, I would advise them not to go to college, but to get a service job that pays well (have you priced plumbers and electricians lately?) and doesn’t require you to waste four years and tens (sometimes hundreds) of thousands of dollars complying with the political correctness speech and behavior codes that make our college campuses resemble a concentration camp.