The cleanup of jobs will be ruthless

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Valentin Katasonov on the fourth industrial revolution giving rise to the robot society

Last year, the Davos Forum was held under the slogan "The Fourth Industrial Revolution". The ideological rationale for this slogan was presented in the new book of the same name by the founder and permanent president of the World Economic Forum, the Swiss economist professor Klaus Martin Schwab. At this year's forum in Davos, the conversation about the fourth industrial revolution was continued.

Today, at conferences, round tables, forums, congresses (any: scientific, political, economic, cultural) the phrase "fourth industrial revolution" is becoming an almost indispensable attribute of any report and speech. Let's try to figure out what it is: another fashion or really fixation of serious, tectonic changes in the economy, society, culture? Let us refer to the book of the Swiss professor, which has already been published in Russian (Schwab Klaus. The fourth industrial revolution. - M.: Eksmo, 2016).

Klaus Schwab explains that the first industrial revolution was the widespread use of steam engines, which allowed many industries to be mechanized. As you know, this revolution began in England in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The second industrial revolution, which began in the late 19th century, was the widespread use of electricity, electric motors and other electrical engineering, which continued the process of mechanizing production and helped create mass production. In the last decades of the twentieth century, the third revolution began, which was expressed in the widespread introduction of electronics, computers, information technologies. This revolution is sometimes referred to as "digital". It leads to the automation of production and other areas of economic activity.

The fourth industrial revolution is unfolding before our eyes. Some believe that this is a continuation of the "digital" revolution, its new stage, at which technology begins to supplant a person. However, according to Klaus Schwab, the qualitative difference between the fourth revolution and the third is also the synergistic effect that arises from the merger of different technologies: computer, information, nanotechnology, biotechnology, etc. Another facet of the fourth revolution, according to Schwab, as well as other sociologists and futurists, the blurring of lines between the physical, digital (informational) and biological (including human) worlds can become. It is not very clear to Schwab himself why scientific and technological progress went along this channel.

It is difficult for the most perspicacious futurists and sociologists to imagine what society, economy, and people will become in the coming decades. But intuitively, they sense that the change will be revolutionary. That the fourth revolution will be not only and not so much "industrial", it will affect all aspects of human life. Moreover, the consequences can be not only with a plus sign, but negative or even destructive for man and human civilization. What are the fears of experts in connection with the fourth industrial revolution?

First, as we have already noted, the widespread introduction of robots can lead to the displacement of a person from the sphere of production and other sectors of the economy - first partial, and then complete (social consequences).

Second, robots can start controlling people (political implications)

Thirdly, as a result of connection with a robot, a person can turn into a cyborg, i.e. the extinction of what we used to call homo sapiens (anthropological consequences) will occur.

Experts working on the subject of the fourth industrial revolution draw attention to the fact that changes at the beginning of the 21st century began to occur at a rapid pace. However, the driving forces behind these changes are not well understood. Someone believes that the fourth revolution is an "objective" process of the development of science and technology, someone believes that it is the fruit of a conspiracy of the world behind the scenes against humanity, someone is sure of the mystical nature of these changes (the "inspirer" of this process has horns and hooves).

It is noteworthy that much of what Klaus Schwab attributes to the fourth industrial revolution was predicted and described in detail by famous science fiction writers of the past (Edgar Poe, Jules Verne, H. G. Wellsand others), as well as by dystopian writers (the most famous of them are: Evgeny Zamyatin, Aldous Huxley, George Orwell, Ray Bradbury). Involuntarily, the question arises about the sources of the "perspicacity" of the writers-futurists. But this is a topic for another conversation.

The main attention of the general public, politicians, the media today is focused on the social consequences of the fourth revolution associated with the introduction of robots. This is the first and most understandable "layer" of the revolution. Let's dwell on the topic of robots in more detail.

In the narrow sense, robots are understood as technical devices that make it possible to replace a person in production and other areas of economic activity. Robots in mechanical engineering and other industries began to appear in the last century. Their introduction was called production automation, robots increased the productivity of the remaining workers. But at some point in time, the production facilities became completely deserted. Gradually, robotization began to go beyond material production, capturing trade, transport, services, finance and monetary circulation.

Things have reached the point that today most of the decisions in the field of financial speculation are made by robots that calculate the most optimal "moves" based on processing large amounts of information about the state of various financial markets. Such robots during the working day can make a large number of transactions for buying and selling financial instruments, earning significant profits due to gigantic turnovers. In the world of speculation, this is called “high frequency trading,” and the need for live traders is steadily declining.

Robots are also being introduced by banks and investment funds into the field of asset management. Robot consultants (robo-advisers) are rapidly gaining a place under the sun on the world stock markets. According to the research company Aite Group, in 2015 the global robo-advising industry showed 200% growth. The Bank of Russia, in its report published last summer, estimated the total volume of assets managed by robotic consultants at $ 50 billion worldwide, and McKinsey & Co believes that in the future this volume could grow to $ 13.5 trillion. dollars. While robots in management companies, funds and banks act as consultants. However, tomorrow they can completely "take the chair" of a living asset manager.

In a broad sense, robots are understood as technical devices that not only carry out operations in the field of production and various areas of professional activity, but also serve the domestic sphere. The most striking example is cars driven by autopilots. A person will not have to drive, the car will be driven by a robot. This is not fiction, Google has been developing and testing self-driving cars for several years now. Mass production of robotic cars can start in 2-3 years.

Today, the term “smart things” is in common use. We are talking about the fact that there is an automation of things that every person uses every day. For example, "smart" curtains that adjust transparency depending on the level of ambient light and the desired lighting in the room. Experts see great prospects in creating a "smart" home - a system of home devices capable of solving tasks necessary for a tenant without human intervention: turning on / off the light, changing the heat supply to the house, operating the air conditioner, monitoring the operation of other household appliances.

One of the areas of robotization is the widespread introduction of 3D printers. It is a peripheral device that uses the method of layer-by-layer creation of a physical object from a digital 3D model. Already today, 3D printers are used to make models and molds for foundry, for the production of various little things at home, in medicine (in prosthetics and the production of implants). However, there are already examples of making much more serious and massive things using this technology - parts for the production of weapons (and even all weapons), car bodies, in construction, etc.

Even more "advanced" robotization is the linking of production robots, as well as "robotic things" into unified networks. This is called the "robotic internet" or "machine-to-machine communication". As conceived by the developers of such systems, machine-to-machine communication can optimize production, commercial and financial operations and is extremely promising in large corporations.

Companies specializing in information and computer technologies (ICT) and promoting robots in all spheres of society (even in government and military affairs) seek to show that robotization is a direct path to the "golden future" of humanity. However, sociologists, politicians and simply sane people have serious fears that robotization can lead to catastrophic consequences. We all remember the phrase “the sheep ate people” from history. We are talking about the era of the initial accumulation of capital in England, when the peasants were driven from the land, deprived of their means of subsistence, and the occupied lands were fenced off and organized sheep grazing. Sheep produced wool, which the early capitalists of England supplied to various countries of the world. Something similar can happen in the 21st century in connection with the robotization of the economy, when they say: "The robots ate people."

We don't have to go far for examples of how deserted workshops, production sites, and entire enterprises appear before our eyes. So, in the 90s, the European company Adidas decided to move its production to Asia, where labor was several times cheaper than in Germany. Today a new stage of "optimization" of the company's costs has begun, even without moving production thousands of kilometers from the "base". Adidas starts work in a new factory in Ansbach, Germany, where all operations are carried out by robots. The name of this factory speaks for itself - "Fast Factory". The factory will be operating at full capacity this year. In addition, next year it is planned to open the same factory in the United States, a little later in the UK or France. Another sports shoe manufacturer, Nike, is following the same path, and announced the imminent commissioning of a completely deserted factory.

The second example relates to electronics. A leading manufacturer of electronic components for Apple, Hewlett-Packard, Dell and Sony, Foxconn Corporation is focused on Taiwan. She installed 1 million robots that replaced 1.2 million workers.

Third example. In Australia, one of the world's largest mining companies, Rio Tinto, uses self-driving trucks and drills that do not require human operators to operate iron ore deposits. Automatic trains will soon be launched, which will deliver ore to the port, located about 480 km away.

Newspapers, magazines, television almost every day publish estimates of how many jobs the introduction of robots can "save" for employers in individual enterprises, in individual industries and industries, in the economy as a whole in the coming years. So, an American futurist Dick Peltierbelieves that by 2030, humanity will lose 50 million jobs, which will go to robots. And by 2040, humanity will have lost more than half of all jobs in the world.

Research firm Gartner estimates that automation will reduce the total number of jobs by 1/3 in 10 years. Economists at Oxford University estimate that half of today's jobs will be replaced by machine technology within 20 years. Analysts at the consulting company Deloitte and scientists at Oxford University concluded that over the next 20 years, robots could reduce the number of jobs by 35%. This means that every third worker will be unemployed. In general, all estimates are close to each other. They also correspond with the figures contained in the book by Klaus Schwab.

In the 19th and 20th centuries. the introduction of new technology led to an increase in labor productivity and the release of jobs. But at the same time, new industries and industries arose that created new jobs. For many years and even decades, due to such a compensating effect, it was possible to maintain the level of employment (unemployment) at approximately the same (relatively socially safe) level. In order to reduce the negative consequences of the introduction of new technologies on employment, the authorities organized labor exchanges and retraining of personnel. And in the years when Keynesianism was the official economic ideology of the authorities, the state created additional jobs (recall the US public works program in the 1930s under the President Franklin Roosevelt).

Alas, no countervailing effects are expected today. The offensive of robots on the widest front is observed. They will “clean up” jobs in manufacturing, trade, consumer services, transport, and banking. Even in the field of public administration, in connection with the e-government project, power structures may become deserted. In the field of military affairs - the same thing (suffice it to recall modern drones - aren't these flying robots replacing the dangerous profession of a military pilot?). Robotics will hit the so-called "middle class" especially painfully. Every year there are fewer and fewer “irreplaceable” specialties. Today in China, by the way, a robot has been created, which has been taught to write the simplest notes in the media. Maybe tomorrow there will be a robot who will write novels?

What will a society "populated" by robots be like? Can this dangerous trend of robotization be resisted? How real is the threat of “capture” of jobs by robots in Russia? I will try to answer these and other questions in my next publications.