Are engineers designing their robotic replacements? [Reflections

Abstract

ROBOTS ARE COMING FOR YOUR JOBS! THAT WAS THE gist of numerous news reports following the release of the 2016 U.S. Economic Report of the President. My first thought on reading this was that anyone who saw the videos of clumsy robots falling helplessly during the recent DARPA Robotics Challenge must have been incredulous: That's what's coming after my job!? · My second thought was more sobering. Robots are, after all, only a subset of the computerization leading to the automation of traditional jobs. As engineers we can see steady progress in machine learning, artificial intelligence, and big data. Contemplating this, it suddenly occurred to me to worry about engineering jobs. Are they threatened as well? · History has shown that while automation increases productivity and creates new jobs, it also displaces jobs. However, the president's economic report notes that in recent decades the rate of job destruction has outpaced the rate of job creation, resulting in less overall participation in the workforce. Regardless, stopping or slowing the pace of technological development has always been a fruitless exercise. While we engineers may be responsible for implementing tech's advance, we also seem powerless before its inevitable progression. As technology's handmaidens, we will undoubtedly provide at least complicit support, even as our own engineering jobs are displaced. · An earlier report, by Carl B. Frey and Michael A. Osborne, of the University of Oxford, examined the potential for technological disruption in 702 different occupations. Their study concluded that 47 percent of current U.S. jobs are at risk of displacement. In considering the risk for each occupation, they evaluated the technological bottleneck that would be most likely to occur in automation efforts. The bottleneck could arise in any of three different aspects of work–the need for perception and manipulation, the need for creative intelligence, and the need for social intelligence.