President Obama’s White House warned again Tuesday that low-wage employees such as cashiers and drivers face losing their jobs to robots in the years ahead.
Economic and scientific advisers to Obama said in a new report that “millions” of such workers are “likely to face displacement from or restructuring of their current jobs, leading millions of Americans to experience economic hardship in the short-run absent new policies.” Accordingly, the administration called for boosting safety net and early education programs, and for increasing funding for job training sixfold to transition workers to new lines of work.
Tuesday’s report follows a warning from Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers earlier this year that workers in jobs paying less than $20 an hour face an 83 percent chance of seeing their work automated in the years ahead.
In Tuesday’s analysis, the White House issued three recommendations for policies relating to artificial intelligence: investing more in artificial intelligence, educating workers to move up in skills, and aiding workers in transitioning to new forms of work.
Without those approaches, the report makes clear, the country is at risk of having artificial intelligence compete with low-skilled workers, lowering their wages, while delivering benefits to managers and thereby exacerbating inequality.
Artificial intelligence “will help make the pie bigger. We want to make sure that everyone benefits from that,” said Jason Furman, chairman of Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, speaking on a call with reporters Tuesday afternoon.
One positive note in the report is that new jobs likely will be created in the field of artificial intelligence. Workers will be needed to develop the technology, including not just engineers but increasingly philosophers and sociologists who can grapple with the ethics and social impact of artificial intelligence. Similarly, people will be needed as supervisors, not only to make sure that automated machines don’t break, but also that they interact well and ethically with people. New jobs also will be created in helping robots engage with humans and in arranging infrastructure for robots, the report suggested, such as in the case of preparing roads for self-driving cars.
