Robots can take our jobs, but they will never render obsolete our love
Robots can take our jobs, but they will never render
obsolete our love
Yes, a machine could technically breastfeed a child. But
only a mother can provide that vital human expression of a love that overcomes
exhaustion
By Giles Fraser Thursday 2 February 2017 10.42 EST Last
modified on Thursday 2 February 2017 13.16 EST
These days, when I wake in the night, my wife is
invariably up, sitting in a chair at the side of the bed, breastfeeding our
son. I make tea and say how lovely they look. And then, I usually drift back to
sleep or reach for my book to stay awake in an act of silent solidarity. There
is not much more that I can do.
My bedside reading is about robots. And it’s probably not
a great idea to have it at the side of the bed because it has been
nightmare-inducing. I have luddite sympathies and an instinctive distrust of
technological innovation, so I don’t get some geeky thrill at the idea of
robots taking over the world, taking our jobs and forcing human beings into
obsolescence.
The Luddites were a secret society of English textile
workers whose livelihoods were removed by the introduction of power looms. For
many, the industrial revolution meant unemployment, destitution and starvation.
So, beginning in Nottinghamshire in 1811, they broke into factories and smashed
up machines. By 1812, the government moved in to protect the source of their
newfound wealth – wealth for the 1%, of course – and passed the Frame-Breaking
Act, making machine-smashing punishable by death. And Luddite activists were
executed.
But if you think the Luddites were on, as they say, “the
wrong side of history”, just wait to see what robotics and artificial
intelligence technologies will do to the employment prospects of the human
race. Donald Trump tells the US working class that China and Mexico are
stealing their jobs. But they’re not: it’s robots. Ford’s much-heralded
decision to scrap a new plant in Mexico and instead invest $700m in Michigan
will create only 700 new jobs. You don’t need many people to build cars these
days.
And nor will you need people to drive cars or fly
aeroplanes, for that matter, or deliver packages, design houses and fight wars.
Software exists to write news reports and, apparently, there are “life-like”
robots to have sex with. Into the future, robots will operate on your body and
arrest you if you break the law. Sometimes it feels as if the future is now.
Last week, I even bought my coffee from a robot – they call it Nespresso Cube.
I put in my card, pressed a few buttons and the robotised order-picking system
delivered my coffee. Not a barista in sight. There’s lots of stuff we don’t
need people for. We are rapidly becoming obsolete.
The old wisdom was that this revolution would only affect
the working-class muscle jobs and that you future-proof your usefulness by
getting into jobs of the mind; jobs that require intelligence and education.
But the whole point of artificial intelligence is that it’s automating
cognitive tasks to such an extent that computers can now do a great deal of the
head stuff better than humans. My bedside book is The Second Machine Age, by
two MIT scholars, Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee. They recount what the
Dutch grandmaster Jan Hein Donner said when asked how he’d prepare to beat a
chess computer: “I would bring a hammer.” Far from the wrong side of history,
the Luddites could be the future.
What jobs will be left? What jobs could metal and
software never do? These were my night worries, churning round in my head. And
then it struck me that the answer was quite possibly before me. Could you ever
imagine a robot breastfeeding a child? Oh, I’m sure some idiot could come up
with a humanoid with an artificial breast that lactated formula milk. But that
is only one part of what’s going on at the side of the bed. As well as feeding,
the mother is communicating a plethora of unconscious messages about being
loved and feeling safe. And in getting up in the middle of the night,
sleep-deprived and exhausted, she is putting herself out for our son in a way
that a robot never could.
Yes, a robot could be there for the child, obviously –
but not be there exhausted. And thus it couldn’t exhibit the love that
overcomes exhaustion. In other words, what the second machine age could well do
is bring to the fore the moral, spiritual and emotional aspects of being human.
When the robots have taken all the hands and head jobs, we will be reminded
again of the centrality of the heart.
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