Fifty years ago, a committee organized by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences concluded a study into automated language translation by saying that “There is no immediate or predictable prospect of useful machine translation.”
Forty years ago, the idea that trained doctors could ever be challenged by algorithms was similarly the stuff of sci-fi novels and movies.
Ten years ago, respected MIT and Harvard economists Frank Levy and Richard Murnane published their book The New Division of Labor, containing an optimistic chapter called “Why People Still Matter,” which patiently explained why software could never replace a human driver.
In all of these cases, the people making the forecasts weren’t idiots. They were doing what rational individuals ought to do: basing their conclusions on the available evidence, and then extrapolating on it to predict what was going to happen next. At the same time, in every one of these predictions the experts claiming that a certain part of life was automation-proof turned out to be wrong.
Today Google Translate, medical algorithms, and self-driving cars are all very much a reality. Almost every field of work–from lawyers and law enforcement officials, to accountants and architects–is undergoing an “algorithmic turn” as greater parts of it (including decision-making abilities) are handed over to automation.
“This is happening faster and faster,” says Erik Brynjolfsson, director of the MIT Center for Digital Business–who has recently co-authored a new book with principal research scientist Andrew McAfee entitled, The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies. “I think that is why people are becoming scared by the process, because they’re seeing the automation can affect a much, much broader set of jobs than ever before.”
The Second Machine Age
The classic narrative of techno-replacement–as harsh as it might have been–stated that if you did a job straightforward enough to be replaced by a machine, you more or less deserved whatever happened. While blue collar jobs found themselves “disrupted” by new technology, white collar jobs typically enjoyed only the positive “sustaining” qualities of improved technology: help making their jobs easier and more efficient.
