Robots wont take our jobs, say workers theyll take yours instead

Robots wont take our jobs, say workers theyll take yours insteadRobots wont take our jobs, say workers - theyll take yours insteadAs you look around your professional world, your calendar of meetings, your carefully calibrated instincts, and your strong performance reviews, the robot revolution is probably elend your primary worry. You probably think Id like to see a robot try to do all this.Larry Summers agrees.The former Treasury secretary and current Harvard professor wrote an intriguing opinion piece in the Washington Post which had a simple message Sure, you may lose your job, but dont blame the robots for it.Citing positive innovations like ja genau processing and mobile banking, Summers pleaded, why pick on robots?The target of Summers displeasure Bill Gates. The philanthropist and former Microsoft CEO told Quartz that hewants to taxour future techno-overlords.Summers isnt so sure that will work Does Gates think anyone, let alone Congress, the Trump administration or a commi ssion comprised of his fellow technocrats, can distinguish labor-saving activities from labor-enhancing ones? Surely even if experts could draw such distinctions, the ability of the IRS to administer them is in doubt.Americansare okay with robots taking someone elses jobAutomation is a real economic trend, not a hype-driven panic. Around 47% of US jobs are at risk because of automation,according to research published by the University of Oxford in 2013.But those numbers dont fully reflect how people feel about the subject.Indeed, most Americans have very little hostility toward their future robot overlords. Thats becausenot all Americans mind the bots replacing people in certain positions they just cant imagine themselves getting fired to make way for one.Some 66% of people said they agree or strongly agree that their jobs arent going anywhere, but that others will,according to a LivePersonsurvey.Blue-collar robots versus white-collar robotsThatsurveyof 2,000 Americans by customer s ervice firm LivePerson belastung month asked people to pick which jobs they would trust a robots or automated intelligence to do - if they could do them as well or better than a person.A lot of respondents decided to throw blue-collar jobs under the robot wheels 55% said cashier and 52% said factory worker, while 28% said customer service representative,22% said taxi driver, 4% said doctor/nurse, and 3% chose robot lawyers over human ones.There were holdouts 18.5% said they wouldnt trust automation in place of any jobs. (Those people will surely be the first to go when the technological revolution comes.)But robots are getting smarter every day. Yes, theyve replaced cashiers and other blue-collar jobs, but white-collar jobs are not far behind. This month, robots could be doing your taxes, inHR Blocks partnership with IBMs Watson.Even some investment bankers - richly paid advisers on mergers and acquisitions - had their bonuses taken awaylast year by their employer, a href=/company /goldmansachs-jobsGoldman Sachs/a. This year, perhaps not coincidentally, Goldman decided to support its mergers team with 75 programmers whose job is to create algorithms to better judge which mergers will work and which ones wont. That sounds great, until you remember thats the exact job investment bankers are supposed to do. No wonder young bankers are nervous.Using technology todo your taxesIn fact, robots have widely made headway into thefinancial services industry, where humans long believed that personal judgment was superior. Think of your stockbroker or your financial adviser, or your accountant or lawyer. Robots can do many aspects of those jobs now.Tax services company HR Block is partnering with IBM Watson to do your taxes this season, for the first time. HR Block employees will be using the technology to find credits and deductions available to customers.Its stunning to see how adaptable Watson is. The companies have trained the human-like technology in the federal tax code, and HR Block said the technology uses cognitive computingYou can think of Watson as being a translator in a senseTypically, you go in to get your taxes done, and bring your paper work and then you sit there on your side of the desk its not easy to see what theyre doing and whats going on, IBM spokeswoman Katy Rosati told Bloomberg Law.Technology has already replaced many other financial functions, including investing advice so-called robo-advisersincluding Betterment and WealthFront are gaining in popularity.Another way robots and algorithms are beating humans your 401(k). Studies consistently show that your investments perform better if you just dump your money in a passive vehicle, like an index fund or exchange-traded fund, rather than letting an active human manager pick stocks.Why Bill Gates wants to tax robotsBill Gates thinks that if robots are taking your place at work, theyshould also be requiredto pay taxes, like you do.Sincehuman work is subject to an income tax, r obots replacing those people in those places should be taxed at a similar level, he saidin an vorstellungsgesprch with Quartz.But Harvard University President Emeritus Lawrence Summers argued against Gatess proposal in a Washington Post opinion piece today. Robots are hugely productive, he argued - and because their numbers are potentially limitless, they can create economic growth and we shouldnt hold them back for slow-working humans.Imagine that 50 people can produce robots who will do the work of 100, Summers wrote in the Washington Post. A sufficiently high tax on robots would prevent them from being produced. Surely it would be better for society to enjoy the extra output and establish suitable taxes and transfers to protect displaced workers. It is hard to see why shrinking the pie, rather than enlarging it as much as possible and then redistributing, is the right way forward.Of course, this discussion is still highly theoretical. While automation and even drones proliferate to make our work easier, there are jobs that are too dangerous for both robots and humans the robots sent to examine the Fukushima nuclear accident site in Japan keep dying.