The Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future by Martin Ford

Author:Martin Ford [Ford, Martin]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: Civil, Technology & Engineering, General
ISBN: 9781780747507
Google: hB1fCgAAQBAJ
Publisher: Oneworld Publications
Published: 2015-09-03T21:01:50+00:00

WHILE RECENT APPLICATIONS OF AI and robotics to the health care field are impressive and advancing rapidly, they are, for the most part, just beginning to nibble at the edges of the hospital cost problem. With the exception of pharmacists, and possibly doctors or technicians who specialize in analyzing images or lab specimens, automating even a significant portion of the jobs done by most skilled health care workers remains a daunting challenge. For those seeking a career that is likely to be relatively safe from automation, a skilled health care profession that requires direct interaction with patients remains an excellent bet. That calculus could, of course, change in the more distant future. Twenty or thirty years from now, I think, it’s impossible to say with any real confidence what might be technologically possible.

Technology is not the only consideration, of course. Health care, more than any other sector of the economy, is subject to a complex web of rules and regulations imposed by governments, agencies like the FDA, and licensing authorities. Every action and every decision are also colored by the looming threat of litigation if an error—or perhaps just an unlucky outcome—should occur. Even among retail pharmacists, the specific impact of automation on employment isn’t easily discernible. The reason is likely regulation. Farhad Manjoo interviewed one pharmacist who said, “Most pharmacists are employed only because the law says that there has to be a pharmacist present to dispense drugs.”37 That, at least for the moment, is probably something of an exaggeration. Job prospects for newly minted pharmacists have worsened significantly over the past decade, and things may well get worse. A 2012 analysis identifies a “looming joblessness crisis for new pharmacy graduates” and suggests that the unemployment rate could reach 20 percent.38 However, this is likely due largely to an explosion in the number of new graduates entering the job market as pharmacy schools have dramatically increased enrollments.* Relative to most other occupations, there’s little doubt that health care professionals enjoy an extraordinary degree of employment security as a result of factors completely unrelated to the technical challenges associated with automating their jobs.

This may be good news for health care workers, but if technology has only a muted impact on health care costs even as it disrupts other employment sectors, the economic risks we face will be amplified. In that scenario, the burden of soaring health care costs will become even more unsustainable as advancing technology continues to produce unemployment and ever-increasing inequality, as well as stagnant, or even falling, incomes for most workers in other industries. This prospect makes it even more critical to introduce meaningful reforms that will correct the market power imbalance between insurers and providers so that advancing technology can be fully leveraged as a mechanism for increased efficiency across the health care sector. Without that, we run the risk that our market economy will eventually come to be dominated by a sector that is inefficient and, indeed, not an especially well-functioning market at all.

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