Daneel Olivaw and a Robust Economy

When I was just age 13, Isaac Asimov began his epic career as a novelist (he had others) with the publication of I, Robot, precursor of a sweeping saga of the “future history of mankind”.  It would go on to include by some estimates over 500 books that would contain major science fiction works like the Foundation series as mere subsets.  Threading his way through it all is the semi-immortal humanoid robot R. Daneel Olivaw, often invisible but always active in his watchful guardianship over the emergence of a galaxy-wide human civilization into full maturity. So invisible in fact that a whole series can go by without any reference to him, only to have his key role in it revealed much later in other series.  He easily captured the imagination of a 13 year old boy.  And he fundamentally shaped all our views of robotics, both for the better and the worse, long before the actual birth of the field.

I was reminded of this while rummaging through some old papers and discovering a graduate school policy analysis I had written back in 1983, on “Managing the Impacts of Robotics”.  It contained some of the usual blather of grad school papers, but also some insights and recommendations I still find useful 30 years later.  It starts off by pointing out that “robotics” is a loose concept that can combine many different technologies. A firm definition is uncertain, and that definition can make a huge difference.  One of the reasons Japan’s use of robotics has advanced much more quickly than that of the U.S. is that Japan’s definition of Robot is much broader than that of the U.S.  That is the negative side of R. Daneel Olivaw.  We tend to think of robots “only” as walking, perhaps talking, possibly humanoid, intelligent machines capable of performing work and making decisions on their own.  That leads to the view of robots as a product to be built, used and sold, rather than a process for doing work.  We are gradually learning better now, partly by emulating the Japanese, but in the meantime it has prevented our recognizing that productive use of robotics will require fundamental reshaping of factories, work flows, and ways of relating to work itself, and it has slowed both our use of robotics in the U.S. and our entrance into the global robotics markets.  For example, we have trade restrictions against sale abroad of sophisticated electronic components capable of being redirected to use in weaponry, and that practically is our definition of a robot.  And it has left us unfocused on necessary alterations in the relations between the work process and our labor supply, i.e., us.  Again for example, a work process consisting of worker + simple task requires much less training for the worker than a process consisting of worker + robot + complex task.  An educated work force becomes a necessity.  And of course, how to deal with worker displacement is already a well known major issue.

 One of the things that made introduction of robotics fairly easy for the Japanese is that they faced a growing labor shortage as their population began to shrink.  An article in the Washington Post today reported that the U.S. worker population is now growing much more slowly than it has in the past. The Post sees it as a possible harbinger of a permanently stagnant economy, but of course it could count as a kind of grim blessing as a backdrop for a vigorous transition into a robotics driven economy.  That economy could include all sorts of robotic tasks we haven’t even thought of yet.  The rest of the world is already getting out ahead of us, and we have a lot of catching up to do.  In Japan, they’re developing robots for child care.  The BBC reports that in Scotland, they’ve developed a robot named “Giraff” for care and companionship of persons with dementia living alone.    It’s a humanoid robot with a TV screen for a face.  Steered by a caregiver located elsewhere, it can go around cleaning up, checking for use of medications, etc., then allows the caregiver, shown on the TV screen, to hold companionable conversations with the dementia patient.  The possibilities for improving the quality of our lives as well as the productivity of our workplaces are enormous.  Daneel would be proud.

The Japanese found that one of the quickest ways to spread robotics is a system where robots are developed by R&D in large organizations for use in small businesses.  We tend to think in terms of robots clanging their way around the floor of large factories, but that could be only the smaller part of the picture.   To achieve that robotics diffusion process in an American setting will involve reshaping our thinking about business-labor relations. Here, I found two of my recommendations back in 1983 to be still of possible interest.  First, it could involve setting up a system of guaranteed lifetime part-time employment in exchange for a payroll tax based system of “training accounts” that provide for the lifelong retraining that will be part of a robotics driven economy.  Second, and a necessary adjunct to the first, is the creation of “robot leasing corporations” in which workers could buy shares and derive income as robots are leased by small businesses.  In other countries, such corporations might be a government-business joint venture, but in America large pension funds might work better as a funding medium.

Whatever the particular ways of managing the diffusion of robots, it is too important an issue to be left to “nature taking its course.”  Failure to resolve the issue in equitable ways will result in long-term social conflict and the gradual falling behind of America in the global economy.  The Post article noted that the difference over 25 years between a projected stagnant annual growth of 1.75 percent and a robust growth of 3 percent is 36 percent of the size of the resulting economy.  One of the primary dangers in introducing new technology is premature entrenchment of a haphazard way of using it which forecloses better long-term opportunities for its management.  We have already lost too much time on robotics, and the door of opportunity is closing quickly.  We need ways to work together.