Perceived Usefulness: Automation is Here to Stay, and We Need to Adapt.
How does something come to be seen as useful? It’s something that’s been in the back of my mind for a while now, and I want to explore the driving forces behind perceived utility, specifically relating to automation—why do people fear it, rather than embrace the change?
Perceived usefulness isn’t a new subject. In fact, it was even a topic of research in 1989. Fred Davis’ paper asserts that people tend to adopt technology based on the belief that it will help them perform their jobs better. However, this idea is turned on its head as routine tasks become increasingly automated leading to very real fears from workers that they will be replaced. In other words, what if automation makes workers obsolete?
By 2030, it’s projected that up to 400 to 800 million people globally will be displaced by automation. Arguably this should be a good thing, it means fewer redundant jobs and people will be free to pursue other interests. In order for people to find utility in a new technology, they need to see its usefulness. Automation has the potential to give people the time to pursue their passions, rather than simply work for a living. To that end, I’ll call this social utility—people stand to regain free agency because of automation. Unfortunately, so long as people’s livelihoods are tied to their occupation and ability to perform productive labor, automation serves as a hindrance and a competitor, not as a utility.
Social safety nets such as universal basic income and universal healthcare are paramount as routine tasks are taken over by artificial intelligence and automation. In order to create a perceived usefulness for these new technologies among those most affected, we must create programs to decouple income from labor. Businesses have a poor track record of considering the broader societal implications of replacing human beings with more efficient technological solutions. However, we shouldn’t be scorning the tools that we build, we should be questioning the systems we have in place.
Without social structures and programs in place to accommodate the people who will be replaced, the recent advances in workplace efficiency have minimal social utility. These developments don’t make people’s jobs easier, they make their lives harder. Every era has seen a push by businesses to treat human beings as replaceable parts in a machine. The industrial revolution saw inhumane practices toward workers that most today would consider abhorrent. Slavery also had proponents singing the praises of a hostage workforce.
Without considering the human cost as we move to streamline our industries, modern businesses risk becoming the same villains that favor progress at the price of people.
As a Southerner, the folktale about John Henry comes to mind. Supposedly, John Henry was a legendary steel driver—the best at what he did. He hammered holes in rocks for the explosives used to create railway tunnels. The premise is that steel drivers were being replaced by steam drills. However, John Henry wasn’t about to let this happen. He raced the machine and was victorious, however in the end he “died with a hammer in his hand” due to the sheer exertion of the task.
My suspicion is that if John Henry had UBI and healthcare, he wouldn’t have had much of a reason to care about that steam drill. The intent of the folktale is to illustrate a man who was so committed to his trade that he died for his passion. To me, there’s an underlying sadness in the story. John Henry felt that he had nothing else in life other than his trade, and once that trade became obsolete, he decided to stake his pride in his craft and died to prove a point. That isn’t the way to a sustainable future. People shouldn’t have to be so threatened by new technologies that they’re willing to stake their lives on preventing its implementation.
History is littered with cautionary tales like this. In order to foster a sense of utility for these new tools, it is imperative that we create a sense of security for the people who will be replaced by them.
The inescapable truth is that millions of jobs will be replaced by automation, or made obsolete. Our institutions must do more to address the looming crisis, and we must hold our institutions accountable for doing the right by our laborers. Otherwise, workers will simply end up like John Henry, dying with their hammers in their hands.
