Amol Rajan: Be creative if you want to outsmart the robots

Machines will never produce great works of art, write memorable stanzas, design exquisite museums or compose beautiful symphonies
13 February 2014
WEST END FINAL

Get our award-winning daily news email featuring exclusive stories, opinion and expert analysis

I would like to be emailed about offers, event and updates from Evening Standard. Read our privacy notice.

Around about this time last week I went on Iain Dale’s excellent drivetime show on LBC. The Tube strikes were very much still with us, and I pointed out that they were a sign of things to come, as technology deprives ever more people of jobs. To this point our host raised the spectre of the Luddites, and the fact that fears about robots taking over are as old as, well, robots.

If you ever want to persuade someone that the second machine age, as Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee call it in their new book, is not like other economic revolutions, here is a handy statistic. In the Nineties, more than 66 per cent of the world’s wealth went to the labour force (ie, in wages). In the 2000s, that fell to 62 per cent. That might seem a small shift but its implications are staggering, particularly when you consider the way wealth has concentrated among the very richest people.

As The Economist put it: “Even among wage-earners the rich have done vastly better than the rest: the share of income earned by the top one per cent of workers has increased since the Nineties even as the overall labour share has fallen.” Partly this is because of China, Russia and India engaging with the world economy over the past 20 years and doubling the supply of labour.

But it is also to do with robots. Computers brilliant at calculation have replaced human heads, and fabulously dextrous machinery has replaced human hands. Both are getting cheaper, cleverer and more dextrous all the time. What robots will never do is replace human hearts.

Machines can’t do creativity. They’ll never produce great works of art, write memorable stanzas, design exquisite museums or compose beautiful symphonies. They’re utterly useless at sport. Bowling machines are very useful to cricketers but nobody would pay to watch them operate out in the middle at Lord’s. Real Madrid wouldn’t pay £100,000 a week for a robot; and if you asked a robot to throw a javelin you’d be calling for medical help pretty quick.

Machines don’t learn from experience. Craftsmanship is the antithesis of computation. The practical knowledge and wisdom that comes from honing a skill over years and years will never be something a hard drive or circuit can do.

Machines don’t develop relationships. The can’t build networks of like-minded individuals with shared goals, or communities based on trust and reciprocity. They don’t nurture, lead, inspire, adapt or negotiate.

Machines don’t take risks. A notorious paper in the Eighties argued that the mindset of the entrepreneur is like that of the petty criminal: someone who is always judging the costs and benefits of particular actions. No robot ever did that.

These are just some of the things that we’ve got over machines. In other words, don’t despair; but know that the encroachment of automation and digital technology on our labour markets is going to change everything, and probably increase inequality in the short term.

If you’re a parent, maybe tell your kids to play an instrument, master a craft, practise kick-ups and learn Mandarin. And then cross your fingers and hope they get paid for doing some of that.

Amol Rajan is editor of The Independent. Twitter: @amolrajan

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in