"What exactly is a "robot"? We might envision a Star Wars-like robot in the vein of R2-D2 or C-3PO, but a robot is any device or algorithm that does what humans once did, from mechanical combines and thermostats to dishwashers and airfare search sites."
- Scott A. Wolla (2018) Will Robots Take Our Jobs? Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis/Economic Research
AI enthusiasts and futurists keep saying robots will make jobs obsolete sometime this century. Economists tend to disagree and continue to project overall job growth for the foreseeable future. While most economists agree that some occupations will decline or disappear, the general consensus within the field is that other occupations will take their place and many existing occupations will exhibit a surprising resiliency as they are redefined to complement new technologies. Basically: technological advances will create opportunities to exploit capabilities those advances make possible, either in the form of new occupations or new job tasks for old occupations.
Take the lowly office clerk, long predicted to go the way of the dodo, thanks to the wonders of automation. Yet according to the Occupational Outlook Handbook, the number of office clerks in the US has been holding steady for years (at about 3 million employed) and is expected to do so at least until 2026. Why? Because with new capabilities comes new job tasks. These days, office clerks are expected to do much more than file and type; they need to be able to handle sophisticated data processing/management tasks, using software such as FileMaker Pro, MS Excel, MS Access; Adobe Acrobat, SAP - to name a few.
I'll close with a few quotes from olden times, to document that speculation about robots and jobs is nothing new.
[Sometime in the 21st century] "only the very ablest people are likely to be needed to manage the new, automated economy. Since robots are apt to take over many of the services, especially the mean ones, large segments of the population may find themselves without suitable employment..." p. 45
Theodore J . Gordon and Olaf Helmer (1964) "Report on a Long-Range Forecasting Study," The Rand Corporation.
"Today, futurists are discussing the onset of a sweeping technological revolution, one which would rival or surpass the Industrial Revolution of the 19th century in importance....Rising expectations alone will cause Americans to translate productivity gains into higher standards of living instead of less work, a pattern which has held for centuries. The period of adjustment which lies ahead may not be painless, but it seems that work is here to stay." p 10-14
Levitan, S.A. and Johnson, C.M. The future of work: Does it belong to us or to the robots. Monthly Labor Review; 1982, 105, 10–14.
Note that the first quote came from futurists and the second from economists. Some things never change.
Next: More on why jobs will prevail in the age of robots. A handy list of reasons.