Don’t Worry about Automation: Worry about Automation

1 — Jobs don’t get automated

It’s more true to say ‘tasks get automated’ than it is to say ‘jobs get automated’. This might seem like a distinction without a difference, but it really isn’t. When a job gets automated, people stop doing that job. When a task gets automated, people who do that job just end up not doing that part of it anymore, or spending way less time on that task.

So, maybe they fire some of the people doing that job, because fewer hours of labor are needed. Or, maybe, instead of firing you, they just cut your hours.

Alternatively, they might want you to be better at the parts of your job that are too hard for the machines to do.

Sometimes, though, a job really does get automated. Not a lot of elevator operators left.

2 — Just because they could automate your job, doesn’t mean that it’s actually worth doing that

If the time-discounted value of all your future paychecks doesn’t exceed the price of the machine that could replace you plus the time-discounted value of all future maintenance on that machine, they won’t buy the machine. Put another way, if the following inequality is true, then your job is safe:

L/r< A+ M/r

This simplifies to:

L<Ar+M

Where L is the price of labor over a period, A is the price of the machine that could replace that labor, r is the interest…