Everything that can be automated will be automated…
I have been thinking a lot lately about her first law:
Everything that can be automated will be automated.
First of all, it’s crazy that she was able to foresee this three decades ago! Forget automation, back then, computers were still not “mainstream”; they definitely were not the sure-thing that everyone was betting on, unlike mullets.
However, today everywhere you turn, from newspapers to podcasts to water cooler conversations, you hear about automation. The most common spin on automation is of course the “robots are taking over the world and subsequently all of our jobs” scenario.
While Zuboff’s first law is incredibly insightful, it also unequivocally embeds paranoia into the minds of the human workforce. But the reality is that we will have to contend with automation whether we want to or not. It is inevitable.
Some view automation as a problem but I choose to view it as an incredible opportunity for the global human workforce. Like any opportunity though, it needs to be captured properly.
Let me fully explain.
In High OutPut Management, the former President of Intel Andy Grove, talks a little about capitalism in a globalizing world.
We learn that in a globalizing world, capital (money NOT machines/factories) seeks out the lowest cost means of production. Costs decrease by virtue of the fact that there are more humans willing to do thing “X”. Thus, they can compete against each other for the right to do thing “X”.
In this scenario companies can either die or adapt to the changing rules of production (you can also read that as costs of production).
We don’t need to look far to find companies that were displaced from rampant globalization. In fact, an entire industry (the US manufacturing industry) was impacted due to the inability to keep up with (lower cost) Chinese manufacturing.
Andy Grove sums all this by saying that “anything that can be done will be done”. This may sound a bit tautological but makes a whole lot of sense when considering the fundamental assumptions underneath. Any opportunity that exists to make money will be exploited. And if you are not doing it, then someone else will, half way across the world, cause they can.
When I read this from Andy Grove, I instantly thought of Zuboff’s first rule.
The argument for “everything that can be automated will be automated” is, in a way, a derivative of the larger argument that “anything that can be done will be done.” Automation is just a way of getting “it” done automatically.
The production function will always look for a way to minimize costs. As discussed earlier, in manufacturing, costs were minimized due to rampant globalization. Capital (money) was in search of lower cost K (capital, but this time meaning factories, machinery and equipment) and L (labor) so they could produce “X” cheaper.
When you extrapolate the production function’s lower-cost bias to the information economy you can imagine the total impact. Automation for the information economy will be an even more powerful force than globalization was for manufacturing or anything for that matter.
Also, quick side note. Since the information economy (software) is inexorably tied to the manufacturing of physical products, everything will be affected.
Thus far, we have only had a taste of automation. Startups/companies today are relying on more and more automation to set up quick servers and databases and get to market ASAP. Yes, it also has to do with economies of scale and Moore’s law as well. But automation has played a significant role in that process.
The above is just one example and perhaps not even the best one. The best and most direct examples are actually being built right now. If you are wondering where automation is headed, look no further than your everyday working lives.
Do you ever find yourself at work doing the same string of tasks over and over again with changes to only a handful of variables? Maybe lot’s of copying and/or pasting or taking data from here to there?
If the answer is yes, then automation will chew that right up.
For example, there is email writing software out there that is taking out a lot of the manual work for marketers and recruiters. Most outbound emails are just being forked off a template while changing a few variables. It’s rather easy to automate. So now, what used to take human capital to do will soon be done by an algorithm.
You might say “well, isn’t that dangerous and won’t that replace the human?”. The answer would be yeah under the circumstances that the entire value-add of that individual within the organization was a copy and paste functionality.
However, IF the org hired properly, then that individual is educated and has time and skills to dedicate towards more important things. Things that can’t easily be automated and likely worth more of her time. For example, algorithmically creating templated emails might be easy but making sure those emails have a persuasive voice may be hard for an algorithm. OR making sure the emails look like an actual human wrote them, so doing some classic QA (quality assurance)/management work on the overall process. Again, kinda difficult for algorithms to do that.
Automation has the tremendous power to complement our workflow, as long as we are moving higher on our hierarchy of skills. Meaning, as automation eats away at the point/click/copy skills that we use everyday, we should all be building skills higher up in the food chain. Skills that can’t easily be replicated by algorithms.
We should be investing our time educating ourselves and each other and learning as much as possible.
Building skills that hone in on our ability to analyze, manage and empathize will be key. These will be fundamental skill sets for the future; skills that automation has not learned how to chew. Yet.
More on this in a future post.
