It's so easily forgotten that people aren’t a cost. They’re an input, always and everywhere, and this truth won’t lose any validity as robots proliferate. Quite the opposite.
Which is why it’s useful to respond to Manhattan Institute (MI) president Reihan Salam’s recent observation about immigration in an opinion piece he penned. Salam asked “If the classic case for openness to low-skill immigration is that newcomers do the jobs that Americans won’t do, what happens when robots can do them instead?” Salam could perhaps be persuaded to rethink his question. Or withdraw it altogether? Think about it.
Precisely because AI and “robots” are poised to brilliantly and beautifully erase all manner of work done at all levels of the proverbial work food chain, jobs that Americans can’t not do are set to explode in both variety and number. As argued in my 2018 book The End of Work, and in countless op-eds since, jobs aren’t finite precisely because we haven’t scratched the surface when it comes to meeting the needs of humans, and of much greater importance, leading the needs of humans.
Which means that if and when AI and robots live up to even a fraction of their job destroying potential, work that much more tessellates with the unique skills and intelligence of every American will soar in quality and amount. As predicted in the book, Americans will paradoxically work more than ever while working less than ever. Shorter work weeks for sure, but since work will increasingly be a reflection of what we’re passionate about, Americans will be working even when they’re not, including while on vacations that will grow in length and extravagance.
Too optimistic for you? That’s fine. The future is opaque.
Just the same, these predictions lose none of their potency vis-à-vis Salam. Assuming robots “take” the jobs formerly done by allegedly “low-skilled” immigrants as he predicts they will, the latter won’t shrink the need for individuals living south of the U.S. border. Not a bit.
That’s because automation of tasks formerly done by humans is the picture-definition of economic growth. Translated, it’s productivity. And the soaring productivity born of robots and automation will by its very name produce wealth on a level that will make the present appear impoverished by comparison.
The result will be all sorts of new and high-end jobs that will not remotely resemble the work of the present, but that Americans will have to have. Work for them will be a routine expression of charismatic passion rooted in potential finally realized. The other side of the previous coin will be endless amounts of work that has fewer or no takers. Crucial about the work that the high-skilled, U.S. born will not do in the future, it will be of the higher-productivity kind (think much higher pay) that will make it even more urgent for the supposedly low-skilled to bring their talents to the U.S.
The migration of human beings is the purest market signal on earth, and nothing else comes close. Applied to Salam’s analysis, if robots have the potential to do all that the MI president expects, opportunity stateside will be much greater, and much more remunerative than ever. The need for more people will soar.
People once again aren’t a cost, and jobs aren’t finite. Instead, people create work by dividing it in greater amounts not just with other humans, but machines. Contra Salam, the need for “low-skilled” labor from south of the border will be more urgent than ever the more that AI and robots live up to their undeniable potential.
