I’m a Junior in Dedman College, so people are already asking me those pesky, stereotypical end-of-college questions like “Where do you see yourself in ten years?” and “What are you going to do with an English degree?” and, essentially, “How are you going to get a job and support yourself and not be homeless and starving in 3 months?” Often, if my questioner is older I get, “Aren’t you afraid the robots are going to take all the jobs?” I’ve started responding “God, I hope so.”
I should explain: I truly love my work. Law is a beautiful thing to me, and I would be perfectly happy to work in it until the day I die. Additionally, my wish for robot overlords probably won’t come true, and I’ll most likely have a job. I’m not just an English major, but a triple major, double minor. I’m also studying Political Science, Philosophy, Human Rights, Public Policy, and International affairs, which means I’m headed for law school, a PhD, and then (hopefully) a well-paying job after all that homework. Because my field is old and academic I’m not as likely to be replaced by a robot or an algorithm, which is unfortunate. Regardless of my love of the law, and my relative job security, I hope every day that my dream job gets stolen by AI. I hope machines take your job too, and your mom’s, because your mom is a nice lady and she deserves a vacation.
We often forget that humans, not machines, are the ones who directly benefit when machines “take” jobs. Backhoes are machines that replaced human jobs; less people have to swing shovels in the heat now because of them. Calculators reduced the number of workers necessary for record keeping, and then computers did the same thing to an exponentially greater degree years later, and yet both calculators and computers have wildly increased our quality of life (just ask any student in a stats class). So why do we fear the advent of some new technology that, by reducing the amount of work we need to do, will free us to be happier and more productive humans? READ MORE
I’m a Junior in Dedman College, so people are already asking me those pesky, stereotypical end-of-college questions like “Where do you see yourself in ten years?” and “What are you going to do with an English degree?” and, essentially, “How are you going to get a job and support yourself and not be homeless and starving in 3 months?” Often, if my questioner is older I get, “Aren’t you afraid the robots are going to take all the jobs?” I’ve started responding “God, I hope so.”
I should explain: I truly love my work. Law is a beautiful thing to me, and I would be perfectly happy to work in it until the day I die. Additionally, my wish for robot overlords probably won’t come true, and I’ll most likely have a job. I’m not just an English major, but a triple major, double minor. I’m also studying Political Science, Philosophy, Human Rights, Public Policy, and International affairs, which means I’m headed for law school, a PhD, and then (hopefully) a well-paying job after all that homework. Because my field is old and academic I’m not as likely to be replaced by a robot or an algorithm, which is unfortunate. Regardless of my love of the law, and my relative job security, I hope every day that my dream job gets stolen by AI. I hope machines take your job too, and your mom’s, because your mom is a nice lady and she deserves a vacation.
We often forget that humans, not machines, are the ones who directly benefit when machines “take” jobs. Backhoes are machines that replaced human jobs; less people have to swing shovels in the heat now because of them. Calculators reduced the number of workers necessary for record keeping, and then computers did the same thing to an exponentially greater degree years later, and yet both calculators and computers have wildly increased our quality of life (just ask any student in a stats class). So why do we fear the advent of some new technology that, by reducing the amount of work we need to do, will free us to be happier and more productive humans? READ MORE