It’s time that we let the robots take our jobs
To solve Britain's problems we not only need a robot revolution; we need to rethink our entire relationship with work
The following is an entry for the TxP Progress prize in answer to the question “Britain is stuck. How can we get it moving again?”. The Progress Prize is in partnership with Civic Future and New Statesman Spotlight and is intended to platform ideas identifying antidotes to Britain’s current malaise.
***
In an age of technological advances beyond the wildest imaginations of innovators at the turn of the 20th century, the majority of the population of Britain today are still working long hours to merely scrape by. But it need not be this way. In 2024, we already have the technology and equipment to supercharge productivity and raise living standards, while simultaneously working substantially fewer hours. How? We need the robots to take away our jobs.
The basic arguments for increased robotic mechanisation are neither controversial nor revolutionary. Robots work more efficiently than human workers across a wide range of both basic and complex tasks. Robots do not work their 9-5 and then go home for a nap. Robots don’t procrastinate and they don’t go on strike. Robots can repeatedly perform mind-numbing tasks at high speed and with tiny error rates. In sum, the World Economic Forum has reported that a majority mechanised workforce can produce productivity increases of up to 250%.
Despite global recognition of the advantages of mass robotics, Britain is failing to keep pace; in fact, we are arguably moving backwards. In a particularly salient example, the Environmental Audit Committee found that the number of automated car washes in the UK halved in the 15 years to 2018, with many actually replaced by hand car washes. As economist Duncan Weldon recently joked, rather than robots putting workers’ jobs at risk, “we’ve been taking the robots’ jobs”. In global terms, the picture is sobering – at 101 robots per 10,000 employees in manufacturing, the UK’s robot density is not only below the world average of 126, it also lags behind countries like Slovenia (183) and Slovakia (175). By contrast, South Korea, the world leaders on this metric, boast a figure almost 10 times that of the UK (932), and have seen remarkable growth in GDP per capita in the past 30 years.
But time-saving technological opportunities do not stop at the factory floor. Just as robotics allows us to eliminate repetitive, unstimulating manual labour tasks, AI will reduce the man-hours needed for white-collar jobs. Recent research by Harvard University has found that AI can increase the speed with which service sector workers complete tasks by 25%, with a 40% increase in the quality of work. Clearly, this is only the beginning as the possibilities of AI advances in healthcare, finance and agriculture are expanded.
In order to transition to an automated future, the UK can look internationally for practical policy inspiration. Korea’s huge success in the roll-out of its smart factories, for example, has come from state and local governmental funding of robot development and implementation; Seoul Metropolitan Government last year set out its plans to invest 160 million USD to aid the transition to robot-run service industries across the city by 2026.
The UK has made some small steps in the right direction, such as a £6 million fund for the development of robotics projects, but the numbers fall vastly below what is needed and investment focuses primarily on development rather than mass implementation. In order to see real returns, the government must provide substantial subsidies to aid the roll-out of robot and AI systems across our industries, viewing this investment as akin to the provision of basic infrastructure such as transport links and education. Whether directly through grants, or via tax breaks for companies that meet a high threshold of automation e.g. a 70% mechanised workforce, the UK government should be willing to invest for future success.
***
However, while a transformation of our offices and factories into sci-fi visions of AI-powered efficiency is necessary, this is only half of the battle. Where our political thinking currently falls down is in our perennial framing of the “risk to jobs”. In fact, think tanks tend to fall over themselves in the rush to generate research that shows that jobs will not be lost to robots and AI. This mindset is precisely where we are going wrong. To meet the demands of the next century, Britain must fundamentally revolutionise how it thinks about work – namely, we need to do less of it.
Currently, the greater the efficiency gains in one part of our economic system, the greater the proliferation of tasks (and even jobs) elsewhere. As a result, workers are kept busy with increasingly less meaningful tasks as unnecessary bureaucracy, middle management, and advisory roles abound. This phenomenon, dubbed “bullshit jobs” by anthropologist David Graeber, is perhaps best exemplified by Barack Obama’s revealing justification for maintaining aspects of the existing US health insurance system because “three million jobs” would be lost if a more efficient paperwork process were implemented. By contrast, to truly capitalise on productivity gains, we must stop creating jobs for jobs’ sake, and instead reduce the (human) working week to 3 days.
Besides the obvious appeals of additional leisure time, the core economic benefit of a 3-day week is the ability for society to reinvest in its human capital. Through 16 extra hours a week, workers would unlock new opportunities for education, scientific exploration, and entrepreneurialism that were previously untapped. Furthermore, while the fear of job losses often mobilises workers against robotic advances (with even white-collar workers now fearing AI), reduced working weeks are generally greeted with positivity, and would likely neutralise public opposition to automation.
From a policy perspective, new educational possibilities should be implemented through governmental (and private) investments in resources including courses - or even AI tutors - as well as grants and programmes to stimulate academic research. In order to incentivise reduced hours, the government should mandate significant minimum wage increases, paid for by automation-enabled profits. A strong mandatory minimum would provide workers with a decent living wage despite their shorter hours, while ensuring that automation remains cheaper (and therefore more attractive) to businesses than manual labour. Finally, new laws limiting the payment of large dividends to shareholders would help to ensure that profits are reinvested in workers, research, and development.
It may seem unduly optimistic to believe that with more free time, people will commit their mental resources to upskilling, innovating, and generally contributing to the public good, but considerable evidence exists to the contrary. The most obvious permanently out of work comparison group are the retired community, whom the Centre for Economics and Business Research recently found to contribute £32.7 billion of unpaid labour a year in the UK, including £15 billion in volunteering alone. In short, when people have more free time, they tend to spend it on improving their own skills, exploring entrepreneurship, and giving back to society.
Britain was the birthplace of the first industrial revolution, and our technological innovations propelled us to productivity levels never seen before. However, the mass mechanisation of the 18th century saw profits accrue to the wealthiest, and workers resisted the destruction of their livelihoods that came with little compensation or meaningful redeployment of their talents. The 21st century has the potential for a revolution of a similar magnitude, with the rise of smart factories and the replacement of white collar jobs. This time, with the right mindset and policy initiatives, the benefits can be accrued by all, and a supercharged economy will sit alongside an invigorated, innovative society of the future.