“Progress” is inextricably linked to the idea of positive forward motion. The key word here is positive, as people often fall into the thought process that forward motion is beneficial, so to progress forward must be positive too. However, as expressed in the pilot episode of “Humans” and Martin Ford’s “The Automation Wave”, progress as a positive is up for debate, especially when in regards to technology. Both the director of this television series and the writer of this book are “futurists” who use the status quo of the present scientific and social community to systematically explore and predict a potential future. In both these works the futurists in charge honed in on the presence of robots in the future and what their roles would be, and whether they are a truly positive piece of progress.
In Human, there is a classic “rebellious teen” character Matilda with slipping grades due lack of motivation, but hers stems from the presence of robots within her society. Her argument– “What’s the point?”. She well knows that synthetic androids so commonly installed in her world will be programmed to any job that would take her years to study for, and they’ll most likely do the job more efficiently. Matilda is unmotivated not because she is an angsty teenager but because the robots have taken away her sense of purpose.
Ford also explores this future possibility of human-purpose displacement by the robots with a specific focus on low-wage labor. Sure, assigning robots to undesirable jobs like repetitive factory work or simple cashier tasks at fast food restaurants would free up humans to do more challenging jobs, but for many these straighter forward employment opportunities are a primary and perhaps singular source of income. The high turnover rates of jobs like these allow for them to be easily accessible to the public who need work now, just as a means to make ends meet. Without them, people with modest levels of education will have a difficult time finding work. The US’s dynamic economy gives hope that sufficient jobs would be able to replace these for the sake of the people that would become unemployed at the hands of robots, but that is a high risk that lives across the nation would be dependent on.
Robotic progress could rip open a can of opportunity– it could be an era of liberty from labor for humans that would allow for uninterrupted freedom of mind and creativity. However, it could also be ripping open a can of worms of never before seen poverty, economic displacement, and violent neglection of the middle-to-lower class as robots would take over human jobs. Robotics on the level proposed by these two futurists is definitely a forward motion for humans, the question of its legitimacy as “positive” still stands.