I used to believe that one day all human labour would be automated (e.g. see here). Upon further reflection, I realize that I am wrong. The question of whether or not machines will someday replace all humans depends crucially on whether or not P is equal to NP. Jobs that will eventually be automated will be the ones that can be solved easily with an algorithm. In computer science parlance, these are problems in the computational complexity class P (solvable in polynomial time). For example, traditional travel agents have disappeared faster than bluefin tuna because their task is pretty simple to automate. However, not all travel agents will disappear. The ones that survive will be more like concierges that put together complex travel arrangements or require negotiating with many parties.
Eventually, the jobs that humans will hold (barring a collapse of civilization as we know it) will involve solving problems in the complexity class NP (or harder). That is not to say that machines won’t be doing some of these jobs, only that the advantage of machines over humans will not be as clear cut. While it is true that if we could fully reproduce a human and make it faster and bigger then it could do everything that a human could do better but as I blogged about before, I think it will be difficult to exactly reproduce humans. Additionally, for some very hard problems that don’t even have any good approximation schemes, blind luck will play an important role in coming up with solutions. Balancing different human centric priorities will also be important and that may be best left for humans to do. Even if it turns out that P=NP there could still be some jobs that humans can do like working on undecidable problems.
So what are some jobs that will be around in the NP economy? Well, I think mathematicians will still be employed. Theorems can be verified in polynomial time but there are no known algorithms in P to generate them. That is not to say that there won’t be robot mathematicians and mathematicians will certainly use automated theorem proving programs to help them (e.g. see here). However, I think the human touch will always have some use. Artists and comedians will also have jobs in the future. These are professions that require intimate knowledge of what it is like to be human . Again, there will be machine comics and artists but they won’t fully replace humans. I also think that craftsmen like carpenters, stone masons, basket weavers and so forth could also make a comeback. They will have to exhibit some exceptional artistry to survive but the demand for them could increase since some people will always long for the human touch in their furniture and houses.
The question then is whether or not there will be enough NP jobs to go around and whether or not everyone is able and willing to hold one. To some, an NP economy will be almost Utopian – everyone will have interesting jobs. However, there may be some people who simply don’t want or can’t do an NP job. What will happen to them? I think that will be a big (probably undecidable) problem that will face society in the not too distant future, provided we make it that far.
Scientific Clearing House 
Of course this assumes that every society will become an automated society… but I suspect that regardless of how advanced technology becomes, there will always be “haves” and “have-nots.” It’s only that the gap between them will widen.
If you live somewhere where the mere task of survival (mostly consisting of very non-NP jobs such as food growing/preparation, cleaning, etc.) consumes 99% of your time, I somehow doubt that those non-NP jobs will cease to exist, esp. as the human tendency to survive would require a great deal of non-NP work.
Even in a wealthy and automated country, perhaps having non-NP workers would become a sign of prestige and become the “new form” of conspicuous consumption… so I suspect there will be always be non-NP jobs even if just to satisfy the whims of the wealthy.
Also, I somehow doubt that automation will ever replace, for example, parenting, childcare, and other uniquely human endeavors… wet nurses, anyone?
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Absolutely, I was looking at the most optimistic scenario. In your have/have-not world, the have-nots are essentially replacing machines because they are cheaper. I actually think that much of the physical aspects of health care can be automated. There is a roboticist at UCSD that is already putting a robot into his child’s daycare to test it out and the Japanese are trying to build robots to take care of the elderly.
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after 17 years of studying the subject of the end of civilization,I made a blog about it:
magdyhalim.blogspot.com
please have a look.
thanks.
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[…] of the migration from a highly skilled and paid profession (what I called an NP job in a recent post) to a more algorithmic and mechanical one (a P job). Here are some excerpts from the story: For […]
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Magdy, as you know I think that the end of the world will come when God decides, as is clear from Scripture and the words of Jesus Christ: “No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.” In your belief that the end will come quickly and suddenly, the next words of Jesus affirm; “As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of man. For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinkung, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark; and they knew nothing about what would happen ub til the flood came and took them all away.”
However, I do not agree that our civilization is the only one that has reached a very high level; others before ours rose, and then collapsed; the incredible technological advances in our time and the moral decline, do indicate that our civilization is following the pattern of others that reached a peak and then collapsed.
The end of the world is predicted in the Bible , in Revelation, and the “day of the Lord” is a common theme throughout both the New and the Old Testaments. Once again, I say that God, the Creator of this world and everything in it, is the one who will determine the end of the world; and until that time, he gives all men the chance to turn from sin to receive a new life as His own children, by receiving the forgiveness of sin offered freely to us because jesus Christ died in our place, bearing our judgment on Himself, and so enabling us to live forever in His kingdom.
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We were only there for four hours or so and didn’t see as much, but it was still amazing. It’s next up in my posting schedule, and I still don’t know how to give it justice.
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