Posted at 9:00 a.m.
I have always been fascinated by robots. Bad tongues will say it’s because I have the interpersonal skills of an electric can opener, but it’s not just that. I come from a family of entrepreneurs. I have often visited factories and the logistics of an assembly line have always intrigued me. I also worked there on occasion, like a postmodern Charlie Chaplin. I dreamed of being replaced by a machine that thrives on repetition and never needs to go to the bathroom.
Last June, the Minister of Labour, Jean Boulet, told the magazine News that to overcome the labor shortage, he preferred that companies increase their productivity, in particular through automation, rather than welcoming more immigrants. Basically, we prefer robots to “steal our jobs “. An artificial intelligence trained to make rational decisions would no doubt see this as a false dilemma, but I still prefer to have humans running our ministries. Well, most of the time.
Robotization leads to several pitfalls. Of course, small technical glitches can arise, as happened recently in Moscow when a 7-year-old boy had his finger broken by a robot chess player who had mistaken his index finger for a pawn. We can also think of the possibility that an android travels in time to come and assassinate the mother of the future leader of the resistance against Skynet. We don’t want that.
It is especially in terms of social equality that the shoe pinches.
Since the invention of the three-button wheel, as Sam Hamad would say, each industrial revolution has brought its share of social changes. The current changes are particularly disruptive due to the simultaneous emergence of robotization and artificial intelligence. The COVID vintage 19 pandemic has also had its influence by propelling telework to a point of no return, while globalization continues to favor the relocation of jobs. How will society organize itself in these circumstances? The resulting chain reaction has ramifications my processor has difficulty imagining.
Some economists speak of the constitution of a barbell economy, that is, a dumbbell-shaped economy that is growing at the bottom and at the top of the scale, but not in the middle. To the question “how much do you benches, the big one? », we will not be able to answer « the economy of Quebec » for very long because the extremities are gaining weight. According to this idea, there will be plenty of jobs for low and high earners, but the middle class will suffer. Real estate brokers, accountants and columnists may be replaced by algorithms. If he didn’t have as many RRSPs, Pierre-Yves McSween would be in trouble.
On the other hand, small low-paying jobs are still there for a while. McDonald’s President Chris Kempczinski recently said that replacing his restaurant workers with robots is not an option in the medium term. Putting a “splouche” of Big Mac sauce on a loaf without worrying about the uniformity of the spreading is an art that the machines still haven’t mastered.
Conversely, Amazon has just acquired iRobot, a company that has jeopardized the household person-with-a-uterus industry. Amazon doesn’t just want to become a seller of sweepers. She hopes to benefit from iRobot’s research into vacuuming, but more importantly, they say, compile information about our homes. As Alaclair Ensemble said: “You thought that was what it was, but that was not what it was. »
Robot vacuums are also experts at tracing the contours of your privacy.
The rather friendly relationship I’ve developed with my robot vacuum is faltering. Amazon, whose fulfillment centers are partially automated, has no obligation (and probably no will) to ensure that the social fabric remains strong. For this company, if the social fabric costs less to produce in China, it is from there that we will import our panties, regardless of the consequences.
Humans have always adapted, some would say, but one would hope otherwise. I recently had the opportunity to visit a few small businesses that acquired robots, not to replace employees, but to give them better conditions. A baker who can now get up in the wee hours, rather than the very wee hours, because a machine controls the swelling of her loaves. A cheese maker who no longer has to rub his cheese by hand twice a week. A microbrewer that doesn’t have to stick its own labels. These are all people who continue to brew, refine and knead, but have gained in quality of life. On a small scale, these people regain control of the means of production (I looked for a less communist way of putting it, to no avail).
But it takes a certain basis to get there. You can’t ask someone who has trouble setting the time on their microwave overnight to know how to program a sheep shearing robot (if it exists). I see a lot of obstacles, therefore, before I make peace with my robot vacuum cleaner. I don’t yet see the outline of a social organization where the machines take care of working while we take care of cultivating our idleness, but there is certainly a better balance to be achieved so that everything does not get lost. I know it’s a bit naive, all this, but unlike robots, I have the freedom to dream.