The number of jobs lost to more efficient machines is only part of the problem . . . In the past, new industries hired far more people than those they put out of business. But this is not true of many of today’s new industries.”
This sentiment, from Time magazine, dates from the early weeks of John Kennedy’s presidency. Yet it would slot nicely into many a contemporary political speech. Like any self-respecting remorseless killer robot from the future, our techno-anxiety just keeps coming back.
Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Terminator was science fiction — but so, too, is the idea that robots and software algorithms are guzzling jobs faster than they can be created. There is an astonishing mismatch between our fear of automation and the reality so far.