2076-02-07 Minions

Everyone will be able to take as much as he needs.

Within the next ten years Rossum's Universal Robots will produce so much wheat, so much cloth, so much everything that things will no longer have any value. Everyone will be able to take as much as he needs.—Karel Čapek, R.U.R.

I think that manufacturing plant remains the largest employer of humans I've ever worked in. Not because we don't build big anymore, but because we don't need as many people to do it. Certainly not all in one place, anyway.

Automation was already making inroads in the auto industry, where repetitive, semi-skilled labor was unionized and expensive. A crude robot could replace a union worker on three shifts without a break, and eight robots required only one non-union human supervisor. The accountants were happy. The line workers, less so. Eventually entire factories were closed down, automated, and reopened with minimal human staff. Thousands of manufacturing jobs disappeared, permanently.

That pattern continued and spread worldwide over the next half-century. Innovators improved the robots, making them cheaper and more capable. I did my bit on that, mostly in creating lighter and stronger materials, but I had a lot of colleagues. Robot vacuum cleaners were just the first step in making 'bots domestically ubiquitous. It wasn't long until small businesses and garage-level inventors could afford robots for their own assembly lines.

Today, anything a human has to do three times gets handed off to a robot. Laundry, chopping vegetables, housecleaning—anything boring or repetitive, or requiring unwavering attention, is better done by automation than a fallible, inattentive human. That leaves us free for more creative work.

And oh, what creative work we do! With automation making everything cheaper, humans have access to more materials for their creativity. DIY and craft businesses are bigger than ever. Households today have more 'bots for hobbies and crafts than they have for domestic labor. Once the garden is tended and the house cleaned, 'bots are prepping canvas or holding up the other end of whatever project is to hand.

Humans as supervisors of robot labor are essentially multiplying the workforce. One human gardener can boss a half-dozen robot assistants, whether that's in an heirloom apple orchard or a regrown offshore reef.

During the worst of the climate change crisis, there were so many huge projects that we simply didn't have enough human hands to staff them all. Fortunately, 'bots became capable of assisting us just in time. When the waters are rising, the forests are on fire, food crops are at risk, and the infrastructure is crumbling, you need every capable pair of hands—or robotic manipulators—you can get. Without automation and 'bot labor, we'd be in much worse shape.

Now that I think about it, I've lost track of how many 'bots I have in my home and labs today. Several dozen, at least. Some I've had for decades. If we start counting 'bots as a population, I suppose they outnumber us by quite a bit. Not that I'm worried about that. I know where the shutdown switches are.