The DMV Solution?

Oracles are in a quandary about the projected effect of automation on future employment levels. One dire prediction concludes that 50% of all current jobs will disappear. It has become an accepted theme that robots and AI are going to create massive unemployment around the world resulting in social dislocations and disruption. One obvious answer is what I will call the DMV solution. When you go to the Department of Motor Vehicles for a driver's license, you wait in one line to get a form, then in another to  submit it, then in another possibly for a photograph, then in another to take an eye test, then in another possibly to take a written test, and finally go to someone else to take a road test.

This means that it takes six (or more) DMV employees to serve just one function, getting your license ... and there are many other functions of this agency ... a formula for full employment at the DMV. Yes, the DMV is a government agency and government agencies are notorious for make-work jobs for the relatives of politicians. And as distasteful as this process is, it is a fact of life.

I suspect that, if robots and AI are going to deplete the number of current productive jobs, that the world will eventually move toward a DMV-like world. All kinds of new service jobs will pop up.... like today's personal trainers and dog walkers ... that will help compensate for the jobs lost to automation. I don't think we will turn off our A/Cs and have Nubian boys fanning us, but there will be lots of new job categories created to fill the voids. But, of course, the really good jobs will be the robot builders and repairers.