In 2002, NASA roboticist Mark Rosheim used Da Vinci’s scattered notes and sketches to see if he could create his own version of the 15th century automaton. While no complete drawings of the automaton exist today, evidence suggests that Da Vinci may have actually built a prototype in 1495 while working under the patronage of the Duke of Milan. According to Da Vinci’s sketches of the key components, the knight was to be powered by an external mechanical crank and use cables and pulleys to sit, stand, turn its head, cross its arms and even lift up its metal visor. Perhaps most extraordinary of all is his plan for an artificial man in the form of an armored Germanic knight. Leonardo Da Vinci wrote extensively about automatons, and his personal notebooks are littered with ideas for mechanical creations ranging from a hydraulic water clock to a robotic lion. Plus, what happens in the long term when technological advancement goes from incremental to radical, putting most of us out of work?Ĭlick on the player above to hear their journey or scroll through the photos below to meet the voices from their reporting.Life-sized recreation of Da Vinci’s robot. They found a cop who says you’re better off getting pulled over by him than a robot, a composer who gets inspiration from a sofa and a woman who makes her living by continually evolving.Īlong the way, they looked at how to train people for these robot-proof jobs in the near term. That’s the classic promise of technology, but does it hold up today?Īrmed with this question and data from McKinsey, Marketplace Morning Report host David Brancaccio and producer Katie Long drove across the Midwest - a region that has seen waves of competition from both globalization and automation - to search for jobs that technology can’t easily replace. The farm workers got better work in factories and American standards of living went up. We are taught that’s OK, because technology created more productive, higher-paying, less back-breaking and more interesting jobs. Take, for example, the 98 percent of all farming jobs that were annihilated by machines over the last two centuries. Subscribe to the Marketplace Morning Report on iTunesĮconomic theory happily acknowledges that technology eradicates lots of jobs. For example, it may be a long time before we are comfortable with robo-judges, robo-legislators or robo-priests. Another is social acceptability - whether society is willing to automate a job. Even if a robot can feasibly do a task, it still has to make economic sense to install and use it. One is relative cost, meaning how much the boss has to pay a human versus a machine to get the work done. Of course there are other factors that determine whether a human or machine will be hired for the job. If demand had stayed flat however, the ranks of bank tellers would have declined. But overall, more tellers were hired to serve more customers at more locations. Because of ATMs, banks could afford to open new branches staffed by fewer tellers. ATMs became widespread, which could have spelled trouble for human bank tellers. In other words, the demand for radiologists could go up and offset any lost work brought on by technology.Ī similar demand dynamic took place with bank tellers from the 1970s to the early 2000s. As technology allows radiology services to become faster and cheaper, more people might be able to access and pay for them. One might assume new imaging machines will mean fewer radiologists, because a single radiologist can get more work done assisted by technology. Most anyone can drive - hey, even computers are learning. Contrast that with the other piece of their job - pushing the gas pedal, hitting the brakes and turning the wheel - which doesn’t take much expertise. With the advent of GPS and smartphone apps, the navigation aspect has gone digital, allowing more people to become drivers, and in turn, drive down wages. Years ago, taxi drivers had to study and memorize entire city maps, a specialized skill that allowed only the qualified few to make money. On the other hand, we have the taxi driver whose job consists of two basic parts: navigating and driving. This leaves radiologists with a skilled portion of work that cannot be automated, giving them a better shot at keeping their exclusive high-paying jobs. But radiologists add value in other ways machines can’t: by communicating with patients and integrating medical information into diagnoses and treatment plans. Computers are starting to read medical images just as well as radiologists. Is it the part that takes skill or the part that is rote?įor example, radiology and taxi driving - two jobs transformed by technology. While it's useful to know how much of your job could be done by machines, it may be more useful to understand what piece of your job is robotizable. Are you the radiologist or the taxi driver?Īutomatability is just a number.
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