Robot Anxiety and Politics

Karen Thompson: Think it's better than it was--when people did all this work?
Jack Ramsay: Sure.
Karen Thompson: But machines always break down.
Jack Ramsay: Let me tell you how it is. Nothing works right. Relationships don't work right. People don't work right. People make machines, so why should machines be perfect?
Karen Thompson: Because they're machines.
Jack Ramsay: Yeah? Well, that's not the way it is.
--Runaway

Recent Brookings Institute analysis suggesting a link between 'robot anxiety' and last year's presidential election. Robot anxiety is the fear that robots will permanently displace workers. Although it has been around long before modern day technology, robot anxiety appears to be growing in part due to rapid advances in artificial intelligence which has some forecasting that machines will soon obsolete even knowledge workers.

Robot anxiety may also be growing because robots are being over-employed as regulations such as the minimum wage inaccurately tip economic calculation in favor of automation.

The Brookings study portrays the distribution of robotic installations across the US as uneven--i.e., some states are home to significantly more robots than others. Moreover, states that voted 'red' in last year's election carry a robot intensity (defined as robots/1000 workers)--more than double that of states that voted blue.

Because workers that fear for their jobs will seek political relief if need be, it is proposed that voters in key battleground (and robot-laden) states such as Michigan and Wisconsin pulled the lever for Trump partly due to his loud protectionist stance.

While the economic angle of permanent job loss has little merit, the political aspect of the theory may contain a kernel or two of truth. In the long run, of course, protectionism has long been a bipartisan endeavor here in the States.