We Won't Even Know If A Robot Takes Your Job

In his final Twitter post as President Obama's deputy Chief Technology Officer, Ed Felten dryly notes one of his accomplishments: "Robot apocalypses: 0." Robots and automation have received lots of attention over the past year, with much of the interest ranging from alarmist to curious. Elon Musk has said that robots will take your job. And, at the recently concluded 50th annual Consumer Electronics Show, companies rolled out robots to monitor your child and brew your coffee and tea. Robots are everywhere, except, as it turns out, in the data. To be clear, I don't mean there's no data about robots.