robot displacing million
Robots are coming for your job
A viral video released in February showed Boston Dynamics' new bipedal robot, Atlas, performing human-like tasks: opening doors, tromping about in the snow, lifting and stacking boxes. Tech geeks cheered and Silicon Valley investors salivated at the potential end to human manual labor. Shortly thereafter, White House economists released a forecast that calculated more precisely whom Atlas and other forms of automation are going to put out of work. Most occupations that pay less than 20 an hour are likely to be, in the words of the report, "automated into obsolescence." In other words, the so-called Fourth Industrial Revolution has found its first victims: blue-collar workers and the poor.