Humans Need Not Apply

Robots, software, and automatons of any sort don’t need to be perfect to steal jobs from flesh-and-blood humans — they only need to be better than them.

So goes the conceit of the above video, “Humans Need Not Apply.”

YouTube user CGPGrey makes interesting mini-documentaries, and the latest one addresses a topic we’ve touched on a number of times in the past: How will human labor and employment be affected as robotic technologies ramp up to become more and more useful?

The obvious applications are in manual-labor-centric arenas, but as CGPGrey discusses above, even the brainier professions like doctoring and lawyering aren’t safe. As discussed above, IBM’s famous Watson supercomputer juggled knowledge so effectively that it beat humans at Jeopardy, but this was only a side pursuit in parallel with its main goal — to become the best doctor in the world.

Hesitant to get treated by a robot “doctor?” Remember, it only has to be better than a human doctor.