Impact on Physical Processes

At some time in the twenty-first century the United States will start the transition into an economy with no human work. After the inflection point, job destruction will be greater than job creation and overall employment will decline. Once the decline starts it will continue and human employment over the next several centuries will approach a very small fraction of current employment, perhaps even zero. This book deals with the transition, not the end result. Automation can be applied to physical processes and information processes. Physical process automation is the subject of this chapter and information process automation is the subject of Chap. 5 . Two types of automation are considered in the book. Programmable automation that is automation whose steps and be defined by rules and trainable automation that is automation by an algorithm that has been trained over a large body of data. Both chapters review progress in each type of automation. The main emphasis in this chapter is progress in automation of physical goods production. Progress in the various steps of physical goods production, which are design, parts manufacture, assembly of components and the product, is discussed. Also considered are innovations in organization. Lessor topics are physical process automation in transportation, supply chain, agriculture, forestry, mining, and physical processes in the services.