A role works from a range of abstraction between professions and automation. In a profession one person masters all the mental and physical aspects of trade and can apply them holistically from small details of handling material imperfections to the organization of the guild. At the border to automation, a worker is reduced to an executor of not yet automated tasks. The expectations on a master craftsman are much more complex than on an assembly-line worker.
With more things getting automated this frees the capacity to automate more complex skills. And so on. This is seen in real-time with software: Today a lot of software is (still) built semi-manually (some build tool is started to compile and bundle files together to some executable or installer). Every developer knows how to do this. It is a simple role to take on: “Can you do the build, please?” As the company and the software grow there is a phase where either this becomes a more fleshed-out role, “build master”, maybe even a dedicated job position—or more likely it will be automated. And as the automation—the build process or “pipeline”—becomes more complicated and you need the role of a build software expert. At this point, some tasks previously requiring skill and experience have been standardized and automated and what remains is the more complex task of managing the automation.
Over time, the range between what is fully automatable and what humans can do in an unpredictable environment, shrinks. With AGI there will be no roles left for humans. At least no roles in the sense used here. I think low skilled people already feel this.
The Cognitive Range of Roles
A role works from a range of abstraction between professions and automation. In a profession one person masters all the mental and physical aspects of trade and can apply them holistically from small details of handling material imperfections to the organization of the guild. At the border to automation, a worker is reduced to an executor of not yet automated tasks. The expectations on a master craftsman are much more complex than on an assembly-line worker.
With more things getting automated this frees the capacity to automate more complex skills. And so on. This is seen in real-time with software: Today a lot of software is (still) built semi-manually (some build tool is started to compile and bundle files together to some executable or installer). Every developer knows how to do this. It is a simple role to take on: “Can you do the build, please?” As the company and the software grow there is a phase where either this becomes a more fleshed-out role, “build master”, maybe even a dedicated job position—or more likely it will be automated. And as the automation—the build process or “pipeline”—becomes more complicated and you need the role of a build software expert. At this point, some tasks previously requiring skill and experience have been standardized and automated and what remains is the more complex task of managing the automation.
Over time, the range between what is fully automatable and what humans can do in an unpredictable environment, shrinks. With AGI there will be no roles left for humans. At least no roles in the sense used here. I think low skilled people already feel this.