There are fears on how recent advances in robotics and AI could render many human jobs redundant, but humans might move to other kinds of roles that exist because of the robots themselves.
Speaking at a recent Tesla all-hands meeting, CEO Elon Musk offered his perspective on the evolving relationship between humans and robots in the workplace. Responding to an employee’s question about job displacement, Musk painted a picture of a future where humans, instead of being replaced by robots, will become their managers.
“I think what we’ll find with the robots,” Musk began, “is that there will be a ratio of people to robots. So you’ll effectively end up managing a group of robots.” He expanded on this idea, suggesting a more personal connection with the machines: “So, you know, you’ll have basically, I don’t know, your flock or your little group of robots that you take care of and you tell them what to do.”
This new dynamic, Musk believes, will result in a kind of automatic promotion for workers: “Yeah, you’re promoted to manager,” he laughed. He extended this analogy to the realm of autonomous vehicles: “I think the same thing will be true of cars. Like, so for the self-driving cars, people that are, say, Uber drivers today or something like that, or taxi drivers today, will end up managing a fleet of cars.” He argued this shift would lead to greater efficiency: “And that’ll be a much more effective use of that time, you know, just take care of, like, 10, 20 cars, or however many they can take care of.”
Musk’s vision suggests a future where human oversight remains essential, even in a highly automated world. This scenario, however, still implies a significant reduction in the number of jobs required. While current Uber drivers might become fleet managers, overseeing dozens of autonomous vehicles, far fewer managers will be needed compared to the current number of drivers. This shift, while potentially creating new roles, will likely lead to job losses in the affected sectors. In order to create more work, the economy will have to rapidly expand, so that existing people can be gainfully employed as well.
Musk isn’t the only tech leader who’s talked about how humans will essentially become managers to AI in the coming years. Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang has said that AI will cause everyone to be promoted to “manager”, and they’ll be managing groups of AI agents. But the concept of managing a “flock” of robots also raises questions about the nature of these future jobs — while Musk’s comments suggest an active management role, the reality might involve monitoring automated systems, potentially leading to monotonous and less engaging work. The long-term societal and economic implications of such a shift require could be tremendous, and could careful consideration as we navigate an increasingly automated future.