Robots, Uber and Airbnb


Over the past few weeks I’ve read several eye-opening articles and columns about the future of businesses and jobs.  For example, will taxis become a thing of the past?  It’s not too hard to imagine a future where the Uber car service that you ordered on your iPhone app picks you up, but with no driver behind the wheel?

“Will robots take away middle income jobs?” is becoming a greater concern as technology continues to become more complex.  One article in Bloomberg BusinessWeek magazine (read article here) talks about the newest crop of robots and the jobs they are performing.  One example listed in the article is a hotel near San Francisco that is now using robots to deliver room service to guests.

According to a study mentioned in the article, 47% of all U.S. jobs are at risk over the next two decades of being given over to computers.  Another recent article talked about how many auditing jobs of CPAs could soon be handled by computer.

I’m not sure if you’ve heard of Uber or Airbnb, but both have been in the news often of late.  Tom Friedman wrote a great column in the New York Times on May 20th where he talked about how business is changing.  Here is an excerpt from his column “Hillary, Jeb, Facebook and Disorder”:

Just follow the headlines. We’re in the middle of some huge disruptive inflections in technology, the labor market and geopolitics that will raise fundamental questions about the future of work and the social contracts between governments and their people and employers and employees. These will all erupt in the next presidency.

What are the signs of that? Well, my candidate for best lead paragraph on a news article so far this year goes to Tom Goodwin, an executive at Havas Media, whose essay March 3 on Techcrunch.com began: “Uber, the world’s largest taxi company, owns no vehicles. Facebook, the world’s most popular media owner, creates no content. Alibaba, the most valuable retailer, has no inventory. And Airbnb, the world’s largest accommodation provider, owns no real estate. Something interesting is happening.”

There sure is. We’re at the start of a major shift on the question of what’s worth owning. What all of the above companies have in common is that they have either created trust platforms that match supply and demand for things people never thought of supplying: a spare bedroom in their home or a seat in their car or a commercial link between a small retailer in North Dakota and a small manufacturer in China.

Friedman makes some great points but what he fails to mention about these new companies is that many are only providing part time work at relatively low wages.  Again, is this more bad news for a declining middle class?

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