 It happened again! The worst thing ever! What happened? Your button plant popped again? No! A robot stole my job! Again! Oh man, that's too bad. Wait, I thought you said you had the worst job ever. I never said that! I have the worst job ever! Well, so what if I did? A robot took my job like it always does, and now I have nowhere to work! And it isn't just me! Robots are gonna take all of our jobs, and then they'll kill us and take over the world! Whoa there, Bob. Let's take a deep breath and think about this for a minute. Not only will there not be a RoboPocalypse, they're not going to take all the jobs either. And I think you're forgetting about all the ways that machines and automation dramatically improve our lives. You're one of them, aren't you? Um, no. But you do know that we use machines to do the difficult, dirty, dangerous, and time-consuming work that nobody wants to do, right? This time is different! They aren't just machines, they're thinking machines! Artificial intelligence, people will be out of jobs and starving in the streets. We need to ban these machines. Ban the machines? Or at least tax them to pay for everyone who will be on unemployment. Bob, large-scale change is nothing new. 200 years ago, 83% of Americans worked on a farm. Today, it's 1.5%. Are 81.5% of Americans unemployed now because their labor is no longer required on farms? No. I guess not. For the vast majority of human history, almost everyone had to work as hard as they possibly could for as long as they possibly could every single day, just to barely stay ahead of starvation and mother nature. It took thousands of years for us to figure out how to develop even the simplest of machines, because we couldn't spare enough of our time and effort to invent them before. Machines we never think about because they're so common today, refrigerators, vacuum cleaners, dishwashers, electric ovens, etc., would have seemed like witchcraft 200 years ago. In fact, because of automated efficiency, we have fewer people working fewer hours to achieve a level of prosperity that was unimaginable before the Industrial Revolution. Where did I put those employment statistics? In the United States, only half of the population is considered to be in the workforce. The average number of hours worked in a week is 34. Technological advancements can be scary and uncomfortable because there's always a transition period where displaced workers struggle to find their feet again. But we as humans always adapt, learn new skills, and are ultimately better off for having our previous jobs done by machines. In the end, we should want robots doing our work. And after all, it's better than the alternative. Break time is over. Get back to work.