Can robots write blog posts? Asking for a friend. A new study out of Boston University, picked up by Quartz, studied the impact of automation on the American workforce between 1990 and 2007. The findings indicate that robots pose far more of a threat to the American worker than do, say, illegal immigrants.

The study found that for every additional industrial robot added to the workforce, employment in that "commuting area" was reduced by between three and six human workers. Adding insult to injury, every one of our new metallic friends lowered wages by between .25 and .5 percent. (Note: Take "metallic" with a grain of salt. Most automation looks more like lines of code than it does Bender.) According to Quartz's citation of the International Federation of Robotics, there are already between 1.5 and 1.75 million industrial robots in operation, and some expect that number to double by 2025.

That means the economy could shed between 4.5 million human workers on the low end, and 10.5 million (!) in the worst scenario, in less than a decade—all because of automation.

Amidst all this, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin gave an interview to Axios' Mike Allen last week in which he was asked about the threat of AI takin' our jobs. Mnuchin, a former Goldman Sachs banker, hedge funder, and—in the estimation of some—foreclosure specialist, was brought in to help Run Government Like a Business. By Axios' summary, it seems Mnuchin isn't particularly concerned about the threat posed to human workers by automation and artificial intelligence:

On AI supplanting human jobs: "it's not even on our radar screen.... 50-100 more years" away. "I'm not worried at all" about robots displacing humans in the near future, he said, adding: "In fact I'm optimistic."

This is aggressively wrong based on the available evidence. A separate 2013 report cited by Business Insider, for instance, indicated that about 47 percent of total US employment is at "high risk" of potentially being automated. Areas at risk include "most workers in transportation and logistical occupations, together with the bulk of office and administrative support workers, and labor in production occupations." Additionally, researchers found"that a substantial share of employment in service occupations, where most US job growth has occurred over the past decades (Autor and Dorn, 2013) are highly susceptible to computerization."

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The stunning revelation here is not just that jobs are at risk, it's what kind of jobs. While all the talk has been about the collapse of manufacturing employment, the warning here is that office jobs will soon be at similar risk. This is a monumental societal challenge.

Many of the leading minds in the science and technology spaces have already acknowledged this. Theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking said in December that AI will decimate middle class service jobs, just as machines have done to manufacturing. Back in 2014, Google Chairman Eric Schmidt envisioned massive disruption in the workforce—and the concept of nine-to-five work—because of automation. Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk considers automation a foregone conclusion, and has already suggested society will end up providing a "universal basic income" to most citizens to account for the fact that there simply will be no jobs they can do.

From Mnuchin's comments, he either knows nothing about automation in the workforce or is playing down the threat rather than trying to address it. Considering that, whatever else you might say about him, Mnuchin has been extremely successful in the business world, one seems more likely than the other. Either way, it's a disservice to the American worker and a discouraging sign of this administration's willingness and ability to cope with this issue—particularly as the scope and gravity of it comes into sharper focus than ever.

Jack Holmes Politics Editor Jack Holmes is the Politics Editor at Esquire, where he writes daily and edits the Politics Blog with Charles P Pierce.

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