Coming soon: Robo-greeter

It's already happening. Kinetics Inc., a maker of self-service kiosks, has delivered some 4,000 check-in stations to major airlines across the United States including Continental and Northwest since 1996. Airlines say as many as 70 percent of fliers now check in at unmanned kiosks. Not only can the machines quickly issue boarding passes (average time: about 1 minute), they're constantly being upgraded to do more, meaning fewer times when customers need to seek out a live ticket agent.

High-value jobs are also being cut. For example, in recent years mergers and acquisitions, as well as the increasing reliability of computer systems, have led corporations to consolidate their computer systems. In the process, they've winnowed out some highly paid positions, says Andrew Efstathiou, business and IT services program manager at the Yankee Group, a research firm in Boston. "Three or four years ago, those people were extremely well paid. [Now] there are fewer jobs in that space, and they're not quite as well paid as they used to be."

Job-stealing technology has crept in elsewhere in the computer world. Already, an e-mail to AOL asking for help likely will be "read" and answered, at least at first, by an automated system, which is never offended by an angry customer, Cohen says. Even in a creative field like journalism, an automated system could follow set formulas and write routine articles, such as traffic reports and obituaries. "That would increase the productivity of the newspaper, but at the same time it subtly eliminates particularly the entry-level jobs," he says.

If American workers feel anxious about automation, they've got plenty of company overseas. Today's wave of new technology has twinned with another powerful development - the collapse of the cold-war socialist economic bloc - to create unprecedented pressure on jobs worldwide, says Ms. Polaski of the Carnegie Endowment. Automation has cut jobs just as millions of Chinese, Indian, and former East bloc workers have come into more direct competition with American workers, partly because of improved telecommunications. These factors have caused an "historically unprecedented skewing" of the relationship between employer and worker, she adds.

So far, though, automation doesn't appear to have had a deep impact on job loss. For example, despite its airline kiosks and a tough travel economy, Continental says it has seen only a 4 percent decrease in ticket agents since 9/11. Kinetics is also running a pilot program at 55 McDonald's restaurants, where customers can order food at kiosks. Some restaurants have actually had to increase employment in the kitchen because of the faster customer turnover out front, says Jim Brown, a spokesman for Kinetics in Lake Mary, Fla.

Home Depot, which has 850 stores with self-checkout lanes, has put people who had run registers "in the aisles, helping people find the stuff in the store, allowing them to upsell [customers] to a better-quality product for the job," says Greg Buzek, president of the IHL Consulting Group in Franklin, Tenn., which studies retailers. Publix supermarkets is using freed workers to upgrade their bakery and deli departments and take groceries to customers' cars, he adds.

Job losses at service counters have been minimal so far, says Mr. Efstathiou. But eventually, automation will have an extensive effect, he adds. Even more significant for retail jobs will be the movement of commerce online, from banking to retailing to moviegoing, reducing the need for people to visit bricks-and-mortar stores.

For workers caught in the change, "It's a painful process," Professor Karmarkar says. New technology becomes irresistible to businesses because it boosts productivity: That's bad for workers who lose jobs, but good for consumers who receive faster service and better products at lower prices.

And it's perplexing for lawmakers. "There's going to have to be a multifaceted approach to this problem," he says, "and it's not going to be easy to get a bead on it."

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