The Effect of Robot Assistance on Skills

Abstract

How does work with robots change human capital? I study a unique setting in which professional baseball leagues provided-and subsequently removed-access to robot assistance for umpires. Umpires demonstrated improved precision and accuracy in ball-strike decisions while using robot assistance, but their performance declined substantially below pre-assistance levels after it was removed. Both highly skilled and inexperienced umpires exhibited large declines in performance after the removal of robot assistance. Umpires who used robot assistance for longer periods of time faced a steeper decline in accuracy than those who used it for shorter periods. Umpires who worked a full season with robot assistance did not fully return to their initial skill level by the end of the following season. In contrast, umpires who missed an entire canceled season during the COVID-19 pandemic suffered much smaller skill depreciation effects, indicating that robot-exposure effects are not driven solely by umpires not using their skills. Finally, I show that robot-exposed umpires experience skill deterioration in determining whether a baserunner is safe, showing that skill depreciation extends beyond robot-assisted tasks.

Keywords: Labor Productivity, Skill, Robot

JEL Classification: J24, J64, O33