Robots Are Coming For Our Jobs, Just Not All of Them 319
szczys writes: There was a video published on YouTube about a year ago called Humans Need Not Apply which compared human labor now to horse labor just before industrialization. It's a great thought-exercise, but there are a ton of tasks where it's still science-fiction to think robots are taking over anytime soon. Kristina Panos makes a great argument for which jobs we all want to see taken by robots, others that would be very difficult to make happen, and some that would just creep everyone out.
jobs? (Score:3)
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Who else would Dice hire to seed the comments with the same inanity they've put in the newsfeed?
If your job can be described by an algorithm... (Score:5, Interesting)
...then it will be automated somehow, eventually.
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Re:If your job can be described by an algorithm... (Score:4, Insightful)
Really?
Tell that to my fellow grads who got degrees in accounting. No one could find a job :-(
Excel and VBA took over book keeper jobs. You can't get a CPA without experience and a masters degree and you can't get experience without being a book keeper. A catch 22.
Really most large companies use Quicken and Excel to do their jobs and people in India to do a double check with the numbers. Those with experience and 22 credits in finance can take the CPA ... oh and to get anyway with real experience to pass HR you need to do 2 year internships at the top 3 accounting firms for 70 hours a week to prove yourself.
It seems more jobs pay less, work more, and have steeper requirements as time goes on. Automation is putting the squeeze in this area for everyone and yes even IT. Object oriented programming and better tools cost programmers more jobs too. IT jobs typically have more hours today than 10 years ago because so many have been replaced and are higher to work 14 hours if you include a pizza.
The incentive is made by the CEO and CIO of the company to cut costs. Not you. Similar analogy? I downgraded to a crappy DSl connection :-( Why? Comcast wanted $100 a month with no TV just for internet??! Fuck that. I went to DSL to save money. I know it is not as good but my priorities is I will tolerate it as I have bills to pay.
A CIO knows they get inferior work by outsourcing and using programs to replace people. However, the savings make the pain worth it. Same principle.
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That's what happens when people shun unions.
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Unionize and you can say India real fast! Most companies that are not union will simply close shop. It is not only Walmart who eliminates the deli position at all stores because of 1 unionized location.
With a global marketshare we need to compete. Putting up more barriers will just have them ignore the US entirely. Infact Coke mentioned they hardly make any money in America anymore. If they left the US they will only be down 12% profits or something silly.
If they had to unionize Coke will simply survive jus
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Your faith in sports terms is misguided. (Score:2)
With a (redacted) marketshare we need to (redacted). Putting up more barriers will just have them ignore the US entirely.
It wouldn't be that bad of a disaster, as not all companies could afford to leave. Others would find themselves on the painfully wrong end of some products delivered by more US-friendly peers.
By leaving the US, they would be signing their own death warrants. Embracing the US and her citizens would preserve their existence and remove any reason for hostility.
Re:Your faith in sports terms is misguided. (Score:4)
It wouldn't be that bad of a disaster
We can look at the past half century of policy. Sure, it's not that bad a disaster as there is still a US economy and it is to some degree still functioning well. But there has been a huge vast movement of US business and industry to other countries for a very long time. And most businesses have done well by it despite the assurances to the contrary.
By leaving the US, they would be signing their own death warrants. Embracing the US and her citizens would preserve their existence and remove any reason for hostility.
That is delusion. There's already plenty of hostility towards business in the US whether there is reason for it or not. And how does one kill a business when the business has no presence in the countries where one wants to do the killing. Mental failwaves?
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I think people keep thinking of the robot apocalypse of robots killing us. But what if robots were declared sentient beings, and some super rich guy who owned all the robot corps gave his wealth to his robot. Then we'd have a robot who owned all the production and wealth in control. He could be a robot with no ill feelings, but just the perfect business bot. Since he doesn't die, wealth doesn'
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Since he doesn't die, wealth doesn't get redistributed.
Economies don't work like that. For example, how does the bizbot get that land? Land doesn't magically change ownership. There is a trade of wealth for land that happens. And given the land is "prohibitively expensive", this transfer of wealth would be considerable.
Second, wealth is not a conserved property. You can create and destroy it. This bizbot would be creating massive amounts of wealth. That's how it could continue to grow richer without actually owning all the wealth.
Third, closely related to
Re:If your job can be described by an algorithm... (Score:5, Funny)
if broke {fix(it);return fixed && call main }
add value;
update or upgrade;
procrastinate(stuff);
do consumerstuff {
support(economy);
} until money < minimum;
call main;
} until robots;
//* call use_retirement(savings) #function not written yet *//
//* fix pseudo_code to make sense *//
function create_awesome_money_generator(ideas)
{
write awesomeThing1(ideas);
create Microsoft2();
create Apple2();
takeover FaceBook();
admit(Satoshi Nakamoto);
}
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If a human can figure out how to do their job, an algorithm can describe it...
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We're only tipping in the US because their boss doesn't want to pay them. Almost never has a waiter delivered beyond my expectations. In fairness, it is rare that the opportunity exists for them to do so.
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Almost never has a waiter delivered beyond my expectations. I that like the time I ordered a salad and got two by mistake and she let me keep the second one for free?
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Almost all of them would do that, it costs them nothing and what are they going to do with an extra salad? But no that rarely happens. But brining the high chair for my 3yo without asking, that's bonus points. Bringing extra napkins to a table with two kids. Bringing water as well as any alcoholic beverages, without having to be asked. Refreshing given restaurants "free" items (bread, chips, fries, whatever it is) without having to be asked. Just generally not trying not to see you. Those are all ways to ea
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Nah. Don't underestimate humans' desire to have other humans serving them. We could automate away all waitstaff tomorrow, but people like having some peon come and take their order. Tipping amplifies the power trip further by letting the patron decide the size of the proverbial table scraps thrown to the server.
Unless it would have an impact on cost, capacity, response time, opening hours and whatnot. Line at the counter because that guy costs money? Put up five terminals, always one free and if keeps prices down too that's great. Want to pay your bills at 3AM? Online banking is always open. The downside is that a robot can't really improvise and be service-minded, not that it lacks a pulse.
So? (Score:3)
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What kind of job? Perhaps one where the fact that a human is performing it is part of its value -- e.g., entertainer, or something else?
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People don't account for what is being automated changing.
I try to replace myself daily. I write software specifically to try and replace me so that I can work on other stuff. The job that I did when I came out of college doesn't exist anymore. It's a collection of scripts and programs. Society has always progressed like this. Pretty soon drones are going to be picking my crops.
good education with a 100K loan (Score:2)
good education with a 100K loan that is very hard to get rid of.
It's not a good business proposition (Score:3)
That's one of the big problems with college loans: they'll give you 100k for a career path with no clear ability to pay back that cost in a reasonable timeframe (say, 5 years). If you took out a $100k to get a music degree, an education degree, a social sciences or philosophy or religion degree there's no way that's going to pay off in a reasonable period. Chemical engineering? Yeah. MD or JD? Yup. Accounting - maybe.
If, all of a sudden there were no loan guarantees and banks based loans on actual salaries
Re: So? (Score:2)
Hmmm ... 'computers' used to have to go to school as well.
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If nobody's willing to pay for it, then it doesn't need to be done.
That is a REALLY cold way to put it... but accurate... :(
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Obviously there are huge problems in the world - e.g. poverty, disease, and conflict.
Yes, but who is willing to pay for finding solutions for them?
So, there's all this work that needs doing - finding solutions to the world's big problems.
Many things would be nice to have done, but someone has to pay for them. As it stands now, there aren't people willing to pay to solve other people's problems. Or not enough anyway.
I mean, every day somewhere around 20,000 children die of poverty. Clearly this is a terrible problem.
Yes, it is... but unless you are wealthy and want to pay to solve it, then it will keep happening. Those children don't have the money.
So why aren't there an abundance of well paying jobs finding solutions
I could repeat myself, but you get the idea...
Because no one wants to pay for them... The powers that be aren't interested in spe
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If you don't understand that the economics of that situation are impossible - that the investment of a 4 year college education can never improve grocery bagging by enough to make the education worth the effort - you're not competent to discuss economic issues.
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Unless grocery baggers are hired based on their lack of education (ex: 8th or 10th grade being the last completed), we're already massively wasting education. They are not using any skills they have in any subject taught in a school that cannot be taught in five minutes. However, most of these companies require a high school diploma, GED, or similar, for a job requiring none of the implied skills.
There's no reason that the VP of Manufacturing in my company refuses to hire anyone without a BSME to work as a
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To paraphrase a line from The Incredibles, "When everyone is college educated - no one will be."
I'm not exactly thrilled at the prospect of living in a world where you'll need a 4 year college degree to bag groceries, because everyone in the transportation industry was put out of work by self-driving vehicles and drones. From the looks of things, we're not even that far off.
^ Wish I could upvote you, that is 100% true... and so many people don't get it... you can't give EVERYONE a college education and expect it to mean anything...
Not Extinct... (Score:3)
Yet, horses didn't become extinct. Not in the slightest. We still have _LOTS_ of horses around here. Some farms still use them for horsepower - it's a personal preference. Many people use them for pleasure. They're better off than they were before - more pampered. Soon you like the horse will be just a pleasure item for your robot overlords and happier for that.
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Are you looking forward to some rich bastard using you for pleasure once robots do to workers what automation did for horses?
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Not as many farriers or blacksmiths though.
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22 million inn 1905, peaking at 26 million in 1915. There was a low in the equine population of 3 million probably in the 1960s, and it's above 9 million today.
commentsubjectsaredumb (Score:5, Interesting)
It's hilarious to see people in denial about this coming to a head, when it's long since started.
Bobby McGuy is 18 and trying to pay for school instead of suckering into the predatory scam of student loans, because he knows he's fucked if he doesn't get exclusive education (which, by definition, not everyone can have). He's healthy, ready to work, an optimized subject on a silver platter, and there's nothing for him to do unless he undercuts the robot's $2/hr. He's worthless. If, IF there's anything for him to do, 4,999,999,999 others want to do it too.
Re:commentsubjectsaredumb (Score:4, Insightful)
Most of the time when such disparity occurs that the general population starts to starve results in the leaders and top 1% getting their heads cut off. Never underestimate the power of an entire population with nothing to lose. Some of the rich people realize this, others don't, but in the end if what you claim comes true it won't be very long before it's not true anymore.
How's that going to play out (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't see us throwing off the yolk of oppression with violent revolution ever again. If there's any hope it's male birth control and a general lack of interest in having children that'll do it (queue
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And how exactly will killing the 1% change anything? Jobs will magically be created when their heads are removed?
Great, you fire the first shot. I'll sit back and laugh at you.
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Is this really the case though? It seems like every time I think I`ve found a grass root revolution, there would actually be a 1% guy pulling the important strings.
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It's already happening. Where does your paycheck go? John Everyman? It goes to mortgages, insurance, cars, medical bills, taxes, corporate-made products and services, it goes up.
One illusion is "John's getting a cut from Walmart" - his job exists because it's a net upwards flow.
It's not a conspiracy or anything, I'm not whining - I drew First Worlder at birth, I'm in the Golden Bil
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Anything commoners offer each other, the robots provide/made cheaper.
Such as job creation? Then the problem doesn't exist in the first place.
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There's jobs? Great! I was worried that the 5,000,000,000 work-aged people in the 99% would struggle to find things the 1%'ers want done. Apparently each rich guy needs a city-sized army of artists and musicians for each of their mansions.
People globally are more gainfully employed than they were in the past. It's been getting better for a long time now.
Bobby McGuy is 18 and trying to pay for school instead of suckering into the predatory scam of student loans
Bobby McGuy is a 1%er. If you look at the population of people who are actually worried about predatory scam student loans, that's under 10% of the US's population which in turn is less than 5% of the world's population.
He's healthy, ready to work, an optimized subject on a silver platter, and there's nothing for him to do unless he undercuts the robot's $2/hr.
How about you get out of the way? I find most people who worry about technology replacing humans also advocate for practices such as mandatory employer insurance, minimum wage
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Once you approach the $2/hr it becomes harder and harder to call it "employment".
You do realize that $2/hr is a number that Falos just made up. The places that have $2/hr for real are also places with much lower cost of living.
Further, low wage jobs aren't career jobs. They're starter jobs. One huge consequence of destroying low wage jobs has been the creation of a young adult population who doesn't know how to work.
While I enjoy the fruit of the slave labor as much as the next guy, it drives huge communities to abstain from doing any kind of work and living happily on unemployment benefits.
Unemployment benefits that somehow never stop? And who pays for those unemployment benefits again?
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There is enough to do.
There is not enough willingness to pay for it. Look at what artists make. No matter if they are musicians, painters, writers, actors or anything else. 1% of them makes 99% of the money, the rest would get a real job if a) there were real jobs for people with artistic talents and b) they were not driven by passion instead of greed.
Look at the jobs that require humans instead of workers. Teachers, nurses, policemen. Some of the worst paid jobs if you put it in relation to what is require
Until true AI is developed.... (Score:2)
Until a true AI can be developed automation could only replace manual labor jobs, any job that needs thought involved is going to be out. There is also the problem of troubleshooting and fixing the robots, something I doubt could be automated except for the most routine breakage. For every advance in robots we've seen a loss of some pretty crappy jobs and the addition of some very high paid technical jobs. The welders in the auto plants were replaced with robots and then the auto companies had to hire engin
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Until a true AI can be developed automation could only replace manual labor jobs, any job that needs thought involved is going to be out. There is also the problem of troubleshooting and fixing the robots, something I doubt could be automated except for the most routine breakage.
(...)
This has been a pretty consistent trend, manual labor replaced with white collar high wage jobs (in lower numbers), often the cost savings aren't very high in labor rates, but the savings come from more precise work by the robots. For example, automotive welding now is perfect almost every time.
The trend is towards more and more defective items being replaced, not repaired exactly because repairmen can't keep up with the speed, precision and specialization of mass production, not to mention the logistics of parts and repair tools. Clothes and small electronics are good examples, it's not worth people's time to repair relative to the cost of buying a new one. And more advanced machinery run more and more self-diagnostics, there's less and less babysitting. Even the parts you do replace are more and
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People tend to overestimate the 'thought' that goes into their jobs.
Let me just preface this and say that there are people in each job that really do put some unique thought into things. But for a general practitioner of a problem and for 90% of cases, you'd be surprised how far following routine steps takes you.
I remember the first time this happened (probably about 10 years ago), I was working for a firm and they were embracing wikis and other such tools. My manager asked me to write down our trouble shoo
Robots create jobs (Score:2)
It has been said before.
As the cost of production decreases so will the prices. When that happens more money is left to buy other products hence the job growth. However, short term yes it will sting.
Cars created jobs long term. Many buggy repair places and horse growers were very upset and predicted gloom too! But can we exist today without cars and trucks? No.
If you are non skilled then yes it sucks and you should have listened to your teachers and got an education in something. Last I looked plumbers stil
Re:Robots create jobs (Score:5, Informative)
Last I looked plumbers still make more than doctors.
I keep hearing this, but all the data I can find does plumbers making on average ~$60k and general practitioners ~$140k.
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Last I looked plumbers still make more than doctors.
I keep hearing this, but all the data I can find does plumbers making on average ~$60k and general practitioners ~$140k.
I needed some work done for a kitchen. They standard rate was between $100hr - $150 an hour.
Yes plumbers make 6 figures. Seeing a doctor costs about the same too and they have a full staff to pay like a receptionist, nurse, transcribers, liability insurance, etc. In the end the doctor who charges $150,000 is also a top income earning and pays %50 tax. He or she probably takes home around $65,000 a year after all the costs are incurred. True some plumbers get paid $60,000 too! There boss gets the other $60,0
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And the plumber had a 100% billable hourly rate for the day too right? He didn't spend 30min driving to you place, provide you with a quote, then the following day spend an hour getting the supplies needed, and drive another 30min all for a 2hour job.
I know a plumber on 6 figures. He puts in 10+hour days for his salary. Getting paid $150 an hour is a small consolation for the time on the clock where he's not getting paid at all. Not to mention residential / repair work is about as shit as it gets (pun inten
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A plumber who owns a business is not a plumber and shouldn't be compared to one.
A plumber is either self employed and is subject to all the above, or a trades person working for a business and doesn't earn nearly the hourly rate you think he does.
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A plumber who owns a business is not a plumber and shouldn't be compared to one.
That's a good shot in the rhetorical foot right there.
A plumber is either self employed and is subject to all the above, or a trades person working for a business and doesn't earn nearly the hourly rate you think he does.
Says someone who couldn't even get into the second half of a sentence before they contradicted themselves.
Where the hell are you? (Score:2)
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Admittedly, the salary range for both of these professions is wide, but on average a general practitioner makes d
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I needed some work done for a kitchen. They standard rate was between $100hr - $150 an hour.
The owner of a plumbing business may be making six figures. A plumber who is an employee of such a business is most certainly not making that much. And for the owner, that six figures is gross. After paying labour (most plumbers seldom work solo and have at least one apprentice on staff), insurance, taxes, &c., his net is probably significantly lower.
Plumbers don't make more than doctors (Score:2)
Business men who run plumbing companies make more than doctors who are merely employees.
Just because you're a plumber doesn't mean you can't have business acumen. Just as being a doctor doesn't mean you do have it. I know plenty of both, and the rich ones are the ones that run a business, either instead of or in addition to their hands-on work. And the doctors running the business end of things are still making a shitload more than the plumbers who are running the business end of things, by a factor of 3 or
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"Eventually all of us will have more free time as we can create businesses with a fraction of the capital and sell them to other people in poorer countries who will ahve an expanding middle class like China and soon Africa hopefully"
You've managed to come to the correct realization by taking the wrong path.
The people who will make money in the coming decades will be (already are, actually) the ones who own the robots. The advantage is that the good robots won't go out and become competitors for your busines
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I could say the same with factories 100 years ago and had statistics prove it! But a middle class formed in the US and Europe in the 19th century at the same time.
I could go back 30 years ago and say the same with computers and humans won't know math anymore. True computers short term eliminated some book keepers. Long time we had silicon valley and a whole new profession or professions invented.
Competition will lower prices and yes it will be awhile before India, China, Africa, and perhaps some day Russia
The Ratio Problem [Re:Robots create jobs] (Score:3)
But one could see the car industry as a likely source of new jobs to replace the horse jobs. We don't have anything equivalent in proportion.
A robot may replace 10 jobs for every 1 bot repair or design job it creates. (And they may soon be able to fix themselves.) Houston, we have a ratio problem. As somebody pointed out, industrial-age improvements magnified human ability, rather than outright r
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Plumbers have to buy truck and expensive tools, and they don't get paid for driving to your house so that's built into their hourly rate. Doctors only need to buy stethoscope (and those will soon cost $0.30 to 3d print) which lasts his whole career, plus he gets kickbacks from Big Pharma for pushing their drugs. So in the end plumber is worse off than doctor.
Doctors have to buy some very expensive database HIPPA compliant software, transcribers, nurses, receptionists, and ultra expensive medical equipment if they have a speciality. The plumber wins as IT people need expensive certs, and also vans/trucks too. IT has it the best as the cost of getting a MCSE or Cisco is just several thousand dollars and maybe up to $10k if you want some instructor led courses at the most.
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I know what I'm thinking (Score:5, Funny)
Robots Are Coming For Our Jobs, Just Not All of Them
So, what are the other ones doing? Sneaky bastards.
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For all we know they have already taken over upper management, it would explain some of the fucked up decisions that are being made in the upper echelons.
The corps are in danger as well here (Score:4, Interesting)
Consider that if everyone has a robot, that you could get your robot to make things for you rather than buy them.
Here you say "but what about chemicals and compounds"... all of that can be automated.
People in cities might be fucked. I don't know... they can live it up with Judge Dredd in Mega City 1. But people with some land might be able to enjoy a modern high tech life style and produce most of what they want and need independently.
3d printers... CNC machines... that magnetic auto refinery/chemical plant/bio sample handler... there are a lot of things you could make with that. And those things you made could make pretty much anything else and so on.
Keep in mind, everything we have today from satellites to submarines was built with human hands... or built with things built by human hands.
We could see a democratization of industry in the same way that computers have democratized a lot of things.
Rather than wondering if you'll have a job... consider if you'll even need one. Why do you have the job? To make the money to get the things you buy with the money. What if you could just skip that middle step and go right to the end?
You might say "this thing I want isn't practical to build that way"... maybe... but also consider that you might build things differently if your industrial model were different.
Consider how things were made 30 thousand years ago. Pretty much all we have from that period are "hand axes"... bits of stone chipped into sharp shapes... or smooth rocks used as hammers.
Look at how things were made in every era from then to now. The way they're made and the way people thought about the things they made changed from one era to the next. That relationship between the thing, what it is meant to do, who made it, and how society sees the person that made it influences the thing that is made.
A skilled craftsman in the 1700s is not going to make something the same way that an assembly line worker will in 1938. And just the same, a person that instructs his machinery to build him a whatever that he wants is not going to build it the same way that assembly line worker would either.
the great take away many people have with this is that we should just get welfare and have the big government or corporations pay us for breathing. The reality is that if the industrial complex doesn't need us then it doesn't need us. You might think you can vote yourself some political power but if you provide nothing the society actually needs... then why does the society need to care what you want? Your vote won't matter.
So you had better hope you're better than just a welfare sink. Because if that's all 80 percent of humanity becomes... then 80 percent of humanity is expendable. I'm not saying I'd kill them off... I'm saying someone will do it though. And when it happens... those that do it will lose nothing when they do it because the people they're killing are of no value at all to the society.
So pray you're not as useless as some would suggest. Because if you are... you might just be the walking dead.
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But people with some land might be able to enjoy a modern high tech life style and produce most of what they want and need independently.
This is my goal and something that I started about five years ago. Land is very cheap in many places.
I currently produce about 10% of my own food, but in a position to go up to 100% if I dropped other interests. I received a flyer from a company I bought my solar from yesterday advertising panels for sale at $0.28/watt. I do live in moderate high tech comfort for almost no money. I'm building a machine and wood shop by buying old tools for scrap and rebuilding them. I'm doing this mostly for fun, but wonde
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It just doesn't occur to anyone as a possibility. The things you want come from the store in their mind. It doesn't occur to them that all these things came out of a factory and the factory made the thing by making a lot of simple parts, and those parts were assembled, and the assembly was put in a box, and the box was put on a truck, and that truck delivered it to a store, and the store put it on a shelf.
All of that said, people including you are going to be buying a lot of stuff from these stores that got
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Part of your freedom equation is: "have some land" - if you have anything, land, a home, in some states even a car, you are taxed on that possession. The only way to pay taxes is with money, you can't give the tax man a bushel of corn you grew or a nifty widget your robot made, you've got to give him money. Can't pay the tax, you lose the possession, or go to jail, or both (and in some states, neither - they don't take your primary residence, they just pile you deeper in debt so that if you ever do get an
Re:The corps are in danger as well here (Score:4, Interesting)
Being too poor to afford your own land and robots to do all your work for you does not imply that you are "useless".
Your are a blind self-entitled prick if you think that the rich deserve their riches and the poor deserve poverty. We do not have equality of opportunity, so outcomes are not only the product of hard work and intelligence. There are plenty of hard-working, intelligent, "useful" people in the world who, because of the circumstances of their birth and other bad rolls of the dice, are not fortunate enough to be in the position of the one to whom other people are deemed "useful", rather than the other way around.
I'm not saying the solution is everyone living off the welfare of some big centralize robot-and-land-owning minority (either government or corporations). The solution is to make sure everyone gets access to land and robots and gets to be "self-sufficient" on the back of that productive capital, the same way the stinking rich few who are already rich enough to charge others to borrow their capital and then pay those borrowers their own rent money back to labor for them are.
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Being too poor to afford your own land and robots to do all your work for you does not imply that you are "useless".
As a human being? No, it does not.
As a productive member of future society? Perhaps it does. It all depends on what "useless" really means.
Your are a blind self-entitled prick if you think that the rich deserve their riches and the poor deserve poverty.
"deserve" is perhaps the wrong word... "have and have not" might be better words... or perhaps... "earned and unearned" is another way to look at it.
We do not have equality of opportunity, so outcomes are not only the product of hard work and intelligence. There are plenty of hard-working, intelligent, "useful" people in the world who, because of the circumstances of their birth and other bad rolls of the dice, are not fortunate enough to be in the position of the one to whom other people are deemed "useful", rather than the other way around.
While that is true, it is also true that life isn't fair, isn't likely to ever become fair, and true complete equal opportunity is a goal, not a destination. We can strive for it, but never reach it. Keep in mind tha
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Rent and interest are perfectly reasonable things to exist in an economy, without them many parts of our world wouldn't function as well...
You are completely wrong about both of these things, but I don't feel like arguing them yet again. Read some of my back posts if you really care to know why I think so.
I'm not going to provide a poor person a place to live, if I can't charge rent, why would I do that?
Renting is not the only option. If you want to make money off your capital, sell it. If nobody can afford it... sell it for less, or else waste your investment in it completely. Your choice. Charging money for something and getting to still keep it and charge more money for it again indefinitely is not a valid option, and that model is the ro
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Consider for a moment the old systems of nobles and kings and warlords.
Why did they care for the welfare of the peasants? Because they needed them to work in the fields and provide bodies in wars.
You're still looking at the whole problem backwards.
The question is not what use are the peasants to the nobles.
The question is why the nobles get to decide who gets to live and work on the land.
The only reason the peasants need to be "of use" to the nobles is because the nobles claim the land the peasants would be living and working upon by force, and demand that the peasants labor for them if they want to borrow that land back.
If the nobles did not have claim to all the capital the peasants labor upon, th
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You're talking about a war where the 20% are outnumbered by billions.
If the 20% are armed with nukes, or an engineered virus the antidote to which only they possess, they can make short work of the remaining 80%. Sure, in the case of tactical nuclear strikes the bombed areas may be a no-man's land for several decades, but after that all those pesky proles are no more of a nuisance.
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Assuming 5 billion people...
20 percent is 1 billion...
Thus 1 billion versus 4 billion.
And if the 1 billion have all the industry, technology, and food.... and the 4 billion are utterly dependent on the 1 billion for everything.
The 1 billion will rule the 4 billion.
And in being ruled, the 1 billion can systemically limit the population of the 4 billion... invest in killer robots.
And if they need human armies... they can hire a tiny fraction of the 4 billion as a professional army... tell them "we'll give you
Who Needs a Job? (Score:2)
We will likely wind up in a situation where basic commodities are provided free of charge, or for a very small fee, and your home robot will use them to make whatever you want, whether it's a new t-shirt, a drone, or even a
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They will decrease the costs, but the net cost to the consumer will not drop correspondingly because it will have already been shown that people are willing to pay that much for the product.
In other words, any potential for savings that might otherwise be seen by such scales of automated production is liable to be far outweighed by the tendency for human beings to be greedy.
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That will happen for everyone who's wealthy enough to have a home of their own, and robots of their own. Everyone else will get thrown out in the street when their job disappears and they can't make the rent or mortgage, and then starve to death. Or else riot en masse and take the homes and robots of the rich.
The solution to this isn't to avoid building robots, of course. Robots are great, and you're spot-on that nobody wants a job. But most people need a job, and would even need a job if they had a robot t
Herbert's Dune comes to mind (Score:2)
For those eager to remove jobs with AI/tech, consider that all the bread, circuses, and such will not stop a critical mass of displaced individuals.
The result will be a large reversal of technological progress, most of which would have been avoided by reintegrating displaced individuals.
Robots are coming for all jobs eventually... (Score:2)
Robots are coming for all jobs eventually. Not saying "soon", but it's a matter of time, the inevitable endgame of labor-saving technology, which is the whole point of technology: to enable us humans to get more done with less effort. People will never stop trying to get machines to do work for us until we never have to do work -- or pay someone else to do work in our stead -- again.
And that is going to be a gigantic problem for everyone whose life depends on other people paying them to do work in their ste
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Not my job. (Score:2)
Suckers.
Not all of them (Score:3)
Robots Are Coming For Our Jobs, Just Not All of Them
Right. The rest are coming to kill us!
shortsighted vision (Score:3)
from TFA:
We may be a reckless and hedonistic species, but weâ(TM)re not going to replace ourselves into extinction. Thatâ(TM)s just silly. Someone still has to design robots, train them, fix them, and streamline their processes.
Firstly, human being do a lot of silly things. Saying something is silly means absolutely nothing on the axis of "likely to happen".
Secondly, I see nothing that prevents robots in principle from designing, training or fixing other robots. In fact, we already have most of the components for such things in place.
What robots can't do, at this time, is to decide about purpose. They can do things, and even figure out better ways of doing them by themselves, and very soon they will be able to decide independently what to do in order to reach a given goal. But the goal-giving is still human.
But, I don't think that's a god-given. Where do our goals from? They're basically just what's bubbling up from this sea of desires, interests and good old instincts. The ultimate goal is a question as old as mankind, and as silly. We don't have a goal, really. What we consider goals and purposes are just higher-level to-do items, and a sufficiently complex computer program can come up with equivalent things, in principle.
So in summary, we very much may replace ourselves into extinction. And on some level, we even need to do it. Our biological machine is as primitive and flawed as it is beautiful and brilliant. The same will be true for machines we design, but with self-replicating machines, the evolutionary cycles can be much faster in the same way that language and writing have dramatically increased the speed at which we humans develop compared to animals who only have genetics to pass on whatever they learnt.
Totally Unprepared (Score:2)
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Waste collectors have already dropped by 50% in many places because the garbage can is picked up by a robotic arm. The human drives the truck.
Problem is, though that guy is now 2x more productive, I bet his wages didn't budge an inch. Even accounting for the $10k robotic arm.
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If anything, it takes less time now so overall he's probably getting even less money!
No, they increased the size of his run, and laid off another driver who is no longer required.
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Why should he be paid more, just because he's 2x more productive? He's actually doing _less_, by now "just" driving the truck, instead of driving + picking up cans (didn't they used to have driver + one other guy, and both guys would get out & pick up cans).
If he was more productive due to a change _of his own making_, then yes, pay him a lot more.. e.g. if he invented the truck with the robotic arm.
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As countries become more educated, their birth rate goes way down. This happens time after time.
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As countries birth rates go down, immigration goes up, happens every time and our system depends on the growth.
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Right genius, the point is this is not sustainable.
What's not sustainable about it? The people who are replaced by robots get new, more productive jobs. That's what's been going on for the last 500 years.
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It is currently. Unfortunately, it has zero capabilities at the moment (at least strong/true AI), and no exponent is going to make it larger.