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Workers In China, India, USA Believe AI and Robots Will Replace Them (qz.com) 126

An anonymous reader cites a Quartz article: Chinese workers have seen the future, and it involves artificial intelligence, robots, and other forms of automation replacing them, at least for repetitive tasks. That's how workers responded to interviews about the future of work conducted in 13 countries by the ADP Research Institute, part of the payroll systems company ADP. In contrast to China, a minority of workers in Germany think machines will take over repetitive tasks in the future. Workers in Chile, Singapore, the United Kingdom, and France among other countries agree. But American workers and those in India are inclined to see things the Chinese way; nearly two-thirds of those polled said they thought the machines were coming for repetitive work.
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Workers In China, India, USA Believe AI and Robots Will Replace Them

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  • Simple answer is YES (Score:3, Interesting)

    by aisnota ( 98420 ) on Saturday March 19, 2016 @02:44PM (#51733003) Homepage

    Humanity is in a system with an only bias, to fit the economic model.

    Robots are going to replace and AI for services will slice huge swaths of the labor force into oblivion.

    My optimistic assumption, even financial planners are even more doomed in 2016/2017 than programmers FYI.

  • by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 19, 2016 @02:46PM (#51733011)

    The global elite have already transferred most of the assets upwards. The next step is automation and separation, and they will simply leave the rest of us to rot.

    • I think you left the "i" out of "riot".
    • by rtb61 ( 674572 )

      You have to remember the bulk of the actions are based around self serving ego and that ego is not satisfied by a robot doing the work, it requires that a human be forced to do the work and then punished at whim in the most brutal ways for the most shallow reasons. So global elite will want the robots not to to the work but manage the forced labour camps and ensure that enslaved human labour carries out the work in a fashion that those approve. Remember they do not feel guilt when they see a person working

  • by DaMattster ( 977781 ) on Saturday March 19, 2016 @02:48PM (#51733021)
    I don't think the danger is immediate but it definitely is on the horizon. Soon, human beings will be the first living organism to cause self-obsolescence. Human beings will make themselves redundant.
    • It's inevitable. Kinda what makes us human is our desire to make life easier. We've gone from doing everything ourselves, to using tools, to using animals, to using other humans... and very very recently, using machines. And that's generally been a really good thing. Ask your wife (or your mom, whatever) if she'd like to give up the washing machine and the dishwasher and start doing all that shit by hand. Faced with giving up one afternoon reading a magazine with hard labor every fucking day, she'll hap

    • Can a thing be "obsolete" if there's no clear purpose for it in the first place?
    • Soon, human beings will be the first living organism to cause self-obsolescence.

      Not the first. The vast majority of species that have lived on Earth have caused self-obsolescence and died out as a result. We're just considering a different and more efficient route to this most normal of ends.

  • The robots will take over, but they won't kill us physically. They will kill us in our economy as poor and middle class lose jobs and the managers and CEO's find ways to raise production and lower human costs. The fact robots can work tirelessly for cheap is very attractive. But the fact nobody is looking at the negatives of replacing so many jobs is frightening.

  • by rmdingler ( 1955220 ) on Saturday March 19, 2016 @02:54PM (#51733051) Journal
    A recently released poll of earthlings indicates those living in China, The Netherlands, India, and America have a firmer fundamental grasp of the obvious than the Germans and Chileans.
  • Um... they're right (Score:5, Interesting)

    by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Saturday March 19, 2016 @03:02PM (#51733093)
    Seriously. It's already happening. It's well documented that Foxconn is only keeping their employees under pressure from the Chinese gov't to avoid causing social unrest. The 1% don't need us to buy their stuff when they've got robots to make it, Robots to defend it and then a very, very, very small class of servant to attend to their health needs and entertain them. The other 95% (98?) of the population is utterly superfluous. You can do just fine selling 100 computers for $2000 each instead of 1000 for $200. Apple's doing it, and they're the most profitable company in human history.

    Oh, and before everybody starts going on about "There'll be all these new jobs in the Server Sector" no, there won't. If nobody has any money nobody will be able to hire people. That doesn't phase the 1%. Henry Ford only thought about this crap because there were limits to his global reach and ability to automate and obtain the wealth he wanted. That's not true anymore.

    And as for the Industrial Revolution let's not forget there was 70 years of mass unemployment and misery. The Luddites who lost jobs never say employment again. Their Children didn't either. It wasn't until their grandchildren that we started seeing the new economy and by then the Luddites were dead and buried. Plus a lot of that was solved by shipping people overseas, but there really isn't an 'overseas' anymore. We've already colonized the new world.

    Basically we're either going to redistribute the wealth of the machines or enter a new Dark Ages. Everybody sorta forgets the human race spent 1200 years with everyone but the 1% and their servants living like shit.
    • by Anonymous Coward

      Let's go back. Back to when banks of women tediously switched phone calls by hand, and a long distance phone call cost as much as an evening out. Back to when core memory was hand-wound a bit at a time and cost thousands of dollars per kb. Back to when thousands of men died each year mining guano to fertilize our fields.

      Those were great jobs. What a shame it is that the economics of automation and technical advancement prevent people from wasting their lives that way today.

    • by Kjella ( 173770 )

      Basically we're either going to redistribute the wealth of the machines or enter a new Dark Ages. Everybody sorta forgets the human race spent 1200 years with everyone but the 1% and their servants living like shit.

      But the standard for "shit" has pretty much always improved, not regressed. Unless we end up in some kind of resource crunch where we run out of the raw materials to make things, it's probably easier to get some of those automated tools to make happy meals and iPhones (aka bread and circus) than deal with the riots. People need to be pretty damn desperate to start a revolution.

      • that's what the Dark Ages were. 1200 years of zero progress until a plague came along and killed off enough of the ruling class to cause some social disruption and let things get moving again.

        Think of it this way. Let's say you're actually a member of the 1%. You have the best civilization has to offer. Do you want things to change? Do you want new tech to disrupt your power? No, of course not. You get really conservative, really fast when you're the king. Nothing changes, nothing improves because you wo
    • by khallow ( 566160 )

      It's well documented that Foxconn is only keeping their employees under pressure from the Chinese gov't to avoid causing social unrest.

      And it's well documented that the Earth is flat and J. R. "Bob" Dobbs created the universe during an epic drinking binge. The real question here. Is there any evidence, not merely documentation, for your claim?

      Oh, and before everybody starts going on about "There'll be all these new jobs in the Server Sector" no, there won't.

      I like how you destroy your argument so quickly. Of course, there will be these service sector jobs in addition to these manufacturing jobs.

      If nobody has any money nobody will be able to hire people.

      Why do you think that's going to happen? There's just unfounded assertion after unfounded assertion.

      And as for the Industrial Revolution let's not forget there was 70 years of mass unemployment and misery. The Luddites who lost jobs never say employment again. Their Children didn't either. It wasn't until their grandchildren that we started seeing the new economy and by then the Luddites were dead and buried. Plus a lot of that was solved by shipping people overseas, but there really isn't an 'overseas' anymore. We've already colonized the new world.

      And we're retconning history again. The old economy couldn't s

  • Robots are superior to humans in any simple, repetitive task such as playing what used to be the most intellectual of games.

  • Instead of paying $100k for college just spend it on buying shares in the robot factories, or ask your government to tax their profits and give you shares. Get your college education for free online.

    Forcing companies to hire humans is a form of taxation. So by allowing companies to use robots, you get the same benefit and the human with basic income gets to sleep all day or pursue other tuff while still getting paid just for existing. It's a win-win.

  • I dont.... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Lumpy ( 12016 )

    Because I program automation system, and one thing I do know is that Executives are so fucking fickle that they can not make a decision to save their own life. No A.I. on the planet will be able to handle an Executive or CEO.

    CEO:"I do not like this system there are black bars on the screen."
    A.I.: "you demanded we use a 16:10 projector on a 16:9 screen, you even used executive override protocol even though we told you they were incompatible and would have black bars"

    CEO:" make it work without black bars"
    A.I

    • Because I program automation system, and one thing I do know is that Executives are so fucking fickle that they can not make a decision to save their own life. No A.I. on the planet will be able to handle an Executive or CEO.

      CEO:"I do not like this system there are black bars on the screen." A.I.: "you demanded we use a 16:10 projector on a 16:9 screen, you even used executive override protocol even though we told you they were incompatible and would have black bars"

      CEO:" make it work without black bars" A.I.: " we will have to change the screen or the projector, what do you prefer"

      CEO:" Use what I wanted, make it work" A.I.:"......... Illogical...... Murder...... Kill.... Destroy......."

      Meh. Just scale it to fill. It'll be slightly stretched vertically, but not enough that most people (including the CEO) will notice.

      For that matter, if the video that will be displayed is of the CEO, he may understand *exactly* what he's asking for, and the AI is just being dense. Maybe he wants the slight deformation of the video to make him look taller. Not so much that it's obvious, but enough that it may influence the perceptions of the viewers.

  • The system as we know it currently ("American Dream Failure") will fail.

    Wasn't there a company holding back total automation because of fear of social unrest?
    Won't happen in the long run since the human robots on top need to make positive numbers or get replaced by silicon colleagues.

    Looks like the calamities seen from "ideas in peoples heads with weapons" right now causing streams of refugees going north in larger numbers on an area way eastern of the US mainland with abuses and great suffering may be cont

  • Europeans know that a "robot takeover" would piss people off, hell would break loose, then it'd be over. People in the U.S. would vote in some dipshit that has fucked over people for a living and feel appeased. People in China will let someone run them over by tanks until they stfu.

    • Re: (Score:1, Troll)

      by slashping ( 2674483 )
      Europe is being taken over by barbarians from Africa and Middle East. There will be no need for robots.
  • EU politicians have the naive (or racist?) idea that in the future, China will produce goods and western countries will design them.

    EU workers are not stupid and understood that China also want to do the design. Hence their fate is to be replaced not by a machine, but by a Chineese worker designing machine-made products.

  • DARPA Robots are full 2.1D autonomous. Cars have far less degrees of liberty and their "environment" is heavily subsidized.

    Why are drones (3D evolution) and electric train (1.xD evolution) easy to build?

    Well in the case of drones makers don't care about limiting the movements so rules of feedbacks are easy. In case of train, it is even easier.

    It is all about the size of the decision tree and the number of input(sensors)/output(effectors) that are coupled you need to control. There probably is a metric to gi

  • by kheldan ( 1460303 ) on Sunday March 20, 2016 @01:44AM (#51735507) Journal
    Everyone is getting their panties in a bunch over this when it's just not going to happen. There is no such thing as 'AI', there are just cheesy 'expert systems' that mimick intelligence for a very limited subject. There are simply too many things that humans need to do that you can't make a machine to do, and there are too many things that humans won't accept a non-human to do. Also you want to invoke World War 3? Put hundreds of millions of people out of work worldwide. There WILL be war. But it's all good: Because it's not going to happen anyway. Everyone is spreading FUD on this subject just like they're doing with self-driving cars. None of this technology is anywhere NEAR the point where people are being led to believe it is. Rest assured that you'll all live out the rest of your lives without having to worry about some robot taking your job.
    • past 3. The bad news is you're wrong...

      Yes, we say "AI" when we really mean "Expert System" but you're massively underestimating the power of a modern expert system. Self driving cars alone show you want works. Yes, they have problems, but there's so much money to be made with them that even if the problems aren't solved they'll be lived with. The squishy humans will have to learn to live with the self driving cars, not the other way around. If all else fails the folks driving (pun) the change will buy l
      • The only way out of this is Socialism and redistribution of wealth.

        No, see FUCK THAT SHIT, because the 1% who have 99% of the wealth will make sure that the 99% who have 1% of the wealth are the ones who are shouldering the burden of your 'redistribution', just like the homeless problem doesn't get solved, just like people living below the poverty line problem doesn't get solved, just like all the other soical problems that require money aren't getting solved, because the rich find ways to ensure they're not paying for anything and that the poor are supporting the poorer.

    • by m00sh ( 2538182 )

      Everyone is getting their panties in a bunch over this when it's just not going to happen. There is no such thing as 'AI', there are just cheesy 'expert systems' that mimick intelligence for a very limited subject. There are simply too many things that humans need to do that you can't make a machine to do, and there are too many things that humans won't accept a non-human to do. Also you want to invoke World War 3? Put hundreds of millions of people out of work worldwide. There WILL be war. But it's all good: Because it's not going to happen anyway. Everyone is spreading FUD on this subject just like they're doing with self-driving cars. None of this technology is anywhere NEAR the point where people are being led to believe it is. Rest assured that you'll all live out the rest of your lives without having to worry about some robot taking your job.

      Regarding world war 3, these expert systems will be pretty adept at keeping unemployed humans occupied.

      Just look at how engaged people get with video games.

  • A lot of Koreans are now intrigued by the tech of AI and the future with AI, because of the Go match between Lee and AlphaGo. What I can see is that a lot of Koreans are afraid of losing their jobs because of advanced AI. But I do feel a little bit uncomfortable with mass media of Korea trying to alert public that "we have to be prepared for that situation happening". I think the disappearance of jobs has happened all the time since the very old human had found out how to use fire. Because of advance of te

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