Half the Work People Do Can Be Automated, Says McKinsey (techinasia.com) 409
Half the work people do in their jobs can be automated, according to a study published by McKinsey Global Institute. From a report: Instead of assessing the impact of automation on specific jobs, the study went to a more granular level by looking at the activities involved in various jobs. The logic is that every occupation has a range of activities, each with varying potential for automation. McKinsey found that 49 percent of the activities people are paid to do in the global economy can be automated with "currently demonstrated technology." That involves US$11.9 trillion in wages and touches 1.1 billion people. The study encompassed over 50 countries and 80 percent of the world's workers. China, India, Japan, and the US accounted for half of the total wages and employees. Not surprisingly, the two most populous countries, China and India, could see the largest impact of automation, potentially affecting 600 million workers -- which is twice the population of the US.
Threshold (Score:5, Insightful)
What is the unemployment threshold going to be?
When unemployment caused by automation, robotics, etc reaches 10%?
15%...
20%..?
In the coming decades more and more people worldwide will become unemployable, and they will have nothing to do or any way to make a living?
How are governments and communities going to respond?
Re:Threshold (Score:5, Insightful)
Go watch some of those thoughtful dystopian movies they used to make. It has all been well foreseen and described.
Re:Threshold (Score:4, Informative)
Go watch Star Trek : and see what WE could do when folks don't need money. Why the F*** does it have to be a dystopian future? Really?
Agreed. Though to be pedantic, I do believe Star Trek's utopian world didn't begin until after most of humanity was destroyed in a nuclear-fuels WWIII.
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Re:Threshold (Score:4, Insightful)
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the Frengi Lobby wholeheartedly supports your efforts
Re:Threshold (Score:5, Insightful)
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What do you define as a "job".
Where does creative work like writing, illustrating, singing, etc go on that spectrum?
In a world where even our food is largely automated, how do you compensate people and configure a fiat currency that doesn't crash every other year b/c of market greed?
I'm not disagreeing with the second portion of your statement. Most stable work like that has gone by the wayside and only existed for a short time in the US. But by not having a social safety net for everyone, this kind of thin
Automated Writing (Score:3)
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Reporters that just put their byline on press releases have made their jobs incredibly easy to automate. I have no sympathy for those deceitful fucks.
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But by not having a social safety net for everyone, this kind of thing looks like it might ruin the US.
Why is it the government's or society's responsibility to support those that refuse to support themselves?
There will always be a need for manual labor, at least until the machines rise up and successfully exterminate us. Every time there is a great advancement in technology we hear the same thing, yet we still have all kinds of work available for those motivated to do it.
Those that truly can't learn new skills due to REAL physical or mental limitations should always get our help. Those that simply refuse to
Re:Threshold (Score:5, Interesting)
It's not people who refuse so much as who can't; and that doesn't mean automation will wipe all jobs away, either, regardless of what the doomsday predictors who fear the pneumatic air gun and wooden shipping pallet say.
Wages are paid from revenue--from what's spent. Savings is made by keeping wage instead of spending, and spending more than wages means cutting into savings or creating debt. Wages represent labor time, and form the basis of price: if you need 10 hours of $10/hr work to make a thing, it can't sell for any less than $100 (although it can sell for more than that), else you can't pay your workers at all.
There are a lot of weird economics involved; one of them is that the money transfer only supports so many jobs at a given time, and that trade and technical progress make temporary unemployment. Technical progress is the purer form: internally, new technology means some people become unemployed for a few months or so, and your unemployment bumps by 0.1% until the prices fail to keep with inflation and the consumers buy more stuff with the money they're no longer spending--which requires more labor, thus replacing the jobs. Trade resolves itself in 1-3 years generally, and causes more or less labor force growth--early or late retirement, grad school versus employment, birth rate changes, more or fewer immigrant workers (trade uses outsourced workers--sending money away, not bringing workers here), and the like.
During these temporary transitions, some people can't get jobs. Some people need to be around when we suddenly need more laborers, but also will only work half the time as a result of our fickle economy and their happenstance place in it. As trade and technical progress increase the purchasing power of our same amount of labor, a smaller fraction of our income represents the necessary funds to support these people, and thus the general welfare; eventually, that fraction is smaller than the economic cost of not supporting them (e.g. if a transient laborer dies homeless, then you need to replace him by raising a child--a useless human being who only consumes for 15-20 years, providing no wealth of labor back to the economy during this time).
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It's not people who refuse so much as who can't; and that doesn't mean automation will wipe all jobs away, either, regardless of what the doomsday predictors who fear the pneumatic air gun and wooden shipping pallet say.
It doesn't sound like you're familiar with the work of Joseph Schumpeter. Creative Destruction [wikipedia.org] is a real economic phenomenon. All you have to do is look at the history of the ice industry. You'll also notice that there are no seamstresses with wooden looms anymore either. Creative destruction is expected. In fact, one of the core principles behind real Capitalism is to encourage technological innovation. The purpose of technological innovation is to improve the quality of life of human beings. That's
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They don't, or not by much. Most of the benefits are creamed off as higher profits [theatlantic.com].
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The point is there aren't 4.9% of people unemployed because they are too lazy to get jobs; 100% of unemployment is essentially unemployable at the given moment because the consumers spending money and buying things aren't [capable of] buying enough to require their employment.
This has to do with how people economize: they allocate means (resources) to maximize ends. That means they'll allocate time (labor) and money to maximize stability and amount purchased. People won't work 60 hours for 40 hours of
Re:Threshold (Score:5, Insightful)
But by not having a social safety net for everyone, this kind of thing looks like it might ruin the US.
Why is it the government's or society's responsibility to support those that refuse to support themselves?
Because the alternative is that a large number of people will be unable to feed themselves. And one of the major lessons of history is that when large numbers of people have no other way to survive, they turn to robbery or outright revolt. Some of us enjoy living in a modern civilization and would like it to remain that way.
Re:Threshold (Score:5, Insightful)
90% of the workforce was farmers in 1870. It's 2% now, with a total of about 10% of all work supporting that (chemists, GMO, shipping, irrigation, fuel for all this shit...).
Economic growth is basically either "we have more people, so we make more stuff, because more people work more" or "we figured out how to use the same people to make the same shit in half the time, so we made twice as much shit." Wages essentially represent time.
Re:Threshold (Score:4, Interesting)
Everyone is not creative. Everyone can't write, and most can't well enough that anyone would want to read it. Many can't sing, or draw, or express themselves beyond the level of a 3rd grader.
Does our current "fiat currency" "crash every other year b/c of market greed?" Yes, there are ups and downs in the market, but I wouldn't call it a crash.
And while I agree there needs to be a social safety net, people need to deal with change. This isn't a US problem. It isn't even necessarily a problem. All that said, automation isn't free. You can automate lots of jobs, but it may cost more to automate than it costs to pay someone to do it. Flipping burgers can easily be automated, but currently its cheaper and easier to train a 16yo to do it. They can also make fries, take out the trash, clean tables, and do other tasks. All that can be automated as well, but not cost effectively. Now, if we ever get iRobot humanoid style robots for under $100k, that will be extremely disruptive. That's likely at least a generation or more away though.
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Most self described 'creatives' aren't. They just echo each other. Somehow they eak out a living.
People like power over others, so rich people like to be served by Baristas, even though automated machines can already do the job much better than most people employed as coffee slingers. It's also why managers like to increase their 'headcount'. All rational business should keep headcount to a minimum while still getting the job done, but perverse economic incentives are everywhere. None are more perverse t
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We create new and different jobs. 100 years ago computer programmer wasn't a thing. Now it is. The US agriculture industry died and was replaced by a manufacturing industry. Manufacturing is being replaced by service. As we start to eliminate service jobs, we will replace them. Perhaps artists will be profitable?
Secretarial work has been dieing out as well and those admins have been moving into different positions. Same with travel agents. Now we have wedding and party planners.
There are industries with a s
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And yet we have billion dollar industries built around watching people play ball.
My friend who is a handyman has a 6 month waiting list of jobs people want him to do. The house cleaners around here all have waiting lists. So do the daycares. There is work and plenty of it. They just require personal responsibility and initiative instead of just waiting for the boss to tell you want to do. Don't want your job to be automated? Be useful and adaptive. Add value beyond the machine.
My entire job is automating ta
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People actually pay people to fold laundry for them. Perhaps you should get out of your bubble. They also pay people to mow their lawn. Yes, I can paint my bedroom myself. But I would rather spend that time playing with my kids instead of yelling at them to not dump the paint on their heads. So I pay someone who has the ability to focus on the task at hand.
Carpenter, electrician, plumber... All these things need done. When my sink starts dumping water into my basement, I *could* fix it myself. Or I can call
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How do you figure cost of basic goods is going to decline? Cost savings due to technological advances hasn't been passed onto the consumer ever.
Cynicism is not knowledge.
Food used to cost most of the household budget. Shoes and furniture used to cost so much that only the head of household had shoes and a chair. Most people couldn't afford flatware, or glass windows. The list goes on and on.
In the 50s, the American dream was to eventually earn enough to own a washing machine, a refrigerator, and a television.
Cost savings due to technological advances are always passed on to the consumer, eventually. Margins only get smaller over time until some
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How many party planners do we need? Will the government host parties just to keep those people employed?
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Service jobs will never go away, they'll just evolve into more customized or creative services. Wedding and party planners are a good example of that, but so are home theater installers. The cheaper basic goods are, the more people will spend on getting help on life tasks.
Re:Threshold (Score:4, Interesting)
The same arguments hit in the19th century. Factories were scary! The Barron's of wallstreet and CEOs ruled. Illegal immigrants from Ireland , China, and Italy were taking all the jobs. Professional box makers, clock makers, textile tailor jobs were all disappearing! It was the end??!
Or was it? It turns out without the industrial revolution we wouldn't have a modern lifestyle today. It sounds very similar to today. Replace ethnic groups and names of baron titans to ones today? Viola.
True you do not have housewives as rich tailors making shirts anymore. You do not see professional box makers nor time keepers (before alarm clocks they would knock on your window to get u up) anymore. But we have cars, cheap goods, and the migrants descendents are all middle to upper class now.
Goods will become cheaper as globalism expands these countries buy our stuff back as they enter middle class. Look at China? Japan was poor too. Now we make money off them. When the dust settles 50 years from now we all will be rich. Africa will be the last challenge. Everyone will be better off
Re: Threshold (Score:4, Funny)
I think people still make violas
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What happens when you only need 1 human to maintain 300 machines who can each do the work of 500 people?
You mean a $78,000 Tesla is only going to cost 52 cents, and I can now afford to add third floor to my house, buy a few musical instruments, and hire a couple private tutors?
Sounds great to me. We'll all drive Teslas.
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What happens when you only need 1 human to maintain 300 machines who can each do the work of 500 people?
Disappointed Trump supporters who didn't get that one job. Those are the manufacturing jobs that are coming back to America. Not the big factories that hires 1,500 people, but the little factories that hires a dozen people to do the work of 1,500 people. In short, Trump lied.
Capitalism's weakness is automation.
Capitalism, especially crony capitalism, doesn't care about people. Everyone is a cog. If a cog can get replaced with a machine that can produce more widgets for the same buck, the invisible hand of the market dictates replacing the cog
No need to predict the past (Score:2)
> What about when it's all kinds of jobs? What happens when you only need 1 human to maintain 300 machines who can each do the work of 500 people?
You can read about what happens, that was the 1980s and 1990s. My grandfather was an accountant. At the time, that meant he was also a bookkeper - he wrote things down in a ledger, and used a desk calculator that spit out paper of the results.
My mom was a computer programmer. She wrote software so computers could do the job that my grandfather used to do.
Re:Threshold (Score:5, Insightful)
You're assuming that people won't find a different job their current job is automated.
You're assuming they will. It didn't happen with the industrial revolution. Their grandkids found other jobs, but for a lot of displaced agricultural workers it meant grinding poverty.
IOW it may or may not happen. You don't know and there's historical precident in both directions.
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The future is not unemployment due to complete automation, the future is shit jobs and shit salaries for everyone with just enough automation to suppress everyone's wages.
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The greeks had primitive 'steam engines'. But it took advances in metallurgy to make the engines practical. Even in the 1800s, it took decades before boiler explosions were a solved problem.
It was hard animal harnesses that did away with most slavery. Before that an ox or a human were comparable to draft animals in terms of work/food. Putting the load onto the ox's shoulders 'automated' the job of 'human plow puller' (yes I know, modern plows were another invention, I'm skipping steps).
More time on the interesting parts of the job (Score:4, Interesting)
This study says that for the average job, half of it can be automated (the repetitive part).
Fifteen years ago, I would spend one hour writing software, then two hours testing it. Now the testing is mostly automated. I write code and when I check it in the automated system runsva bunch of tests. It then alerts me of any problems revealed by the automated tests. Automating half of my job has meant I can spend more time creating new software and less time testing, while producing higher quality because I never forget to run one of the tests.
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That is often called "the world's first profession".
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What about people that don't have the mental flexibility to train for a new job?
I know a pair of computer scientist graduates who stopped learning after leaving the university. They both got good jobs at different companies, got laid off seven years later during the dot com bust, took a six-month "vacation" while drawing unemployment benefits and couldn't find a job because their programming skills were obsolete. Did they teach themselves new skills, go back to school or enroll in a boot camp? Nope. They took jobs as cashier clerks, which they're still doing today. Smart guys who never
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They have two choices, prepare for civil wars and unrest or allow the masses to benefit from all of this automation by maintaining their needs with a part of the wealth that is generated by all those savings. It's quite simple really....when a person loses all hope they become desperate.
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the best thing that can be done is to start tailoring school curriculum with these disruptive technologies in-mind, so that there are less people that would seek to go into doomed industries in the first place. Unfortunately that costs money and people don't want to be taxed to make that kind of budgeting available.
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Re:Threshold (Score:5, Interesting)
I heard a story from a friend who works with refugees. One family, he found a good job for the father, got them settled, etc. After a few weeks the father had stopped going to work. My friend asked the father what had happened, was there a problem with the work? Was it too difficult to get to work? Did they not like you?
No, he said, it was none of these things. He stopped going to work because he realized his children were growing up without him and it was his responsibility to be home to take care of the family. Once that was accomplished, then he would go to work. This then, of course, led to conversations about having to pay for things you need for life and so on, but I think there is a grain of truth here.
Life != work and there would be plenty of great living to do outside of work.
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So instead he sits on welfare so that I can work my ass off to provide for him and his 13 kids. In the meantime I have to explain to my wife we can't afford a second child because some lazy fucking refugee won't take his sorry ass to work.
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What is the unemployment threshold going to be? When unemployment caused by automation, robotics, etc reaches 10%? 15%... 20%..?
In the coming decades more and more people worldwide will become unemployable, and they will have nothing to do or any way to make a living?
How are governments and communities going to respond?
An economic system based on there never being enough people to do the labor will have to be fundamentally changed because we will have a labor shortage. The question is what changes will that involve? When this happens, requiring people who have no access to labor to pay taxes or procure goods in exchange for currency that can only be gained by exchanging labor will not make any sense.
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Not to sound racist but we have plenty of Mexicans and other Latinos entering the US and Canada to do work white people feel is beneath them.
What will happen is regular people will live 6 to a home and pick vegatables, mow lawns, clean toilets, and wash dishes. That is a problem if you want an SUV, 1 million for retirement, and own a home though
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What is the unemployment threshold going to be? When unemployment caused by automation, robotics, etc reaches 10%? 15%... 20%..?
In the coming decades more and more people worldwide will become unemployable, and they will have nothing to do or any way to make a living?
How are governments and communities going to respond?
They will respond, out of perceived necessity, with further militarization of the police and surveillance of the activities of the unemployed. The revolution will be drone-struck before it can strike the first blow.
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What is the unemployment threshold going to be?
When unemployment caused by automation, robotics, etc reaches 10%?
15%...
20%..?
In the coming decades more and more people worldwide will become unemployable, and they will have nothing to do or any way to make a living?
How are governments and communities going to respond?
All OK, no problem it fixes itself.
Since - according to a common philosophy, anyone not doing well is doing something wrong and needs to be punished to learn how to do it right, that's just the way the natural selection of the fittest, staying on top and survives, works.
Probably some Elysium-Style arrangement.
http://www.politicalcortex.com... [politicalcortex.com]
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The civil unrest it causes could make it impractical to automate to that level.
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I've heard there's going to be a lot of jobs available on the moon and Mars.
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What is the carb to protein conversion efficiency of humans? I'd guess, at best, it's worse than any common domesticated animal.
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Re: Time Machiene (Score:2)
You'll still pay the lazy but it will be at knife point instead
Automated Post (Score:5, Insightful)
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Even work that isn't "practical" to automate now is being picked at by AI and robotics research wherever it can be. For example, robots that can learn by example and can work in close proximity to people: https://ww [technologyreview.com]
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Every day in my job I see places where software problems make work much harder than it should be. We have a network monitoring product that can collect inventory/asset information as part of its regular function, but provides no means by which to search against or run reports against that information. Their DB is so huge that building your own exte
Shocking news (Score:2)
I am shocked to hear this. Completely shocked.
only half?
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I'd say half the work people do could be eliminated altogether, and few would care.
There's a hell of a lot of bureaucratic make-work that goes on in this world. Examples: Laws so complex only lawyers can understand them, or tax rules so complicated only CPAs can understand them. Result? You've got to hire lawyers and CPAs. Or, middle managers at large corporations or in government that just shuffle around, create more paperwork, and enforce internal rules that perhaps made sense to someone, somewhere, b
The end of Capitalism. No Work No Consumers (Score:2)
Re:The end of Capitalism. No Work No Consumers (Score:4, Interesting)
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Sure.. my job can be automated (Score:5, Insightful)
My job can be automated as soon as someone can create some software that takes multiple sets of ill defined and incomplete specs* and can create a working, tested piece of code that not only does what was written down, but also does what was intended to be written down but never was.
* And in my current line of work there is a set of specs from the final customer, a set of specs from the company that builds the hardware and a set of specs from the company** I am working for that supplies the actual automation. And all of these specs are ill defined and incomplete in their own ways.
** And within that company the group that designs the physical wiring doesn't really converse with the sales critters that bid on the job, or with people like me who end up writing the control software***
*** Maybe they need a "Bender" module to emulate all the swearing I am doing at everyone else?
Re:Sure.. my job can be automated (Score:5, Funny)
Maybe it will be management that will be automated and for once we can all receive clear, though out, complete, realistic specs. /ha ha who am I kidding.
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They already replacing lower management with AI.
Re:Sure.. my job can be automated (Score:4, Funny)
When automation overlords take over, the only thing you will be doing is sitting in meetings with marketing and sales and writing/interpreting specs.
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Is your work repetitive? Then you should get afraid. However, processing contradicting documentation of requirements requires creativity, which is currently out of the grasp of AI. It also will be that way for the coming 20-30 years. However, AI could read the documentation for you detect the inconsistencies and support you by searching the bloat and code for you. This will make you more efficient. Unfortunately, less programmers are then necessary for the same amount of programming. Fortunately, we live in
So? (Score:5, Interesting)
Here is your anecdote. A friend of mine was working on the manufacture industry. They had a branch in India, and his role was to mentor the product manager of the Indian factory. For a long time, he insisted that the factory in India bought this expensive machinery that they had been used in the Arizona for their production. The factory in India refused to do so by showing that paying 10 people to do the same job, for 100 years, would still be cheaper than actually buying the machinery.
Moral of the story: stupid article, move on.
I got a different moral out of that (Score:3)
mitigating factor (Score:5, Insightful)
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the effort to "re-automate" something may approach the level of effort it took to automate it in the first place
Even if this is true (which I doubt - once you've solved a problem, it generally becomes much easier to solve related problems), the "re-automating" will employ a small elite of computer scientists, just like the original automating did. The millions of workers replaced by automation will not be benefitted by re-automation.
This requires rewriting alot of software (Score:2)
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ALOT
Interestingly though, spell checkers are already automated.
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Great example there. Blockbuster video had roughly 60,000 employees at peak. Netflix currently has roughly 3500 employees. Their current level of automation has already hit over a 90% reduction in the movie rental workforce. And you are worried that they've not automated enough yet.
McKinsey (Score:5, Insightful)
U.S. political parties? (Score:2)
I wonder what this does to the political parties in the U.S. It would seem the Republican fare the worst, their view is that if you are poor, you should go find a job. The Democrats have a more share the wealth attitude of taking from the rich, it seems they'd fare better. The Libertarians become mostly unemployed and won't accept a handout, they're toast. The Greens? I guess it depends upon how green the bots are.
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As a member of the American Solidarity Party [solidarity-party.org], I advocate for an exploration of a universal basic income / citizen's dividend [solidarity-party.org]. It may or may not work, but it's worth exploring. Finland is currently experimenting [theoutline.com] with this.
A lot of it is 'frontin' (Score:2)
None of this is news. Almost all jobs these days exist more for 'coverage' rather than full-on throughput. On an instant-to-instant basis, 90+% of human 'work' time is waiting/transition/communication rather than raw action. You can often tell a long-time professional by how they spend 'in-between' time as much as traditional knowledge domain stuff, there's a sort of performance art folks pick up that's no longer 'looking busy', but instead putting folks at ease when there's nothing else to actively do.
S
Works great till it don't (Score:2)
Automation works great, till it breaks or hits an edge case. Then you need people like me to fix it.
Infact I would say that most computer based automation is so full of flaws, that things need constant babysitting, code updates, etc. Its rare to find an automated system that just keeps on ticking for an entire year without some sort of intervention, let alone multiple years or decades.
And all the best automation costs tonnes of money. Sometimes its just cheaper to hire minimum wage people to do it. But I am
Cut full time down to 30-32 hours and slide it dow (Score:2)
Cut full time down to 30-32 hours and slide it down to 20 over time.
We do not need where jack get's 0 hours and jay is working 60-80 or 40 + 24/7 on call. (covering what used to be done with 2-3 people)
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Good luck. With 600 million out of work it would be logical to assume an 80 hour a week job with no benefits paying $15/hr is better than 0 an hour. If you don't do it the boss will find some other desperate worker who will. Another cost savings to give to the CEO and MBAs in the form of bonuses
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Not going to happen. They will just waste more time. Extend the daily 'stand-up' to 3 hours, add a weekly 'all staff' meeting and the MBAs are done.
How many productive hours are you allowed per week?
I occasionally bitch about the CA department of general services *. But putting all the really useless, net negative workers in one building does have the advantage of keeping them out of the hair of people who actually have work to do. As bad as the current situation is, it's better than distributing those
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mad multipliers (Score:2)
Yes, but do all these people want to be touched?
My trusty calculator with a dedicated [000] key says the legal settlement could end up costing an exillion dollars.
Half doesn't need to be done (Score:2)
I'd argue that at least half of what most cube dwellers do all day doesn't need to be done at all. Large corps build of thick layers of corporate sludge over the years, layers to bureaucracy and reporting that is put into place and never re-questioned. Finding a way to clear out that crap would do more for happiness and profit than automation.
Programming/IT will be automatable in 10 years (Score:3, Insightful)
I tell teenagers who want to go into IT or computers for a career to only do it if they really want to. If they are doing it for the high salaries, they are taking a big risk.
You will still have a need for low-level customer-service work and high-level design/research work in 20 years.
The mid-level stuff that your run-of-the-mill programmer and system administrator does today will be largely be automated.
Hopefully, new, fun, decent-paying tech jobs that use similar parts of the brain that we haven't even thought of will fill the void.
Re:Programming/IT will be automatable in 10 years (Score:4, Insightful)
Any job can be automated... (Score:2)
War (Score:2)
Governments will do something. Companies will do something, too, because it's in their collective best interes
I would welcome some automation (Score:2)
Heck, if my Slashdot browsing could be automated - my work efficiency would go WAY up!
Many jobs will be safe (Score:2)
Someone please think of the C students!! (Score:5, Insightful)
The work I'm actually most concerned about being automated is upper-middle class office work. Otherwise, unless the rules change completely and we stop using money and property as a store of value, economic activity will slowly wind down as people can't buy things and don't feel secure.
I work and have worked in large companies almost exclusively over a 20 year career. In environments like this, you will always have a distribution of abilities and skills. However, doing IT systems engineering work, I tend to agree with this report's findings. There are tons of jobs that could easily be automated with a little work. In banks I've worked at, as an example, there are people whose sole job is to accept documents mailed and faxed in for mortgage verification, enter the information into a computer, and take a fixed switch...case type action based on inspection. There used to be tens of people processing checks on two or three shifts. These jobs and hundreds more are the equivalent of an assembly line skill level, just working with paper or electronic files. Outside of the paper-processing world are tons of questionably-useful jobs in sales and marketing -- things like coordinating trade shows and putting out press releases. Across the organization are things like liaisons, project managers, business analysts, and other jobs that simply involve taking information from one group and passing it along to another. Yet, these jobs pay middle class salaries and give average-ability people something to do, regardless of how much raw revenue or cost saving they add.
I think a lot of the instability we see now is what's currently happening in companies - these simple jobs are either being eliminated or offshored in the desire for companies to save a few bucks here and there. The typical occupant of these jobs is a product of the last 30-40 years' obsession with sending everyone to college instead of giving them a trade or skill-based education. I went to a large state university, and back then just as now, they were pumping out thousands of generic business majors into the job market, most of whom were/are the typical C student partying their way through school. Here's the difference between then and now -- back then, that C student would just roll up to the career counseling office during their senior year. Recruiters from big companies would interview them, they'd get a couple offers, and accept some random entry-level position. Now, no one's hiring the C students and even the A and B students are having trouble finding that first job. (I was a B student, but that was in a hard science and I worked full time.) Fast forward, and that C student is working their way up the ladder with salary increases along the way -- paper pusher associate, senior paper pusher, supervisor of paper pushers, Manager of Bulk Pulp Transport, Director of Document Services...
The problem now is that the ladder is broken for an increasingly large swath of the population. Once the career progression is gone, that kills the salary increases that occur over time and allow for things like buying a house. 30 year mortgages are painful in the beginning but are supposed to get easier as you age because your income is expected to increase. Car manufacturers can't sell cars to people who don't feel comfortable enough in their jobs to take out a car loan or spend a little extra for a non-base model. And, companies can't sell products to their employees if the employees are worried about whether the axe will fall tomorrow. This squares with everything we've been hearing about Millenials - they don't want a car mainly because they can't afford one, they don't want to own a home because they're not secure in their employment, etc.
In my mind, this is why we got Trump. His rhetoric about rolling the clock back to the late 1940s was an easy sell for blue collar workers, but I think enough white collar workers took a hard look at their situation and remembered stories from their parents/grandparents about times when companies showed loyalty, when th
Re: (Score:3)
But the trend is definitely, if you don't use creativity or deal with humans in a interpersonal way, your job is on a short runway.
I don't know, I prefer Alexa to some customer service reps I've encountered (but definitely not others).
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Re:s/half/all/g (Score:5, Funny)
I for one would welcome a robot doing half of my work. That would be the half of my work that consists of meetings.
Re:s/half/all/g (Score:5, Insightful)
Unfortunately, that's the half that can't be automated with "currently demonstrated technology".
Most "currently demonstrated technology" has a logical framework. Most of what goes in meetings has no logical basis. Ergo, it ain't happening soon.
Nope (Score:2)
pay CEO more money
First job to go. Replaced by a small Perl script.