375 Million Jobs May Be Automated By 2030, Study Suggests (cnn.com) 236
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNNMoney: The McKinsey Global Institute cautions that as many as 375 million workers will need to switch occupational categories by 2030 due to automation. The work most at risk of automation includes physical jobs in predictable environments, such as operating machinery or preparing fast food. Data collection and processing is also in the crosshairs, with implications for mortgage origination, paralegals, accounts and back-office processing. To remain viable, workers must embrace retraining in different fields. But governments and companies will need to help smooth what could be a rocky transition.
Despite the looming challenges, the report revealed how workers can move forward. While the introduction of the personal computer in the 1980s eliminated some jobs, it created many more roles. Workers who are willing to develop new skills should be able to find new jobs. The authors don't expect automation will displace jobs involving managing people, social interactions or applying expertise. Gardeners, plumbers, child and elder-care workers are among those facing less risk from automation. The report says that 39 million to 73 million jobs in the U.S. could be destroyed, but about 20 million of those displaced workers can be shifted fairly easily into similar occupations. Globally, up to 800 million workers could be displaced.
Despite the looming challenges, the report revealed how workers can move forward. While the introduction of the personal computer in the 1980s eliminated some jobs, it created many more roles. Workers who are willing to develop new skills should be able to find new jobs. The authors don't expect automation will displace jobs involving managing people, social interactions or applying expertise. Gardeners, plumbers, child and elder-care workers are among those facing less risk from automation. The report says that 39 million to 73 million jobs in the U.S. could be destroyed, but about 20 million of those displaced workers can be shifted fairly easily into similar occupations. Globally, up to 800 million workers could be displaced.
Interesting Perspective (Score:3)
Now obviously that 375 million is worldwide. But to put that number into perspective, isn't the population of the U.S. around 325 million?
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Don't worry! They've got the us covered...
...that 39 million to 73 million jobs in the U.S. could be destroyed, but about 20 million of those displaced workers can be shifted fairly easily into similar occupations.
So, anywhere from 19 million to 53 million US jobs will NOT be able to be easily shifted. And US job training programs are just world renowned for.. yeah, can't even fake lie, our training programs are useless feel good projects. I'd say you can always work for Uber but they're automating too. Well, good luck! Hope all those mysterious unknown jobs that the optimists on /. talk about appearing from nowhere are willing to pay a living wage. (More likely you'l
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It is. Picking grocery's was never meant to be a living wage it's for kids and women to earn a little pin money.
Thought I'd save cayenne8 the trouble...
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So, anywhere from 19 million to 53 million US jobs will NOT be able to be easily shifted. And US job training programs are just world renowned for.. yeah, can't even fake lie, our training programs are useless feel good projects.
That's not just the US, it's pretty much everywhere. Thing is if we see huge shifts in automation like that where large parts of society can't find work, you'll either have to expand the safety net or change how the economy itself works. Or, you can always go another route. With FB, Google, Uber and so on pushing minicome and so on, simply tax them at 60-75% to pay for it. I'll bet that said automation will never happen then.
Slightly to the topic of a living wage, wait for the $15/hr minimum wage to hit
Believe me (Score:2, Insightful)
The way we're going, by 2030 we may living in caves again.
Maybe we can mine for clean coal while we're there.
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The way we're going, by 2030 we may living in caves again.
Sorry, we need those caves to store florgs.
Creating new 509 million jobs (Score:4, Insightful)
This seems to happen every 50 years or so. OMG technology will take our jobs. Oh wait it took jobs that we didn’t want to do and it created a new market for more jobs.
There use to be a job for the human computer who did calculations all day.
We get the electric computer that replaced that job. However this meant more businesses could afford these computer causing a rise of software developers who had more jobs then the human computer had.
Except for fighting the future, embrace it, it will mean you can be on the next big thing.
Re:Creating new 509 million jobs (Score:5, Insightful)
This seems to happen every 50 years or so. OMG technology will take our jobs.
Considering that before the industrial revolution that almost everyone was a farmer, yes, it did take our jobs. Some people managed to survive by moving to cities but plenty of people didn't. I do write "survive" because the conditions they had to endure were horrid. It was a time of mass exploitation, death and hunger.
It took a long time for us to pull ourselves out of that hole but now most people have slowly been pushed back in it. In addition to this we now have increasing levels of automation and the level of exploitation is going to continue rising sharply. If we do nothing to compensate prevent whole sale exploitation of the populous then we'll have a dramatic increase in levels of crime, violence and corruption.
So yeah, color me a bit concerned for humanity.
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The times before the industrial revolution were worse. People moved to the cities because the jobs their beat starving as peasants in the country side.
I'm not arguing that the industrial revolution was bad, I'm arguing it was no panacea. Technology has improved a lot of lives but that doesn't negate the exploitation that came with it as the result of a captive workforce.
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It took a long time for us to pull ourselves out of that hole but now most people have slowly been pushed back in it.
Ask the people of Eastern Europe, China, India, South America and even though they still struggle also Africa if they'd like to turn back time 50 years. The biggest change technology has pushed on us has been globalism, where a ton of cheap workers flooded the market. Before there was like for every one rich American/Western European there were ten dirt poor people. If you looked at the wealth distribution of the world there was the first world, a big slump and then the third world. You could pay anyone fro
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The first industrial revolution was when socialism really solidified into a movement that fought for worker's rights. It's what is needed to cope with this coming change, but a large amount of effort has been made to discredit and demonize it.
The ancient Greeks thought that democracy was a poor system because people voted for their own self-interest instead of the greater good. Turns out that these days it's a poor system because people vote against their own self interest because of propaganda and fake new
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Re: Creating new 509 million jobs (Score:2)
Are you on crack? In the past, farmers were driven off their ancestral lands by state violence, to enrich the landlords. Today, unless you pay the landlords and bankers far more than any worker can afford, you too will be driven off a subsistence farm by state violence.
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The problem with your statement is that every person had the option of ignoring technology and staying on the subsistence farm, using subsistence farming techniques. They chose to lave the farms of their own free will [wikipedia.org].
TFTFY.
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Ever heard of the highland clearances?
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With robots, we won't need seven billion, we can reduce the number to a half billion or so, that's a manageable number.
Why wait ? Without robots we don't need 7 billion either.
Now, what's your proposal to select the 6.5 vs 0.5 billion people ? And what will the exact method of culling ?
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Iterated scissors-paper-stone.
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We won't need the working class because of robots, and we won't need the middle class because of AI. So, the only ones left will be the educated classes, which are not the source of problems today.
Uh, not the source? Yeah right. It is in fact the "educated classes" that represent the 1%, who have created this massive imbalance of global wealth and power. Is is in fact that particular flavor of ruthless Greed that drives elitists, pushing as fast as possible with automation and AI, regardless of the impact. The 1% cannot envision a concern beyond the next fiscal year. Their only goal is to become the next billionaire or trillionaire, a fucking pointless self-centered metric that serves no one but
One of these things... (Score:5, Insightful)
One of these things is not like the others.
When you automate a few, or even all, sock factories, the workers can go make sweaters and underwear, etc. The economy as a whole doesn't make a radical shift. There's some hardship for a small number, but the flex is there.
When you automate everything, the workers won't have that option. The entire economy will shift. There won't be new jobs for workers – because just like the old jobs, general purpose systems will be able to do those as well. There will be no case for hiring a human for such jobs. None.
Unless you have some concrete proposal for the re-employment of the vast majority of the workforce, your vision remains on the highly unlikely side – McDonald's will not put a worker in place of a machine that costs much less and is more reliable; there's absolutely no business case for it. Neither will anyone else. In the present economic system, doing so is a straightforward invitation for competition to undercut your costs and overwhelm your competence.
These systems will be able to do all such jobs. The only question is just how sophisticated they will get... and betting that they won't get very sophisticated is a dubious bet. We're seeing higher levels of competence every day now, and there's no sign of it slowing down – quite the contrary, it's still accelerating.
A major social and economic shift will result. It could be very painful if we're not very quick on our feet. All of the "work ethic" inculcation people are driven by is going to turn from an advantage to a serious detriment in the space of just a few years.
You watch. Unless the whole machine learning sector drags to a halt (not looking that way at all, btw), this stuff is all inevitable. It's almost certain to cause an immense cultural and economic shock.
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You watch. Unless the whole machine learning sector drags to a halt (not looking that way at all, btw), this stuff is all inevitable. It's almost certain to cause an immense cultural and economic shock.
Which ends either in Skynet, or the Butlerian Jihad.
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And perhaps in the rise of Mentats.
Predicting the past again (Score:2)
> When you automate a few, or even all, sock factories, the workers can go make sweaters and underwear, etc.
Too late to make that argument. Sweaters and underwear were automated a long time ago. Along with the production of fabric to start with. As I've pointed out elsewhere on this page, someone keeping an eye on an automated loom has an average salary of $32,000. A weaver made ten cents a day. The more automated the work becomes, the more goods are produced per worker. More goods is more money coming
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Do you think the cost of living hasn't changed in 200 years, or are you knowingly making a bullshit comparison?
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Ah, the old argument: I don't need to cut down that tree because it has never fallen on my house before. There are black swan events. You are arguing there are no black swans in economics, but there clearly are.
Workers do not merely retrain for other jobs, it requires an entire infrastructure. And if the retraining is for more technically competent jobs, good luck getting most of America back in the classroom. This is the same classroom a good portion of them feel it is a badge of honor to disparage. That d
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Another difference is that in the 1800s there were a lot fewer people around. Some areas were pretty much empty. Others were only populated by brown people who a) didn't have guns and b) were heathens and so didn't count.
There seems to be a complex relationship between industrialisation and imperial expansion and you can make a case for causality running either way, or both. One thing's certain, a tiny place like Britain couldn't have invaded a quarter of the world if all the men had to stay home growing
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Eventually yes (Score:2, Insightful)
So yeah, the ship will probably eventually right itself. After a lot of pointless misery that could be easily avoided if we just plain _tried_. Let me put it another way: unemployment and social
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What's your sample size? If you're arguing it happens every 50 years over the last 200 years then statistically that's not a very strong argument. Kind of like stock market arguments. Wow it goes up 8% every 20 years which gives maybe a sample size of 5 with the modern market. Not a strong argument.
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The farmer always feeds us ... until it's Christmas Eve.
Ok but... (Score:2)
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When will we have good adaptive learning algorithms and weak AI in highly functional yet cheap humanoid form?
How do you think your iPhone was manufactured
Just go down to personnel and request a transfer (Score:5, Interesting)
I requested G section and when it was granted, G section put me onto training straight away for my new position;
I love it how these economic-sounding pronouncements about worker obsolescence make it sound like merely a bureaucratic operation plus a dash of worker initiative and the jobs problem is solved.
I like economics, but I'm increasingly convinced that economists are mostly the ecclesiastical division of the capitalist class. Their role is to endorse greed and dislocation of workers as necessary and good works and rebuke critics who question the outcome.
There's plenty of good economists (Score:2)
The elites figured out in the 80s they needed think tanks to give them some legitimacy. That's all this is. But if you can managed to bypass the think tanks and watch the stuff coming out
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Bullshit. The New York Times and Washington Post, just to name two, have been regularly running articles pointing out the fallacies of the new tax cuts. They even reported on an administration official who said it wasn't a tax system overhaul, but a giveaway. They have also widely reported that the big donors to the Republican Party will stop supporting it if they do not get their tax cuts. And they have reported this explains why a widely detested party with low poll approval is going along with an alleged
What are we to do? (Score:2)
We also ruined alot of farmhand and candle makers and box creator jobs too back in the 19th century.
But as someone unemployed competing agaisn't Indians currently for jobs that adjusted for inflation pay less than what I was worth 17 years ago it is discouraging. My country the US is so far far right that any income redistribution is considered communism and is vehemently opposed as entitlement snow flakes to do just that.
What are people supposed to do to have a secure average life?
I loved Star Trek TNG as
You could stop abandoning those folks to poverty (Score:2)
We have a solution. It's socialism. Give people the fruits of those machine's labors instead of letting an elite aristocracy monopolize them. I realize it's frustrating to let people have things they didn't 'earn' (funny how it's not when they inherit wealth, but that's s
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China is already investing heavily in automation. They fear that the rest of the world will automate and their large population will become a relative high cost way to manufacture.
The biggest job loss? (Score:2)
The largest losses won't be among tech and factory workers. It will be retail and driving.
Retail already has big bloody chunks torn out of it by online sales.
The rush to automated rides, trucks, and personal vehicles is breathless.
Moral of the story: Find something better to do.
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Moral of the story: Find something better to do.
Go fishing.
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It gets worse. Automated driving will enable new forms of automation not possible before. There are tons of jobs where someone drives to a client location, does X job, then drives back to the office. Humans were necessary to drive there, do X, then drive back. Once the driving is automated, the human will only be needed for X, and beancounters will start thinking "I wonder if we can automate X..."
First on the chopping block will be moving/loading/unloading type jobs, postal delivery and moving-van type stuf
So Japan's failure is assumed? (Score:2, Funny)
A driving force of Japanese robotics R&D is to solve their elder care problem. Eldercare is certainly in their crosshairs. Perhaps we can export all of our displaced accountants and mortgage bankers to change bedpans.
Actually, unless someone troubles to risk creating AIs for cooking the books, only honest accountants and bankers really have to worry. Does that mean its not a problem at all?
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Care of the elderly is becoming a problem for most developed nations, as populations stabilize or even begin to fall. Pensions and elderly care provision all relied on a growing population to work, so that one old person's care was paid for by several younger people. Now it's getting to 1:1 or worse, the young don't want to pay any more.
The basic contract on which most modern societies were built, that you pay for taxes and contributions now and are looked after in old age, is breaking down. Robots may help
But what does the worker give up. (Score:2)
What if itâ(TM)s a high paying job and the workers replacement job pays a third? Thatâ(TM)s just as bad.
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The obvious solution is to use your last check to buy a robot that will outperform you and send you its income. Then, once you've purchased enough robots, you can open a robo-brothel. Then, pray that Jude Law doesn't catch wind.
Managing people? (Score:3)
Future Career Options (Score:2)
When I grow up, I wanna be a robot! Daddy says that's where all the jobs are.
In Asda-Walmart the customer is the robot. (Score:2)
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I hate the self-checkout aisle.
They're terrible. And it appears they're not cheaper either.
The cheapest supermarkets in the UK (Lidl and Aldi) use a small number of well trained staff compared to the large bank of self checkouts and poorly trained staff in the other supemarkets.
They can reliably scan goods faster than I can pack them, too.
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As for the amount of time spent in checkout, you're fo
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"Just because the current incarnation sucks, doesn't mean it will always suck."
It also doesn't mean that it will improve. The only thing that will bring improvement is competition that gives a better customer experience w/o significantly costing more.
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"Just because the current incarnation sucks, doesn't mean it will always suck."
It also doesn't mean that it will improve. The only thing that will bring improvement is competition that gives a better customer experience w/o significantly costing more.
I don't recall there being a monopoly in this market? In any case, I don't think anyone's ever won a bet against technology improving.
Birth control to the rescue! (Score:2)
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>So when it comes to automation replacing jobs, why does the list of things we need more of never include "birth control"?
Because that view includes the assumption that only the richest people have any inherent value. Even the poorest person has as much right to exist and have children as the richest.
We should be encouraging a population reduction because we can more easily maintain our lifestyle if we have smaller numbers, not because rich people don't need servants any longer.
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Clue: The wealthiest portion of the population doesn't have kids nearly at the rate of the poor.
Riddle me this (Score:2)
If occupation A is automated, and all the ex-As move into similar occupation B, isn't it pretty likely that B is going to be next - by the middle of next week, probably?
Finally, a use for social justice warriors (Score:2)
How much job automation will be driven by corporate legal and HR when they realize that a robot cannot be accused of sexual harassment? This will push automation even into the highly "social" jobs that involve a lot of interfacing with either customers or other employees, because these are the most legally vulnerable.
Who Knew (Score:2)
Who knew that that many hookers would be put out of work?!?
The actual report (Score:5, Informative)
https://www.mckinsey.com/globa... [mckinsey.com]
The 5 MB PDF:
https://www.mckinsey.com/~/med... [mckinsey.com]
If there are fewer jobs... (Score:2)
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...who's going to have the money to buy the stuff that these robots make? What will happen to our consumerism and advertising driven economies then? Will /. be able to survive? Is this how the robot apocalypse will be, i.e. an economic depression rather than Skynet and killer androids?
The eternal question. In the past, automation allowed the displaced to shift into new jobs. Whether that will be the case in this upcoming situation is not clear, since the goal is not to make things cheaper or better, but to eliminate jobs.
This situation is not going to be stopped, but there seems to be precious little intelligent discussion on what will happen. There are many people who through lack of ambition, or mental makeup, are not capable of moving up to a higher-tier career. What do we do with
hold on (Score:2)
Doesn't that mean that automation will shift fairly easily into those folks new Jerbs?
Not to worry folks, we'll all be bosses.
A "rocky" transition? We're fucked. (Score:2)
"39 million to 73 million jobs in the U.S. could be destroyed, but about 20 million of those displaced workers can be shifted fairly easily into similar occupations. Globally, up to 800 million workers could be displaced."
Translation: 800 million jobs globally are being removed by automation, and only 25 - 50% of them are coming back.
Perhaps we can stop with the "could be a rocky transition" bullshit already and wake up. Automation and good-enough AI is going to be a massive disruptor to human employment, it's coming faster than anyone can predict, and we don't have a fucking clue as to how to resolve that problem.
And please don't tell me UBI is the solution when taxation is the obvious answer to fund it. You can't even ge
Wow, What a Relief! (Score:2)
So... best case is only 19 million formerly employed people out of work permanently and only 20 million precariously employed in newly-created, probably make-work, likely government-subsidized, low-paid jobs (unless of course, these new jobs are exported to $5/hour places overseas) for which there will be intense, ruthless competition that wil
I see a light (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly right.
Here's how it's going to go:
First they will come up with computing systems effective enough to do jobs that aren't tightly constrained. That's coming along right now; mostly in the nature of stacking of simple systems to gain stacked competencies.
The training for individual competencies is going on all around us right now. The difficult task of integrating them remains, and there are many more to go. But it is going.
Then, and only then, will the rush to build anthropomorphic chassis commence. Within just a few years (four or five at the most) of that – after all, it's a straight-forward engineering challenge, completely unlike the nature of putting the task competencies together – we'll be deluged by integrated systems that will be able to do just about anything we're able to do, job-wise.
The light at the end of the tunnel is definitely a train.
Our society will have to completely change the nature of what we expect from our citizens, and what we provide for them, and how we provide it. If we don't get that done in time, there's going to be a lot of blood on the tracks.
The butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker (Score:3, Insightful)
What do these names have in common?
Smith, Potter, Taylor, Spinner, Weaver, Webster, Dyer, Thatcher, Tyler, Miller, Baker, Cheeseman, Spicer, Cook, Fisher, Carter, Clarke, Skinner
They are all common jobs that lots of people do, of course. Or were, 100 years ago. They've all pretty much been automated. Of course we could now list 50 jobs that are common today that didn't exist 100 years a good o. In fact, over half of the US workforce works in jobs that didn't exist 100 years ago.
Yes jobs will be automated
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Already answered. [slashdot.org]
Dyac. Loom, not look. Automated loom (Score:2)
That should be "automated loom".
Loom operators today make about $32,000/year. Rather better than the 10 cents a day Weaver's made.
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Loom operators today make about $32,000/year. Rather better than the 10 cents a day Weaver's made.
But tomorrow, loom operators will be gone, replaced by intelligent looms that can not only tell when they're having a problem, but solve it as well. That's the fundamental difference in this particular revolution: before, we replaced ten workers with one. Now, we're replacing that one worker with zero workers.
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10 cents a day for catching mice isn't bad.
You left out the the thing that belongs to a person called Weaver, so I assumed you meant his cat.
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It's lucky you didn't write automated loon. Because there are people who would jump on that and make sarcastic quips.
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So what you are saying is that in 100 years common surnames will include Webdev, Phonemonkey and Uberman?
Actually that last one sounds kinda cool.
Re: The butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker (Score:2)
Appman ( and Appwoman), Featurer, Speccer, Docker, Documan, Ritter, Desigman, Iotter, Squeller, Nosqueller, Javer, Jascriper, Cesser, Huchtemeler, Coder, Decoder, Assembler, Scrummer, Waterfaller, Phonegapper, Manageman,
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Then, and only then, will the rush to build anthropomorphic chassis commence.
Making a good one is not that easy, and definitely not very cheap. Both of these things have to change before we're getting androids. However, plenty of people are definitely researching it now, so that we already at least have a pretty good idea of what the problems are. Right now, just moving one around elegantly is a job that can't be done for long without a tether, so there's not much use for them. But there's plenty of use for box-shaped robots that spew out hamburgers.
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I don't see why that bit's particularly important.
When cars came out people didn't say "wait till they get rid of them thar new-fangled wheels and put legs on them, as God intended".
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I don't see why that bit's particularly important.
When cars came out people didn't say "wait till they get rid of them thar new-fangled wheels and put legs on them, as God intended".
People also didn't consider buying sex cars.
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Why are you fixated on bipedal robots? The use case for them is with repurposing a human oriented facility for use with robotics where it is cost prohibitive to refurbish the facility for use by robotics which there are very few facility out there where work processes involve move objects between point A and point B and the path between A and B involves ladders or stairs. The worst elevation change typically originates from ramps. A tracked or wheeled robot with a low center of gravity is more than capable
They'll feel the pressure (Score:3)
It won't be some rich techbro. It'll be a mass of very desperate people.
UBI, or some economic equivalent, is inevitable. They're going to have to aim for an economy of plenty. How that actually looks is impossible to say right now, but UBI is definitely one of the possible paths. The alternative is the government looking for a tarring and feathering.
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UBI is for the lazy leftists only. And the amount will never be enough to satisfy their jealousy.
Making sure everyone has a decent quality of life (at least for food and shelter) is not a leftist pipe dream, it's merely a sign that civilization is moving forward. It's the other end of the spectrum from the time when cavemen would leave weak people behind.
As for freeloaders and subsidized whiners, yes they will always exist. But they don't matter and their number doesn't grow; if you avoid the places where they hang out, they fade in the background. Just ignore them and don't reward the media who use th
You've missed the point - a thought experiment (Score:5, Interesting)
A thought experiment. In a nation of 330 million, if there are only 150 million jobs, are the unemployed freeloaders? Really think about it before you answer.
The new thing that's happening is that here soon, production will massively outpace labor. It's a new state of affairs that human beings haven't seen yet. There isn't an -ism to describe it accurately. It wouldn't be capitalism or communism, both are predicated on scarcity. Given a limited amount of valuable goods, how best to equitably distribute them? Remove the "limited" from the equation and they suddenly don't apply.
So what would you do if that were the case? Let's say that automation does eliminate half the jobs in America. There simply isn't anything for you to do. What would you do? Would you hold to your "argh it looks like socialism so it is bad" philosophy and not accept UBI? Would you starve before giving in?
Because it is coming, you know. And it doesn't have jack shit to do with any political left/right point of view. Right now it's pure capitalism driving this. As soon as UPS is able to replace 100,000 drivers with an average salary of 75,000 a year with computers - it will. The competitive advantage it would gain would be 7.5 billion in saved revenue. Think they won't do that?
And every other industry that can, will. If UPS does it, FedEx will have to if they wish to remain competitive. And so on.
What will you do then?
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The competitive advantage it would gain would be 7.5 billion in saved revenue.
Wrong. Because that 7.5 billion dollars is being EXTRACTED from the US economy. That 7.5 billion dollars used to pay for houses, gas, food, cars, and everything else those drivers needed for their daily life. That money was paid to other people, who bought packages that needed to be delivered.
Take that money out of the economy, and you don't get 100% of that money back. You lose a percentage of your customers, because they don't have money anymore. That's the real, fundamental problem with the race to the b
Re:You've missed the point - a thought experiment (Score:5, Insightful)
Wrong. Because that 7.5 billion dollars is being EXTRACTED from the US economy. That 7.5 billion dollars used to pay for houses, gas, food, cars, and everything else those drivers needed for their daily life.
You are correct, of course. Replacing those workers would immediately return 7.5 billion to UPS, minus a percentage of people/customers newly unemployed that would no longer be able to afford their services. This is where UBI enters the conversation.
UBI is one answer, but I'm not convinced that it will really work. We've based our cultural values around being productive members of society.
Also correct. As it currently stands, a great deal of America bases a great deal of their personal self-image around their ability to hold a job. I will say this though - cultural values can change, and rapidly if they have to. A brief review of the last 100 years of German history can show that.
Is this the american dream? Nope. But I think we realistically need to be having these conversations well ahead of the time when we lay off 3.5 million truck drivers, ten times that many warehouse workers, half of all office workers, all legal clerks, etc., etc., etc. And those days are not that far away.
Bless you. You are the only other person who is worried about the same thing I'm worried about. This exactly. We are making exactly zero preparations for this. It's inevitable at this point and all of society is simply ignoring it. Don't tell me they don't want to replace 3.5 million truck drivers - they absolutely do. You don't make a R&D project like this one [cnn.com] on a whim. I think the economy - just on trucking alone - could tank. Add to that all the other easily automated jobs and it's a disaster. And nobody is even talking about being prepared for it.
I'm not 100% sure UBI would be a fix either. Maybe another solution would be to have everyone retire at 35, and instead of calling it UBI we call it early pension. Or something. I don't know what would actually work either. But it's a problem we're going to have to solve, and soon.
Re:They'll feel the pressure (Score:5, Interesting)
As a life long fiscal conservative, I'd suggest you do some reading on UBI before spouting off. I'll admit that I had a similar kneejerk reaction when I first heard about it. I now see it as inevitable with the future of automation and AI. UBI doesn't mean you need to stop working, and testing in various locations has already shown that people generally like to remain active in some kind of work. Typically, UBI doesn't cover enough for much in the way of non-necessities...you couldn't afford a vacation w/o additional income. fivethirtyeight.com did an excellent article if you could be bothered to read up on it.
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Where? Atlantis, perhaps?
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Re: Fake news, (Score:5, Funny)
At the very least, there will apparently always be jobs writing about how automation is going to put everyone out of a job.
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I started in engineering 30 years ago. I'd say that almost 100% of what engineers did back then is gone.
Indeed. I am an engineer, and 35 years ago I sat at my desk and wrote Fortran. Today I sit at my desk and write C++.
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Started with Fortran (around '81), Pascal, C and then C++ Now I sit at a desk and troll ShanghaiBill.
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Nope. Pure speculation. Chances are that by then there will be jobs we aren't even imagining now.
Like Florg Tweaking, Florg Alignment, Florg Replacement and Florg Synthesis. And then someone comes up with an algorithm that can boop any type of florg automatically and that field's gone, too.
No, seriously. Try to imagine new jobs. Doing what? Ranking Florg boopers by accuracy?
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We won''t need to imagine them. There'll be an AI to do it for us.
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Maybe 'fault' is the wrong word, rather that it's the unemployed's responsibility (no matter what) to find employment, and if they can't find work well fuck them because we have ours.
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What is the endgame?
Heat-death of the universe. Next.
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And how many billions of jobs are automated today? Probably at least 100 billion, depending on how you define "job".
For the last 200+ years, our consistent answer to every human that was displaced by some form of automation was "go get an education."
Since automation and good-enough AI are now coming for educated jobs, please stop ignorantly looking at history as if our tried-and-true wisdom will continue to be valid.
50 years from now, there won't be much of a reason to even educate a human for the purposes of employment.