Can Marc Andreessen Stop Technology From Eating Our Jobs? (hackernoon.com) 152
Technology writer Tom Chanter explores the life story of venture capitalist Marc Andreessen to ask whether software will not only eat the world, but also the jobs of what one historian predicts will be a "massive new unworking class: people devoid of any economic, political or even artistic value." Can Marc Andreessen prevent a so-called "useless class" who "will not merely be unemployed -- it will be unemployable"?
Andreessen grew up in New Lisbon, Wisconsin (population: 1,500), and taught himself the BASIC programming language at age 8. He co-developed the original Mosaic web browser before he'd graduated from college, went on to co-found Netscape, and by age 23 was worth $53 million. He then transformed into a "super angel" investor in companies like Twitter, Airbnb, Lyft, Facebook, Skype, and GitHub. "Having been an innovator in the tech start-up game, Andreessen is now an innovator in the tech venture capital game," writes Chanter. "He is a jedi that has become the master." In 2011, Marc Andreessen published an article in the Wall Street Journal titled, Why Software Is Eating The World. He wrote, "Over the next 10 years, the battles between incumbents and software-powered insurgents will be epic...." 7 years later, it's clear Andreessen was correct. Lyft has destroyed taxi jobs. Airbnb has destroyed hotel jobs. Amazon destroyed independent bookstores. How does Andreessen feel about that? "Screw the independent bookstores," he said in his New Yorker profile. "There weren't any near where I grew up. There were only ones in college towns. The rest of us could go pound sand."
But the 4,900-word article also notes Andreessen's pledge to give half his income to charitable causes -- and his observation in a 2015 interview that outside of the United States, global income inequality is falling, not rising. "He has seen technology transform his own life, and has seen how technology has bridged the global wealth gap. Why shouldn't he be optimistic about the future of America's working class?"
And Andreessen's ultimate answer to the jobs destroyed by technology may be Udacity. The article cites Andreessen's investment in the company in 2012, and points to the online education platform's hopeful mission statement. "Virtually anyone on the planet with an internet connection and a commitment to self-empowerment through learning can come to Udacity, master a suite of job-ready skills, and pursue rewarding employment."
As a boy in Wisconsin he was starved for information. He has created an education institution accessible from Wisconsin to Africa. As a boy in Wisconsin he was starved for connection. He has married an innovative philanthropist and author, Laura Arrillaga-Andreessen. They have a son named John. Andreessen is optimistic for both the working class and the future tech elite.
In his New Yorker profile he says of his son, "He'll come of age in a world where ten or a hundred times more people will be able to contribute in science and medicine and the arts, a more peaceful and prosperous world."
He added, tongue in cheek, "I'm going to teach him how to take over that world!"
Andreessen grew up in New Lisbon, Wisconsin (population: 1,500), and taught himself the BASIC programming language at age 8. He co-developed the original Mosaic web browser before he'd graduated from college, went on to co-found Netscape, and by age 23 was worth $53 million. He then transformed into a "super angel" investor in companies like Twitter, Airbnb, Lyft, Facebook, Skype, and GitHub. "Having been an innovator in the tech start-up game, Andreessen is now an innovator in the tech venture capital game," writes Chanter. "He is a jedi that has become the master." In 2011, Marc Andreessen published an article in the Wall Street Journal titled, Why Software Is Eating The World. He wrote, "Over the next 10 years, the battles between incumbents and software-powered insurgents will be epic...." 7 years later, it's clear Andreessen was correct. Lyft has destroyed taxi jobs. Airbnb has destroyed hotel jobs. Amazon destroyed independent bookstores. How does Andreessen feel about that? "Screw the independent bookstores," he said in his New Yorker profile. "There weren't any near where I grew up. There were only ones in college towns. The rest of us could go pound sand."
But the 4,900-word article also notes Andreessen's pledge to give half his income to charitable causes -- and his observation in a 2015 interview that outside of the United States, global income inequality is falling, not rising. "He has seen technology transform his own life, and has seen how technology has bridged the global wealth gap. Why shouldn't he be optimistic about the future of America's working class?"
And Andreessen's ultimate answer to the jobs destroyed by technology may be Udacity. The article cites Andreessen's investment in the company in 2012, and points to the online education platform's hopeful mission statement. "Virtually anyone on the planet with an internet connection and a commitment to self-empowerment through learning can come to Udacity, master a suite of job-ready skills, and pursue rewarding employment."
As a boy in Wisconsin he was starved for information. He has created an education institution accessible from Wisconsin to Africa. As a boy in Wisconsin he was starved for connection. He has married an innovative philanthropist and author, Laura Arrillaga-Andreessen. They have a son named John. Andreessen is optimistic for both the working class and the future tech elite.
In his New Yorker profile he says of his son, "He'll come of age in a world where ten or a hundred times more people will be able to contribute in science and medicine and the arts, a more peaceful and prosperous world."
He added, tongue in cheek, "I'm going to teach him how to take over that world!"
Re:Tough for new parents deciding on having kids (Score:4, Funny)
On odd days we see stories about how civilization is going to collapse because robots will steal all the jobs.
On even days we see stories about how there there won't be enough workers to support the retiring boomers.
The only thing certain is that civilization is going to end. We just can't agree on the reason.
Re:Tough for new parents deciding on having kids (Score:4, Interesting)
On odd days we see stories about how civilization is going to collapse because robots will steal all the jobs. On even days we see stories about how there there won't be enough workers to support the retiring boomers.
Those two problems aren't that different. Arguably they are the same problem.
Retiring boomers are a problem because there may not be a large enough tax base to fund social security benefits from individual workers. This is made worse if less young people have jobs. Retiring boomers are also a problem because there will be a larger percentage of our population needing care workers, but that costs money. If that is automated then we still have the low worker problem, if people do it they need to be paid and we still have the funding problem.
None of these are that catastrophic of a problem, we just need to move more of the taxation burden to those who are benefiting the most from automation instead of from average citizens. Currently there is significant resistance to raising taxes on the rich and big business, but that will either break under the pressure of increased automation and globalization or we will shift further into a plutocratic / feudal society (hopefully the former).
Even though there are solutions to our problems, we still need to fight vigorously to ensure we choose solutions which are more inclusive. The default result of inaction is simply more concentration of wealth and less equality, which is the natural result of unregulated market forces.
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Retiring boomers are a problem because there may not be a large enough tax base to fund social security benefits from individual workers
This is a basic lie told by the Republican party and passed on for the last 20 years without question. The reality is that if you just extend the payroll tax cutoff for higher income people, you make Social Security solvent for decades to come. It's a basic lie that the problem isn't fixable, it's just the Republican party can't stand that maybe people with already very h
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Inside the United States, global income inequality is also falling. The United States is part of the globe....
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Tough for new parents deciding on having kids, knowing even with a college education, they may never get a job.
Those parents will get little to no comfort from anything Andreessen is saying, considering all of his arguments are really for why the upper middle class and a tiny minority of very ambitious and proactive children will be fine. No one should be worried about how well students who actively seek out education will do in the future. Until robots take 100% of our jobs, those children will mostly be just fine.
Our society's problems will be how to handle the other 90+% of our population. The ones who used to be
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The problem is that it would likely slide into some sort of a dystopian nightmare before too long. Humans evolved to be perpetually busy doing something to provide for their needs. Whenever we've had times where people didn't have to do that, those people just created problems. Just look at the current leisure class as a great example. The ones that don't work have far more than what they could possibly spend in several lifetimes, and so they make themselves busy trying to get a high score on net worth.
At t
Frosty (Score:2)
Somebody built a replica of the house from Gone with the Wind in antarctica.
c6gunner says it's a Polar Tara.
Judge Dredd comics predicted this trend (Score:2)
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One of my favourite stories from 2000AD was about a guy who had three jobs - a day job in an office, an evening job (waiter IIRC) and a night job in a bed factory as a tester.
Job hoarding is a crime and needless to say he was like totally judged.
Nobody wants a job! (Score:2, Insightful)
People want wealth!
And somehow the option of having the machines create that wealth for *us* instead of our livestock handlers is conveniently omitted
Also: "Useless lives"... Seriously? Only in America could people think that way. Because enough free time to start getting bored and start really thinking is unheard of, ... and even if, the education of those is lacking too.
And only there is value defined as how much " the industry" can leech on you.
In reality, given enough free time, people start doing usefu
Re: Nobody wants a job! (Score:1)
In reality, given enough free time, people start doing useful things by themselves!
For sure. Just look at the Kardashians.
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People still pay attention to the Kartrashians??
Do people really have nothing interesting to do with their own life that they have to watch someone else's fake life???
Western Civilization is fucked. :-/
--
The Lie of Christianity: Jesus never sinned.
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America voted in a trust fund reality TV star as President.
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LOL. Nice!
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They would create wealth for the owners of the machines.
You seem to think that our economy is based on "making stuff". But manufacturing is only 12% of the economy.
The most valuable companies in the world do no manufacturing.
If suddenly, machines could make everything we currently make, there would be little change in our economy. The biggest effect would be the fall of the price of manufactured goods relative to services, raising the effective wages of the 80% of people who work in the service economy.
Replacing service workers with machines is much harder, an
Manufacturing (Score:2)
You seem to think that our economy is based on "making stuff". But manufacturing is only 12% of the economy.
12% of the US economy. That is not true globally.
The most valuable companies in the world do no manufacturing.
Want to bet [wikipedia.org] on that? Of the 10 largest companies in the world by revenue, the only one in the top ten that arguably isn't a manufacturer is Walmart and their business is almost exclusively selling manufactured goods made by other companies. Yes oil and gas is wildly valuable and processing fossil fuels IS manufacturing.
If you are measuring by market cap [wikipedia.org] you still have lots of companies that make some/most of their revenue via manufacturing. The top ten t
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I realise you're trying to be sarcastic, but you're correct. In the per-capita GDP rankings, the UK is 25th at $43,620, China is 78th at $16,624 (2017 IMF numbers). The USA is 11th at $59,495.
The east coast cities where the manufacturing is done are not poor. Shanghai and Shenzhen have per capita GDP over $30k, about the level of Italy.
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If robots can do everything, it’s the previous definitions of wealth that become irrelevant.
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In reality, given enough free time, people start doing useful things by themselves!
I'm surprised this isn't obvious to everybody. Lots of people don't stop working once they make their first million(s), even though they could retire and spend the rest of their lives on the couch, watching TV. I have colleagues I know for sure are multimillionaires; they're still putting lots of effort in the job, and pushing themselves hard. Heck, even the subject of this post, Andreessen himself could have retired young with the 53 million he got - instead, he kept working and trying to make the world be
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The number coincides with the about 10-15% of independent thinkers. These will always be in demand, because they can deal with non-standard situations. The rest can be automated away.
Betteridge (Score:2)
NO.
People here say "what happens when the elite no longer need the little people" but they're thinking small.
What happens when the machines no longer need the elite people?
We're going to end up the live-action equivalent of Youtube cat videos, existing for the enjoyment of robots.
Robot, Suit, ... Where's the difference? (Score:1)
Everything I have seen, suggests that "management" and "board" are words for rather simple robots without any human-like characteristics. Might as well be Daleks. Very very booring Daleks! [youtu.be]
Oh, and ... just for fun, ... go try and contact a human being at Google. ... ;)
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People here say "what happens when the elite no longer need the little people" but they're thinking small. What happens when the machines no longer need the elite people?
We haven't even reached the first scenario yet, although it's coming up rapidly. It's not clear that we will ever reach the second. It may not actually be physically possible. We understand consciousness poorly enough that we can't say for sure that it will be.
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People here say "what happens when the elite no longer need the little people" but they're thinking small. What happens when the machines no longer need the elite people?
We haven't even reached the first scenario yet
Actually, we have. The majority of "little people" - including me* - work in jobs to either produce products or provide services for other little people. While the elite collect the profits of the sales of these products and services, they profit more from providing financial services to each other.
5 years ago, we had a politician lamenting that other politicians lacked the guts to let the little people "wither and die" - https://www.upi.com/Top_News/U... [upi.com] . While no politician might be (publicly) saying tha
small independent bookstores? (Score:3)
Okay, Mr. Andresssen, put your money where your mouth has been. Open a small independent bookstore in Backwoods, Wisconsin (pop. 1500). Let's see you make payroll with the proceeds. Don't be shy now, get out there and show us how its done. Hint, get your neighbors to read.
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Seems you need to 'read between the lines'.
His point was that some businesses can't, and don't deserve to, survive in certain situations.
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"Debunking 9-11 Debunking" by David Ray Griffin online.
But think how useless your life is anyway if you're actually reading that crap. Even a romance novel might have been a better way to spend your time.
"screw the independent bookstores" $25M Udacity (Score:2)
What part of "screw the independent bookstores" is unclear?
He put at least $25 million into Udacity - that's where his mouth is.
Ignorance runs rampant, again (Score:2)
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We are walking up the ladder of job complexity due to technology, leaving behind more and more people incapable of educating themselves up for the jobs of the future. There will indeed be a massive and growing class of the unemployed and the unemployable as programmed machines take over the lower level jobs, many of which are the entry level jobs that start one off in work life......A huge percentage of the human population is only suited to lower level manual labor.
Indeed.
Every time an article like this comes up, a bunch of people show up and say, "There will be jobs we haven't even thought of yet, and those people can be retrained to do them." While I'm a pretty creative person, I struggle to come up with a future unskilled job that won't be done by robots and machine learning better and faster than it could be done by humans. Nobody is going to come up with a new job and not throw AI and robotics at it first. Humans won't even be considered for it, and the tasks won
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It may turn out that people prefer real strippers and even real waiters and bartenders. You'll know you're in an expensive restaurant because they have real live waiters etc.
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It may turn out that people prefer real strippers and even real waiters and bartenders.
I doubt both of your points. The abundance of anime porn shows lots of folks don't feel real humans are necessary. In fact, I think a strip joint featuring anime characters (a la the Vocaloid shows) could be quite successful. And really, Slashdot still can't handle even a basic accented a?
As to waiters, they're more of a luxury item - McDonalds and their ilk are doing fine without them. And, at least as far as I'm concerned, I'm not going to a restaurant because of the meaningful interaction I have with wai
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There's all types of people including those whose preferences run more into anime. I still think the majority of men prefer women. I know I'd never pay for anime strippers and have paid to watch women removing their clothes.
And yes, waiters will be a luxury item, the expensive restaurant will be the only place they're found.
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Unfortunately that is a fact. However these people will need access to money and meaningful things to do as well or society collapses. An UBI is a small part in that. Countries that are too far behind here will not survive theses changes.
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You can avoid mentioning it though, if you want to avoid being piled on by the SJWs for being a racist or a eugenicist or a horrid meanie.
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lower the full time mark start at 32 hours also he (Score:2)
lower the full time mark start at 32 hours also healthcare for all.
Redneckdot? Stuff that goes Durk-urr-durr? (Score:2, Interesting)
Why would anyone *want* that grueling horrible forced experience that we call "jobs"??
Everybody dreams of relaxing and weekends etc instead!
What we want, is money! Or, wealth to be more exact!
But if only there was a way to achieve that, without having to work...!
No, not employees, Mr. Burns!
Automation!
The problem is, that some leeches managed to take most of the income from our work, without adding value or even really working themselves, and now use that money to replace us.
Which is incredibly stupid, beca
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Careful choice of parents can help.
Re: Correct. Fatcats descended from royalty. (Score:1)
That's why the glorious Democratic People's Republic of Korea has outlawed profit, and given its people heaven on earth. Long live the Dear Leader!
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Teaching everyone to code is not going to work (Score:5, Insightful)
The future is bleak unless we can re-invent how society works. There isn't a job for most people. Maybe we can re-invent society, but it appears to me that future for masses will be joblessness.
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To anybody with two brain cells this is obvious. The MBA morons are (as usual) slow on the uptake, but the only coders that have good prospects longer-term are those with talent and good education. This is an _engineering_ job, not something anybody has a chance to be good at. As soon as the statistics of how hugely expensive the average coder is compared to a good coder become generally accepted, there will not be any jobs left for low-skill coders (about 90% of them today). Educating even more people in s
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Free education doesn't create a world in which everyone has jobs even if everyone takes advantage of the free education. It can't, so long as jobs are created by needs.
Yes, I know, the religious belief here is that as technology eliminates the amount of effort necessary to fill needs, new needs arise. And obviously, this does happen. But there is zero reason to believe that the new needs will always meet or exceed the amount of old needs eliminated. That belief is just a feel-good idea born entirely out
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There is a virtually unlimited amount of available work which could be done, if only we were wealthier and had more people freed up to work on it. We'll never run out.
Get back to us when the galaxy has been remodeled to suit us and we need to start talking about how we're going to begin arranging the rest of the universe...
Fuck this guy (Score:2)
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Who gets to determine the "value" of someone? Everyone has value to someone else. Value is subjective and relative.
You could be a valued food source to some people.
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Sure. But this isn't moral value. It's economic value. And increasingly, a lot of people aren't economically valuable enough that they can keep themselves housed, fed, healthy, and happy.
The big question is what do we do for these people? The article suggests that if we just give them access to the internet they can educate themselves into an economically valuable worker, and all our problems will be solved. But it ignores that a) not everyone is capable of educating themselves to the level necessary, and b
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And value can become massively negative. Just look at the value to society of the average CEO or president.
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You are correct that value is subjective and relative. The difference between a job and a hobby lies purely in whether someone else will pay you to do it. You only have value TO SOMEONE ELSE if you can do something THEY want.
Everyone has value to themself (except in cases of severe mental disorder) so that's not really an interesting topic. The question is, are there people who are utterly and entirely incapable of doing anything that is of any value to anyone else ?
I do community theatre. People buy
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Who gets to determine the "value" of someone? Everyone has value to someone else. Value is subjective and relative.
If you pick a point to stand on, you can determine value from that standpoint. For example, economic output, which is what we're looking at here. Most jobless people have negative economic value. Just by existing, they often manage to get in the way of those attempting to produce economic output.
Right now those people could be given economic value by giving them jobs.
To me this suggests two major topics of conversation. One is, how do we continue to give people economic value after there is no work left for
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Who gets to determine the "value" of someone?
Lots [wikipedia.org] of people do. The DOT, for example. They think the value of an American's life is a bit under 10 million [dot.gov].
And, before you get the pitchforks out, this is actually pretty good - in Russia, for example, public opinion polls put the value a human life to ~$71500.
Return of the Servants and Craftsmen (Score:5, Interesting)
I suspect that the old practice of wealthy families employing full-time household servants will make a significant comeback over the next couple of decades, when legions of low-skill but able-bodied people find themselves irresistibly replaced by software and robotics. Sure, there'll be crying and grumbling over having to take jobs that many folks today consider to be beneath them, but personal servants for the rich were the norm for much of human history after the rise of agriculture and cities. Social expectations shifted during the Industrial Revolution and will shift again with the Robotics Revolution.
It also seems likely that that skillfully created handmade items such as fine furniture will see wider adoption among the upper crust as their wealth relentlessly increases, leading to steady employment for craftsmen in hundreds of thousands of small boutique shops. This is a historical norm as well although the scale will be larger. The rapidly advancing state of the art in low-cost but capable computer-controlled home milling machines and 3D printers obviously will help fuel this trend. In a side note, I suppose that using automated tools kind of blurs the definition of "handmade," but c'est la vie.
Likewise, personal services should see a continuing rise in popularity -- in-home pedicures, manicures, massages, and haircuts as well as expert home cooking by visiting chefs and so forth. In particular, cooking well is a wildly popular skill, and most otherwise low-skilled folks undoubtedly could pick up the knack if motivated. Really, this all happening already, but the pace should pick up quite a bit once robot-driven mass unemployment becomes a thing. Technology leads to fun possibilities -- for example, it's easy to visualize a lumbering beast of a food truck that hosts expert chefs who prepare custom orders for delivery within a limited service area around the truck by small, speedy delivery robots. Needless to say, said food truck bristles with touch screens that display a steady stream of orders from cellphone apps that also provide continuously updated GPS coordinates for the delivery robots. "Hey, Bob -- looks like your Maine lobster with lemon butter is here. I see the food truck bot coming from that corner."
The basic idea is that wealth always, always seeks avenues for spending. Few people indeed gather paper riches merely for the sake of giggling behind closed curtains over their bank balances. Admittedly, a lopsided distribution of wealth will kind of suck for those at the bottom, but outside of the true unfortunates who live on the streets, the bottom class will still be richer than kings were a thousand years ago. Who among us in the developed world doesn't have a cellphone, a color television, and access to enough cheap food to grow mightily into a fat boy or "woman of considerable girth"? Moreover, depending on political winds, a future United States might indeed see a universal basic income that very effectively persuades the have-littles from ever seriously contemplating revolution. I don't imagine the upper-crust types will squawk too much about the huge cost of such social bribery as long as they can keep tootling around in their auto-piloted Rolls-Royces and sipping their top-shelf boutique wines with Beluga caviar while smiling servants buff their toenails. That's the beauty of the increasingly automated production of wealth -- buying off the peasants becomes more and more affordable for the have-alls, and unlike ancient Rome, there aren't any Visigoths hammering on the gates.
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I suspect that the old practice of wealthy families employing full-time household servants will make a significant comeback over the next couple of decades
I suspect you're wrong, and possibly misunderstand what life was like pre-1900 or so. Life back then was very labor intensive, as nobody had a refrigerator or an oven that could be started at the push of a button, or a furnace/AC keeping the temperature comfortable. Think back to what a typical household was like and it's understandable why you'd want more people running around your house and out in the yard performing all those labor intensive tasks. That wood your servant piled up in the fireplace and lit
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I suspect that the old practice of wealthy families employing full-time household servants will make a significant comeback over the next couple of decades, when legions of low-skill but able-bodied people find themselves irresistibly replaced by software and robotics.
I thought this as well at one point, but then I realized that robotics are going to fill this niche. Sure, some people will want a human touch, but a lot will just want the Roomba 2035 to do it's job without judging as they sit around playing with their junk.
While we don't have an automated laundry and dryer system yet, once that's done we'll have automated a lot of the household chores. Automated lawn mowers are becoming more viable, automated floor sweepers have been around for a decade now, dishwashers a
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And if all those things become commonplace, then the rich won't want them. Once you have everything you could possibly dream of, you start dreaming of more.
Whether that's going historical with dozens of household servants at each of your many estates, or futuristic with employing researchers and engineers to create newer and more exotic technologies that the commoners can't afford, one way or another the ultra rich will seek ways to distinguish themselves from the merely affluent.
And if those things don't b
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I suspect that the old practice of wealthy families employing full-time household servants will make a significant comeback
I suspect that household chores and cleaning will be automated. It is an enormous market, and there are already plenty of people working on it.
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Few people indeed gather paper riches merely for the sake of giggling behind closed curtains over their bank balances.
Given how much more money the elites have compared to the costs of even the most opulent lifestyle, this is what the elites are doing. Sure, they have obscenely expensive toys to show off, but the vast majority of their wealth is just bank balances.
buying off the peasants becomes more and more affordable for the have-alls
While true, an increasing number of the elites are becoming more and more resentful of providing for the "peasants."
And the elites have been successful in making the police, who are also peasants, afraid of the rest of the peasants. It's increasingly more likely
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I suspect that the old practice of wealthy families employing full-time household servants will make a significant comeback over the next couple of decades,
Unluckily, it was often a very abusive relationship and might come back for that reason, some people love to abuse others.
Udacity is Comically Bad (Score:5, Interesting)
The fact that this whole story culminates in the punchline, "The answer is Udacity!" is kind of a sick joke. Udacity, from what I've seen of it, is comically awful. Sebastian Thrun seems to be mostly a carnival shyster from what I can tell. Their original premise was to offer a full college education (and "disrupt", run existing colleges out of existence), and they've long since retreated from that goal. Their attempt at solving the remedial-math problem was an epic disaster (link [madmath.com]). I haven't really heard anyone hype Udacity in a few years now.
Review of Thrun's Udacity statistics course, from a statistics professor (me), on my blog:http://www.madmath.com/2012/09/udacity-statistics-101.html [madmath.com]
Previously featured on Slashdot: https://news.slashdot.org/story/12/09/10/129231/the-problems-with-online-math-classes [slashdot.org]
Re: Udacity is Comically Bad (Score:1)
Just out of curiosity, are you opposed to all online math courses, or just those specific ones? I've been wanting to take some courses to brush up on my math skills, but have neither the time nor the interest to attend actual lectures.
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Well, doing work that is worthless is pretty soul-destroying if you are smart enough to see that. As to bureaucrats, every one of those you send home at full wagers is a huge gain in efficiency. These people destroy, nothing else.
What is this nonsense? (Score:2, Interesting)
There is no magic recipes and no powerful people that can do _anything_ effective here. The jobs are going away because machines are getting cheaper at it than humans and the results are better. There is no way to turn back that wheel without a collapse of civilization. (To be fair, the human race is hard at work to arrange for that...) These jobs go away because even an average capable person is astonishingly incompetent and mostly unable to learn. All the things you see in progress and actual productivity
Re: What is this nonsense? (Score:1)
Eh. All your STEM beta pluses are useless without creative thinkers and social scientists to tell them what to do with their skills.
Sounds like an arrogant piece of shit (Score:2)
Why do most humans insist on following other humans just because of past progress?
There is zero anything guaranteeing you anything -- stop looking to others to make your choices.
Wake the fuck up.
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Pound sand because where he grew up bookstores didnt operate? Talk about an ignorant, selfish fuck.
It's not the most polite way to make his point, but it's still a valid point. Independent bookstores only ever served a small percentage of the population. Most people got most of their text media from other sources. Early on it was because they didn't read, and someone was reading them the news. Later on it was because independent bookstores were small, and because libraries existed. Now it's because they're small and vanishing, and because Amazon exists. They also don't solve the book sales problem as wel
Andreessen is a fucking idiot. (Score:2, Interesting)
In the past, we've told the out-of-work buggy whip maker to go get an education, and learn a new trade to avoid becoming a member of the "useless class".
AI is targeting the educated mind, so Andreessen's recommendation is to go get an education??
Andreessen is an ignorant idiot. He also fails to grasp the fact that we already have a "unemployable" class in society (unless you feel infants and the retired elderly somehow aren't). The problem is NOT having an unemployable class. The problem is finding prope
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" ... while also not succumbing to the desires of the employable who are simply fucking lazy."
At some point, the moral hazard argument ceases to have any real weight. In a scenario where there are far fewer jobs available than there are people who want to do them, "forcing the lazy bums to work" would be counterproductive. Unless of course the idea is that everyone is secretly a lazy bum, such that if we let a few of them get away with it everyone else will flee the workforce in droves. But I doubt that would happen.
The trick is to adopt a human-free workplace (which is inevitable) while also not killing a few billion humans doing it.
Don't know how the human race is going to get there, but we have to cure ourselves from the disease of Greed first. Otherwise, it will never happen.
Re: (Score:2)
AI is targeting the educated mind, so Andreessen's recommendation is to go get an education?? You sound as if there's thing thing called "the educated mind" as if it's a single point. It's not, and never has been. Education is both a spectrum and a mass of diversity. AI is also a tool, not simply a replacement human. What makes you think AI isn't going to supplement human intelligence rather than just replace it?
One of the primary drivers behind automation is efficiency, but let's be honest about what that actually means; profits.
AI might be used to supplement human intelligence for some fields, but in the vast majority of them, automation and AI is being driven by the profit motive, so the end goal IS to replace the human, not supplement them.
And to be quite honest, the average educated mind is far more replaceable than you think. We keep talking about achieving "true" AI when all it will take is "good enough"
Wrong way to look at things (Score:3)
Hang on a minute. Rewind. Look at the basic premise here, and realize how there is a poisonous precept in place.
If technology can eat all our jobs, than this means that we should be free. It should be like Star Trek, where we don't have to worry about people cleaning our toilets or doing our laundry, and subsequently don't need to worry about how to the rent or the car.
If technology can eliminate most workers, then we need to ensure that everyone gets to share that prosperity, and not that those who are making it happen get to rule over the rest of us.
We already had the answer in 1966 (Score:2)
It was well-documented and envisioned in Star Trek - money is no longer a thing, and people spend time leveling themselves up.
Spreading more FUD (Score:2)
"Homo Deus" versus "Idiocracy" (Score:1)
Even if higher intelligence isn't genetic (and there are almost certainly genetic components), it is memetic. Children raised in curious, information-seeking, question-pondering experimental households are going to grow up into more new-economy-awesome adults.
And?
And, something like 15% of the eternal-60-hour-week employees of a place like Apple, Google or Amazon South Lake Union are parents. Reasonable to say that most big tech employees will die childless. A kid is the quickest way to sink your new-econ
The Madness of King George (Score:2)
Note: this is the correct thread for the same comment moments ago mistakenly cross-posted at Revisiting the Jobs Artificial Intelligence Will Create with two tiny revisions.
I don't usually play the Jurassic card, but I was there in the late nineties when George Gilder whipped the telecosm into leaping headlong into a giant bluff of Gillette Foamy.
Nope (Score:2)
"Virtually anyone on the planet with an internet connection and a commitment to self-empowerment through learning can come to Udacity, master a suite of job-ready skills, and pursue rewarding employment."
Sure but they can't actually receive that employment. Companies are still obsessed with degrees and even where they will hire people without the overpriced, slow, and poor education they treat them like second class citizens if they don't have a decade or better experience.
Places hiring with multiple years
article is sloppy (Score:2)
I've always believed in Postel's robustness principle: be conservative in what you send, be liberal in what you accept. For this reason, I'm harder on myself than I am on other people in fiddly matters orthographic.
But this is not a good venue to misspell both Andreessen and Horowitz, once each.
First:
Second:
Re: (Score:2)
Somehow it appears I fat-fingered ^Z en route to the "submit" button, and castrated my last amendment of clever verbiage (not even Lazarus had captured the goods, and I had to key it again from memory).
For some reason, I'm especially clumsy today:
* accidentally cross-posted a large post into the wrong future of work woe, woe, woe tab
* dropped a plastic spi
that makes both A15z and A17z (Score:2)
Sometimes I maybe trust the Slashdot eggheads to fill in the blanks more than I ought to.
If you were paying full attention, you would have noticed that by managing to misspell Andreessen as "Andreesen" and "Horowitz" as "Horrowitz" he effectively fudged A16z into both A15z and A17z (not to mention a crypto A16z, because sometimes two wrongs do make a square number).
Which is partly why I drew attention to this being exactly the wrong venue for that double-action slovenliness.