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This is a bit of a Luddite viewpoint. There will be some ups and downs as people adjust to the need for different skill sets however, automation won't simply wi

This is a bit of a Luddite viewpoint. There will be some ups and downs as people adjust to the need for different skill sets however, automation won't simply wipe out any need for human labor. There are lots of things that will likely never be cost effective to automate or are impossible to automate.

ZenoArrow 10y ago
> "There are lots of things that will likely never be cost effective to automate or are impossible to automate." What did you have in mind?
booleandilemma 10y ago
I'm worried that the jobs that will be left to us at some point in the future will either be outside the capabilities of most people, or wholly undesirable.
- zanny 10y ago
  We are already there, no? It is hugely undesirable to work in the service industry because there is no potential upward movement and you are disposable. Nobody wants to work at McDonalds, yet we have a crisis of over-certification for service jobs because people going to college get useless degrees. If there were jobs within their capabilities that were not undesirable they would be doing them, so what that does mean is that for a huge portion of the economy, people are doing undesirable jobs because they don't have the skills to do desirable ones. HN is in kind of its own reality sphere, since everyone likes coding and startups and thinks the work is great, when if you drive 100 miles in any direction from whatever tech hub bubble you are living in you will find entire counties in decline as the only work is at Walmart and there is no industry left to aspire towards for the residents. The main street of town is half condemned, there are old abandoned shoe and plastics factories and half the farmland is either abandoned or corporate owned and manned by a skeleton crew of a few dozen people farming the entire region.
coldtea 10y ago
The opposite of Luddite is believe that it will all get sorted out in the end inevitable. As the fall of Rome, the middle ages, and several other dark periods in human history show, this is now always the case. >There are lots of things that will likely never be cost effective to automate or are impossible to automate. Several things, yes. A lot, no. And even if those types of jobs were many, what matters is the number of positions they give us. E.g. being a brain surgeon might not be easily automated, but we don't need that many brain surgeons anyway. On the other hand, truck driving can be automated, and when it does, it will take with it 1-2 million jobs. Automating fast-food serving and cooking? There go another 2-3 million. Automating office cleaning? There go some millions more. As for more artistic jobs, like a musician or painter, those might not be realistically automated (because we value the human source of an art work etc), but they aren't going to pay much either, especially since most people wont have proper jobs and thus much money to spend on music (and even less so on art).
- FrozenVoid 10y ago
  >As for more artistic jobs http://ostagram.ru/static_pages/lenta?last_days=30&locale=en http://ostagram.ru/static_pages/lenta?last_days=30&locale=en https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0VTI1BBLydE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0VTI1BBLydE
- trentlott 10y ago
  Do we value art? It seems to be hard to make a life that way unless you find some corporate niche. I think automated/algorithmic music and art will happen quite quickly, if it hasn't already.
  - DonaldFisk 10y ago
    There are already programs that can compose music or paint pictures. But is that art if it means nothing to the program which created it? Or was unforeseen by the programmer? Of course, it could be passed off as art, or used as a substitute for it.
  - coldtea 10y ago
    >Do we value art? If you mean emotionally and intellectually, then yes, it has been an essential part of human civilisation since there were cavemen painting on caves. And it doesn't have to be Beethoven to fill the role of art, it can also be Cheap Trick or Skrillex. If you mean financially, then yes again. If we include music, movies, comics, books and TV it's 300bn dollar industry. If we are to believe the news (1), more than €51 billion of fine art was traded in 2014 alone -- and that's a kind of art that concerns rather few people. >I think automated/algorithmic music and art will happen quite quickly, if it hasn't already. What would be the point? More than the artifact, we value the connection with the artist. (1) https://www.artsy.net/article/editorial-the-art-markets-record-breaking-51-euros-billion https://www.artsy.net/article/editorial-the-art-markets-reco...
SomeStupidPoint 10y ago
> There are lots of things that will likely never be cost effective to automate or are impossible to automate. Could you give examples that are capable of providing living wages to 160-250 million people, in the US alone? Technology has completely destroyed the value in human labor for most industries, in much the way we no longer use horses for farming, and is rapidly doing the same to "white collar" jobs. I'm honestly curious what you think it is that <95th percentile humans will have to contribute to the future economy.
- nickff 10y ago
  You are asking an unreasonable question; could the Luddites have predicted the economy of 1900, 1950, or 2000? If we have never been capable of making an accurate forecast, it would be unreasonable to expect that today.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- yummyfajitas 10y ago
  Domestic labor for highly productive individuals. If you are a high productivity software engineer, trader or doctor, there is no reason any of your time should be devoted to driving, doing laundry or cleaning your bathroom. Also, I'm not sure where your "160-250 million people" comes from. That's exactly how many workers there are today, many of whom are in no danger of having their jobs automated.
  - ZenoArrow 10y ago
    > "driving, doing laundry or cleaning your bathroom." All of which can be automated. Furthermore... > "highly productive individuals. If you are a high productivity software engineer, trader or doctor" None of those jobs are safe from automation either. Your personal productivity means diddly squat compared to fast automated interconnected machines that can teach themselves. Engineers and traders are just as expendable as the rest of us.
    - 10y ago
ska 10y ago
Don't forget that the Luddites were substantively correct in their analysis. "Some ups and downs as people adjust" really meant multigenerational economic negative effects in their case, and may be similar for people passed over for automation now. The Luddite families and those like them took 3 to 4 generations to recover fro the blow, economically speaking. Which isn't to say that it shouldn't be done, but that any assertion that people will "retrain" or "find new growth industries" with anything like their current quality of life is at best naive, and more often disingenuous. The most likely case is that the losers in such economic shifts will remain so. Any society that leaves them to sort it out on their own should at Leastbe transparent and realistic about what that means. Discouragingly enough , truck driving itself is a rare example of fairly successful transition to a new industry, as it had a low barrier to entry for people needing to leave a rapidly shrinking workforce in agricultural areas - due to some automation and a larger scale mechanization. One generation of that and it is going to fall off a cliff too, possibly leaving the rural US in a dire employment situation.
shkkmo 10y ago
It's pretty likely that "automation won't simply wipe out any need for human labor" (or at least not for a long time.) The problem is that we seem set on using the minimum wage to ensure a basic level of income. This means that we HAVE to make sure we have enough jobs for everyone, and that all of those jobs HAVE to produce enough economic value for the employer for them to provide that basic level of income. The result is that we end up effectively paying people to do nothing, while effectively prohibiting jobs that don't produce enough value to justify the minimum wage. This seems blatantly inefficient and idiotic to me.
- zielperson 10y ago
  The problem is not that it will wipe out ALL need for human labor, but a lot of it. Just truck drivers - millions of people getting unemployed. And don't paint a too romantic picture... a lot of them will NOT be qualified for another job. We are also using software to enable people to perform tasks normally done by experts. Drafting architectural plans is a recent example. The hand - drawing has been replaced by CAD software, and a LOT of architects now do these themselves or with little staff in-house. I work in the financial sector, and supportive applications will enable "normal" client supporters to sell Investment packages. Of course WITHOUT them really learning shit about investments .. result: Less experts needed (first step) Second step: Automated consulting / online use by the customer. Not even AI needed.

ZenoArrow 10y ago

> "There are lots of things that will likely never be cost effective to automate or are impossible to automate." What did you have in mind?

booleandilemma 10y ago

I'm worried that the jobs that will be left to us at some point in the future will either be outside the capabilities of most people, or wholly undesirable.

zanny 10y ago
We are already there, no? It is hugely undesirable to work in the service industry because there is no potential upward movement and you are disposable. Nobody wants to work at McDonalds, yet we have a crisis of over-certification for service jobs because people going to college get useless degrees. If there were jobs within their capabilities that were not undesirable they would be doing them, so what that does mean is that for a huge portion of the economy, people are doing undesirable jobs because they don't have the skills to do desirable ones. HN is in kind of its own reality sphere, since everyone likes coding and startups and thinks the work is great, when if you drive 100 miles in any direction from whatever tech hub bubble you are living in you will find entire counties in decline as the only work is at Walmart and there is no industry left to aspire towards for the residents. The main street of town is half condemned, there are old abandoned shoe and plastics factories and half the farmland is either abandoned or corporate owned and manned by a skeleton crew of a few dozen people farming the entire region.

coldtea 10y ago

The opposite of Luddite is believe that it will all get sorted out in the end inevitable. As the fall of Rome, the middle ages, and several other dark periods in human history show, this is now always the case. >There are lots of things that will likely never be cost effective to automate or are impossible to automate. Several things, yes. A lot, no. And even if those types of jobs were many, what matters is the number of positions they give us. E.g. being a brain surgeon might not be easily automated, but we don't need that many brain surgeons anyway. On the other hand, truck driving can be automated, and when it does, it will take with it 1-2 million jobs. Automating fast-food serving and cooking? There go another 2-3 million. Automating office cleaning? There go some millions more. As for more artistic jobs, like a musician or painter, those might not be realistically automated (because we value the human source of an art work etc), but they aren't going to pay much either, especially since most people wont have proper jobs and thus much money to spend on music (and even less so on art).

FrozenVoid 10y ago
>As for more artistic jobs http://ostagram.ru/static_pages/lenta?last_days=30&locale=en http://ostagram.ru/static_pages/lenta?last_days=30&locale=en https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0VTI1BBLydE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0VTI1BBLydE
trentlott 10y ago
Do we value art? It seems to be hard to make a life that way unless you find some corporate niche. I think automated/algorithmic music and art will happen quite quickly, if it hasn't already.
- DonaldFisk 10y ago
  There are already programs that can compose music or paint pictures. But is that art if it means nothing to the program which created it? Or was unforeseen by the programmer? Of course, it could be passed off as art, or used as a substitute for it.
- coldtea 10y ago
  >Do we value art? If you mean emotionally and intellectually, then yes, it has been an essential part of human civilisation since there were cavemen painting on caves. And it doesn't have to be Beethoven to fill the role of art, it can also be Cheap Trick or Skrillex. If you mean financially, then yes again. If we include music, movies, comics, books and TV it's 300bn dollar industry. If we are to believe the news (1), more than €51 billion of fine art was traded in 2014 alone -- and that's a kind of art that concerns rather few people. >I think automated/algorithmic music and art will happen quite quickly, if it hasn't already. What would be the point? More than the artifact, we value the connection with the artist. (1) https://www.artsy.net/article/editorial-the-art-markets-record-breaking-51-euros-billion https://www.artsy.net/article/editorial-the-art-markets-reco...

SomeStupidPoint 10y ago

> There are lots of things that will likely never be cost effective to automate or are impossible to automate. Could you give examples that are capable of providing living wages to 160-250 million people, in the US alone? Technology has completely destroyed the value in human labor for most industries, in much the way we no longer use horses for farming, and is rapidly doing the same to "white collar" jobs. I'm honestly curious what you think it is that <95th percentile humans will have to contribute to the future economy.

nickff 10y ago
You are asking an unreasonable question; could the Luddites have predicted the economy of 1900, 1950, or 2000? If we have never been capable of making an accurate forecast, it would be unreasonable to expect that today.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
yummyfajitas 10y ago
Domestic labor for highly productive individuals. If you are a high productivity software engineer, trader or doctor, there is no reason any of your time should be devoted to driving, doing laundry or cleaning your bathroom. Also, I'm not sure where your "160-250 million people" comes from. That's exactly how many workers there are today, many of whom are in no danger of having their jobs automated.
- ZenoArrow 10y ago
  > "driving, doing laundry or cleaning your bathroom." All of which can be automated. Furthermore... > "highly productive individuals. If you are a high productivity software engineer, trader or doctor" None of those jobs are safe from automation either. Your personal productivity means diddly squat compared to fast automated interconnected machines that can teach themselves. Engineers and traders are just as expendable as the rest of us.
  - 10y ago

ska 10y ago

Don't forget that the Luddites were substantively correct in their analysis. "Some ups and downs as people adjust" really meant multigenerational economic negative effects in their case, and may be similar for people passed over for automation now. The Luddite families and those like them took 3 to 4 generations to recover fro the blow, economically speaking. Which isn't to say that it shouldn't be done, but that any assertion that people will "retrain" or "find new growth industries" with anything like their current quality of life is at best naive, and more often disingenuous. The most likely case is that the losers in such economic shifts will remain so. Any society that leaves them to sort it out on their own should at Leastbe transparent and realistic about what that means. Discouragingly enough , truck driving itself is a rare example of fairly successful transition to a new industry, as it had a low barrier to entry for people needing to leave a rapidly shrinking workforce in agricultural areas - due to some automation and a larger scale mechanization. One generation of that and it is going to fall off a cliff too, possibly leaving the rural US in a dire employment situation.

shkkmo 10y ago

It's pretty likely that "automation won't simply wipe out any need for human labor" (or at least not for a long time.) The problem is that we seem set on using the minimum wage to ensure a basic level of income. This means that we HAVE to make sure we have enough jobs for everyone, and that all of those jobs HAVE to produce enough economic value for the employer for them to provide that basic level of income. The result is that we end up effectively paying people to do nothing, while effectively prohibiting jobs that don't produce enough value to justify the minimum wage. This seems blatantly inefficient and idiotic to me.

zielperson 10y ago
The problem is not that it will wipe out ALL need for human labor, but a lot of it. Just truck drivers - millions of people getting unemployed. And don't paint a too romantic picture... a lot of them will NOT be qualified for another job. We are also using software to enable people to perform tasks normally done by experts. Drafting architectural plans is a recent example. The hand - drawing has been replaced by CAD software, and a LOT of architects now do these themselves or with little staff in-house. I work in the financial sector, and supportive applications will enable "normal" client supporters to sell Investment packages. Of course WITHOUT them really learning shit about investments .. result: Less experts needed (first step) Second step: Automated consulting / online use by the customer. Not even AI needed.