5 ms·

Stephen Hawking: AI will decimate middle class jobs

26 points by gina650 10y ago

gina650 10y ago
In China the risk of automation is as high as 77%. http://www.businessinsider.com/clsa-wef-and-citi-on-the-future-of-robots-and-ai-in-the-workforce-2016-6?r=UK&IR=T http://www.businessinsider.com/clsa-wef-and-citi-on-the-futu...
- contingencies 10y ago
  China's middle class is actually growing though, whereas it's static or shrinking in most western countries.
  - adamnemecek 10y ago
    Those those observations are not mutually exclusive.
internaut 10y ago
"Technology has already gutted many traditional manufacturing and working class jobs — but now it may be poised to wreak similar havoc with the middle classes." This is accurate. It is Moravec's Paradox. I keep repeating it because there is a slew of newspaper articles since Trump's victory claiming that Silicon Valley destroyed the manufacturing jobs. This isn't even wrong. It is true that technology destroyed them, but we're talking about Industrial Revolution era technology. Highly Repetitive manual tasks have been automated by machines. Finishing components and configuration of components is mostly performed in Chinese factories or in Western factories, some of which are so highly automated they are called black sites. Anything that could be put into a factory for making the parameters of the task simpler, is mostly already there. The 'low hanging fruit' for disrupting the working class is gone, long gone. It now requires very sophisticated AI and robotics to really impact the remaining working class niches. This is easily several decades away. Guess who performs a lot of work with raw information? The middle classes. That's why they are in the crosshairs of Silicon Valley. A cynic might suggest this 'panic' over the working class losing their jobs has a lot more to do with the middle classes losing theirs.
- k__ 10y ago
  When reading such things, I don't understand why people hate on UBI. I mean, what are the alternatives? You can prohibit automation per law, so that everyone can stay in their jobs. This will probably fail because not every country will pass such laws. You can try to teach the people new stuff that can't be automated easily. But does a clerk want to become a pastry chef or gardener (some of the harder to automate jobs it seems)? Or teach them "higher" education in the hopes they can create their own automations and make money with it, but how much of these clerks are good enough to get through universtiy decades after they left school.
  - mikebelanger 10y ago
    Because welfare of any kind is seen as a moral failure by many. UBI is just a more streamlined version of moral failure. I don't agree with this sentiment, but many hold it. As far as alternatives to UBI go, a lot of people have the hope that automation (indirectly) will create new jobs, and society will ultimately adjust to fill those jobs. I don't know if this will always happen. Many people aren't going to buy any pastry or ask for gardeners if only a handful of them can afford these things to begin with.
    - k__ 10y ago
      > people have the hope that automation (indirectly) will create new jobs I think so, too. But I also think the new jobs would be better if they weren't created because of fear, but because people wanted to do them.
  - internaut 10y ago
    > When reading such things, I don't understand why people hate on UBI. There is a litany of reasons why. Mostly on the "I agree in principal but..." basis. Here are three. 1. The Big Bang. A change as drastic as UBI should be introduced gradually. Fucking up on this scale would have enormous repercussions. For instance: one could gradually lower the age of retirement until everyone is retired (or you could lower taxes, or discount healthcare... you get the idea). If these are untenable propositions, then UBI definitely is. 2. Poison In The Well. If the government is the arbiter of UBI funds, then it gains a type of power it currently does not possess. If there exists criteria for taking UBI away from an individual or group, then the government has the ability to 'tone police' (like China's social credit system) in a way which has more in common with authoritarian dictatorships than a Western style state. Having the autonomy of providing your own food, shelter and other resources enables you to have political independence even if everybody doesn't like you. Not so under UBI. Your economic state is hitched such that only the wealthy now have the right to political opinions. Moral panics should not be able to affect funding. The left and right shall tear UBI apart like a rag doll and it could even become the fulcrum through which a civil war begins. If people feel a threat to their source of food exists you'd have an Arab Spring situation. 3. The Parasite Traveller. There is a contradiction between UBI and having open borders. You must have very close to closed borders to citizens of poorer countries or UBI states which are less wealthy. You have to choose between values. There is no state on this planet capable of UBI for all.
rokosbasilisk 10y ago
More like AI will decimate jobs in the knowledge economy. AI cancer recognition is better than most doctors already.

26 points by gina650 10y ago

In China the risk of automation is as high as 77%. http://www.businessinsider.com/clsa-wef-and-citi-on-the-future-of-robots-and-ai-in-the-workforce-2016-6?r=UK&IR=T http://www.businessinsider.com/clsa-wef-and-citi-on-the-futu...

contingencies 10y ago
China's middle class is actually growing though, whereas it's static or shrinking in most western countries.
- adamnemecek 10y ago
  Those those observations are not mutually exclusive.

internaut 10y ago

"Technology has already gutted many traditional manufacturing and working class jobs — but now it may be poised to wreak similar havoc with the middle classes." This is accurate. It is Moravec's Paradox. I keep repeating it because there is a slew of newspaper articles since Trump's victory claiming that Silicon Valley destroyed the manufacturing jobs. This isn't even wrong. It is true that technology destroyed them, but we're talking about Industrial Revolution era technology. Highly Repetitive manual tasks have been automated by machines. Finishing components and configuration of components is mostly performed in Chinese factories or in Western factories, some of which are so highly automated they are called black sites. Anything that could be put into a factory for making the parameters of the task simpler, is mostly already there. The 'low hanging fruit' for disrupting the working class is gone, long gone. It now requires very sophisticated AI and robotics to really impact the remaining working class niches. This is easily several decades away. Guess who performs a lot of work with raw information? The middle classes. That's why they are in the crosshairs of Silicon Valley. A cynic might suggest this 'panic' over the working class losing their jobs has a lot more to do with the middle classes losing theirs.

k__ 10y ago
When reading such things, I don't understand why people hate on UBI. I mean, what are the alternatives? You can prohibit automation per law, so that everyone can stay in their jobs. This will probably fail because not every country will pass such laws. You can try to teach the people new stuff that can't be automated easily. But does a clerk want to become a pastry chef or gardener (some of the harder to automate jobs it seems)? Or teach them "higher" education in the hopes they can create their own automations and make money with it, but how much of these clerks are good enough to get through universtiy decades after they left school.
- mikebelanger 10y ago
  Because welfare of any kind is seen as a moral failure by many. UBI is just a more streamlined version of moral failure. I don't agree with this sentiment, but many hold it. As far as alternatives to UBI go, a lot of people have the hope that automation (indirectly) will create new jobs, and society will ultimately adjust to fill those jobs. I don't know if this will always happen. Many people aren't going to buy any pastry or ask for gardeners if only a handful of them can afford these things to begin with.
  - k__ 10y ago
    > people have the hope that automation (indirectly) will create new jobs I think so, too. But I also think the new jobs would be better if they weren't created because of fear, but because people wanted to do them.
- internaut 10y ago
  > When reading such things, I don't understand why people hate on UBI. There is a litany of reasons why. Mostly on the "I agree in principal but..." basis. Here are three. 1. The Big Bang. A change as drastic as UBI should be introduced gradually. Fucking up on this scale would have enormous repercussions. For instance: one could gradually lower the age of retirement until everyone is retired (or you could lower taxes, or discount healthcare... you get the idea). If these are untenable propositions, then UBI definitely is. 2. Poison In The Well. If the government is the arbiter of UBI funds, then it gains a type of power it currently does not possess. If there exists criteria for taking UBI away from an individual or group, then the government has the ability to 'tone police' (like China's social credit system) in a way which has more in common with authoritarian dictatorships than a Western style state. Having the autonomy of providing your own food, shelter and other resources enables you to have political independence even if everybody doesn't like you. Not so under UBI. Your economic state is hitched such that only the wealthy now have the right to political opinions. Moral panics should not be able to affect funding. The left and right shall tear UBI apart like a rag doll and it could even become the fulcrum through which a civil war begins. If people feel a threat to their source of food exists you'd have an Arab Spring situation. 3. The Parasite Traveller. There is a contradiction between UBI and having open borders. You must have very close to closed borders to citizens of poorer countries or UBI states which are less wealthy. You have to choose between values. There is no state on this planet capable of UBI for all.

rokosbasilisk 10y ago

More like AI will decimate jobs in the knowledge economy. AI cancer recognition is better than most doctors already.