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The terrifying thing is that you don't even need to reach human-level performance to cause structural unemployment. As a hypothetical example, if automation can
by gthippo 10y ago
The terrifying thing is that you don't even need to reach human-level performance to cause structural unemployment. As a hypothetical example, if automation can make top-performers in your field 10x more efficient, that makes 90% of people in that role redundant.
This feels a lot scarier to me since as a ML engineer, I rarely see applications where we can reach human level performance easily but the idea of making existing top performers 2-5x more effective feels much more viable.
The idea of 80% of people in relatively high-skill jobs who are used to a relatively high income level becoming redundant is a pretty scary one.
- Gracana 10y agoLots of high-earning people tied up in managing money is pretty inefficient for society, though. Maybe those people can switch to factory jobs and help reduce the cost of common things for the common person.
- zepto 10y agoI can't tell if that's meant as sarcasm or not.
- Gracana 10y agoIt's kind of a joke. People getting rich off moving money around is kind of silly, and it would certainly be better if those jobs could be eliminated by machines.
- grzm 10y agoOh, don't worry. People will still get rich off of those transactions.
- chrispeel 10y agoThe vision of public blockchains (such as Ethereum) is to make the core of financial transactions automated and non-profit. While there may still be profit to be made on the margin (credit scores), the vision is that currency and equity trades will happen on decentralized markets that are automated and non-profit. ...Even if this vision occurs, it's not obvious how soon it would occur. For example, will we need stable-value cryptocurrencies before any of this can occur? Will anything significant occur in the next two years, or will it be five? OR more?
- wickawic 10y agoOf which they will quickly become :)
- jhanschoo 10y ago>I rarely see applications where we can reach human level performance easily but the idea of making existing top performers 2-5x more effective feels much more viable. This actually reminds me of Palantir's focus, which is to develop tools to aid analysts.
- jhanschoo 10y ago>I rarely see applications where we can reach human level performance easily but the idea of making existing top performers 2-5x more effective feels much more viable. This actually reminds me of Palantir's focus, which is to develop tools to aid analysts.
- Gustomaximus 10y agoThis is nothing new. I work marketing side running customer acquisition for 12 countries across 3 brands, with budget significant enough to bring in ~3% of a countries population annually in our higher coverage markets. And this year we will add additional countries and brands. We are a team of 3. There is no way this would have worked 10+ years ago. Maybe in another 10 we will be 1...
- pzh 10y agoI guess they can all become Javascript developers and fulfill the big tech companies' dreams of having hordes of cheap engineers on the labor market. That would help save some of the money poured into various initiatives like 'Dolphins who code', etc.
- connorelsea 10y agoWhat is wrong with being a JavaScript developer?
- pzh 10y agoNothing. On the contrary, it's the most marketable skill, judging from the number of Bootcamps that prepare for it.
- beaconstudios 10y agountil software becomes available that makes programming 10x easier...
- secfirstmd 10y agoThis idea has been around for over 10 years but I still don't see that many signs of it happening. I mean what interesting projects are around that actually make it possible to for example, let a non-technial person point and click develop a python or Java application? It happened with HTML/CSS and Dreamweaver/WordPress etc years ago but it's much easier with web stuff and I don't really see it elsewhere.
- beaconstudios 10y agoI think we're in the early stage of automating web development but sites like Wix have made impressive strides in making UI design accessible. I'm working on something in this field myself and I've done enough research and prototyping that I think it's definitely achievable.
- collinmanderson 10y ago