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Students being prepared for jobs that no longer exist – how that could change
- vondur 8y agoIs there really such a thing as a “future proof” job?
- contingencies 8y agoI found it laughable they think lawyers are robot proof.
- toomuchtodo 8y agoSounds straightforward for the Bar association and lawmakers to not allow software to practice law. What profession are lawmakers typically? Lawyers. Some careers will be automated away, except for the ones that can’t be or those that aren’t allowed to by cabals.
- stale2002 8y agoLawyers can't be literally replaced by robots. No, what will instead happen is that a lawyer will be given tools that will allow them to be 100% more efficient on their own, thereby reducing the available jobs by 50%. Even something as simple as improved search tools makes researching much quicker, which is an important part of their job.
- toomuchtodo 8y agoThat’s one way it could play out. Another way is that these tools that make lawyers more efficient increase the amount of legal work that takes place unnecessarily, extracting more dollars from the economy that the profession otherwise would.
- haihaibye 8y agoYou might like this essay: http://www.berglas.org/Articles/ImportantThatSoftwareFails/ImportantThatSoftwareFails.html http://www.berglas.org/Articles/ImportantThatSoftwareFails/I...
- toomuchtodo 8y agoLoved the essay! Thank you for sharing!
- droidist2 8y agoMaybe the courts won't be so backlogged, and public defenders so overworked, and we could give more people fair trials instead of pushing so hard for a guilty plea.
- roywiggins 8y agoThey can always just cut public funding more and restore the status quo. It's not like their current lack of funds is because we are literally out of money, it's because they're not a priority.
- labster 8y agoI don't. They'll just pass a law to make robot lawyers illegal. Rent seeking can be a powerful force against automation.
- contingencies 8y agoIt will play out like H&R Block in accounting. One firm will aggressively automate most procedural, standard advisory and contract law, undercutting the rest. They will be joined by others for the race to the bottom. The beginnings already exist. https://medium.com/legal-tech/legal-tech-startups-9755b18f93ac https://medium.com/legal-tech/legal-tech-startups-9755b18f93... PS. Any legal firm without a strategy here can hire me (at lawyer rates) to tell them how to get with the program. ;)
- PhasmaFelis 8y ago> They'll just pass a law to make robot lawyers illegal. You make that sound like a bad thing. God knows humans fuck a lot of things up. And a lot of legal professions are mostly busywork, which I assume AI can help with. But allowing machines to literally rule us is a long, long way from a good idea, and that's essentially what will happen if you let AI take over e.g. trial lawyering.
- paulddraper 8y agoAnd yet TurboTax exists. Why did no one pass a law against "robot accountants"?
- forkLding 8y agoI think the biggest issue with lawyers getting automated is torts and court litigations or other pieces of legal work not to do with generating or reviewing contracts that can be automated quite easily which would mean no need for a human judge or adjudicator and thus a robot adjudicator who blindly follows a law written by "robots" too? Note: I believe there won't be a need for human judges because robots tend to follow deterministic patterns much easily than non-deterministic, and thus you would probably not need humans to do much judging, displacing humans and turning to robots.
- labster 8y agoLaw is a buggy, occasionally self-contradictory program intended to be executed by humans. If robot judges become a thing, we can be pretty sure all of the human programmers have been replaced already. I'm reminded of the one Trek episode where Kirk is on trial, because the computer is never wrong. It was of course, because it had garbage input. But really, you gotta love UX where the VENT ATMO button is right next to the SKIP TRACK button.
- gaius 8y agoIndeed. I know a couple of people who have transitioned from programmers to lawyers and they say, a contract is just a program you run on a courtroom, the judge is the CPU.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- truculation 8y agoHistorian?
- ilaksh 8y agoThe history of humanity will be documented by the superior beings that succeed us.
- FranzFerdiNaN 8y agoShame no one wants to pay for that skill set.
- skookumchuck 8y agoPeople prefer to think their ideas are new and haven't failed 100% of the time before. "Hey! I just had a great idea! Rent control!"
- rando444 8y agoEngineering - There is always room for improvement and invention Medicine - People always need care Education - People always need to learn Government - There's always government Law Enforcement - Crime isn't likely to disappear in the foreseeable future While the amount of jobs may vary, there are lots of areas of society that are not going to just disappear.
- tyingq 8y ago"Medicine - People always need care" The demographics of baby boomers vs subsequent generations seem to confirm this one as an employment growth area for the US.
- learnstats2 8y agoTeaching jobs have decreased where I live, and are paid lower than they were, despite an increasing population of children. One reason is technology - not all education tasks can be replaced, but some have been already. Combine that with increased competition for jobs generally, and I don’t see education careers being future-proof.
- annabellish 8y ago>While the amount of jobs may vary This is the important snippet. One engineer today can do the work of many engineers of yesteryear. One doctor today can be more productive than several were twenty years prior, and with MI techniques improving continuously that isn't looking to slow down at all. Educators have more tools available to them today than they ever have, and while I don't know if they've become more productive because of it it certainly seems to be helping squeeze budgets ever-tighter. For government workers, there's many sub-groups who feel the same squeeze. Administrative work can be made vastly more efficient through software. Legal work can be sped up tremensouly by automating much of the grunt work. Police armed with better tools, better information gathering, and better technology can serve more people with fewer officers, though again in this case it mostly seems to be serving to let budgets drop continuously. It'll be a while until any of these areas are _automated_, but that doesn't mean that we need as many people working in them today as we would have ten years ago to achieve the same goals.
- jaggederest 8y agoThe truism these days is that you are either taking care of people, making software, or being replaced by software.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- araes 8y agoMuch of the world still does not have basic physical world needs being met (air, sustenance, clothing/shelter, sleep). Heck, a lot of America still doesn't have those needs met. Many of the jobs, and much of the money can still be made by tackling them. And its relativistic, so you can always make "better" versions too. Sure, automation is reducing them, but clever people can tackle how to build a better house, grow food more economically, ect... and employ people while they're doing it. Safety / security needs (personal, financial, health). Tons of money and jobs here too. Much of America is floating in this zone and needs these services or better versions. Much of the world barely has them. The current health care system (in America) is atrocious and vastly overpriced, smart folks like Buffet are rightly pushing into that space. Social needs (family, friendship, intimacy, esteem). Vast amounts of money / jobs, and tons of room for innovation. People need real versions of these, not virtual software things. Ways to actually meet new friends - in the physical world. To find intimacy in natural ways. To feel like they actually have a family instead of being increasingly isolated. (I say this as I type alone on a computer at a coffeeshop...) I won't even cover actualization and transcendence. I suspect such a small percent of the world could even describe what that it means to fully realize themselves that if you can make a job out of it, you're set. Short version - hand wringing is silly. What do people actually need? There are future jobs and money.
- jakecopp 8y agoThese aren't technology problems, they are social and political problems. > To feel like they actually have a family instead of being increasingly isolated. There is no app for that, and I don't know if there should be.
- jakecopp 8y agoSorry, I think I read your message completely wrong - I take this back. It sounds like you're arguing that in fixing these social problems more jobs will be created - I originally thought you wanted to "disrupt" these fields using tech.
- PeterisP 8y agoNeeds don't create jobs, economic demand creates them - and the big difference between a need, necessity or desire versus economic demand is the ability to afford that good or service. If people can't afford basic physical needs, then that's going to create jobs only if these people somehow get extra resources for that. The current job trends won't do that, they're likely going to make it worse for those people that can't afford basic needs - either it's going to be solved by some major politic-economic intervention redistributing resources (UBI being one of multiple possibilities) or it's not going to happen and those needs will stay unmet.
- Proven 8y agoWhy would it change soon as long as: 1) those who teach them are paid anyway (state-funded “education” system) 2) socialist welfare state generously rewards diversity and other nonsense metrics instead of the ability to produce profit 3) unemployment benefits are more than generous and there’s even talk about “basic income”
- mirimir 8y ago> Critics say high schools aren’t doing enough to prepare young people for life after graduation, in-demand jobs and a pathway to the middle class. Maybe there is no "pathway to the middle class". Because the middle class is disappearing.
- paulddraper 8y agoYet the lower class (for however nebluous a definition "classes" are) is shrinking or staying the same. So...seems like a great trend to me. Right?
- monetus 8y agoCurious, by which metrics?
- paulddraper 8y agoMost sources I believe. Pew Research: http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2015/12/09/the-american-middle-class-is-losing-ground/ http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2015/12/09/the-american-middl...
- mirimir 8y agoYes, I've read that. But the lower-middle distinction has always been a fuzzy one. And definitions have been changing. What it means to be "middle class" now is far from what it was some decades ago. And more importantly, such measures as CPI have been tweaked to exclude items that have become more expensive. So the middle class, in any quality-of-life sense, is arguably smaller than claimed. The clearest trend is the growth of the upper middle class and the "1%". And increasing concentration of wealth at the top. Also increasing unemployment, which is excluded from the nominal definition, because people have given up looking for work.
- krupan 8y agoFunny, I was talking to my parents recently about how they were told basically the same thing when I was in high school (let's just say over 20 years ago). "Your kids will have jobs that haven't even been invented yet!" That turned out to be somewhat true, especially if you get really specific. I have worked on drone and SSD hardware, two things that didn't exist when I was in high school. In general though, that stuff is not that crazy and new, core math, electrical engineering, and software skills are still the same. I suppose jobs like "self driving car backup driver" and "Bitcoin miner" are a little more out there :-)
- henrieri 8y agoComing from a long line of miner families from my father's side (my hundreds of times great great parents used to be dwarven miners some time before the defeat of the Sauron) I must say the concept of Bitcoin and gold mining are not that different. It is just the tools which have changed.
- ilaksh 8y agoI personally do not think any jobs will be except from being replaced by human-level AI. And there are many signs that this may happen within 10 years or even less.
- distances 8y agoCare to share any? I haven't yet seen indications of a general AI being achievable in any kind of short term, and I'm somewhat sceptical of it happening this century at all.
- 8bitsrule 8y ago>Eighty-four percent of students are graduating on time.... Nationally, just 25 percent of high school seniors are able to do grade-level math and just 37 percent score proficient in reading. The factory model of education is similar to Tesla's automated Model 3 assembly line. A pat on the head, push 'em out the door, and Prozac for the unhappy.