3 ms·

Machines to 'do half of all work tasks by 2025'

4 points by neom 6y ago

LatteLazy 6y ago
Devil's advocate: 500 years ago 99% of people were farm labourers. 99.9% of those jobs are gone now. We're already down to sub 50% employment (lower when you get into the numbers). So all future drops will be smaller than what we've already done...
- medymed 6y ago
  Came to say this regarding farming as well. On the other hand the number of jobs (skilled and unskilled) caring for the elderly or those with chronic health conditions has probably increased to compensate partially over the last century and will continue to grow. It takes ~2-3 full time laborers (depending on the setting) to care for one person who cannot provide any care for themselves. If the government pays fully for these services, it would not be as extensive as UBI but it would cover a huge number of workers.
mdifrgechd 6y ago
In a lot of "what would AI replace" studies they always talk about how it will be low skill jobs that suffer. Two observations: 1. A lot of "management" is readily automated, look at uber, it automates the dispatcher and keeps the manual workers. This idea could be extended further up the management ladder, its just that middle management is more of a stakeholder to the consultants pushing automation so they focus on eliminating workers. 2. The real scary thought to me is not manual jobs being automated, but rather humans only being used for their spatial reasoning and grasping abilities and having all other agency automated away. Anecdotally this may already be the case e.g. in some warehouses.
giantg2 6y ago
It depends on what they consider a task and what they are using as a baseline. For example, banking processes, trading processes, and just routing emails would account for many tasks. Just think about how much postal work, mailroom/intra-office mail has been replaced. How many millions of previously manual steps in trading and banking have been automated. I feel we have already surpassed 50% of work tasks being automated.

4 points by neom 6y ago

Devil's advocate: 500 years ago 99% of people were farm labourers. 99.9% of those jobs are gone now. We're already down to sub 50% employment (lower when you get into the numbers). So all future drops will be smaller than what we've already done...

medymed 6y ago
Came to say this regarding farming as well. On the other hand the number of jobs (skilled and unskilled) caring for the elderly or those with chronic health conditions has probably increased to compensate partially over the last century and will continue to grow. It takes ~2-3 full time laborers (depending on the setting) to care for one person who cannot provide any care for themselves. If the government pays fully for these services, it would not be as extensive as UBI but it would cover a huge number of workers.

mdifrgechd 6y ago

In a lot of "what would AI replace" studies they always talk about how it will be low skill jobs that suffer. Two observations: 1. A lot of "management" is readily automated, look at uber, it automates the dispatcher and keeps the manual workers. This idea could be extended further up the management ladder, its just that middle management is more of a stakeholder to the consultants pushing automation so they focus on eliminating workers. 2. The real scary thought to me is not manual jobs being automated, but rather humans only being used for their spatial reasoning and grasping abilities and having all other agency automated away. Anecdotally this may already be the case e.g. in some warehouses.

giantg2 6y ago

It depends on what they consider a task and what they are using as a baseline. For example, banking processes, trading processes, and just routing emails would account for many tasks. Just think about how much postal work, mailroom/intra-office mail has been replaced. How many millions of previously manual steps in trading and banking have been automated. I feel we have already surpassed 50% of work tasks being automated.