7 ms·

"Automation and Ai is replacing white collar work this time." I think that If your daily work can be truly replaced by a graphic card running pattern matching s

by fbn79 6y ago

"Automation and Ai is replacing white collar work this time." I think that If your daily work can be truly replaced by a graphic card running pattern matching software you should find a better way to invest your life.

rakkhi 6y ago
Till they come for your job :) Ive seen a lot of jobs that have been automated that are not pattern matching even in IT security. Even where the job is not fully automated like firewall admin it is greatly reduced and the labour is not replaced. E.g 10 years ago at an Aussie bank we had 40 people performing firewall changes and 30 security designers writing and reviewing the rules nedded. Algosec came along, we did software defined networking , things moved to AWS and there are zero dedicated firewall admins anymore and all the designers were absorbed into the architecture and consulting teams and eventually returned to its original size of 20 i.e those 30 security design jobs disappeared
watt 6y ago
Point is, you can't find not just a better way, but you can't find any way. You either own the CPU farm, or you're out.
- rakkhi 6y ago
  Yeah this is the Charles Murray point. We can't all be AI repair or developers. A lot is capped by intelligence. A greater proportion of the gains go to those with the most intelligence and everyone on the bottom gets left behind. That is the real outcome of automation this time. You can see it in the shrinking middle class in the developed world. In the smaller proportion of productivity gains going to labour in the last 60 year ala Piketty
  - ilaksh 6y ago
    You are conflating things. The gains go to people who have privilege. For example, developers in less-wealthy countries can earn a fraction of what those in richer countries earn. Or those born to wealthy parents who don't really need to work and so go into business rather than engineering. Also, in general the idea that greater intelligence means higher income is false. And the assumption many scientists and engineers make is that within a certain number of generations, maybe one, maybe ten, is that we will have AI much smarter than humans. That means smarter than you, and much better at your job than you (whether its "AI repair" or anything else). Smart guy.
    - cbozeman 6y ago
      > Also, in general the idea that greater intelligence means higher income is false. No it isn't. This is only one study of dozens, possibly even hundreds, that have been conducted over the years: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0160289607000219#:~:text=The%20numbers%20suggest%20that%20IQ,income%20is%203.6%20times%20lower https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01602.... The findings are always the same... the more IQ you have, the better off you end up doing, once you control for every other variable. But I get why no one on HN wants to hear that. IQ is something you didn't earn. It's not yours. It was given to you, and not only was it given to you, you're not allowed to refuse it either. You either have it or you don't. And what's worse, even if you want to be smarter, that's almost nothing you can do that'll raise IQ by a few points - at best. Someone with a 100 IQ will never be able to study enough or learn enough to match someone with a 160 IQ. Its a lifelong, glaring, undeniable reminder that the Universe is not fucking fair and does not fucking care about anyone. And I've known enough people that are the demographic of HN to know that, not only does this intrinsically eat at their core because you can't deny it or evade it, but it also shatters their utopian ideals - that if we just eliminate all <insert social justice term of the zeitgeist here> that we can lift everyone up. Well you can't. And you won't. Life's not fair and there's literally nothing you can do about it right now.
      - lm28469 6y ago
        > Well you can't. And you won't. Life's not fair and there's literally nothing you can do about it right now. The only reason we can't is because people like you think we can't and take the status quo as a god given immutable system which is inherently "right". There are plenty of things to be done to reduce, instead of increase, inequalities
        cbozeman 6y ago
        You can't do anything about it because we don't genetically enhance children. Yet. As of two years ago, we mapped out about 2000 genes that contribute to intelligence. A decade ago, we knew of 100. Another decade or two from now, we'll have it entirely mapped out and we'll start to engineer our kids. The reason we'll do this is because our enemies will do this and a high IQ population is a strategic advantage. Its not about "systems" or the status quo. The status quo changes over time, always. Used to be, your ability to throw a spear and kill an animal for the tribe set you apart. Then, what vagina you came out of and what sperm were used to create you designated your station in life. Then, it became your ability to facilitate trade between parties. Later, it shifted to your ability to leverage the output of your fellow man to build a factory or a railroad. Now, in the Information Age, you're limited solely by your IQ, your creativity, and your grit. Those who advanced in the systems above all had grit, determination, willpower, drive. That's a necessary condition and likely always will be, but the other conditions all changed. IQ will likely be the stopping point, at least for humanity. What happens beyond us, that's anyone's guess. Unfortunately, you're still falling back into "utopia-vision". You think if we just build the right "system", we can eliminate all this. Not for a very long time. Probably not ever, and if we ever do, we won't be humans in the current sense, because whereas you're concerned with systems, I'm concerned with human nature, and as it we exist right now, human nature won't support any system where billions of people are propped up by millions for their survival. The resentment it generates, on both sides, is simply unsustainable. The "smart" people who generate all the wealth that the rest of society survives on will resent having to work to maintain society, and the rest of society that receives that wealth will resent not having the same quality of life as the "smart" people who make it all possible in the first place, usually not realizing they'd all be starving to death if the "smart" people decided to merely shut off access. And we won't end up a society of all philosophers and artists because frankly you have to be smart to be a decent philosopher and you have to be creative to be an artist. Most people have middling qualities of both traits. Furthermore, due to the interconnectedness of our global society, people are interested in, can access, and generally are only interested in the "best". Andrew Yang said it best during the 2020 presidential campaign cycle in regards to trying to "regulate" and "break up" Big Tech. No one's interested in using the second-best tech product. Don't believe that? Android and iOS are essentially at parity. You could also say Samsung and Apple are at parity. Almost no one uses Windows Phone OS even though its perfectly acceptable as an operating system and was more than capable of doing what almost every single person needs. But it was the second-best choice, with Android / iOS being the best. We see how that played out. I'm afraid we're in a really rough, really shitty ride. I want to be wrong, because if I'm wrong it means a better world, but I'm using the history of human nature as my reference.
- murukesh_s 6y ago
  out of what? what if you own a sustainable farm house with solar grid. you don't give a shit about anything else..
  - rakkhi 6y ago
    Except entertainment, human contact, travel, and anything else you can't produce on your own. Took me a while to realise a wage was selling my labour to buy stuff other people produce. The higher the wage the more leverage I get over other people's production. A similar view leads to banks with massive loans and low interest rates own more of our productive capacity than feudal lords did over serfs. In Australia tax 35% average, 10% VAT, capital gains and bankls take 30% of your after tax income as a mortgage...
    - lm28469 6y ago
      > Except entertainment, human contact, travel, and anything else you can't produce on your own. Took me a while to realise a wage was selling my labour to buy stuff other people produce. The higher the wage the more leverage I get over other people's production. These are extremely new concepts (besides human contact, but that you can always have), people use to live differently for 99% of human history. Saying there is no other way than the current way is plain wrong and borderline dangerous. Just talk to your grandparents and you'll feel like they lived on another planet. Our current lifestyle of unchecked consumption, absorption entertainment 3+ hours a day, traveling to the other side of the country/world thanks to cheap airlines &c. are not the norm, they're an anomaly > The higher the wage the more leverage I get over other people's production. While not technically wrong, this is a choice you have to make for yourself. There is more to life than consuming other people's production, be careful not to get trapped in the rat race
lm28469 6y ago
Most people can't, and more and more people are thrown in these jobs. This is a direct consequence of automation... and this is why we're in for a bad time unless we rethink our concept or work
- rakkhi 6y ago
  Thus the Expanse. The only palatable solution for government is print money (ie. tax everyone's purchasing power) and pay it in increased welfare. E.g 1400 cheques and more coming. As long as everyone prints there is no debasement of currencies.
  - cbozeman 6y ago
    Well look, if all this is becoming The Expanse, I'd like to make my way to the Ring Gate to a new world sooner rather than later. I find the idea of exploring strange new worlds far more enticing than getting my 1400 credits, or even worse, my €$ Eurodollars.
  - sokoloff 6y ago
    If everyone prints, there is no relative debasement across currencies. There’s a massive debasement against hard/productive assets.
i_am_proteus 6y ago
Some people have spent decades investing in skills and careers that become obviated in a matter of years by new technology. It's easy to see today which lines of work can be better done by computers than by humans-- today. What's less obvious is which lines of work will be automated in two decades. Having your job description written out of the economy by software is a non-event when you're 26, rough when you're 36, and a disaster when you're 46.
- imtringued 6y ago
  The problem is that company funded training is dead. There are some leftover countries like Germany that do formal apprenticeships with reduced pay and they tend to have lower youth unemployment but they are the exception. I know some people who just did an apprenticeship in their 30s and got a new job that way. The alternative would be to have a government mandated long term unemployment insurance program that funds education. It would be a general solution to career loss of any kind. I personally dislike that coal worker communities are being protected by the government. If there was an effective program that helped these people get better jobs we wouldn't even have to worry about protectionism. The big unsolved problem is people who are 10 years away from retirement. They can't just spend 3-5 years retraining without delaying their retirement.
hansor 6y ago
Programming, remote surgery, judging(law), farming. Hardly "bad investment" from society point of view! It is well known bias(supported by numerous studies) that 90% people with your "attitude" are certain that THEIR job is somehow special and immune to automatization.
- cbozeman 6y ago
  It's the same old shit, hansor... no one considers a problem to be "their" problem, right up until it becomes their problem.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
superbcarrot 6y ago
I think that it's okay to say this to yourself and look for a different type of work. Saying this to other people misses a couple of important points. - If you can reskill, you're very fortunate. Not everyone is in the same position. - It doesn't scale to large numbers. The demand in the market for people with skills that can't yet be automated isn't necessarily enough to absorb all the people who are losing their jobs to automation.
agumonkey 6y ago
I spent 3 months at a small court room last summer. 99% of what was ~done (or not done depending on how you see it) could fit on a laptop. The whole service, if in digital form would require near zero human intervention. These people are mostly trying to navigate bad software, bad bosses, bad archives and bad workflow. Oh and angry users of course. The computational needs are not even GPU worthy. I'm not advocating a digital future[1], but a humongous amount of tasks at the service layer are really nil. [1] humanly and sociologically I'd be much more happier keeping most of the system, people contributing to society together, but with better tools and better team spirit (achievable through a little cultural shift), I don't see value in replacing all tasks and letting people idle or live 100 years of leisure, I don't even think it's mentally sane.
Red_Leaves_Flyy 6y ago
Computer was once a job title. People used to get paid to shine shoes and press clothes everyday. Banks used to employee hundreds of people to staff their operations. The DMV is a sprawling human operated date entry firm fronting for a database and camera. Paralegals and research assistants are being replaced by the dozens. Entire factory campuses that employed towns are now operated by mere dozens. Fields that took dozens to manage can now be handled by a few people and traveling farm hands. Hedge funds are out performed by indexes. Many are cooking their books. Self driving cars will happen and displace millions of jobs over what, a decade? Two or three max? I'll bet my current retirement that it happens within the century. Jobs like shelf stocking, burger flipping, and the like could be automated today if the displaced employees wouldn't lead a violent revolution. That's the political reality. How the fuck do you keep 200 million working people happy without repressing them or inciting a revolution?
- DebtDeflation 6y ago
  >The DMV is a sprawling human operated date entry firm fronting for a database and camera This one really hit home. I went to the DMV a few months ago for the first time in over a decade to upgrade my drivers license to a Real ID (must be done in person, previous renewals were done by mail). The entire process was unchanged from when I first got my license almost 30 years ago. Stand in one line to check in. Sit down. Wait for your name to be called to stand in a second line to have them manually keypunch the paper form you have to fill out into their computer system. Sit down. Wait for your name to be called to stand in a third line to get your picture taken. Sit down. Wait for your name to be called to stand in a fourth line to pay (slight change here in that they now accept credit cards, up until a few years ago it was cash or checks only). Sit down. Wait for your name to be called to stand in a fifth line to pick up your new license. Leave after several hours. This whole transaction could have been accomplished with kiosks, 1/10th the number of employees, and 1/4 the amount of floor space in 5 minutes or less.
  - Tarsul 6y ago
    sounds a little like an experience out of another time, like a live museum with actors.

by fbn79 6y ago

rakkhi 6y ago

Till they come for your job :) Ive seen a lot of jobs that have been automated that are not pattern matching even in IT security. Even where the job is not fully automated like firewall admin it is greatly reduced and the labour is not replaced. E.g 10 years ago at an Aussie bank we had 40 people performing firewall changes and 30 security designers writing and reviewing the rules nedded. Algosec came along, we did software defined networking , things moved to AWS and there are zero dedicated firewall admins anymore and all the designers were absorbed into the architecture and consulting teams and eventually returned to its original size of 20 i.e those 30 security design jobs disappeared

watt 6y ago

Point is, you can't find not just a better way, but you can't find any way. You either own the CPU farm, or you're out.

rakkhi 6y ago
Yeah this is the Charles Murray point. We can't all be AI repair or developers. A lot is capped by intelligence. A greater proportion of the gains go to those with the most intelligence and everyone on the bottom gets left behind. That is the real outcome of automation this time. You can see it in the shrinking middle class in the developed world. In the smaller proportion of productivity gains going to labour in the last 60 year ala Piketty
- ilaksh 6y ago
  You are conflating things. The gains go to people who have privilege. For example, developers in less-wealthy countries can earn a fraction of what those in richer countries earn. Or those born to wealthy parents who don't really need to work and so go into business rather than engineering. Also, in general the idea that greater intelligence means higher income is false. And the assumption many scientists and engineers make is that within a certain number of generations, maybe one, maybe ten, is that we will have AI much smarter than humans. That means smarter than you, and much better at your job than you (whether its "AI repair" or anything else). Smart guy.
  - cbozeman 6y ago
    > Also, in general the idea that greater intelligence means higher income is false. No it isn't. This is only one study of dozens, possibly even hundreds, that have been conducted over the years: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0160289607000219#:~:text=The%20numbers%20suggest%20that%20IQ,income%20is%203.6%20times%20lower https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01602.... The findings are always the same... the more IQ you have, the better off you end up doing, once you control for every other variable. But I get why no one on HN wants to hear that. IQ is something you didn't earn. It's not yours. It was given to you, and not only was it given to you, you're not allowed to refuse it either. You either have it or you don't. And what's worse, even if you want to be smarter, that's almost nothing you can do that'll raise IQ by a few points - at best. Someone with a 100 IQ will never be able to study enough or learn enough to match someone with a 160 IQ. Its a lifelong, glaring, undeniable reminder that the Universe is not fucking fair and does not fucking care about anyone. And I've known enough people that are the demographic of HN to know that, not only does this intrinsically eat at their core because you can't deny it or evade it, but it also shatters their utopian ideals - that if we just eliminate all <insert social justice term of the zeitgeist here> that we can lift everyone up. Well you can't. And you won't. Life's not fair and there's literally nothing you can do about it right now.
    - lm28469 6y ago
      > Well you can't. And you won't. Life's not fair and there's literally nothing you can do about it right now. The only reason we can't is because people like you think we can't and take the status quo as a god given immutable system which is inherently "right". There are plenty of things to be done to reduce, instead of increase, inequalities
      - cbozeman 6y ago
        You can't do anything about it because we don't genetically enhance children. Yet. As of two years ago, we mapped out about 2000 genes that contribute to intelligence. A decade ago, we knew of 100. Another decade or two from now, we'll have it entirely mapped out and we'll start to engineer our kids. The reason we'll do this is because our enemies will do this and a high IQ population is a strategic advantage. Its not about "systems" or the status quo. The status quo changes over time, always. Used to be, your ability to throw a spear and kill an animal for the tribe set you apart. Then, what vagina you came out of and what sperm were used to create you designated your station in life. Then, it became your ability to facilitate trade between parties. Later, it shifted to your ability to leverage the output of your fellow man to build a factory or a railroad. Now, in the Information Age, you're limited solely by your IQ, your creativity, and your grit. Those who advanced in the systems above all had grit, determination, willpower, drive. That's a necessary condition and likely always will be, but the other conditions all changed. IQ will likely be the stopping point, at least for humanity. What happens beyond us, that's anyone's guess. Unfortunately, you're still falling back into "utopia-vision". You think if we just build the right "system", we can eliminate all this. Not for a very long time. Probably not ever, and if we ever do, we won't be humans in the current sense, because whereas you're concerned with systems, I'm concerned with human nature, and as it we exist right now, human nature won't support any system where billions of people are propped up by millions for their survival. The resentment it generates, on both sides, is simply unsustainable. The "smart" people who generate all the wealth that the rest of society survives on will resent having to work to maintain society, and the rest of society that receives that wealth will resent not having the same quality of life as the "smart" people who make it all possible in the first place, usually not realizing they'd all be starving to death if the "smart" people decided to merely shut off access. And we won't end up a society of all philosophers and artists because frankly you have to be smart to be a decent philosopher and you have to be creative to be an artist. Most people have middling qualities of both traits. Furthermore, due to the interconnectedness of our global society, people are interested in, can access, and generally are only interested in the "best". Andrew Yang said it best during the 2020 presidential campaign cycle in regards to trying to "regulate" and "break up" Big Tech. No one's interested in using the second-best tech product. Don't believe that? Android and iOS are essentially at parity. You could also say Samsung and Apple are at parity. Almost no one uses Windows Phone OS even though its perfectly acceptable as an operating system and was more than capable of doing what almost every single person needs. But it was the second-best choice, with Android / iOS being the best. We see how that played out. I'm afraid we're in a really rough, really shitty ride. I want to be wrong, because if I'm wrong it means a better world, but I'm using the history of human nature as my reference.
murukesh_s 6y ago
out of what? what if you own a sustainable farm house with solar grid. you don't give a shit about anything else..
- rakkhi 6y ago
  Except entertainment, human contact, travel, and anything else you can't produce on your own. Took me a while to realise a wage was selling my labour to buy stuff other people produce. The higher the wage the more leverage I get over other people's production. A similar view leads to banks with massive loans and low interest rates own more of our productive capacity than feudal lords did over serfs. In Australia tax 35% average, 10% VAT, capital gains and bankls take 30% of your after tax income as a mortgage...
  - lm28469 6y ago
    > Except entertainment, human contact, travel, and anything else you can't produce on your own. Took me a while to realise a wage was selling my labour to buy stuff other people produce. The higher the wage the more leverage I get over other people's production. These are extremely new concepts (besides human contact, but that you can always have), people use to live differently for 99% of human history. Saying there is no other way than the current way is plain wrong and borderline dangerous. Just talk to your grandparents and you'll feel like they lived on another planet. Our current lifestyle of unchecked consumption, absorption entertainment 3+ hours a day, traveling to the other side of the country/world thanks to cheap airlines &c. are not the norm, they're an anomaly > The higher the wage the more leverage I get over other people's production. While not technically wrong, this is a choice you have to make for yourself. There is more to life than consuming other people's production, be careful not to get trapped in the rat race

lm28469 6y ago

Most people can't, and more and more people are thrown in these jobs. This is a direct consequence of automation... and this is why we're in for a bad time unless we rethink our concept or work

rakkhi 6y ago
Thus the Expanse. The only palatable solution for government is print money (ie. tax everyone's purchasing power) and pay it in increased welfare. E.g 1400 cheques and more coming. As long as everyone prints there is no debasement of currencies.
- cbozeman 6y ago
  Well look, if all this is becoming The Expanse, I'd like to make my way to the Ring Gate to a new world sooner rather than later. I find the idea of exploring strange new worlds far more enticing than getting my 1400 credits, or even worse, my €$ Eurodollars.
- sokoloff 6y ago
  If everyone prints, there is no relative debasement across currencies. There’s a massive debasement against hard/productive assets.

i_am_proteus 6y ago

Some people have spent decades investing in skills and careers that become obviated in a matter of years by new technology. It's easy to see today which lines of work can be better done by computers than by humans-- today. What's less obvious is which lines of work will be automated in two decades. Having your job description written out of the economy by software is a non-event when you're 26, rough when you're 36, and a disaster when you're 46.

imtringued 6y ago
The problem is that company funded training is dead. There are some leftover countries like Germany that do formal apprenticeships with reduced pay and they tend to have lower youth unemployment but they are the exception. I know some people who just did an apprenticeship in their 30s and got a new job that way. The alternative would be to have a government mandated long term unemployment insurance program that funds education. It would be a general solution to career loss of any kind. I personally dislike that coal worker communities are being protected by the government. If there was an effective program that helped these people get better jobs we wouldn't even have to worry about protectionism. The big unsolved problem is people who are 10 years away from retirement. They can't just spend 3-5 years retraining without delaying their retirement.

hansor 6y ago

Programming, remote surgery, judging(law), farming. Hardly "bad investment" from society point of view! It is well known bias(supported by numerous studies) that 90% people with your "attitude" are certain that THEIR job is somehow special and immune to automatization.

cbozeman 6y ago
It's the same old shit, hansor... no one considers a problem to be "their" problem, right up until it becomes their problem.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

superbcarrot 6y ago

I think that it's okay to say this to yourself and look for a different type of work. Saying this to other people misses a couple of important points. - If you can reskill, you're very fortunate. Not everyone is in the same position. - It doesn't scale to large numbers. The demand in the market for people with skills that can't yet be automated isn't necessarily enough to absorb all the people who are losing their jobs to automation.

agumonkey 6y ago

I spent 3 months at a small court room last summer. 99% of what was ~done (or not done depending on how you see it) could fit on a laptop. The whole service, if in digital form would require near zero human intervention. These people are mostly trying to navigate bad software, bad bosses, bad archives and bad workflow. Oh and angry users of course. The computational needs are not even GPU worthy. I'm not advocating a digital future[1], but a humongous amount of tasks at the service layer are really nil. [1] humanly and sociologically I'd be much more happier keeping most of the system, people contributing to society together, but with better tools and better team spirit (achievable through a little cultural shift), I don't see value in replacing all tasks and letting people idle or live 100 years of leisure, I don't even think it's mentally sane.

Red_Leaves_Flyy 6y ago

Computer was once a job title. People used to get paid to shine shoes and press clothes everyday. Banks used to employee hundreds of people to staff their operations. The DMV is a sprawling human operated date entry firm fronting for a database and camera. Paralegals and research assistants are being replaced by the dozens. Entire factory campuses that employed towns are now operated by mere dozens. Fields that took dozens to manage can now be handled by a few people and traveling farm hands. Hedge funds are out performed by indexes. Many are cooking their books. Self driving cars will happen and displace millions of jobs over what, a decade? Two or three max? I'll bet my current retirement that it happens within the century. Jobs like shelf stocking, burger flipping, and the like could be automated today if the displaced employees wouldn't lead a violent revolution. That's the political reality. How the fuck do you keep 200 million working people happy without repressing them or inciting a revolution?

DebtDeflation 6y ago
>The DMV is a sprawling human operated date entry firm fronting for a database and camera This one really hit home. I went to the DMV a few months ago for the first time in over a decade to upgrade my drivers license to a Real ID (must be done in person, previous renewals were done by mail). The entire process was unchanged from when I first got my license almost 30 years ago. Stand in one line to check in. Sit down. Wait for your name to be called to stand in a second line to have them manually keypunch the paper form you have to fill out into their computer system. Sit down. Wait for your name to be called to stand in a third line to get your picture taken. Sit down. Wait for your name to be called to stand in a fourth line to pay (slight change here in that they now accept credit cards, up until a few years ago it was cash or checks only). Sit down. Wait for your name to be called to stand in a fifth line to pick up your new license. Leave after several hours. This whole transaction could have been accomplished with kiosks, 1/10th the number of employees, and 1/4 the amount of floor space in 5 minutes or less.
- Tarsul 6y ago
  sounds a little like an experience out of another time, like a live museum with actors.