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We're still fine. We're probably fine for the next twenty or fifty years. Manufacturing jobs are not fine, and they haven't been fine for a while. That's not j

We're still fine. We're probably fine for the next twenty or fifty years. Manufacturing jobs are not fine, and they haven't been fine for a while. That's not just China -- the manufacturing that is done in this country (and Germany, and China) has become increasingly automated. They're working on Agriculture, and as computer vision improves (as it's doing now) the agricultural jobs are going to fall through the floor. First, it will be robots that pick the easiest fruit, and humans finish the job. Then, the robots will get better and better, and eventually the humans will be too expensive to get the remnants. The hidden piece to the law puzzle is that lawyers are becoming increasingly efficient. Why do we need pharmacy techs anymore? Just design the pharmacy to auto-dispense the drugs, and have the pharmacist there to answer questions and give the directions. As it is, technology is reducing the number of people who work in grocery stores. I'm sure that Walmart will figure out a way to automate stocking in the next ten years. How close are we to machine learning and Radiology? Someone has to be working on a "See chart. See expert radiologist opinion. Give computer percentage and expert recommendation side by side. Put results afterward into computer to help train machine." workflow? How long, after that, is the machine learning better than the radiologist, who concentrates on a smaller and smaller number of hard cases? How long after that, is a robot woodworker better than a human one? The robotic one can choose to leave human-like imperfections or not. Now, which of these seem unlikely, given what we know about machine learning and computer vision algorithms? It's not that the problem is hard as much as the computing power/$ isn't there. Yet.

Uhhrrr 15y ago
Woodworking knowledge actually goes pretty deep. If you don't have a feel for each piece, it's easy to break blades, cause fires, or have bits go flying. It's achievable, but I agree with your putting it after radiology.
kiba 15y ago
Question: how will the unemployed find the money to purchase said good dispensed by machines? Machines need markets to sustain their existence or else their owners abandon them or turn them into scrap parts.
- doyoulikeworms 15y ago
  This has happened a lot in history, but I'm no historian. The way I understand it, the automation (or technological improvement) of an industry lowers prices, and therefore helps another industry. Consumers to pay less for products, so extra funds directly (purchases) or indirectly (savings, investment) flow into new industries. In the short term, workers displaced by automation are unemployed, but in the long term, they have growing employment opportunities elsewhere (or even in the same industry, later). What's more, I feel like once automation takes hold in an industry, efficiency gains must accelerate relative to human laborers-- helping everyone. Sure, greater education and methodological improvements help humans to produce more for cheaper, but Moore's Law is a hell of an ally. IANAE(conomist), but I couldn't explain why the world didn't disintegrate after the Industrial Revolution(s) any other way.
- yummyfajitas 15y ago
  It's likely that a small number of high skilled humans (read: AI programmers, artists, and a few others) will have a functioning market among themselves. The remainder of humanity will subsist on some flavor of socialism. Most likely they will have a higher standard of living than the middle class today, but inequality will be dramatically higher.
  - intended 15y ago
    At some point though, the ones subsidizing the others will say no.
    - yummyfajitas 15y ago
      As long as the ones being subsidized don't create too much trouble (e.g. complain about inequality, demand too large a share, etc), why would the upper classes object? Libertarian as I am, I wouldn't object to a welfare state which supports people at college student levels. It would be so cheap that I just wouldn't care.
- jerf 15y ago
  How do they do it now? Because, after all, the robot job holocaust isn't in the future; it's in the past. As someone else pointed out, in the past, even the relatively recent past, the vast bulk of humanity was directly involved in growing food. Now those jobs are gone. So what happened? Other jobs, including types of jobs never imagined before. Capital producers, such as programmers, those still involved in mining, etc. aren't going to want to just sit there and hoard their programs, iron, food, etc., and they will find some way to spend it on other goods and services that the robots can't do, or that humans simply won't accept robots doing. The future has a lot more artists in it, I think. The unemployed will make money when you decide that there is something in your life that you want, be it art, services, or even just robot wrangling itself, and you want that good or service enough that somebody is willing to provide it for you for a price you'll take. Not you in the abstract, you. If you get desperate enough you may well be willing to pay them to learn how to do this thing you want, or at least subsidize their way through it. Things may change a lot, but the fundamental forces of economics don't break down until this set dwindles to zero (presumably because you can just instantiate an AI to do what you want), at which point all bets are off anyhow, and the poor will probably still be mind-blowingly rich by our standards at that point. Now, that's not to say everything's hunky dory. There is some legitimate concern about the rate of job elimination exceeding the rate at which people can retrain into other skills. I'm pointing this out though to make the observation that we have over a hundred years of historical answer to your question, a continuous cycle of destruction of industry after industry, yet barring a fundamentally finance-and-stupid-policy crisis that we happen to be in now, we're still looking at single-digit unemployment with people working ~40 hours a week, numbers that are very stable across decades (at least in comparison to the horrible pictures people paint of this scenario). It's interesting to discuss what's different about this innovation surge, but "Who will buy the Model Ts?" ceased to be an interesting question decades ago. (And personally, while the topic may be in the air, it hasn't happened yet. I don't think this unemployment spike has anything to do with robotics. The business cycle suffices to explain it. I don't expect the next wave of roboticization to really start impacting the job market for a good 5 or 10 years minimum. There's still a lot of pieces to put together.)
randomdata 15y ago
They're working on Agriculture, and as computer vision improves (as it's doing now) the agricultural jobs are going to fall through the floor. I have to say that am so conflicted by this. On one hand, I enjoy farming and run my own small farming operation. On the other hand, I love the technology. Lately, I have even been writing computer vision software in my spare time. Seeing my interests come together like this is really amazing, but also concerning towards my ability to continue farming in the future. Maybe I will eventually find myself in the best of both worlds; developing software for agricultural equipment.
- ebiester 15y ago
  I tend to believe there will still be room for small operations, particularly in conjunction with high end restaurants and those who can afford a premium product. (i.e. http://www.drycreekpeach.com/ http://www.drycreekpeach.com/ --I don't remember if this was the farm that everyone was raving about for a season or something)

Uhhrrr 15y ago

Woodworking knowledge actually goes pretty deep. If you don't have a feel for each piece, it's easy to break blades, cause fires, or have bits go flying. It's achievable, but I agree with your putting it after radiology.

kiba 15y ago

Question: how will the unemployed find the money to purchase said good dispensed by machines? Machines need markets to sustain their existence or else their owners abandon them or turn them into scrap parts.

doyoulikeworms 15y ago
This has happened a lot in history, but I'm no historian. The way I understand it, the automation (or technological improvement) of an industry lowers prices, and therefore helps another industry. Consumers to pay less for products, so extra funds directly (purchases) or indirectly (savings, investment) flow into new industries. In the short term, workers displaced by automation are unemployed, but in the long term, they have growing employment opportunities elsewhere (or even in the same industry, later). What's more, I feel like once automation takes hold in an industry, efficiency gains must accelerate relative to human laborers-- helping everyone. Sure, greater education and methodological improvements help humans to produce more for cheaper, but Moore's Law is a hell of an ally. IANAE(conomist), but I couldn't explain why the world didn't disintegrate after the Industrial Revolution(s) any other way.
yummyfajitas 15y ago
It's likely that a small number of high skilled humans (read: AI programmers, artists, and a few others) will have a functioning market among themselves. The remainder of humanity will subsist on some flavor of socialism. Most likely they will have a higher standard of living than the middle class today, but inequality will be dramatically higher.
- intended 15y ago
  At some point though, the ones subsidizing the others will say no.
  - yummyfajitas 15y ago
    As long as the ones being subsidized don't create too much trouble (e.g. complain about inequality, demand too large a share, etc), why would the upper classes object? Libertarian as I am, I wouldn't object to a welfare state which supports people at college student levels. It would be so cheap that I just wouldn't care.
jerf 15y ago
How do they do it now? Because, after all, the robot job holocaust isn't in the future; it's in the past. As someone else pointed out, in the past, even the relatively recent past, the vast bulk of humanity was directly involved in growing food. Now those jobs are gone. So what happened? Other jobs, including types of jobs never imagined before. Capital producers, such as programmers, those still involved in mining, etc. aren't going to want to just sit there and hoard their programs, iron, food, etc., and they will find some way to spend it on other goods and services that the robots can't do, or that humans simply won't accept robots doing. The future has a lot more artists in it, I think. The unemployed will make money when you decide that there is something in your life that you want, be it art, services, or even just robot wrangling itself, and you want that good or service enough that somebody is willing to provide it for you for a price you'll take. Not you in the abstract, you. If you get desperate enough you may well be willing to pay them to learn how to do this thing you want, or at least subsidize their way through it. Things may change a lot, but the fundamental forces of economics don't break down until this set dwindles to zero (presumably because you can just instantiate an AI to do what you want), at which point all bets are off anyhow, and the poor will probably still be mind-blowingly rich by our standards at that point. Now, that's not to say everything's hunky dory. There is some legitimate concern about the rate of job elimination exceeding the rate at which people can retrain into other skills. I'm pointing this out though to make the observation that we have over a hundred years of historical answer to your question, a continuous cycle of destruction of industry after industry, yet barring a fundamentally finance-and-stupid-policy crisis that we happen to be in now, we're still looking at single-digit unemployment with people working ~40 hours a week, numbers that are very stable across decades (at least in comparison to the horrible pictures people paint of this scenario). It's interesting to discuss what's different about this innovation surge, but "Who will buy the Model Ts?" ceased to be an interesting question decades ago. (And personally, while the topic may be in the air, it hasn't happened yet. I don't think this unemployment spike has anything to do with robotics. The business cycle suffices to explain it. I don't expect the next wave of roboticization to really start impacting the job market for a good 5 or 10 years minimum. There's still a lot of pieces to put together.)

randomdata 15y ago

They're working on Agriculture, and as computer vision improves (as it's doing now) the agricultural jobs are going to fall through the floor. I have to say that am so conflicted by this. On one hand, I enjoy farming and run my own small farming operation. On the other hand, I love the technology. Lately, I have even been writing computer vision software in my spare time. Seeing my interests come together like this is really amazing, but also concerning towards my ability to continue farming in the future. Maybe I will eventually find myself in the best of both worlds; developing software for agricultural equipment.

ebiester 15y ago
I tend to believe there will still be room for small operations, particularly in conjunction with high end restaurants and those who can afford a premium product. (i.e. http://www.drycreekpeach.com/ http://www.drycreekpeach.com/ --I don't remember if this was the farm that everyone was raving about for a season or something)