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I find it ironic that for a long time people have been predicting the demise of low skilled and blue collar work to AI and robots. But as I see it at present,

I find it ironic that for a long time people have been predicting the demise of low skilled and blue collar work to AI and robots. But as I see it at present, it's the high end white collar work that is the most at risk being made redundant to AI since robots and mobile power solutions aren't robust enough to eliminate blue collar work quite yet. I know someone will say why this isn't going to happen but for many in middle and upper management good enough will suffice if it means eliminating expensive white collar workers. That day is coming.

yamtaddle 4y ago
I must say, it really is looking a lot more likely than it did ten years ago that we'll replace most knowledge workers before we replace humans-as-biological-robots with the regular kind of robots. Our hands, eyes, and legs may end up being the expensive parts to replace—not our creativity, not our raw intelligence—so, related niches may be the ones in which human labor thrives the longest. Perhaps Amazon will be able to slash its office workforce to a small fraction of its current size, before it can do the same with its warehouses. Go figure. Time to go lift some weights so I can still land a job in my 50s, I guess....
- yourapostasy 4y ago
  > Perhaps Amazon will be able to slash its office workforce to a small fraction of its current size, before it can do the same with its warehouses. Go figure. See Moravec's Paradox [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moravec%27s_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moravec%27s_paradox
- giraffe_lady 4y ago
  I read a novel recently that took place on a slave-crewed fishing boat. The "captain" was an AI, because analyzing market data and weather reports etc and deciding where to work, when and where to unload was something it was well suited to. Physically hauling nets and gutting fish was nowhere in the near future so human labor remains doing that. I think a less extreme form of this dynamic is coming for most of us in the next decade or two. And an exactly as extreme form coming for some of us.
sixothree 4y ago
The day is coming for literally every job that exists. It's only a matter of _when_. And we simply do not have any sort of economic system to account for such a shift. Pair that with what we have seen "distrust in institutions" can do to people. I have grave fear our future.
yoyohello13 4y ago
More and more I think this will be the future. I was watching an episode of "Dirty Jobs" yesterday and all I could think was "I guess this is what I'll be doing in 10 years".
Hermitian909 4y ago
Lowend or midlevel whitecollar work sure, I'm skeptical about highend. AI is still quite far off from a notion of "common sense", if we _did_ have that it would actually solve a very large host of open problems in robotics that prevent it from being taking lots of blue collar jobs (at least my former coworkers at a Toyota's robotics R&D lab thought so). As automation improves the leverage on top talent increases and the premium for incrementally better skills improves. I'm arguably a worse programmer than my uncle was 30 years ago but earn far more (inflation adjusted) because I can leverage things like AWS, open source libraries, and various SAAS offerings.

yamtaddle 4y ago

I must say, it really is looking a lot more likely than it did ten years ago that we'll replace most knowledge workers before we replace humans-as-biological-robots with the regular kind of robots. Our hands, eyes, and legs may end up being the expensive parts to replace—not our creativity, not our raw intelligence—so, related niches may be the ones in which human labor thrives the longest. Perhaps Amazon will be able to slash its office workforce to a small fraction of its current size, before it can do the same with its warehouses. Go figure. Time to go lift some weights so I can still land a job in my 50s, I guess....

yourapostasy 4y ago
> Perhaps Amazon will be able to slash its office workforce to a small fraction of its current size, before it can do the same with its warehouses. Go figure. See Moravec's Paradox [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moravec%27s_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moravec%27s_paradox
giraffe_lady 4y ago
I read a novel recently that took place on a slave-crewed fishing boat. The "captain" was an AI, because analyzing market data and weather reports etc and deciding where to work, when and where to unload was something it was well suited to. Physically hauling nets and gutting fish was nowhere in the near future so human labor remains doing that. I think a less extreme form of this dynamic is coming for most of us in the next decade or two. And an exactly as extreme form coming for some of us.

sixothree 4y ago

The day is coming for literally every job that exists. It's only a matter of _when_. And we simply do not have any sort of economic system to account for such a shift. Pair that with what we have seen "distrust in institutions" can do to people. I have grave fear our future.

yoyohello13 4y ago

More and more I think this will be the future. I was watching an episode of "Dirty Jobs" yesterday and all I could think was "I guess this is what I'll be doing in 10 years".

Hermitian909 4y ago

Lowend or midlevel whitecollar work sure, I'm skeptical about highend. AI is still quite far off from a notion of "common sense", if we _did_ have that it would actually solve a very large host of open problems in robotics that prevent it from being taking lots of blue collar jobs (at least my former coworkers at a Toyota's robotics R&D lab thought so). As automation improves the leverage on top talent increases and the premium for incrementally better skills improves. I'm arguably a worse programmer than my uncle was 30 years ago but earn far more (inflation adjusted) because I can leverage things like AWS, open source libraries, and various SAAS offerings.