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20 years is not conservative; it is a very aggressive timetable for significant impact on employment. I think you underestimate just what is involved in most "

20 years is not conservative; it is a very aggressive timetable for significant impact on employment. I think you underestimate just what is involved in most "unskilled", manual jobs, and you also underestimate scale-up difficulties in production and teaching the robots. These are not a bunch of rectangular slabs with only one moving part. Further, there are hundreds of thousands of occupations; the most numerous occupation, health care aide, is extremely diverse. It's not like "write the next iOS or Android, and you're done": you have to repeat that on the order of a million times. (Note: I am not given to using adverbs, especially intensifiers, as a rule. Please take that into account when reading "very" and "extremely" above.)

MacsHeadroom 3y ago
Counterpoint, 20 years ago smartphones didn't exist. Now it's been nearly impossible to work without one for around a decade. Technology can move quite fast sometimes.
- aurareturn 3y ago
  Smartphones are just smaller laptops, which are smaller desktops. Apple made the Newton in 1992. I think humanoid AI robots are a bigger leap.
- tuatoru 3y ago
  Smartphones are the rectangular slabs with a single moving part that I mentioned. The simplicity and stupidity of them is colossal.
- JohnFen 3y ago
  > Now it's been nearly impossible to work without one for around a decade. How true this is probably depends on where you live. In my part of the US, this isn't even close to being true. You can get along just fine without a smartphone.
  - jlokier 3y ago
    Where I live, in the UK, it isn't possible to login to three of my bank accounts for admin or make credit card payments without a smartphone to confirm payments sometimes. I had to approve the debit card purchase of a small pizza via in-app notification from the bank last week. Email, voice phone and SMS authentication used to be used but they are gradually being deprecated by some financial services. One job ago I had to use my smartphone several times a day to approve corporate VPN logins on the work-provided computer, before I could access the Git repo, BitBucket and Linux dev VMs. All of us had to install a specific authenticator app on our phone. Two jobs ago I had to use Google auth with my smartphone used as a security token, to access work documents and emails. When the phone broke I lost that access, despite transferring a backup to a new phone and most things surviving the transfer, because that access was associated to the device.
    - JohnFen 3y ago
      I have a strict policy about work and smartphones. Nothing related to work touches my smartphone. If an employer has processes that require a smartphone, then the employer needs to supply that smartphone to me, just like my employer needs to supply other essential work equipment such as a computer.

MacsHeadroom 3y ago

Counterpoint, 20 years ago smartphones didn't exist. Now it's been nearly impossible to work without one for around a decade. Technology can move quite fast sometimes.

aurareturn 3y ago
Smartphones are just smaller laptops, which are smaller desktops. Apple made the Newton in 1992. I think humanoid AI robots are a bigger leap.
tuatoru 3y ago
Smartphones are the rectangular slabs with a single moving part that I mentioned. The simplicity and stupidity of them is colossal.
JohnFen 3y ago
> Now it's been nearly impossible to work without one for around a decade. How true this is probably depends on where you live. In my part of the US, this isn't even close to being true. You can get along just fine without a smartphone.
- jlokier 3y ago
  Where I live, in the UK, it isn't possible to login to three of my bank accounts for admin or make credit card payments without a smartphone to confirm payments sometimes. I had to approve the debit card purchase of a small pizza via in-app notification from the bank last week. Email, voice phone and SMS authentication used to be used but they are gradually being deprecated by some financial services. One job ago I had to use my smartphone several times a day to approve corporate VPN logins on the work-provided computer, before I could access the Git repo, BitBucket and Linux dev VMs. All of us had to install a specific authenticator app on our phone. Two jobs ago I had to use Google auth with my smartphone used as a security token, to access work documents and emails. When the phone broke I lost that access, despite transferring a backup to a new phone and most things surviving the transfer, because that access was associated to the device.
  - JohnFen 3y ago
    I have a strict policy about work and smartphones. Nothing related to work touches my smartphone. If an employer has processes that require a smartphone, then the employer needs to supply that smartphone to me, just like my employer needs to supply other essential work equipment such as a computer.