6 ms·
Brain work may be going the way of manual work
- 3pt14159 13y agoNo they will not. The amount of effort required to shrink real knowledge worker jobs is astronomical compared to simply driving a car. After the singularity, fine. But even that will require a massive, massive amount of work. The low hanging fruit for increasing knowledge work output is in Gattaca not AI.
- kybernetyk 13y agoI guess the point where an AI can replace a programmer is the point where a technological singularity begins. Because at that point the AI is capable of improving its own code which would lead to a 'runaway reaction'. And if you're in a post-singularity world you don't really have to worry about jobs anymore. So I guess being a programmer is pretty future proof ;)
- nostromo 13y agoSoftware is already replacing programmers through gains in efficiency if not AI. Just look at what a small number of programmers can accomplish today vs 10 or 20 years ago.
- danielweber 13y agoThere's not a finite amount of software that the world needs, though. We're standing on the shoulders of giants but the top of the ladder is not even in sight.
- lpvn 13y agoThe fact that automation will take most of population out of work doesn't necessarily mean that your job will be completely automated. Look at a manufacturing plant for instance, human workers are still necessary but you need 10x less workers and they'll produce 10x more than 50 years ago. The same holds for technical areas, we can't say for sure when we'll have strong AI but in the meantime we're gonna need less and less people to do the job that a lot of people do today. This all to say that the problem of unemployment isn't about every single person in the world being unable to get a job, if you have 35% of your population unable to exchange their labour capacities for a living then this is a huge social problem.
- ippisl 13y agoIt depends i think. Let's say you develop mobile games for a living and then the unemployment rate rises to 20-30%. The economy collapses, and nobody buys games. Not the best place to be while paying the mortgage. Ironically , if you're a programer who increases productivity, i.e. causes unemployment, you save money. In sour economy the need to save money is the greatest.
- conroe64 13y agoSo, post singularity, people with no wealth or ability to work will be prevented from starving? There are many people that are dying from starvation today. Why would this change?
- rtkwe 13y agoThe idea of the singularity also includes post-scarcity for at least basic survival needs. The logic being when robots & AIs take over all the jobs we can increase the output to a point where goods are exceedingly abundant. Granted that path involves quite a bit of faith that there's some reason to provide, but it's not terribly unreasonable if a bit idealistic.
- simonbrown 13y agoWhat if natural resources are scarce?
- rtkwe 13y agoBasic living is perfectly sustainable for our current population and beyond I think (and I think I've read but have no source), anything above that could be allotted based on the newly scarce resource of human creativity or whatever we decide. Also many scarce resources could likely be made non scarce with 'free' labor of robots/AIs.
- conroe64 13y agoThis idea fails because we had the resources to feed everybody today yet it doesn't happen. In the future, when techno-baron A sees that techno-baron B is getting ahead, techno-baron A consumes more resources in order to defeat techno-baron B. If people are in the way of that, and they are of no use to any techno-barons they are pushed aside. There was "post-scarcity for basic survival needs" for millions of years already. When life first formed on earth, there was food enough for every organism. That didn't prevent organisms from fighting each other. Competition and the extinction of the losers has been a central theme of life since it began. Being at the top of the food pyramid, and in a first-world country has made us forget that fact. The idea that humanity can rise above this, formed from living in this social-economic bubble for far too long, is just hubris.
- aespinoza 13y agoSadly, I couldn't read the article due to the paywall. But I agree with you. I don't think AI will replace knowledge workers. A couple of decades ago, people used to say that workers in factories would disappear as well. That never happened, at least not completely. The costs are always a problem. If AI will ever really replace us, is still a mystery for the future. Because for it to work, it would have to be cost effective.
- w1ntermute 13y ago> Sadly, I couldn't read the article due to the paywall. Just open it in Incognito Mode. The Economist uses a simple, cookie-based porous paywall.
- aespinoza 13y agoThanks for the tip. It worked.
- enraged_camel 13y ago>>A couple of decades ago, people used to say that workers in factories would disappear as well. That never happened, at least not completely. It hasn't happened completely, but that is only a matter of time. Manufacturing jobs have been declining at a sharp and steady rate in the US. One part of this may be due to outsourcing, but the other part is due to automation. When machines can do most of the labor, eventually you will only need a few high-level engineers to calibrate those machines.
- ujeezy 13y agoJobs in U.S. factories disappeared to Asia. Now that offshore manufacturing costs are rising, we can expect more companies to follow Foxconn's example, and invest heavily in machines. If a job is offshored (as much knowledge work has been), it's a good bet that the next step will be to automate it.
- msutherl 13y agoGattaca, and computer assisted knowledge work. Let's use humans for what humans are good at and computers for what computers are good at. Let's also work on the interface between those two systems.
- JulianMorrison 13y agoYou don't have to fully automate a job. You just have to replace most of the human labour. The "secretary" sector wasn't obliterated by word processing and email, but it was crushed down to a vestigial remnant. The "lawyer" sector could be as easily crushed by Watson.
- ujeezy 13y ago> You don't have to fully automate a job Right, and a lot of today's technology bridges the gap by shifting work to the end user. How often does anyone call a travel agent anymore?
- return0 13y agoI would rather prepare for it rather than shove my head in the sand. Is there reason to believe it will come later rather than sooner?
- wvenable 13y agoIt's already happening. The number of "knowledge worker" jobs is shrinking. The low-skilled are the first to go and software is replacing them, just as low-skilled labor jobs have been replaced by machines. It's a slow process, as the quantity and depth of software increases, the number of knowledge workers decreases. That's literally the reason for existence for most software.
- Sven7 13y agoYou don't need AI to see the number of programmers required on a project to exponentially shrink. Five years ago to build a simple video chat you needed a team of hardcore programmers with expertise in video, audio, networking, real time protocols and telecom. Today it takes a couple of lines of javascript through WebRTC.
- greenyoda 13y agoBut aren't users demanding more and more features from software as time goes on, and won't this added size and complexity create additional work for programmers even though the stuff we did in the previous release is now easier to do? For example, compare the amount of software that went into a phone ten years ago with the gigabytes of software that sits on a smartphone today, or the complexity of the UI on a phone ten years ago vs. today. Not to mention the increased functionality of the servers at the back-ends of all these apps. Also, if you're starting a project from scratch, you can use the latest and most streamlined technology. But if you're supporting a large code base (millions of lines of code) and adding features to it, you can't just suddenly re-write all your code to use the latest techniques. Also, you may be locked into a technology by your customers. For example, in the enterprise software space, lots of customers have a huge investment in Java application servers on which all their software runs, and if you want to compete in that space, it's easier to sell them a Java-based system than it is to convince them to install and learn to support a Ruby-based system just to run your product. And there's probably much more code (and programmers) in enterprise software -- think of all the software that supports banks, insurance companies, hospitals, government agencies, pharmaceutical companies, etc. -- than in the start-up world. I don't think AI is going to make a dent in that huge, complex pile of legacy software any time soon.
- Sven7 13y agoLook at state govt employees in the US. A major portion of this labor force is involved in managing data. Even if you take just the "knowledge workers", the number still would be in the hundreds of thousands range. Not counting outsourcing. Facebook manages the data of 1 billion people, spanning some 200 countries with 5000 employees. No great AI involved. Glad you bought up enterprise, most of those programmers now come from Indian IT companies. The only sector still employing american programmers is defence. Now if you are right and all those hospitals, pharma companies, insurance companies, banks etc require more and more features to be built for their customers then why do we see this http://www.indianexpress.com/news/its-time-to-move-on-as-tech-cos-put-brakes-on-hiring/1105812/ http://www.indianexpress.com/news/its-time-to-move-on-as-tec... Why do we see Infosys tanking after almost a decade of being a darling of the stock market. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-05-22/infosys-investors-balk-as-ceo-says-worst-over-corporate-india.html http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-05-22/infosys-investors-b... Of course its all not happening overnight, there are some legacy systems that are still too expensive to replace but it is happening.
- johntb86 13y agoIt's already started: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303379204577472633591769336.html http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405270230337920457747... Lawyers are being replaced by computers for doing pretrial document review. Currently only low-skill low-creativity jobs are being replaced, but that will expand over time.
- Aardwolf 13y ago"Moore’s law—that the computing power available for a given price doubles about every 18 months—continues to apply. " Then why are Intel desktop CPU's not getting any better the last 3 years?
- sliverstorm 13y agoBecause the article, like just about damn everyone else, completely misunderstands Moore's law, which actually observes that the number of transistors we can fit on a chip doubles every two years. Transistor count does not directly correlate to performance.
- moarzLaw 13y agoWrong again. Moore's law is actually not any kind of law at all. It's merely a business practice adopted by Intel, which they attempt to adhere to. The fact that they refer to it as a law, and that journalists around the world parrot their term, is all merely a magical marketing sales pitch. They TRY to double the transistor count on a periodic basis, and, when they do, suddenly, they've got a newer, better, more expensive thing to market and sell. Wowee! The future is such a miracle!
- icebraining 13y ago"Moore's law" is the name, it doesn't matter if it's a real law or not.
- guard-of-terra 13y agoIf they won't try to double the transistor count, then somebody else will come and eat their lunch. Trying to make better products is the only viable strategy for them. Moore's law is about their success in doing so. Your car's horse power doesn't increase twofold every 1,5 years neither its gas consumption decreases, but with transistors it actually happens.
- sliverstorm 13y agoIt's not a law, nor is it a business practice. Read what I said again: Moore's law ... OBSERVES that the number of transistors we can fit on a chip doubles every two years. If you are trying to argue with me calling it "Moore's law", you are too late. You missed the boat. That's what it is called, law or not.
- starrhorne 13y agoSeems like this article is conflating service workers with knowledge workers. Being a chauffeur isn't the same as being a designer.
- bsenftner 13y agoIt's the finance and legal professions that are most at risk with the current level of AI and machine learning. Contrary to what most finance and legal professionals believe, there is low creativity in their vocations - and that is exactly what AI and machine learning does best: wrote procedural operations from a complex set of rules. This will be very interesting to see how our "captains of corruption" (the fucks that actually run this planet) react when they are pushed to the curb.
- Iterated 13y agoWhat part of finance do you think will go first ? Finance is highly subjective, and while I don't think it isn't at risk of being taken over by AI, I think it will be quite a while before a machine can make the proper subjective decisions a finance professional makes.
- JulianMorrison 13y agoUh, they already do, high frequency trading.
- hazov 13y agoInsurance underwriting probably will become more and more automated, the exceptions are the cases with large values involved, in the short run, definitely this will be automated some day as well, or insurance in which only a small part of the population pay for insurance and the sample is small too do any meaningful statistics. Anyway there'll probably always be people behind the algorithms doing the modeling or programming at least.
- theorique 13y agoAs a finance professional (HF equities trader), I find this surprising. We are using computers more and more in this world. Of course, if a person has no familiarity or skill with computers - for analytics, monitoring, and so forth - they are likely to be left behind.
- tbrownaw 13y agoAs always, the fun part is the interface between the rules engine and the real world. How good is AI at gathering requirements from people who don't quite know what they want? The other fun part is what happens when AI is good enough to replace the gophers who do most of the grunt work, but not yet good enough to replace the experts who figure out what the customers really want. If this stage lasts long enough for the experts to retire, where do new experts come from?
- mindcrime 13y agoFWIW, this sounds a lot like Schumpeterian (or Marxist) "creative destruction" at play. The idea of "creative destruction" is an interesting one, and it's an area of much debate in regards to the long-term viability of the capitalist model. The key idea of "creative destruction" is basically that technological innovation both creates (duh) and destroys (in that it destroys economic value based on pre-innovation technologies). And since - in Schumpeter's view anyway - capitalism depends on a constant flow of new innovations and entrerpeneurship, we have a constant state of churn where value is being "creatively destroyed". I started reading Josesph Schumpeter's Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy[2] a while back but got distracted and never finished it - but based on what I know so far, I recommend it. What I'm not yet clear on, from my limited reading of the original source material, and a few related works, is exactly how bullish (or not) Schumpeter was on capitalism. Which reminds me, I really want to go back and finish the book, as I find this topic both fascinating and important. [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_destruction http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_destruction [2]:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalism,_Socialism_and_Democracy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalism,_Socialism_and_Democ...
- tocomment 13y agoYou mention Schumpeterian, guess who wrote the article! (or it could be someone with the same name, I don't honestly know)
- ahi 13y agoSchumpeter died in 1950. "Our Schumpeter columnist and his colleagues consider business, finance and management, in a blog named after the economist Joseph Schumpeter"
- return0 13y agoI assume it's the name of the column, unless the dead have risen. And creative destruction is mentioned in the article too!
- mindcrime 13y agoYeah, the original Schumpeter is long dead. But apparently that blog is meant as a tribute to him or something. I actually wasn't completely clear on that point myself, when I first saw the word "Schumpeter" on the page. I kind of assumed it was either something like that, or an amazing coincidence.
- nwenzel 13y agoWhile I doubt there will be some Reverse Big Bang of creative destruction, it's tough to argue that the need for knowledge workers is being reduced. In theory, even Excel reduces the need for knowledge workers by allowing a single analyst to produce more output that an analyst with graph paper. My question to HN-ers, as people who write code that further reduces the need for knowledge workers, how should we feel about our role in contributing to a Vonnegut-style dystopia? Indifference? If not us, someone else will do it. And job loss isn't really a net loss. It's just capital reallocating to another area. Pride? Automation brings advances down in price point creating a better standard of living for all. Something else? edit: The "need" for knowledge workers isn't reduced. I stated that incorrectly. I meant that fewer knowledge workers are needed for a given task or given output. Clearly, the need for knowledge workers as a pct of the workforce is higher than in the past and will continue to do so until the machines take over.
- invalidOrTaken 13y agoSome technologies are inherently populist, while others are authoritarian. ENIAC was authoritarian, pocket calculators populist (and abacus more so, because it can be produced from more easily available materials). Tanks authoritarian (because too expensive for one person), IEDs populist. Large solar plants authoritarian, "small-solar," one-family panel setups populist. Agribusiness authoritarian, home fertilizer production for home gardens populist. We may end up as net job destroyers, but if we create enough new entrepreneurs, or make off-the-grid more viable, then I don't feel so bad.
- ujeezy 13y agoI'm optimistically looking for ways not to feel guilty about this. I've always believed that better technology creates new jobs and a wealthier society, but it's pretty clear now that businesses are doing very well by automating away mid-skill jobs. Just contrast the stock market with the job market: companies are becoming more profitable but hiring/paying less. Tech entrepreneurs are trained to think about optimizing/automating. For example, here's an old blog post by Kopelman: http://redeye.firstround.com/2006/04/shrink_a_market.html http://redeye.firstround.com/2006/04/shrink_a_market.html Summary: there's a lot of opportunity for you if you find a way to shrink a market. Without doing too much handwringing, I think it's our responsibility as engineers/technologists to at least try to be aware of what we destroy with what we create.
- Gravityloss 13y agoUnfortunately, the world is very imperfect and there's a huge amount of things that need improvement. To quote M King Hubbert: "Our ignorance is not so vast as our failure to use what we know." I don't see work running out.
- coenhyde 13y agoI don't see AI leading the reduction jobs available to knowledge workers for a while yet. Though knowledge workers will continue to loose their jobs. But this will simply be the result of specialized software (not what I call AI).