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No 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, f

No 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 ago
I 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 ago
  Software 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 ago
    There'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 ago
  The 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 ago
  It 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 ago
  So, 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 ago
    The 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 ago
      What if natural resources are scarce?
      - rtkwe 13y ago
        Basic 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 ago
      This 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 ago
Sadly, 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 ago
    Thanks 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 ago
  Jobs 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 ago
Gattaca, 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 ago
You 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 ago
I 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 ago
It'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.
- 3pt14159 13y ago
  Low-skill and knowledge worker are at the opposite ends of the spectrum.
  - wvenable 13y ago
    In this case, Low skill is adjective on knowledge worker not a category unto itself.
Sven7 13y ago
You 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 ago
  But 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 ago
    Look 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 ago
It'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.

kybernetyk 13y ago

I 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 ago
Software 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 ago
  There'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 ago
The 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 ago
It 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 ago
So, 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 ago
  The 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 ago
    What if natural resources are scarce?
    - rtkwe 13y ago
      Basic 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 ago
    This 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 ago

Sadly, 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 ago
  Thanks 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 ago
Jobs 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 ago

Gattaca, 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 ago

You 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 ago

I 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 ago

It'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.

3pt14159 13y ago
Low-skill and knowledge worker are at the opposite ends of the spectrum.
- wvenable 13y ago
  In this case, Low skill is adjective on knowledge worker not a category unto itself.

Sven7 13y ago

You 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 ago
But 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 ago
  Look 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 ago

It'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.