6 ms·

The rise of robots and the future of jobs

38 points by juanre 13y ago

mrfusion 13y ago
This other article on the front page of HN today seems to contradict this [1]. [1] http://www.economist.com/news/21589080-golden-rule-microchips-appears-be-coming-end-no-moore http://www.economist.com/news/21589080-golden-rule-microchip...
Morgawr 13y ago
Moore's law has not much to do with computational power anymore, it's always been about transistor numbers in cpus. While this has traditionally mapped 1:1 with computing power, it doesn't work like this anymore. It's not an exponential growth in computing because our techniques of parallelism and algorithms haven't been keeping up with all this power. Very interesting article nonetheless, just felt like clarifying this tiny point.
beat 13y ago
Robots have been taking over jobs for a long time. The problem is that people have too narrow a definition of "robot". Is a Bobcat a robot? A job that 30 years ago might have been done by a row of men with shovels can now be done faster and far more cheaply by one guy with a Bobcat. How about a forklift? Hauling 100 pound bags of stuff around used to be a major source of human employment. Now, we put those bags on a pallet and carry them with a forklift. Is a food processor a robot? A century ago, fine French cooking was defined by its labor-intensive sauces, manually grinding and sieving vegetables down to liquids. Now, it can be done in seconds by a cheap little machine. Meanwhile, two people and a Hobart can wash all the dishes generated by a large restaurant. Is that Hobart a robot? Automation doesn't just replace labor. It allows new forms of labor. Most of us here work on computers. What would we have been doing 100 years ago, before there were computers? Would we have been clerks? Adding numbers manually? Artists drawing things by hand for print?
contextual 13y ago
Automation and the mass annihilation of jobs will be the biggest story of the next five years.
- mooreds 13y ago
  I remember reading a story in Analog science fiction about just this scenario: inexpensive, multi purpose robots (and the riots they caused when people realized they could be replaced). The solution? Have each robot owned by one, and only one, human being, who could lease out the robot's "labor" as they wished. I doubt that solution is possible, but I do think the issues the story raised are going to be, as you put it, "the biggest story" of the near future. (I wish I could remember the name of that story!)
  - rett12 13y ago
    This one is similar: http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm
    - mooreds 13y ago
      I love that story--the contrast between the US and Australia illustrates the fact that it really is a political choice how to spend fantastic wealth that automation gives us. (It's not only a political choice, there are moral components as well.)
  - _random_ 13y ago
    Government wouldn't even limit real estate ownership to one per person...
  - anonymfus 13y ago
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Means_of_production#Marxian_economic_analysis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Means_of_production#Marxian_eco...
  - Houshalter 13y ago
    But why only one? It might be optimal to have many more robots than humans.
    - mooreds 13y ago
scrabble 13y ago
This is a key reason why I feel it's important to be working in technology, especially as a developer. It will take longer before your job is automated away. My wife works in a position that I feel could be automated, and it's scary when you give it much thought. When the time comes that there are people who are able to work because their skills keep them valuable and people who can't work because their skills are no longer needed, I know which side I want to be on, regardless of any sort of moral implications.
_random_ 13y ago
"We tend to miss this because the bloated copies of Microsoft Word we use do not seem faster than 20 years ago." - person obviously not familiar with Office 365. "Even the Chinese must fear the robots." - especially them IMHO (world's manufacturing outsourcing center).
- elliottkember 13y ago
  > person obviously not familiar with Office 365 More like, a person in an office. Adopting new technology has less to do with new technology becoming available, and more to do with retraining, support and backups. I imagine the majority of the workforce is not familiar with Office 365.
alexholehouse 13y ago
So I was having a debate with a colleague a few weeks ago: the suggestion was that in 20 years time the a large percentage of surgeries done in hospitals will be done by robots . Importantly, we didn't specify which surgeries, but through the conversation the implication was not that robots would be removing millions of weird moles and skin marks - we're talking serious, long surgeries. I'd be really interested to hear the HN community's view on this. I have my own (strong) opinions based on my knowledge of AI and ML as a field, but perhaps other people have their own strong opinions (and perhaps people can change my mind!)
- Paul_S 13y ago
  You have to specify what you mean by "done by robots". Will a qualified surgeon still need to be present for the operation to take place?
  - eloisant 13y ago
    Probably, but they may be alone supervising 3 operations in parallel rather than having a team of junior surgeons and nurses to help them on one operation.
- rimantas 13y ago
  > we're talking serious, long surgeries well, 20 years is a long time, so it is hard so speculate. But I'll say, probably not.
- cycrutchfield 13y ago
  If you think that liability issues pose a significant barrier to entry for self-driving cars getting to market, just wait until you consider robotically automated surgeries.
  - eli_gottlieb 13y ago
    Just wait until the probability of error with a robot surgeon is lower than that of a human surgeon.
Killah911 13y ago
Things that are formulaic, repetitive and doesn't necessarily need "human" input will inherently be reached barring any catastrophic events that set all of humanity back. Terminator is robots with agency bias added, so that scenario happening is a bit unlikely. Elysium on other hand might be a slightly better portrayal of things to come. There are some other serious implications of the rise of such technology too, political ones. The "elite" & "powerful" have depended on the masses for labor, economic output etc. When a good chunk of the masses become somewhat "useless", what happens to them? Thanks to drones and "big dogs", it can be somewhat ensured that a massive population of people will have no real recourse to socio-economic or other inequities and injustices.
- dualogy 13y ago
  > Thanks to drones and "big dogs" What are "big dogs" in this context? (Bit of a challenge for the Goog!)
  - cabalamat 13y ago
    It says in the article that Big Dog is a robot made by a company Google bought. Here's a video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cNZPRsrwumQ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cNZPRsrwumQ
effdee 13y ago
Two quotes come to mind: "Never send a human to do a machine's job." -- Agent Smith "We must do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living. It is a fact today that one in ten thousand of us can make a technological breakthrough capable of supporting all the rest. The youth of today are absolutely right in recognizing this nonsense of earning a living. We keep inventing jobs because of this false idea that everybody has to be employed at some kind of drudgery because, according to Malthusian-Darwinian theory, he must justify his right to exist. So we have inspectors of inspectors and people making instruments for inspectors to inspect inspectors. The true business of people should be to go back to school and think about whatever it was they were thinking about before somebody came along and told them they had to earn a living." -- Buckminster Fuller
eli_gottlieb 13y ago
And this is why I want to find work in automation, robotics, or AI or something. Labor against capitalist. Sharpen the contradictions! Radicalize the moderates[1]! Bring it all on! [1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z6GLoKkkCtY http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z6GLoKkkCtY
- bananacurve 13y ago
  Steady comrade.
  - eli_gottlieb 13y ago
    Let me have a little fun with it. Glory to Arstotzka!
kybernetikos 13y ago
It's been my worry for a while that we will achieve the marxist workers utopia technically, where the vast majority of work is done by robot, but culturally we will be stuck with a small group of people enjoying the rewards of capital and technology and an enormous group of miserable poor fighting each other to get the rare chance to work. Even if you think that such an outcome is 'deserved' for the capitalist and technologist in the short term, in the long term, as the divide grows sharper, I believe most people will come to see that there's something appalling about giving all of the wealth of the world to the descendants of the few and nothing to the rest. Already one family in the USA control more wealth than approximately half the population. And this will get starker. Technology enhances power, and we are currently stuck with a system where much more worrying than the 'rich getting richer', the 'powerful get more powerful'. And the technological concentration of power in the hands of capital goes alongside the concentration of military and political power too. In the past, when capital got too far ahead of labour, there was always the spectacle of revolution to act as a last ditch moderator and equaliser, but the future will give those in power unprecedented access to surveillance, intelligence and military ability to allow the divide to grow bigger than ever before. We need to find a way to share the amazing gains that technology brings with labour as well as with capital, and do so in a way that doesn't disincentivise the creation of new technology, and we need to start coming up with this really soon to have any chance of heading off a disaster. I think this is one of the most serious issues facing us as people who care about technology and the world.
- beat 13y ago
  That's why I think Guaranteed Income schemes are inevitable politically, in the developed countries. Sooner or later, one is going to do it (Switzerland?), and within a couple of decades, all the rest will follow. Hopefully, this will lead to a realignment of society's sense of "value" away from currency and things exchangeable for currency. Money-driven thinking is the curse of Marxists as much as capitalists.
  - anonymfus 13y ago
    The problem is that capitalism, as any other paperclip maximizer, will not stop working just because of one country decision. Minimal income will increase cost of labour because nobody would want to do shitty job. This will make local products more costly and less competitive, and most of the labour will be outsourced. Most of the export will be natural resources. Switzerland owns huge chunk of world's banking system and due to direct democracy has minimal corruption, so it could afford minimal income by exploitation of other countries. How to make it work for Ethiopia without Earth's unite government and worldwide wealth redistribution system?
JoeAltmaier 13y ago
Personal service will probably continue. In fact its a large part of the American job scene. Somebody cuts your hair, your lawn. Somebody does your taxes. Some of these can be done by robots, but its hard to replace the human interaction. Will that mean personal services will become as rare as employing a butler is now? Maybe. Or maybe some of these will never be efficiently replaced by bots. And new ones may come up. In some countries, the 'haves' employ dozens of 'have-nots' in an effort to allow everybody a position in society. With robots, it may be enough to nanny an industrialist's children to school each morning. Then return to your bot-run apartment to enjoy automatic perfect coffee and read your blogs.
- kybernetikos 13y ago
  There will not be enough industrialists for there to be many of these jobs. The wages will be driven down, the expected duties will increase, they'll be fought over by the large numbers of unemployed. They'll probably end up being given away as prizes on reality TV shows.
nopinsight 13y ago
The article's central point at least partially hinges on the continuation of Moore's Law. However, if the exponential rise in computing power at stead cost does not continue, the coming 'rise of robots' might be substantially slower. There is some evidence that Moore's Law might come to an end: http://www.economist.com/news/21589080-golden-rule-microchips-appears-be-coming-end-no-moore http://www.economist.com/news/21589080-golden-rule-microchip... Our knowledge of AI suggests that performing basic human tasks like perception and navigation in the physical world is extremely computationally expensive. Even though improvements in algorithms would speed things up somewhat. The required computing resources would still be fairly expensive for complicated tasks many workers routinely perform. On the bright side, this might give us time to adjust our institutions to the new reality. Thoughts?

38 points by juanre 13y ago

This other article on the front page of HN today seems to contradict this [1]. [1] http://www.economist.com/news/21589080-golden-rule-microchips-appears-be-coming-end-no-moore http://www.economist.com/news/21589080-golden-rule-microchip...

Morgawr 13y ago

Moore's law has not much to do with computational power anymore, it's always been about transistor numbers in cpus. While this has traditionally mapped 1:1 with computing power, it doesn't work like this anymore. It's not an exponential growth in computing because our techniques of parallelism and algorithms haven't been keeping up with all this power. Very interesting article nonetheless, just felt like clarifying this tiny point.

beat 13y ago

Robots have been taking over jobs for a long time. The problem is that people have too narrow a definition of "robot". Is a Bobcat a robot? A job that 30 years ago might have been done by a row of men with shovels can now be done faster and far more cheaply by one guy with a Bobcat. How about a forklift? Hauling 100 pound bags of stuff around used to be a major source of human employment. Now, we put those bags on a pallet and carry them with a forklift. Is a food processor a robot? A century ago, fine French cooking was defined by its labor-intensive sauces, manually grinding and sieving vegetables down to liquids. Now, it can be done in seconds by a cheap little machine. Meanwhile, two people and a Hobart can wash all the dishes generated by a large restaurant. Is that Hobart a robot? Automation doesn't just replace labor. It allows new forms of labor. Most of us here work on computers. What would we have been doing 100 years ago, before there were computers? Would we have been clerks? Adding numbers manually? Artists drawing things by hand for print?

contextual 13y ago

Automation and the mass annihilation of jobs will be the biggest story of the next five years.

mooreds 13y ago
I remember reading a story in Analog science fiction about just this scenario: inexpensive, multi purpose robots (and the riots they caused when people realized they could be replaced). The solution? Have each robot owned by one, and only one, human being, who could lease out the robot's "labor" as they wished. I doubt that solution is possible, but I do think the issues the story raised are going to be, as you put it, "the biggest story" of the near future. (I wish I could remember the name of that story!)
- rett12 13y ago
  This one is similar: http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm
  - mooreds 13y ago
    I love that story--the contrast between the US and Australia illustrates the fact that it really is a political choice how to spend fantastic wealth that automation gives us. (It's not only a political choice, there are moral components as well.)
- _random_ 13y ago
  Government wouldn't even limit real estate ownership to one per person...
- anonymfus 13y ago
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Means_of_production#Marxian_economic_analysis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Means_of_production#Marxian_eco...
- Houshalter 13y ago
  But why only one? It might be optimal to have many more robots than humans.
  - mooreds 13y ago

scrabble 13y ago

This is a key reason why I feel it's important to be working in technology, especially as a developer. It will take longer before your job is automated away. My wife works in a position that I feel could be automated, and it's scary when you give it much thought. When the time comes that there are people who are able to work because their skills keep them valuable and people who can't work because their skills are no longer needed, I know which side I want to be on, regardless of any sort of moral implications.

_random_ 13y ago

"We tend to miss this because the bloated copies of Microsoft Word we use do not seem faster than 20 years ago." - person obviously not familiar with Office 365. "Even the Chinese must fear the robots." - especially them IMHO (world's manufacturing outsourcing center).

elliottkember 13y ago
> person obviously not familiar with Office 365 More like, a person in an office. Adopting new technology has less to do with new technology becoming available, and more to do with retraining, support and backups. I imagine the majority of the workforce is not familiar with Office 365.

alexholehouse 13y ago

So I was having a debate with a colleague a few weeks ago: the suggestion was that in 20 years time the a large percentage of surgeries done in hospitals will be done by robots . Importantly, we didn't specify which surgeries, but through the conversation the implication was not that robots would be removing millions of weird moles and skin marks - we're talking serious, long surgeries. I'd be really interested to hear the HN community's view on this. I have my own (strong) opinions based on my knowledge of AI and ML as a field, but perhaps other people have their own strong opinions (and perhaps people can change my mind!)

Paul_S 13y ago
You have to specify what you mean by "done by robots". Will a qualified surgeon still need to be present for the operation to take place?
- eloisant 13y ago
  Probably, but they may be alone supervising 3 operations in parallel rather than having a team of junior surgeons and nurses to help them on one operation.
rimantas 13y ago
> we're talking serious, long surgeries well, 20 years is a long time, so it is hard so speculate. But I'll say, probably not.
cycrutchfield 13y ago
If you think that liability issues pose a significant barrier to entry for self-driving cars getting to market, just wait until you consider robotically automated surgeries.
- eli_gottlieb 13y ago
  Just wait until the probability of error with a robot surgeon is lower than that of a human surgeon.

Killah911 13y ago

Things that are formulaic, repetitive and doesn't necessarily need "human" input will inherently be reached barring any catastrophic events that set all of humanity back. Terminator is robots with agency bias added, so that scenario happening is a bit unlikely. Elysium on other hand might be a slightly better portrayal of things to come. There are some other serious implications of the rise of such technology too, political ones. The "elite" & "powerful" have depended on the masses for labor, economic output etc. When a good chunk of the masses become somewhat "useless", what happens to them? Thanks to drones and "big dogs", it can be somewhat ensured that a massive population of people will have no real recourse to socio-economic or other inequities and injustices.

dualogy 13y ago
> Thanks to drones and "big dogs" What are "big dogs" in this context? (Bit of a challenge for the Goog!)
- cabalamat 13y ago
  It says in the article that Big Dog is a robot made by a company Google bought. Here's a video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cNZPRsrwumQ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cNZPRsrwumQ

effdee 13y ago

Two quotes come to mind: "Never send a human to do a machine's job." -- Agent Smith "We must do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living. It is a fact today that one in ten thousand of us can make a technological breakthrough capable of supporting all the rest. The youth of today are absolutely right in recognizing this nonsense of earning a living. We keep inventing jobs because of this false idea that everybody has to be employed at some kind of drudgery because, according to Malthusian-Darwinian theory, he must justify his right to exist. So we have inspectors of inspectors and people making instruments for inspectors to inspect inspectors. The true business of people should be to go back to school and think about whatever it was they were thinking about before somebody came along and told them they had to earn a living." -- Buckminster Fuller

eli_gottlieb 13y ago

And this is why I want to find work in automation, robotics, or AI or something. Labor against capitalist. Sharpen the contradictions! Radicalize the moderates[1]! Bring it all on! [1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z6GLoKkkCtY http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z6GLoKkkCtY

bananacurve 13y ago
Steady comrade.
- eli_gottlieb 13y ago
  Let me have a little fun with it. Glory to Arstotzka!

kybernetikos 13y ago

It's been my worry for a while that we will achieve the marxist workers utopia technically, where the vast majority of work is done by robot, but culturally we will be stuck with a small group of people enjoying the rewards of capital and technology and an enormous group of miserable poor fighting each other to get the rare chance to work. Even if you think that such an outcome is 'deserved' for the capitalist and technologist in the short term, in the long term, as the divide grows sharper, I believe most people will come to see that there's something appalling about giving all of the wealth of the world to the descendants of the few and nothing to the rest. Already one family in the USA control more wealth than approximately half the population. And this will get starker. Technology enhances power, and we are currently stuck with a system where much more worrying than the 'rich getting richer', the 'powerful get more powerful'. And the technological concentration of power in the hands of capital goes alongside the concentration of military and political power too. In the past, when capital got too far ahead of labour, there was always the spectacle of revolution to act as a last ditch moderator and equaliser, but the future will give those in power unprecedented access to surveillance, intelligence and military ability to allow the divide to grow bigger than ever before. We need to find a way to share the amazing gains that technology brings with labour as well as with capital, and do so in a way that doesn't disincentivise the creation of new technology, and we need to start coming up with this really soon to have any chance of heading off a disaster. I think this is one of the most serious issues facing us as people who care about technology and the world.

beat 13y ago
That's why I think Guaranteed Income schemes are inevitable politically, in the developed countries. Sooner or later, one is going to do it (Switzerland?), and within a couple of decades, all the rest will follow. Hopefully, this will lead to a realignment of society's sense of "value" away from currency and things exchangeable for currency. Money-driven thinking is the curse of Marxists as much as capitalists.
- anonymfus 13y ago
  The problem is that capitalism, as any other paperclip maximizer, will not stop working just because of one country decision. Minimal income will increase cost of labour because nobody would want to do shitty job. This will make local products more costly and less competitive, and most of the labour will be outsourced. Most of the export will be natural resources. Switzerland owns huge chunk of world's banking system and due to direct democracy has minimal corruption, so it could afford minimal income by exploitation of other countries. How to make it work for Ethiopia without Earth's unite government and worldwide wealth redistribution system?

JoeAltmaier 13y ago

Personal service will probably continue. In fact its a large part of the American job scene. Somebody cuts your hair, your lawn. Somebody does your taxes. Some of these can be done by robots, but its hard to replace the human interaction. Will that mean personal services will become as rare as employing a butler is now? Maybe. Or maybe some of these will never be efficiently replaced by bots. And new ones may come up. In some countries, the 'haves' employ dozens of 'have-nots' in an effort to allow everybody a position in society. With robots, it may be enough to nanny an industrialist's children to school each morning. Then return to your bot-run apartment to enjoy automatic perfect coffee and read your blogs.

kybernetikos 13y ago
There will not be enough industrialists for there to be many of these jobs. The wages will be driven down, the expected duties will increase, they'll be fought over by the large numbers of unemployed. They'll probably end up being given away as prizes on reality TV shows.

nopinsight 13y ago

The article's central point at least partially hinges on the continuation of Moore's Law. However, if the exponential rise in computing power at stead cost does not continue, the coming 'rise of robots' might be substantially slower. There is some evidence that Moore's Law might come to an end: http://www.economist.com/news/21589080-golden-rule-microchips-appears-be-coming-end-no-moore http://www.economist.com/news/21589080-golden-rule-microchip... Our knowledge of AI suggests that performing basic human tasks like perception and navigation in the physical world is extremely computationally expensive. Even though improvements in algorithms would speed things up somewhat. The required computing resources would still be fairly expensive for complicated tasks many workers routinely perform. On the bright side, this might give us time to adjust our institutions to the new reality. Thoughts?