9 ms·
What Jobs Will the Robots Take?
- gnaritas 13y agoEventually, all of them.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- zackmorris 13y agohttp://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm
- bitcuration 13y agoLook the bright side, automation is the reason everyone in the first world now live like the 1% of the third world, as well as the 1% from any human history. How to fiddling through the coming automation without unrest the society is the only question, before our next generation all live like the 1% of today's first world someday in the future. Automation, not war, should be the only force to propel civilization and living standard. Instead of minimum wage, minimum welfare would be a feasible answer to the future.
- noir_lord 13y agoThe thing that worries be sounds like something out of a bad dystopian sci-fi novel. What if the super rich are the ones who get the most advantage out of the automation and use it to keep the rest of the poor under control, I'm talking Ghetto's with automated riot control. I'd think such things where unthinkable but if you look at the history of a company like Nestle nothing would surprise me.
- rayiner 13y agoI used to worry about this, but these days my thinking has evolved. Technology has been evolving towards more and more concentrated destructive power, yet human societies have evolved towards more and more freedom (modulo bumps in the road). Why hasn't the opposite happened? The reason is precisely because of the destructive power of modern technology. It makes the dystopia in your example inherently unstable. That automated riot control is one "super rich" person with a conscience (or a clever hacker!) away from being used to destroy the oligarchy it is designed to protect. In contrast, it used to take a great warlord to challenge a despotic king, back when war meant marshaling vast numbers of men and horses.
- a8da6b0c91d 13y agoPeople seem to ignore the idea that the super rich and the automated production will get as far away from the democratic masses as possible. They won't bother controlling them or setting up a welfare system, they'll just leave them to scrape by however they can. Fully automated enterprises will have huge incentives to avoid the taxing power of large states. They don't need a workforce, remember. A robotized manufacturer would set up in some small, possibly autocratic state. How are the unemployed masses going to get their subsidies when the taxable productivity is on some small island in the pacific?
- bcoates 13y agoThat's not how taxes work. You can tax anything you can get your hands on. Unless this hypothetical robo-island has a mercantilist military capable of ensuring access to markets by force, the states would just tax the goods or resources moving in or out.
- beat 13y agoAccording to a libertarian friend of mine, if you raise the minimum wage, jobs will get offshored or replaced with automation. I told him good luck with his new robot McDonald's in India. Basically, any job that can be automated will be automated, as soon as it's feasible. This has been going on for millennia, ever since the first genius learned to herd goats rather than hunt them. People just have a very narrow definition of "automate". We don't plow our fields or harvest our crops by hand anymore, leading to massive reductions in farm employment over the past 100 years. But we don't think of tractors as "robots", so it gets ignored. I have this saying that drives my whole career's thinking... "Have computers do what computers do well, have humans do what humans do well." Computers are wonderful about performing precision tasks perfectly, at incredible speeds. But they are terrible at making decisions in the face of incomplete data. They can be programmed to sort of simulate it, but it's not the same. Meanwhile, humans are incredible at making correct decisions using incomplete or incorrect data, but it's almost impossible to get them to do the same thing the same way twice in a row. So the jobs that will last are the ones that require decision-making in the face of incomplete/incorrect data. The jobs that will be automated are the precision, repeatable tasks.
- saosebastiao 13y agoI think you overestimate what humans are capable of doing (comparatively) well. By your definition, computers should be terrible at Air Traffic Control, Driving Cars, Logistics Planning, and even playing Chess. But computers are incredibly advanced at those tasks...performing well above their average human counterparts, and in some cases even better than the best human specialists. Humans have developed a large skillset through evolution, and it is a skillset that includes highly sophisticated heuristics for problem solving, communication, and physical interaction. Even 15 years ago, the top Ops Research and Artifical Intelligence researchers and their computer models couldn't outperform an ordinary truck driver on the Traveling Salesman problem on average. Now, there isn't a human in the world that can outperform their models. 15 years ago, there wasn't a single robot in the world that could compete with an ordinary human in the task of walking. Now we have Boston Dynamics. The idea that humans are special at making decisions with incomplete data is short sighted. It assumes that computers can't improve at the task. They are certainly a far ways away from making general purpose decisions with incomplete data, but there are several current systems out there that make very sophisticated (even unparalleled) decisions in specialized domains, and they do it with incomplete data. That isn't to say that your saying is wrong. It is just to say that it isn't a given that something that humans do comparatively well today may not be that way in the future.
- guimarin 13y agoWe are moving from a world where everyone has to work to one where no one can work. From closed allocation and hierarchical control to open allocation and a decentralized control structure. This process will probably take a long time, and to the point, machines have not been shown to be better than humans at taking away human fear. Like a nurse does for a terminal patient. Certainly any pattern recognition job will go in the next decade or so, be it paralegal, general practitioner, or accountant.
- jarrett 13y agoIn anticipation of someone bringing up the Luddite Fallacy: [1] It's true that we're still below 50% unemployment, despite tremendous increases in productivity and automation over the preceding centuries. The standard explanation for this phenomenon is that technology eliminates certain jobs, but also creates new jobs that couldn't have existed before. That pattern has indeed held true (in the long run) since the Industrial Revolution began. But crucially, we can't be sure the pattern will hold true forever. There is no proof that it constitutes an inviolable law of economics. It could very well be that technology can result in a major, permanent, net loss of employment, but just hasn't yet. So what could change? What might break the pattern that has held true thus far? Here's one hypothesis. There is an inflection point--a threshold where automation has become sufficiently advanced. Beyond this threshold, our capacity to automate processes is faster than the expansion of demand for those processes. Whereas, before that threshold, new demand could only be satisfied by human labor, owing to society's inability to immediately automate the requisite processes. If this hypothesis is true, then once we cross the threshold, we should see a long-term decline in employment. That's not to say no new jobs will ever be created after reaching the threshold. No doubt they will. Even so, more jobs would be lost than created, resulting in a net decline. If we take this idea to its logical extreme, we can envision a world in which every process and occupation can be trivially automated. If we assume such automation always costs less than subsistence wages[2], then presumably any given firm will choose to automate all of its processes rather than employ people. The result being 0% employment. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_unemployment http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_unemployment [2] This is a big assumption. There could be a dynamic equilibrium where market forces balance the cost of automation against the cost of living. Thus the TCO of a robot would in many cases be very close to the cost of a human employee. Processes would then be divided amongst humans and robots in accordance with the relative costs of automating each process.
- tomp 13y agoThe simplest counterargument to the Luddite Fallacy I have heard is: Animals (e.g. horses), the lowest-skilled "workers", have been completely replaced by machines.
- 13y ago
- stormqloud 13y agoI'm just waiting for the first robots that can sand and plaint interior rooms/walls. There is a crazy amount of wall square footage in offices/commercial/malls/hallways etc where a robot traveling on a mobile linear beam can totally do the work. As somebody that spend some amount of time every week hiring, one of the biggest issues is not automation but the workforce itself. Finding people that are willing to show up and do jobs is just a major problem. Companies want to hire but the candidates that show up at the door can often be barely employable. All the millenials want work from home jobs with executive pay. The idea of starting in the back sweeping the floors (no matter your education but to show work ethic and flexibility) is gone. The working world will get harder over the years. The "raised like a delicate flower" to "love their job" are in serious trouble in the future. Putting food on the table takes time and effort. It's called "work" not "play" for a reason.
- tomp 13y agoI'm just waiting for the first robots that can put food on the table on their own.
- kasey_junk 13y agoI really doubt your company actually pays someone full time to sweep the floors. More probably, you've outsourced this to a specialist company that only sweeps floors (well they probably buff them, vacuum them, etc.). That company has no reason to promote people beyond the cleaning floor job as that is their main business & curtailing HR costs is probably their biggest driver to profit. So in the best case they keep workers who can't find better jobs at low cost at the same position for years, and in the worst case they actually "sub-contract" those positions out to companies that exploit illegal immigrants, who have a near limitless supply of under payed workers to cycle through. So forgive me, if instead of reading your comment as a jab against overly entitled "millenials" and instead read it for what it is, companies reaping what they sow. If companies wanted employees who will start on the ground floor and work up, they should foster an environment where that can actually happen rather than treating their employees with a cavalier mercenary attitude, and getting huffy when their employee pool reacts in kind.
- 13y ago
- enupten 13y agoI can only hope that this doesn't lead to another AI winter.
- coldcode 13y agoHoping for them to replace our politicians.
- ggreer 13y agoEconomist Robin Hanson has a good talk about the economics of nanotech and AI: http://vimeo.com/9508131 http://vimeo.com/9508131 Around 22 minutes in, he talks about whether labor and capital (machines) are complements or substitutes. I'll summarize his argument for the time-constrained: There are many tasks that need to be done in an economy. Machines are more efficient at some of these tasks, humans at others. Over time, machines have been able to do a greater portion of these tasks efficiently. Today, machines are mostly complements. They help humans do tasks more efficiently. But as machines get better, they're able to do a larger portion of tasks. At some point, they'll start substituting for people. This has happened for some basic jobs in the past, but not to the extent we'll soon see. On the bright side, the limiting factor in most of our economy today is people. Machines can be mass-produced, but raising and training people is hard. Machines can augment people, but run into diminishing returns. Having two monitors won't make you twice as productive, and two keyboards won't let you type twice as fast. If we can do all the tasks in our economy without people, we can get insane growth rates in GDP. Unfortunately, with no people in the economy, everyone would be out of work. Only the machine owners (or investors) would benefit. Everyone else would be dependent on social programs or charity. In Robin's example, AI is the machine that can do all tasks. But we don't need to build such amazing machines before putting a lot of people out of work. Most jobs are not AI-complete.
- avmich 13y agoImagine how nicely this problem - with machines gradually becoming better - would play out in a country resembling Soviet Union. In SU, everyone works for government, and salaries aren't too different. So, with greater and greater employment of robotics, salaries can gradually rise, and working hours gradually decrease - and the whole society gets benefits more or less at the same time. More money supports demand for products - to some extent - and more time allow to improve the quality of life - people devote more time to kids, to arts, to each other, to interesting ideas etc.
- georgemcbay 13y ago"In Robin's example, AI is the machine that can do all tasks. But we don't need to build such amazing machines before putting a lot of people out of work. Most jobs are not AI-complete." I didn't watch the video yet, but one thing often missed in the whole automation debate is that for a given task, you don't need to replace 100% of the people to cause great, painful economic shifts. Just complementary-automating things enough so that 5 people can do the work that 10 people used to do is incredibly impactful.
- ladzoppelin 13y agoIn my opinion unless political and social changes are made to the system, the lack of money in the "middle class" will greatly hurt the economy. Who has money for smartphones, fast internet, fart apps and tablets when you have no way to make a living. Why advertise to people who are not in a position to buy anything? Why steel from people with no money? Obviously a standard income of some sort make these automation scenarios more believable.
- njharman 13y ago> But this time is different: Nearly half of American jobs today could be automated in "a decade or two, As most things, I really doubt "this time" is any different. I have no numbers / research to back it up but I'd bet pre-steam loom UK, every agricultural country, and many others faced similar job elimination with advent of mechanization. Not as fast as 20 years though.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- johngalt 13y agoA test to determine if a robot will take job X in the future. Ask: would this job be automated today if hiring a human cost $500,000/year? If yes, then the clock is ticking. Over time the robot will only get cheaper and the human will only become more expensive.
- anon4 13y agoA programmer from Eastern Europe, India, etc. costs less than 500 000$/year (maybe as low as 50 000$/year). I don't see any progress in automating their work.
- eli_gottlieb 13y agoThen you tell me why Google sponsors the Artificial General Intelligence conference every year ;-).
- anon4 13y ago> Telemarketers at 99% chance of being replaced by robots That's awesome. That means I can then automate answering the phone and determining if it's a telemarketer on the other end (in the case of an unknown number).