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Destruction of large numbers of jobs by robots unlikely, says new OECD Study

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Re: Destruction of large numbers of jobs by robots unlikely, says new OECD Study

#71

Post by InclinedPlane »

amatic wrote: post #28
InclinedPlane wrote: post #15

Sigh. It doesn't matter. People have this bizarre conception of the economy as an exact lock-fit between jobs and work that needs doing, and they have a hard time imagining changes to that fit, even though throughout human history there has been constant change. In truth there is a nearly infinite amount of work that needs doing. We just get by with most of the work not being done. Just go back in time and think abou…

That is all true. Still, try pointing that out to truck drivers (for example) when they start getting laid off because the company can't handle the automated competition. Economy-wide, there will always be jobs for people to do, it is the large number of individual workers who will be scared for their particular jobs.

This is true, and very important. Volatility in jobs can potentially put those at the bottom at an increased disadvantage, while consolidating the advantages of those who are already well off. Partly this is because people are "falling down" the experience ladder when starting a new career and their lack of economic buffer means they also can't negotiate decent wages. And too, new industries means that the hard won organizations (like labor unions) and established norms in pay and working conditions are no longer present, putting folks at another disadvantage.

Which has almost certainly been a factor in what's been happening to labor since the 1980s, who have seen their wages remain stagnant and job security fall through the floor (especially for those under 30) while the economy and productivity continues to grow and grow. This is, I would say, fairly obviously a bad thing, and requires a lot of rethink in order to makeup for the extreme power imbalances and iniquities at play, but very little of substance has been done about it so far.

Re: Destruction of large numbers of jobs by robots unlikely, says new OECD Study

#72

Post by laurentoget »

baudehlo wrote: post #48
Bartweiss wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One for one replacement is a truly strange standard to hold to. After all, even trucking automation will not be a 100% loss - if nothing else, we'll see a rise in full-service highway gas stations to fuel driverless trucks. On the other hand, even 10% replacement of an industry (9 workers doing what 10 workers do now) is a big deal, and there are a lot of careers (legal, HR, document handling) that should expect to s…

I am still yet to see an answer to the liability question on driverless trucks. Are the truck manufacturers going to take that insurance on? It cost Airbus billions of dollars when their software screwed up and they got massive amounts of government support to basically bail them out.

Presumable automated trucks will kill less people than human operated ones, so the insurance will be cheaper.

I am sure the companies who will operate those trucks and the manufacturers can figure a way to divide liability.

They seem to be doing just fine figuring out how to deal with the liability associated with the 3600 or so people who die in crashes involving big trucks every year.

Re: Destruction of large numbers of jobs by robots unlikely, says new OECD Study

#73

Post by Qantourisc »

rhino369 wrote: post #24
daveguy wrote: post #5

Hm. The subtitle is "Destruction of large numbers of jobs unlikely, says new OECD Study", but the very first table gives a list of percent of jobs automatable by country. It ranges from 7-12%. That is a HELL of a lot of jobs. The argument is, "have no fear! it won't be 47% of jobs automated!" -- only 10%. 10% job loss is a labor crisis. Of course if you have all of those retrainable as other jobs (including automatio…

Something like 70% of Americans worked in agriculture in 1850, and like 5% did in 1950 (many of whom were probably migrant workers from Mexico). We've gone through radical change before.

Yes, and they where replaced with mainly useful jobs. But how many useful jobs can keep coming up with ? At what point does it just become sick extravagance of goods(materialism) and services we do not need?

Re: Destruction of large numbers of jobs by robots unlikely, says new OECD Study

#74

Post by sandworm101 »

Honestly, I read these studies and think nobody writing them has any idea of what these jobs actually entail. Driving a truck is not the be all and end all of being a truck driver. The driver covers a great many tasks, from admin and security, to safety inspections, to dealing with law enforcement and boarder guards. I see no talk of how the robot is to replace those functions.

I do see sweeping statements about rebuilding entire infrastructures in order to accommodate robots (ie doing away with roadside safety inspections or eliminating boarder crossings). Every day I see ships come into harbour. Creating an autopilot for a ship is simple compared to one for a trucks. Yet every day a speedboat heads out to deliver the harbour pilot, and tugboat captains stand guard as tankers approach the bridge. Automation has failed to remove any of those jobs. The engine room crews may be a little smaller than in days past but the bridge crews, the drivers, are still there. We wouldn't have it any other way.

And aircraft ... and trains ...

Re: Destruction of large numbers of jobs by robots unlikely, says new OECD Study

#75

Post by apendleton »

11thEarlOfMar wrote: post #3

The most imminent threat to jobs that I can identify is drivers. Taxi's, trucks, delivery vehicles and buses. We can see rapid improvement of self-driving technology. For sure, tech moves into mainstream more slowly than we generally imagine it will, but the sheer numbers of persons who could be displaced make even a relatively protracted implementation a big problem. Drive through Mountain View, Ca. on any given day…

Moving people and things is way bigger than just vehicles on public roads, too. There are giant earth-movers in pit mines, metro trains, and other fairly car-like examples. There are also less obvious examples like the increasing automation of Amazon warehouses: where once pickers moved amongst the shelves in a warehouse, now pickers are stationary and robots move entire banks of shelves around, entirely automated, and the same amount of picking and packing is done with fewer pickers.

These are all facets of the same problem, and it's everywhere.

Re: Destruction of large numbers of jobs by robots unlikely, says new OECD Study

#76

Post by maerF0x0 »

Animats wrote: post #9

Actual OECD study: [1] The study says that, for the US, 9% of people are at "high risk" of automated out of a job. (That probably means "replaceable right now".) But 38% of people are potentially replaceable. There's an assumption in the OECD report that the entire job of a human must be replaced. But that's not how automation works. We're seeing this in the more advanced law firms. What used to take a senior attorne…

9% more unemployed is a recession. 38% more unemployed is a crisis/revolution (unless we play our cards right)

Re: Destruction of large numbers of jobs by robots unlikely, says new OECD Study

#77

Post by bad_user »

pixl97 wrote: post #70
rhino369 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something like 70% of Americans worked in agriculture in 1850, and like 5% did in 1950 (many of whom were probably migrant workers from Mexico). We've gone through radical change before.

One of the bigger issues now is you're competing with the entire world. When global shipping can get any product almost anywhere in a few days, economy of scale wins.

With oil becoming more expensive, for how long do you think global shipping will stay cheap? "Economy of scale" is many times an euphemism for "burn fossil fuels with subsidized costs".

Re: Destruction of large numbers of jobs by robots unlikely, says new OECD Study

#79

Post by cm2187 »

We have seen exactly the same fear with the appearance of machines and automation in the industry after the war. Look at historical news footage and people were concerned that this would lead to massive losses of jobs. And it did, the industry is a lot less labour intensive today, at least in the western world. But jobs were created elsewhere and the economy adapted.

Beside, with outsourcing to China, there aren't that many manufacturing jobs left in the US and Europe for robots to take anyway. I think where robots will have a huge potential is for domestic tasks: cleaning your home, taking parcels while you're away, preparing food, doing the laundry and ironing. A home robot that would do all that would have a huge market. But they are not going to replace an existing workforce, rather free up time for women (who still predominantly bear the burden of these tasks) and enable them to focus on their career.

I think there could be another wave of automation in the service industry, but it wouldn't be robots, just software. Today there are a huge number of manual tasks done in the service industry: processing invoices, preparing financial accounts, payslips, paying a lawyer to rewrite the same contract over and over, etc. Some of that can be automated by outsourcing it to a provider who has the means to automate it, but a huge fraction is just too specific, customized to a business, to justify paying for an IT team to build software for it. The way to automate it is for business people to build their own automation. In a way Microsoft Office has done partially that (an accountant with Excel has the productivity of 50 accountants from the 50s) but I think we can gain another order of magnitude of productivity by enable people to code. For that, basic coding skills should be widely deployed, in a very simple and highly productive language. And I am not convinced this language already exists.

Re: Destruction of large numbers of jobs by robots unlikely, says new OECD Study

#80

Post by Udik »

InclinedPlane wrote: post #15

Sigh. It doesn't matter. People have this bizarre conception of the economy as an exact lock-fit between jobs and work that needs doing, and they have a hard time imagining changes to that fit, even though throughout human history there has been constant change. In truth there is a nearly infinite amount of work that needs doing. We just get by with most of the work not being done. Just go back in time and think abou…

The problem is not in the amount of job to be done. The problem is the cost of replacing a human being with a machine. Until the cost is higher than the worker's salary, that worker is fine. When it becomes lower, there is no job for him any more. So far we've always been in a situation where for any job that could be done by a machine, infinite more would only be doable by a real human. But we'll quickly reach the point where there will be NO jobs that can't be done by a machine for cheaper. On the other hand, if information technology keeps evolving much faster than robotics, the kast jobs to actually disappear will be the low qualification manual jobs. Note that truck driving is an intellectual job, not a manual one.
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