31–40 of 71 posts
I'm wondering what jobs, according to people on HN, are most likely to be replaced by AI in the coming years.
And Im in the crowd that doesn't think we'll see it replace all jobs in a field -- just 60-90% of them, which causes major labor problems when talking about common jobs.
I have no information on this, but the cynic in me thinks this is likely a total non-story/spin. I find it unlikely anyone would be so confident a AI system that they are "planning to introduce" that they'd schedule staff cuts. What's more likely is that staff cuts were already planned. This puts a great spin on a (I would guess most likely free/cheap) experimental deployment of Watson.
This is a non story because insurance (and banking) replaced human workers with expert systems a looong time ago.
I'm wondering what jobs, according to people on HN, are most likely to be replaced by AI in the coming years.
The reason it has been going on without anyone really noticing is because very few people get fired because of it. The real effect has been on a slow down in new hires as people retire.
The reason for this is that whatever efficiency you free up isn't directly tied to a single job function. Say you do a self-service system for handling employee transport costs. This might free up an entire job function worth of hours in a HR department, but they are coming from 6 different employees. Doesn't lead to anyone being fired, but eventually you'll automate enough systems that someone retiring won't need to be replaced.
Programming isn't even a safe zone. I mean, think about how much time you save by using things like modern frameworks and the interconnectivity of everything and then compare that to how it was 25 years ago.
I'm wondering what jobs, according to people on HN, are most likely to be replaced by AI in the coming years.
Drivers, factory/warehouse workers (ongoing), clerks (ongoing), and secretaries. And Im in the crowd that doesn't think we'll see it replace all jobs in a field -- just 60-90% of them, which causes major labor problems when talking about common jobs.
As a (perhaps contrived) example, family doctors could be replaced by lab workers, who take simple measurements, feed them into a computer, and the AI does the rest (i.e., correlating conditions to a large number of existing patient files, and hence referring patients to specialists).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's just not true. Source: my sister is a commercial underwriter at a large US insurance company. And while they do have software that gives a suggestion for a premium, it does not know enough to be accurate, so she has to always adjust it. This is definitely an industry where more automation could easily be done, but the big insurers are a conservative, risk adverse group.
Not to marginalize your sister's job, but couldn't that essentially be training for an "AI system" (NN or otherwise), and over time it will reach similar conclusions with increasing accuracy? Maybe they're doing that at her work already behind the scenes.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's just not true. Source: my sister is a commercial underwriter at a large US insurance company. And while they do have software that gives a suggestion for a premium, it does not know enough to be accurate, so she has to always adjust it. This is definitely an industry where more automation could easily be done, but the big insurers are a conservative, risk adverse group.
Not to marginalize your sister's job, but couldn't that essentially be training for an "AI system" (NN or otherwise), and over time it will reach similar conclusions with increasing accuracy? Maybe they're doing that at her work already behind the scenes.
There is also licensing involved, in my sister's case she had to earn a CPCU before she could do here job on her own.
I have no information on this, but the cynic in me thinks this is likely a total non-story/spin. I find it unlikely anyone would be so confident a AI system that they are "planning to introduce" that they'd schedule staff cuts. What's more likely is that staff cuts were already planned. This puts a great spin on a (I would guess most likely free/cheap) experimental deployment of Watson.
I only skimmed, but it indicated that 34% of a pool of ("primarily") 47 workers would be replaced. So ... 16 employees. I suppose that's interesting, but it's not as big as the headline made me believe.
The article also cites other companies doing the same thing, even if no staff cuts are involved for now.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Drivers, factory/warehouse workers (ongoing), clerks (ongoing), and secretaries. And Im in the crowd that doesn't think we'll see it replace all jobs in a field -- just 60-90% of them, which causes major labor problems when talking about common jobs.
But some jobs can perhaps be replaced by "lower-education" jobs. As a (perhaps contrived) example, family doctors could be replaced by lab workers, who take simple measurements, feed them into a computer, and the AI does the rest (i.e., correlating conditions to a large number of existing patient files, and hence referring patients to specialists).
Suppose right now, we have 1 doctor, 1 nurse, and 3 lab techs per 50 patients per day. I think technology generally lets us do the same job with just 2 nurses and 1 lab tech. So we lose 40% of the jobs from the higher paying side and probably more like 50-75% of the pay.
In less contrived examples, I think we lose a lot of the jobs in the 25th-75th percentile range, which is the middle classes.
So it's not that we see no jobs, it's that we see bad jobs and the elites. The middle gets automated out, and it's starting to be faster than people can retrain.
Somehow related: http://qz.com/799816/dutch-bank-ing-is-replacing-5800-people...