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At Davos, IBM Chief Predicts Artificial Intelligence Won’t Be a Job Killer

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Re: At Davos, IBM Chief Predicts Artificial Intelligence Won’t Be a Job Killer

#121

Post by bbctol »

kbenson wrote: post #50
Houshalter wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, this time it is different. I like the comparison to horses. Steam engines and trains threatened to replace horses in the mid 1800s. A lot of things that were previously done by horses were replaced with trains and steam engines. Yet the horse population grew, and cities remained full of horses. There were countless transportation innovations in the 1800s, from canals to streetcars and omnibuses to bicycles. But…

Horses are tools that people used. When there's no more use for the tool, it's usage may be reduces. People are not just tools, they are the reason we have an economy in the first place. A solution in some form will have to be put forth if one doesn't emerge. Another way of looking at this is that we weren't ever under threat of millions of displaced horses rising up and overthrowing the system. Since that is a possi…

Technology is also a force multiplier, removing the need to keep soldiers happy. The future is a couple billionaires with a drone army to keep the rest of us at bay while we thankfully starve.

Re: At Davos, IBM Chief Predicts Artificial Intelligence Won’t Be a Job Killer

#122

Post by unclenoriega »

jdmichal wrote: post #112
serge2k wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hate those self checkout machines. They are slow and constantly try to error out and alert a human to help me. I'm capable of bagging groceries, just let me do it. still, there is rarely a line.

I have a special hatred for self-checkout machines that attempt to monitor your bagging without an escape mechanism. Let loss prevention do their damn job and let me give you my money already. At least I can still vote with my feet and always go to a cashier in these places. Someday I probably won't be able to.

There was a Planet Money segment about these. (I think it was Planet Money.) Apparently, there's a setting on these machines for the balance between convenience and loss prevention. It's up to the stores to set it where they want.

Re: At Davos, IBM Chief Predicts Artificial Intelligence Won’t Be a Job Killer

#123

Post by pbalau »

wtvanhest wrote: post #56
josho wrote: post #3

This is all you need to read from the article: > Advances in artificial intelligence will lead to job losses, but new forms of employment will take their place...History, though, has demonstrated that technological breakthroughs lead to new employment opportunities -- IBM CEO Ginni Rometty But, I think we are approaching (if we haven't already crossed this point) the time where new jobs created by technology advancem…

Instagram is an amazing example. > My example here is Instagram, a company of a dozen staff or so when acquired, is the digital replacement of photo labs in every city. New technologies are not the job creator that they once were and I haven't read anything to contradict that statement or posit that new tech is going to drive jobs growth. Photo labs (places where physical photos were developed and edited) were replac…

Things that are based on rules will be and should be automated. You are saying that the person that fixes the technical aspects of a picture is screwed. So fucking what? With tech you will have 1 billion people taking technically perfect pictures, but it's still the photographer, which can also manually do the what the tech does, that will take a picture of the right subject.

Re: At Davos, IBM Chief Predicts Artificial Intelligence Won’t Be a Job Killer

#124

Post by euyyn »

vorotato wrote: post #115
euyyn wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did they build those hand tools by hand? Honest question.

They're amish they build everything by hand

As in, they won't buy a hammer from the town down the road? Instead they'll cast the metal head, and chop the wood for the handle? Mine their own metal ore? It can't go all the way through.

Re: At Davos, IBM Chief Predicts Artificial Intelligence Won’t Be a Job Killer

#125

Post by semi-extrinsic »

abakker wrote: post #110
K0SM0S wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very true, never thought of it this way. Add to that the fact that robots don't have the same needs (can operate with little air/heat/light, don't even need to get out of the room, much less safety concerns in general and practically 0% comfort). You could build kitchens in basements or beneath roofs and save 100% of the floor surface for customers.

You could also have much better safety systems - I.e. total oxygen evacuation for grease fires. No need to worry about people getting hurt. In fact, you might be able to make food in a 100% neutral environment (N2?) and have no fire risk at all. Then, you can use closed-loop air filtration and not exhaust grease and combustion byproducts into the atmosphere. OTOH, the nice dining experiences will be done by people wh…

No need for total oxygen evacuation. You actually just have to drop oxygen content in the air down from 21% to 15% to make most substances (including oil and grease) inflammable, and this air is perfectly safe to breathe for humans.

In fact, if you consider the partial oxygen pressure (which is what matters for your lungs), this air is no worse than the air you find inside an airplane, or at a 2500m (8200 ft) mountain peak; Wikipedia says 140 million people live permanently at above 2500 m.

Now, this already exists and is called a hypoxic air fire prevention system, and is used e.g. in some data centers and in archives of valuable documents. It's not used in fast food restaurants though, because they have better ways of preventing and extinguishing fires at lower cost.

Re: At Davos, IBM Chief Predicts Artificial Intelligence Won’t Be a Job Killer

#126

Post by tdb7893 »

Pamar wrote: post #69
tdb7893 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tech never creates as many jobs as it destroys buy it doesn't have to. When there were less farming the economy compensated by creating manufacturing jobs so I don't think that the worst case scenario is a given, at least in the reasonably foreseeable future

Manufacturing jobs did not require enormously sophisticated skills (i.e. the equivalent of a PhD) to be performed. So "moving up" or "moving to" the new jobs was still possible. If automated trucks replace 1000 truckers, how many of them will be able to transition to "automated truck programmer"? (And note: they cannot move to "automated truck mechanic" because those jobs are already taken by "non-automated truck mec…

I know individually people are going to have a hard time, that seems pretty obvious. The comment I was responding to was saying that technology was going to lead to less jobs overall and I was just pointing out that each specific technology has led to less jobs overall (otherwise generally the new tech wouldn't be worth it) but the economy as a whole generally creates jobs elsewhere to compensate. I was mainly wondering why he think the economy can't create the new jobs any more.

Re: At Davos, IBM Chief Predicts Artificial Intelligence Won’t Be a Job Killer

#127

Post by pbalau »

josho wrote: post #90
drzaiusapelord wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>History, though, has demonstrated that technological breakthroughs lead to new employment opportunities Except history has never had to content with automation and AI. Sure, back in the old days you took farmers and showed them how to make steel. Then took the steel workers and showed them how to work in a cubicle in a service economy. Now we're not that far away from the machines doing cubicle work. What's past the…

> Except history has never had to content with automation and AI It's taken me awhile to wrap my head around this. I think I'm starting to understand the fundamental difference. In the past technology revolutionized processes. E.g. Replace horse with trains and cars. But, the human skills were never touched--they all required a driver. Whereas today, technology is reaching the point of replacing human skills. E.g. au…

Air brakes replaced human breakers on trains.

Re: At Davos, IBM Chief Predicts Artificial Intelligence Won’t Be a Job Killer

#128

Post by unclenoriega »

vorotato wrote: post #115
euyyn wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did they build those hand tools by hand? Honest question.

They're amish they build everything by hand

Amish restrictions on technologies aren't absolute. They can buy things from "English" companies. Some of them even use mobile phones.[0]

[0] http://amishamerica.com/do-amish-use-telephones/

Re: At Davos, IBM Chief Predicts Artificial Intelligence Won’t Be a Job Killer

#129

Post by unclenoriega »

euyyn wrote: post #93
Retric wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think several orders of magnitude is really true. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P73REgj-3UE is slower than a modern house, but not that slow. Further, with just hand tools the Amish where known for raising a barn in one day.

Did they build those hand tools by hand? Honest question.

Some do this, but (most?) Amish can definitely buy industrially-produced tools. Some even use (non-electric) power tools: http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2013/02/22/172626089/insid...

Re: At Davos, IBM Chief Predicts Artificial Intelligence Won’t Be a Job Killer

#130

Post by kmicklas »

K0SM0S wrote: post #96
nickparker wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think your analysis is based on shallower automation than we'll actually see. Let's assume your robot arm example is about a frycook at a burger joint. I agree a robot arm isn't an effective way to replace the frycook, but a specialized system like Momentum Machines is developing[1] will be. The automated fast food joint isn't a regular one with robot arms instead of people, it's a box the size of a small office th…

I think the biggest change, functionally, between past automation and today's going forward is the actual ability of the system to "know" what it is doing and correct/adjust accordingly. We're moving past "dumb" automation essentially, and from a historical (technology) perspective it's every bit as fascinating as we'd hoped it to be, and then some. I mean, real-time voiced-over translation on Skype? Eventually even…

> order of magnitude better than what any human individual/team could do (think Spotify's recommendations

It's orders of magnitude more scalable but you're music nerd friend will beat Spotify's recommendations any day.

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