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AI are taking jobs

economist.com

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Re: AI are taking jobs

#31

Post by _delirium »

inkaudio wrote: post #29

The author does not fully understand the totality of the work these professional do. From the two example listed. "Radiologists, who can earn over $300,000 a year in America, after 13 years of college education and internship, are among the first to feel the heat. It is not just that the task of scanning tumour slides and X-ray pictures is being outsourced to Indian laboratories, where the job is done for a tenth of…

I agree it doesn't cover everything they do, but covering just some of the more routine activities can be enough for significant disruption. For example, dermatologists are fairly worried that "upload a photo and we'll diagnose your mole", either via software or outsourcing, will cut out a significant percentage of their business. It's not by any means the hardest work a dermatologist does, but it's common, steady work that produces reliable revenue, so it hurts to lose it. It may be that we won't need as many dermatologists only to handle the actually-hard stuff.

(Though for medicine in particular, I think a mixture of "you can always do more" and humans' seemingly infinite hypochondria means that medical spending will continue to eat up as much money as we're willing to throw at it.)

Re: AI are taking jobs

#32

Post by _delirium »

shasta wrote: post #28
DanielBMarkham wrote: post #14

A lot of the argument on this topic seems to be "but this time it is really different!" Perhaps. And perhaps not. Most likely it is different, just like all those other times were different. I hate to be skeptical, but when this same pattern of people saying "it's different!" repeats over and over again without it being different, I think the onus is on those making the claim to support their argument better. If anyt…

As wealth accumulates among the masters of technology, asking what jobs might provide value to your peers is the wrong question. What value can your friends provide to big corporations?

Bertrand Gille (60s/70s historian of technology) had an interesting hypothesis, that as technical systems, and coupled technical-economic systems (e.g. large corporations built on technical advances) get complex, interdependent, and rapidly changing, at some point it becomes too difficult for humans to fully understand and control their workings and evolution, and the dependencies make even choosing which technologies you "want" to use highly constrained, all of which leads to somewhat of an inversion of control.

Rather than technology being a tool, of which humans ask, "what do I want to use this tool for?", instead there is this evolving technical-economic system that you have no choice but to interact with, and what you need to ask of yourself is, "how can I make myself useful to this system?" I.e., given the technical-economic system of your present moment, which you only understand a part of, where do you fit yourself in so you can be a tool that that system finds useful to employ towards its ends (whatever those might be)? Alternately, he hoped there was a way to re-invert the inversion of control, but no word on success on that front...

Re: AI are taking jobs

#33

Post by chc »

forensic wrote: post #24
adamjernst wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm. I'd dispute that. We now have cellular phones, computers and the Internet, cars that are far safer and more efficient, 43" plasma TVs with 500 channels, iPads... You might say "well, those are all gadgets." Fine, but if you cut all of those out of your life you'll probably save more than $3000 per year. That itself is a huge boost for the average worker.

If you cut all those out of your life, you don't have a job anymore. Cell phones, cars, computers, internet... these aren't luxuries. These are mandatory investments that people have to make in their career. Investments they have to make out of their own pocket. Try getting a job without a phone. Doesn't work. If I was a retired millionaire I could cut them out.

You don't need a mobile to have a phone. On the extreme side, you could take public transportation everywhere, use the Internet at the library when you needed it and just have home phone service. This is actually sufficient for most jobs in a lot of places, though it is a lot less convenient.

If you want slightly more convenience, you can (for example) get a decent car that will take you from point A to point B for about $5000.

In the end, you really are mostly paying for convenience.

Re: AI are taking jobs

#34

Post by mietek »

ars wrote: post #21
kandu wrote: post #5

Imagine a world where all goods and services required for a decent life will be provided by AI and robots. Still, there will plenty of jobs for humans - those related to the humanity of humans. Life could become dedicated to enjoying art in various forms, and this art will be conceived mostly by humans. If people will have no work to do, they could hire entertainers. They could do jobs as a hobby - e.g., manually pro…

Sounds like a horrible world to me. "Life could become dedicated to enjoying art"?? Ugh!!!! "...could enjoy the variety of clothing..." are you kidding? That sounds horrible. There is a basic human need to be needed. People who have everything but are not needed are miserable. People who are needed, but have little are happy.

The "Culture" series of novels by Iain M. Banks explores these issues in some detail.

Re: AI are taking jobs

#35

Post by thmcmahon »

mikeash wrote: post #13
simonsarris wrote: post #7

I don't see this as a bad thing, except: In the 1950's people wondered what the future generations would do with all their free time. They predicted, correctly, that worker productivity would rise immensely. They also assumed that people would be just as wealthy while working much less. People are wealthier in some ways. In america, its pretty much standard issue to own at least one car (partially perhaps because a c…

This is just my uninformed opinion, but I think a lot of it has fallen victim to keeping up with the Joneses, and a lot of the rest to employers not being willing to give decent terms to part timers. People could get by with a much smaller salary (or keep the same salary but save a ton of it) by having an older car, a smaller house, less fancy food, etc. but everybody else has nicer things. I see people buying really…

There is an interesting article on Bloomberg about this exact thing. Americans have converted the extra productivity into consumer possessions, while other countries (read Scandinavia/Northern Europe) have converted them into increased leisure time.

Have a look:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-11-03/americans-work-too-...

Re: AI are taking jobs

#36

Post by bdr »

_delirium wrote: post #32
shasta wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As wealth accumulates among the masters of technology, asking what jobs might provide value to your peers is the wrong question. What value can your friends provide to big corporations?

Bertrand Gille (60s/70s historian of technology) had an interesting hypothesis, that as technical systems, and coupled technical-economic systems (e.g. large corporations built on technical advances) get complex, interdependent, and rapidly changing, at some point it becomes too difficult for humans to fully understand and control their workings and evolution, and the dependencies make even choosing which technologie…

That sounds interesting. Is there a particular essay or book that would be a good starting point?

Re: AI are taking jobs

#37

Post by forensic »

chc wrote: post #33
forensic wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you cut all those out of your life, you don't have a job anymore. Cell phones, cars, computers, internet... these aren't luxuries. These are mandatory investments that people have to make in their career. Investments they have to make out of their own pocket. Try getting a job without a phone. Doesn't work. If I was a retired millionaire I could cut them out.

You don't need a mobile to have a phone. On the extreme side, you could take public transportation everywhere, use the Internet at the library when you needed it and just have home phone service. This is actually sufficient for most jobs in a lot of places, though it is a lot less convenient. If you want slightly more convenience, you can (for example) get a decent car that will take you from point A to point B for a…

$5000?

You are so out of touch. Most people I know who are having trouble either have no car or a $400 beater car. A $5000 car would be considered lavish.

You have a trust fund or something don't you?

A mobile phone is absolutely a requirement to get a job. Employers expect you to have it and expect you to answer when they call. Guess what happens if, after a job interview, you don't answer your call.

"Sorry boss, I was at the grocery store." is not an excuse.

"Sorry boss, I was on the toilet" is not even an excuse.

You either answer or you don't get the job.

Guess what happens if, at a $12/hour job, you don't answer your phone and come in for extra shifts when they are short workers? They take away your hours. They financially punish you.

You've never tried going without the internet if you think the library is a substitute. Employers require you to have email and web access from home, and they don't accept, "Sorry boss I didn't read your email yet. I haven't had a chance to get down to the library. It takes while on public transport you know" as an excuse.

My last job paid $9.10 an hour and I was expected to review my email daily as well as visit the company website occasionally to do these little quizzes and courses. The public library closes at 6pm. It wouldn't even be possible for me to get there.

Try going into a job interview and telling them you can't be reached instantly by email or phone at any time. See what happens.

You sound like Marie Antoinette. "The unemployed can just get a $5000 car! What the hell are they complaining about?"

Re: AI are taking jobs

#38

Post by 127 »

kandu wrote: post #5

Imagine a world where all goods and services required for a decent life will be provided by AI and robots. Still, there will plenty of jobs for humans - those related to the humanity of humans. Life could become dedicated to enjoying art in various forms, and this art will be conceived mostly by humans. If people will have no work to do, they could hire entertainers. They could do jobs as a hobby - e.g., manually pro…

Sounds like a society of couch potatoes and drug addicts to me. From my perspective you have a much too optimistic view on the human race. If people are not forced to exceed, they will not. Suffering, that does not cripple, defines us. It makes us stronger, more agile, more determined. I would go so far as to say that when we have dreams and goals and we strive to achieve them, by making work towards step by step, each moment we feel better about ourself. Each success builds us and makes us more confident.

If it were not for women, I'd just sit home playing World of Warcraft, drinking energy drinks and masturbating, to put it bluntly.

Even if our basic material needs are met through automation, we are all still engaged in a very bitter competition for other resources, you do realize. There simply can not exist a state of utopia as long as we reproduce sexually (I have a very Freudian view on this). This is a catch-22 of course. The state we are in defines what we consider an utopia.

You are assuming that if we didn't have to worry about producing material resources, creativity and intellect would be the determining factor in who gets their way. Why not violence? Why not intimidation and sociopathy? As tightly knit social groups (small villages and communities) break down and we live in one global village, nobody really knows each other. Most of the people we meet are complete strangers to us. It's much easier for exploitative and cruel personalities to thrive, because they can stay hidden in plain sight. They can pretend and manipulate to their dark hearts content without the fear of retribution. If they get discovered they can just move to a different location.

As we have more material resources as welfare and a legal arm heavily protective of women and children, women don't need a protector nor a financier. They can just get the sperm they want and raise kids outside of marriage. Old institutions that were the bedrock of civilized society will all but crumble to dust. Widespread soft polygamy will replace it. Those with the most instant charm and good appearances will win, instead of those who build things to last on the long run. Short term strategies will win over the long term ones.

These are all hyperboles I use to describe my views of the modes of societal change and interaction.

It is my theory that the easier it is to meet material needs, the lazier people get and more prone to instant gratification. It's not that difficult to extrapolate from this one simple truth.

Also one of the problems I didn't touch upon, is how our natural instincts that were developed for a very different world will overtake and corrupt us: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supernormal_Stimuli. Slow seduction of irrational and unbalanced stimulus can make our behaviour very self destructive on the long run.

Re: AI are taking jobs

#39

Post by potatolicious »

noonespecial wrote: post #30
DanielBMarkham wrote: post #14

A lot of the argument on this topic seems to be "but this time it is really different!" Perhaps. And perhaps not. Most likely it is different, just like all those other times were different. I hate to be skeptical, but when this same pattern of people saying "it's different!" repeats over and over again without it being different, I think the onus is on those making the claim to support their argument better. If anyt…

Spot on. Nearly all of the articles I've seen of late that tackle this theme reduce to "but how can all of the X's that are now unemployed find work if the economy will never again need X's". Its a simple failure of imagination. When 50% of the people were farmers, not many of them could imagine being airline pilots. A combine harvester must have seemed like a fearsome thing indeed.

The problem isn't that there aren't new jobs being created, it's that almost none of them can be done by the people who were displaced.

You lay off 10,000 factory workers. Do you think they can ever be airline pilots? Or programmers? Or financial analysts? Or what-have-yous?

Sure, a small (very small) percentage of these folk will successfully retrain into another field, but the vast majority of them will be left behind. They do not have the educational background to pursue the knowledge-based jobs that are the only ones hiring.

And even if they did have the necessary educational background for retraining, who would pay for it? Education in the USA is already absurdly expensive, and the employer sure as hell won't be picking up the tab.

Re: AI are taking jobs

#40

Post by _delirium »

bdr wrote: post #36
_delirium wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bertrand Gille (60s/70s historian of technology) had an interesting hypothesis, that as technical systems, and coupled technical-economic systems (e.g. large corporations built on technical advances) get complex, interdependent, and rapidly changing, at some point it becomes too difficult for humans to fully understand and control their workings and evolution, and the dependencies make even choosing which technologie…

That sounds interesting. Is there a particular essay or book that would be a good starting point?

Unfortunately it's mostly all piled into Gille's magnum opus, the 1500-page History of Techniques (1978), which to make matters worse is out of print in English and sells for absurd prices online (though some university libraries have it).

I read it mostly second-hand via Bernard Stiegler's Technics and Time, which is widely available in English and summarizes Gille extensively in the beginning portions. That's an okay intro in the purely summary parts, but is tied up in Stiegler's own project of somehow re-theorizing what time means via a mixture of technical evolution and Heideggerian philosophy, which may not be what you're interested in (I found it a bit over my head, but I'm not at all versed in Heideggerian philosophy). Maybe since it's caused a bit of a revival in interest in Gille, someone will re-print an English translation, or a good secondary work.

Oddly his only work that is widely available in English, Engineers of the Renaissance, is quite good but has none of this in it; it's just a straightforward, well-researched history of Renaissance-era engineering.

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