61–70 of 92 posts
The probability for software engineers is 4.2% in the paper. All jobs will be automated in 100 years in my opinion (if technological development continues). In fact, work itself will be automated away. (But some will continue to 'work' for other reasons than gatheting resources).
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Automation eliminates jobs - that's the whole point. One robot replaces 20 workers and you only need 1 person per every 20 robots to manage them. Sure, you've got jobs in robot building and such but when a robot shop with 20 employees turns out 200 robots in one year and displaces 4000 workers...
You need to go to the next level. People automate things not to eliminate jobs (that's not the whole point), but to save money. So now the product is cheaper. So the buyers of the product have extra money to spend - which opens whole new fields of products and services for them, which will (at first) be run by humans and have jobs. It's a cycle that repeated many many times in history. It's just happening faster now.…
Until they get spooked and cut back discretionary spending just in case. So-called service economies are not stable.
A thought experiment: Imagine a pre-singularity world with near-intelligent anthropomorphic robots which can do most manual tasks - including resource mining, food production and building more of themselves. Imagine most menial white collar jobs have been replaced by clever software written by people on this site. There are still some jobs for humans to do - in game design, fashion, service, music, etc. But any way y…
By historical metrics, unemployment in the U.S. is over 50%.
A thought experiment: Imagine a pre-singularity world with near-intelligent anthropomorphic robots which can do most manual tasks - including resource mining, food production and building more of themselves. Imagine most menial white collar jobs have been replaced by clever software written by people on this site. There are still some jobs for humans to do - in game design, fashion, service, music, etc. But any way y…
> So if you think my thought experiment can come to pass - we need to be very concerned. We only need to be concerned if we make the assumption that societal expectations won't adjust as well. "Hard work" is seen as a virtue; someone who takes government assistance is pitied at best, considered "parasitic" at worst. If we take those views into your world it will be a disaster . But instead the real question should be…
Working under the premise (2) should be avoided, I favor discussions around basic income.
With strong AI, wouldn't 100% of U.S. jobs be at risk? On the bright side, as software engineers, I would think our jobs will be the last to go. My guess is as a species we'll just find something else to do, just like we always do. Who knows, maybe inefficiency will become fashionable at some point.
A thought experiment: Imagine a pre-singularity world with near-intelligent anthropomorphic robots which can do most manual tasks - including resource mining, food production and building more of themselves. Imagine most menial white collar jobs have been replaced by clever software written by people on this site. There are still some jobs for humans to do - in game design, fashion, service, music, etc. But any way y…
Ray Kurzweil talks about this in "The Age of Spiritual Machines". It probably comes down to human morality (as with just about everything) with regards to whether this singularity is a good thing or a bad thing.
A thought experiment: Imagine a pre-singularity world with near-intelligent anthropomorphic robots which can do most manual tasks - including resource mining, food production and building more of themselves. Imagine most menial white collar jobs have been replaced by clever software written by people on this site. There are still some jobs for humans to do - in game design, fashion, service, music, etc. But any way y…
I would challenge you to paint a picture of a far off future where most jobs haven't evaporated 200 years ago, nobody would have guessed that there would be millions of computer programmers employed in the world today, because the rise of computers couldn't be predicted. It's likely that in an era where basic needs are provided by robots, people are free to come up with new inventions that lead to the creation of new…
Once we've digitized all the existing flows of information present in non-software industries, I would expect the number of developers employeed by a free market to begin to shrink.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That is (very likely) true in the long run, but it would be foolish to overlook the short-term effects that can be devastating for many individuals. The weavers faced real problems, had a real existential crisis and struggled with real poverty and hunger for many decades. Yes, the industrial revolution brought a tremendous increase in wealth and living standards to everyone, but only eventually to everyone. It is tre…
I agree with this. Not sure how viable, but it'd be nice to see some kind of federal program which allowed for a 5-year transition program for people where their industries collapse precipitously (by some definition) and are guaranteed 100% their wages but must study/prepare for a new career. Not sure how to avoid the occasional dilly-dallier who thought they'd make a good chef, but maybe we'd just have to put up wit…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The customers as a whole don't have more money, because half of them just got automated out of their jobs. Maybe enough new jobs come around that it isn't a long term problem this time, but there will come a time when essentially every job could be done by a computer. What then?
If that point in time comes, and the computers still "obey" humans, yet still have enough control so that there are no wars between different computer groups, then nobody will have a job and we'll just ask robots to make us stuff and they'll mine other planets and make stuff for us, and we'll live in outerspace in spaceships and relax a lot.