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Report: 47% of U.S. Jobs At Risk of Being Automated Out of Existence

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Re: Report: 47% of U.S. Jobs At Risk of Being Automated Out of Existence

#91

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 Imagine most menial white collar jobs have been replaced by clever software written by people on this site.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…

The simple answer to this, is that most liberal arts-oriented positions will morph into sales and marketing, and technical-oriented ones will morph into technical services (software engineering, maintenance). The world isn't going start starving, or somehow skyrocket into 99% unemployment rates. While there will be a "new norm" of higher unemployment rates for a while, that will quickly subside and people will find jobs, etc. We're just experiencing a cultural shift to a different type of business format. Call it the post-technology era.

tl;dr the sky is not falling

Re: Report: 47% of U.S. Jobs At Risk of Being Automated Out of Existence

#92
post #50

I think PG's essay is an excellent compliment to articles like these. It certainly offered a perspective I hadn't ever considered. "Mind The Gap" http://paulgraham.com/gap.html

Based on this, and other essays, I am beginning to suspect Paul Graham is the technological equivalent of David Brooks (the NYT columnist). I'm a well educated middle middle class white American and after reading this essay, I immediately groked how the non-white Other groups (gays, black, etc) in society get offended by the ignorant and simplistic assumptions or stereotypical thinking of the In groups (the politically correct brigade being outrageously sensitive to even mere nuances or surface details, of course, in a needless fashion). I am beginning to understand the various criticisms of the HN community... then again, my life has been much more varied than the average middle class American and I'd like to think I have a more comprehensive understanding of life (yeah, arrogant). Or I just think and read too much.

Or maybe it is more a matter of values, and the values of rich white guys in Silicon Valley are hardly those of most of humanity. One's values are factors in the blinders you were while interpreting reality, along with whatever unconscious crap you're not dealing with (or maybe those feed into the values) and from that arises your attitudes, etc.

Anyway, my immediate emotional reaction on reading this was WTF? I wasn't impressed.

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