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Destruction of large numbers of jobs by robots unlikely, says new OECD Study

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Re: Destruction of large numbers of jobs by robots unlikely, says new OECD Study

#111

Post by Nadya »

resu_nimda wrote: post #51
Nadya wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Does anyone today feel as though we've lost half of our jobs to mechanized farming, those jobs were "destroyed?" Not really, it allowed other industries like entertainment to flourish. Now that less of us have to do X, we can do more Y. I think it's absolutely a valid point to say "job loss will be slow enough that people will be able to adapt." Someone else phrased it best, I read it from an HN user but they may ha…

The underlying point is that not everyone needs a job. "Everyone has a job" is not an important fundamental requirement of functioning society. Everyone needs food, water, and shelter. In the early days, everyone needed a job because that's what it took to provide those basic needs. As we develop automation that allows those things to be provided to more people with less human labor, we shouldn't say "oh shit, we're…

>The underlying point is that not everyone needs a job. "Everyone has a job" is not an important fundamental requirement of functioning society.

The discussion was about whether or not jobs have been lost. Not whether or not jobs will be or are necessary. For the time being, jobs are both being lost and necessary. At least for most people and people who don't enjoy being homeless.

Re: Destruction of large numbers of jobs by robots unlikely, says new OECD Study

#112

Post by superuser2 »

zaroth wrote: post #53
pasquinelli wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

how it goes down is important though. if automation follows after labor begins to move to something else then that's one thing, but the reverse, automation putting people out of work, mean there might not be anything for them to realistically move to.

A booming business in automation and robot repair.

The whole point is that you need fewer humans in the loop. If every factory worker automated out of a job was hired back to work on the robots, we'd skip the automation part entirely.

Re: Destruction of large numbers of jobs by robots unlikely, says new OECD Study

#113

Post by Pica_soO »

napoleond wrote: post #58
infogulch wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, so you have 3 employees working 24/7 for an average of a $20k salary (33% more than minimum wage). That's $60k/year or $120k over 24 months (based on Bartweiss' ROI estimation). Do you think it's possible to deliver an automated gas pump that services 4,800 trucks per day (~1 truck every 3 minutes) for $120k? I don't.

Eventually I think it could happen. It simply requires economies of scale--the hardware is not the expensive part of an automated gas pump.

Yes, its the software. And the software needs data to have the machine learn, given this data, a machine designed for fitting niches, can squeeze itself into even unlikely corners.

Re: Destruction of large numbers of jobs by robots unlikely, says new OECD Study

#114

Post by resu_nimda »

Nadya wrote: post #111
resu_nimda wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The underlying point is that not everyone needs a job. "Everyone has a job" is not an important fundamental requirement of functioning society. Everyone needs food, water, and shelter. In the early days, everyone needed a job because that's what it took to provide those basic needs. As we develop automation that allows those things to be provided to more people with less human labor, we shouldn't say "oh shit, we're…

>The underlying point is that not everyone needs a job. "Everyone has a job" is not an important fundamental requirement of functioning society. The discussion was about whether or not jobs have been lost. Not whether or not jobs will be or are necessary. For the time being, jobs are both being lost and necessary. At least for most people and people who don't enjoy being homeless.

In 1870, nearly half of the workforce worked in agriculture. Almost all of those "jobs" were "lost" over the next century. Did that have a meaningful correlation with unemployment rate?

There is not some fixed amount of "work that needs to be done" that in turn creates a fixed (and steadily diminishing) pool of jobs to draw from. The amount of jobs available is a purely socioeconomic function of who is willing to pay whom for what.

Take Facebook. Do the jobs there carve out some section of the total amount of work that needs to be done today? Not really, a guy made a thing, and convinced people to give him an arbitrary amount of money, and decided to give an arbitrary number of people arbitrary amounts of that money to help him out. A certain number of jobs were created because of the way people decided to distribute their money. Not because they took some of the limited "available job" slots.

Re: Destruction of large numbers of jobs by robots unlikely, says new OECD Study

#115

Post by ChuckMcM »

orkoden wrote: post #96
ChuckMcM wrote: post #36

The actual study is a bit more detailed and it suggests some interesting things. One is the evolution of work and jobs over time. As a pretty relevant example, the migration of shopping to "online" vs in store means two things; First you don't need the goods in a metro area, and second you need to get them to the customers. If you replace all current "shopping" traffic with "delivery" traffic it really cuts into the…

> we imagine some "delivery only" roads This is possible but unlikely. There have been numerous plans in the past to build such large infrastructure. Like large pneumatic tubes to every house for deliveries. It usually turned out to be too expensive to build.

The trick though is to understand the economics of what you're trying to do before you implement it. Additional rail lines are quite expensive, one lane roads not so much.

Starting small, consider an autonomous truck that uses electricity like a city bus to move a container along a single lane protected from other traffic. You have one end in the port of Oakland (busy container terminal) and the other in a distribution warehouse outside Livermore (lots of open space, access to freeways and rail). Now one has to price out the cost savings of having containers appear automatically in a transhipping location without burning diesel or getting stuck in traffic.

You save a bit on the driver, you save more on the gas, and you take roads off the freeway which will help you to encourage local municipalities to give you easements for your autobot trucks to drive on.

It would be fun to sit down with a trans-shipper and find out their costs and whether or not you could save them time and effort.

Re: Destruction of large numbers of jobs by robots unlikely, says new OECD Study

#116

Post by anonbanker »

Animats wrote: post #9

Actual OECD study: [1] The study says that, for the US, 9% of people are at "high risk" of automated out of a job. (That probably means "replaceable right now".) But 38% of people are potentially replaceable. There's an assumption in the OECD report that the entire job of a human must be replaced. But that's not how automation works. We're seeing this in the more advanced law firms. What used to take a senior attorne…

As someone constantly dealing with lawyers on a day-to-day basis, I cannot wait for the day that self-empowered "legal hackers" are able to compete against lawyers using tools such as Watson/ROSS.

Imagine being able to dictate grounds for relief, and have the machine draft the paperwork for you, ready to sign/witness and file.

Imagine not having to pay a lawyer $400/hour to answer what should be a simple question.

Imagine being able to have computer-based training about the acts/statutes you are currently referencing in your process.

I can't wait.

Re: Destruction of large numbers of jobs by robots unlikely, says new OECD Study

#117

Post by vl »

infogulch wrote: post #45
Pica_soO wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The factor is availability- you need three of these workers for a around the clock shift. AI does not sleep.

Ok, so you have 3 employees working 24/7 for an average of a $20k salary (33% more than minimum wage). That's $60k/year or $120k over 24 months (based on Bartweiss' ROI estimation). Do you think it's possible to deliver an automated gas pump that services 4,800 trucks per day (~1 truck every 3 minutes) for $120k? I don't.

Track per 3 minutes is 480 tracks per day.

Re: Destruction of large numbers of jobs by robots unlikely, says new OECD Study

#118

Post by vl »

Bartweiss wrote: post #13
Animats wrote: post #9

Actual OECD study: [1] The study says that, for the US, 9% of people are at "high risk" of automated out of a job. (That probably means "replaceable right now".) But 38% of people are potentially replaceable. There's an assumption in the OECD report that the entire job of a human must be replaced. But that's not how automation works. We're seeing this in the more advanced law firms. What used to take a senior attorne…

One for one replacement is a truly strange standard to hold to. After all, even trucking automation will not be a 100% loss - if nothing else, we'll see a rise in full-service highway gas stations to fuel driverless trucks. On the other hand, even 10% replacement of an industry (9 workers doing what 10 workers do now) is a big deal, and there are a lot of careers (legal, HR, document handling) that should expect to s…

>we'll see a rise in full-service highway gas stations to fuel driverless trucks

Not really - all AV trucks will be owned by consolidated corporations, think Uber for trucks. These corporations will have service centers in strategic location, AV trucks will come for refueling to these centers.

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