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AI are taking jobs

economist.com

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Re: AI are taking jobs

#111

Post by inkaudio »

nknight wrote: post #81
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…

> interaction with patient, which is the most important task It's also the one radiologists and other medical professionals routinely fail at. Sorry, but if your argument is "computers don't have a bedside manner", I have to call that a plus... for the computers.

Sure there are many in the medical profession who fail at beside manners, but it is not the vast majority. And it's not just beside manner, understanding medical terminology, prepping and positioning the patient for the X-ray, X-raying the appropriate body part, operating the machinery safely and effectively, recording keeping, etc.. It's easy for an outsider to downplay the importance of all this, but that's because they don't do the work and never considers what happens when someone messes up: important care is delayed or a patient gets too much x-ray exposure.

Re: AI are taking jobs

#112

Post by mseebach »

politician wrote: post #76
potatolicious wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 beh…

Hear, hear. This is the reason that we need a wage for displaced workers. People who will probably never work again, due to lack of education or ambition. It's socialism, yes, but are we going to be responsible for allowing millions of people to become beggars while we enjoy the fruits of our labors? I started my career right out of uni by developing software which eliminated hundreds of low skill jobs. Hundreds... r…

> This is the reason that we need a wage for displaced workers. People who will probably never work again, due to lack of education or ambition.

Are you sure it's a good idea to systematically reward a lack of ambition?

> It's my belief that as a result of our efforts, our drive to untangle complexity, that there will likely be 50% unemployment in the US by the end of the next decade. Let's design for that.

You proposed design will become a self-fulfilling prophesy. Putting people on a permanent wage because they will "probably never work again" will signal to those people that society considers them worthless. You will never produce anything of sufficient value for anyone to consider it worthwhile to feed you for the effort.

Re: AI are taking jobs

#113

Post by ericd »

_delirium wrote: post #31
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 wo…

This sounds like a glorious future to me :-) I can't wait to have automated health checkups as well (maybe even persistent checkups).

Perhaps the number of dermatologists won't even decrease - perhaps we'll simply have an increase in quality/frequency of screening for the same number of dermatologists. Perhaps it will open things up so more people can afford to get regular screenings. I'm not poor, but that's one of those things that I classify as too much of a luxury to do regularly - there are a bunch of different screenings that people could do.

Re: AI are taking jobs

#114

Post by [deleted] »

potatolicious wrote: post #39
noonespecial wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 beh…

[deleted]

Re: AI are taking jobs

#115

Post by bambax »

The article starts by predicting that the Dilberts of the world will start losing their job in droves without being able to find another one, and then mentions as examples... radiologists and lawyers making over $300K/year.

Radiologists are no Dilberts.

Re: AI are taking jobs

#117

Post by bluedanieru »

nickik wrote: post #106
bluedanieru wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They'll adapt alright, but remember that the goal of the adaptation is to provide for themselves a quality of life that is comparable to that of their peers, not necessarily to contribute to society in a way that you would find useful. That is, they're just as likely to kill you in a riot and take your things, as they are to commit to a few years of school in their late thirties or forties. People are not rational ac…

Well hard core libertarians that are Anarchocapitalists maybe but in a system where you have working law (working like its working now) its more likly that people start learing to do something usefull then just going on a killing spree.

The issue is whether they will even be able to, and what to do with them if they can't. It's one thing to say to one person 'well you didn't study hard enough or just aren't smart, we don't have anything for you to do and you'll never find employment again'. It's quite another to say that to tens of millions of people in the first world, and eventually hundreds of millions worldwide. I'm not sure that's where we're headed, but if we are as this article suggests, our institutions and way of life will not survive.

Re: AI are taking jobs

#118

Post by mseebach »

politician wrote: post #78
hagy wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Change hurts. It hurts doubly so when uncertainty is mixed in. The majority of the western population has a fairly rigid definition of job: trade your time for money. Its one thing to change how you trade your time for money: e.g. going from plowing a field a shuffling papers at a desk. It’s a whole another thing to adopt a certain level of self-responsibility (and risk) in determining how you provide value for your…

What is the endpoint you have in mind?

I think he's suggesting that in the future a job will move from being "rent my body 8 hours a day on a long term contract" to "pay me to me provide a service you need".

Patio11's article from a few weeks ago "Don't call yourself a programmer" illustrates this divide for the development community, but I'd be surprised if it can't be applied to most other fields. If you call yourself "factory worker" you're expendable and outsourcable.

Re: AI are taking jobs

#119

Post by atomicdog »

nickik wrote: post #101
potatolicious wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 beh…

Sure they could, Internet is not that expensiv and thats really all you need to learn programming. Sure education is expensiv but self education is not!

That's kinda like saying a book and a pad of paper is all you need to learn astrophysics and work at NASA.

Re: AI are taking jobs

#120

Post by atomicdog »

cageface wrote: post #59
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…

Sure, but how many people are going to be able to make a living on Hamburger ebooks? I don't think it's that hard to supplement your income a bit like this but I don't see this kind of thing compensating for many lost full-time jobs.

OP's scenario is further complicated by the fact that his wife is (presumably) half supported by himself who (presumably) is earning a living.

So... How many single people earn a living, pay rent, bills, feed themselves and live to an acceptable standard from selling Hamburger ebooks?

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