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AI are taking jobs

economist.com

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Re: AI are taking jobs

#131

Post by muyuu »

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…

In both cases, fewer will be needed. This will either cause unemployment in the short term or will pressure the salaries downward. If it's a significant force, that is.

Re: AI are taking jobs

#132

Post by [deleted] »

mseebach wrote: post #126
DuncanIdaho wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Are you sure it's a good idea to systematically reward a lack of ambition? > 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. You provide ques…

So here's where I'm coming from: Putting food on the table as a result of your work is satisfying and a source of pride. Not being able to do it is shameful. This is a fundamental dynamic. While it's good that there's a safety net so slip-ups and bad luck won't put you in the street and kill your children, institutionalising that dynamic (effectively removing it) will have catastrophic effects on the values of societ…

[deleted]

Re: AI are taking jobs

#133

Post by _delirium »

mseebach wrote: post #129
david927 wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is one of the most important ideas being explored right now and could not only save families but also become a giant incubator for new research. (It may also require moving to a new form of government, such as a Direct Democracy, to implement.) It's an idea whose time has come.

The proportion of Danish citizens on some kind of transfer income: 60% (includes student stipends all the way to pensions) The value of new research undertaken by people on transfer income: very small, if any at all. The reason the idea requiring direct democracy is that it involves two wolves and a sheep voting on what's for dinner.

The second part doesn't seem correct; a huge amount of new development in Denmark is done by people on transfer income. For example, a number of research results that later were commercialized have come out of Masters theses (there's even a whole arrangement where you can do a thesis in collaboration with a company), and a number of companies were funded initially by some kind of government benefits, sometimes officially and sometimes unofficially (since you lose benefits once you're officially "working for a startup"). Even when the money doesn't go directly to the startup, it provides a backstop so people feel more free to take risks starting a company.

I guess it'd be interesting to read a study quantifying it, but I'd be surprised if it were really true that not much research comes out of people on transfer incomes, especially if you include the people who used transfer incomes to bootstrap the early stages of a startup.

Re: AI are taking jobs

#134

Post by nickik »

atomicdog wrote: post #119
nickik wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Well there is a diffrence between working for NASA and working as MediCore Java programmer. Its not just about programming but you can learn tons of stuff with help of the internet that is not really expensiv.

Re: AI are taking jobs

#135

Post by tomjen3 »

brianobush wrote: post #98

So if you work in AI, you are safe?

The last commit you ever make will be the AI that takes over your job when all the other jobs have been fixed. It will also be the commit which brings about the singularity (which should happen at about the time when you get out of your car on the way home) so there is really no reason to fear that.

Re: AI are taking jobs

#136

Post by nickik »

bluedanieru wrote: post #117
nickik wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 h…

I just think that even with 40 you can learn something new. That said, I am in faver of a strong social stat to help these people.

Re: AI are taking jobs

#137

Post by mseebach »

_delirium wrote: post #133
mseebach wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The proportion of Danish citizens on some kind of transfer income: 60% (includes student stipends all the way to pensions) The value of new research undertaken by people on transfer income: very small, if any at all. The reason the idea requiring direct democracy is that it involves two wolves and a sheep voting on what's for dinner.

The second part doesn't seem correct; a huge amount of new development in Denmark is done by people on transfer income. For example, a number of research results that later were commercialized have come out of Masters theses (there's even a whole arrangement where you can do a thesis in collaboration with a company), and a number of companies were funded initially by some kind of government benefits, sometimes offici…

So, student subsidies are the odd one out here, because they're not money you're given to survive, they're given in exchange for a specific activity. They do, however, count as transfer income, and the source I have for 60% didn't break it down.

Yes, unemployment benefits can provide a backstop that enables entrepreneurship, but Denmark has more generous benefits than most other countries, yet the levels of entrepreneurship don't follow.

Any other direct subsidy towards entrepreneurship (although often misguided) aren't transfer income in the sense being suggested by the GP.

The people who can just sit around and come up with exciting new research or who can become successful entrepreneurs are generally also the kind of people who can get a job if they want or need one.

Re: AI are taking jobs

#138

Post by mseebach »

_delirium wrote: post #130
mseebach wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So here's where I'm coming from: Putting food on the table as a result of your work is satisfying and a source of pride. Not being able to do it is shameful. This is a fundamental dynamic. While it's good that there's a safety net so slip-ups and bad luck won't put you in the street and kill your children, institutionalising that dynamic (effectively removing it) will have catastrophic effects on the values of societ…

I guess to me that's not an interesting dynamic for a society that's advanced past subsistence farming. In subsistence farming, yes, you work to feed yourself. If you have modern 21st-century farming technology though, producing enough food to feed everyone takes only a few percent of GDP, not 100% of everyone's time. Why not just give it to everyone, since its cost is basically noise on modern economic scales anyway…

Putting food on the table is a metaphor that goes beyond food. Here are some statistics on Americans counted as poor: http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2011/09/understandi...

We have moved beyond subsistence farming and free food - "food on the table" means a lot more, including many scarce goods.

Re: AI are taking jobs

#139

Post by loup-vaillant »

127 wrote: post #49
zanny wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The downfall of this is where our current economic system projects us : Developers make AI and machines capable of replacing farming, mining, power generation, resource refinement completely, except for technicians and mechanics. It isn't far off from the same machines entering the human service workforce, replacing the cashier and drive through clerk. They replace cars and planes (already have auto pilot, google car…

One thing I hope the technological advancement will bring is synthetic meat. With extremely cheap energy (both environmentally and financially) synthetic product should not be too expensive to compete with slaughtering real live animals. We are predators, yes, but that does not mean we can step up the ladder and satisfy our diet using a higher level of technology without any real animal suffering. This does exclude m…

You are saying that strong AI (with at least human-level intelligence) is impossible. We don't run on magic, though. Many tasks we do, we made machines that do them better. I see no reason why that couldn't apply to programming itself. (In principle, at least. I could understand that we're not smart enough to achieve this in practice.)

Re: AI are taking jobs

#140

Post by marquis »

mseebach wrote: post #112
politician wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 propo…

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

Why the assumption that if you pay someone a living wage when their services are no longer needed, they won't continue to seek meaningful work, re-educate themselves or provide valuable services to the community? I come from a working class family, all of whom have the option to not work yet choose to do one or all three of the above out of a basic need to participate in their community and be valued.

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