Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The future of jobs: The onrushing wave

economist.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 141 posts

Re: The future of jobs: The onrushing wave

#21

Post by midnightreactor »

SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #10
anon4 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you're saying the future is in robotics.

The future is monitoring and surveillance. That's what these systems do. That and a few data-driven suggestions here and there.

Here's a novel perspective for you: This class of devices are subsidized pieces of technology for use by a group of people, a portion of which for whom it could argued would not have access to the resources this technology provides, and they have access to a greater wealth of data because they are not entitled to rights management for the data they produce, for better or worse.

The challenge of these systems is gaining value and insight of understanding different aspects of human behavior while considering the risk/reward calculation each actor engaged in the system. Your use of the words monitoring and surveillance betrays an implied connotation which could be described in the vein of paranoid or Orwellian. It's disingenuous to distill the entirety of what these systems do as "monitoring and surveillance [...] and a few data-driven suggestions here and there". It's more like "monitoring and surveillance" are what these systems are, implied context or not, and what you and I get out of it are suggestions informed by the data of what you and I and everyone else participating actually does within a system.

Re: The future of jobs: The onrushing wave

#22

Post by eli_gottlieb »

moonchrome wrote: post #18
[deleted] wrote: post #16

[deleted]

>eventually full AIs At that point there will be no corporations or anything else related to our society because it will break the premise society is built on - that we are better off working with each other - someone in control of such AI doesn't need anyone else - it's impossible to guess what they would do with it but a logical choice would be to eliminate potential threats (ie. anyone who can develop similar tech…

People tend to bloviate a bit about how the first person or group to build and train a "seed AGI" would have "godlike" power, but what they forget is that given godlike power, there is no reason to be selfish or psychopathic. Most human selfishness and greed comes from incentive gradients and competition traps resulting from the systems we have to survive in. Once you have nonhuman but human-equivalent-or-greater intelligence directed towards human goals, you're beyond competing for survival, and have no incentive not to direct the AGI cooperatively and altruistically.

This is a choice we can make, as a profession, as a community, and as a species. There is no point in letting short-sighted competitive anxieties destroy such a potential for good.

Re: The future of jobs: The onrushing wave

#23

Post by josephschmoe »

ExpiredLink wrote: post #13
josephg wrote: post #4

There's a great 15 minute video by CGP Grey introducing the same set of concepts that technology will contribute to unemployment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU Its a bit pop-sciency, but its very approachable and well explained.

It sounds like the technology forecasts in the 50ies and 60ies but with a pessimistic instead of an optimistic undertone.

In all fairness, most desk jobs that existed in the 50's and 60's are now heavily consolidated (it now takes one journalist and Google what it used to take 10 to do). And most factory work is either also heavily consolidated or moved overseas.

Would the words "service economy" even make sense back then?

Re: The future of jobs: The onrushing wave

#25

Post by d4nt »

jfoster wrote: post #11

The interesting thing is that a wave of redundancy due to automation or unprecedented efficiency contains problems that those made redundant might be able to work on. Eg. Joe can't afford X due to lack of employment, and Bob can't afford Y for the same reason. Assuming Bob can supply X and Joe can supply Y (or some more complicated network of bartering), it seems like should be possible for an economy to arise.

This relies on the assumption that there are things Joe wants that Bob can supply and vice versa. But as we climb higher and higher up the hierarchy of needs that may not be the case.

We are already very effective at keeping people alive and mildly entertained indefinitely. (Although we currently look down on these people as trash for not contributing to society). But I can envisage a time when meeting all my material needs requires almost no human input and meeting my emotional needs cannot be monetised.

Re: The future of jobs: The onrushing wave

#26

Post by DanielBMarkham »

Science is by definition the creation of causal chains. If I do X in this system, Y will result. Hence the importance of falsifiability and reproducibility.

This is yet another in a series of economic articles that sound much more like a typical op-ed column than an observation, hypothesis, or proof.

Re: The future of jobs: The onrushing wave

#27

Post by SixSigma »

Ftee trade destroys wages, of this there is no secret.

De-regulation subverts democracy.

Time to revisit the relationship between capital and well-being. Ricardian theories of comparative advantage drive wealth into the hands of those who control capital, not into the calloused hands of the poor suckers who sweat.

Re: The future of jobs: The onrushing wave

#30

Post by glesica »

grandalf wrote: post #28

If unemployment ever becomes a problem we can simply outlaw the wheat combine, which will open up hundreds of thousands of jobs harvesting grain manually.

I hope you were being sarcastic... but in case you weren't, why would we ever create meaningless work instead of just giving people money for pursuing whatever makes them happy? A basic income guarantee seems like a much more reasonable solution than "put everyone to work digging holes and filling them in again".
Post reply on HN