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The Long-Term Jobs Killer Is Not China, It’s Automation

nytimes.com

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Re: The Long-Term Jobs Killer Is Not China, It’s Automation

#211

Post by edblarney »

xbmcuser wrote: post #117
edblarney wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Where as today the global economy is stagnating." The global economy is in good shape. Western economies are stagnating - but there are 5 billion people who were not even on the economic radar just 50 years ago. They were earning basically 'nothing'. But now they are earning 'something' and it's growing fast. There are more than 40 countries with growth over 5% GDP growth in 2015. [1] There are 5 billion people who…

The top 15 economies in the world are 75% of the world economy. Most are in the West. The growth of the other 25% is not going to help much if these 15 combined do not grow more than the efficiency gains from automation.

"The top 15 economies in the world are 75% of the world economy. Most are in the West. The growth of the other 25% is not going to help much if these 15 combined do not grow more than the efficiency gains from automation."

But they are not most of the population.

We're talking about employment here.

5 billion people 'lives improving dramatically' vs. 2 billion people 'lives improving slowly' is a good equation.

That those 2 billion are 'already wealthy' and a small uptick in their wealth increases the global GDP a little bit more is and odd way of looking at it.

By that measure, we should be focusing on Gates and Zuckerbergs wealth more than anything else!

The 'global GDP' is not the point here.

Re: The Long-Term Jobs Killer Is Not China, It’s Automation

#213

Post by JustSomeNobody »

croon wrote: post #192
randcraw wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cures for disease. Entertainment. Friendship.

Cures for diseases I expect AI to do much better than us very soon. Entertainment will take longer, but I see no reason why it wouldn't be possible to algorithmically create. The lesser ones like Big Bang Theory is basically just a nerd reskin of every other sitcom Chuck Lorre has done. That could probably be churned out by a computer by the end of 2020. The more complicated entertainment will take longer to crack th…

> I expect AI to do much better than us very soon.

and it's a good thing too, because if we are all out of work there'll be no good reason for us all to have so much intelligence so we'll me devolving back to the apes.

Re: The Long-Term Jobs Killer Is Not China, It’s Automation

#214

Post by enraged_camel »

cm2187 wrote: post #88
wvenable wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> tell me which people you know, in which industries, have outright 'lost their jobs' due to some AI or machine? As software developers, it's literally our jobs to put people out of work. My software is specifically designed reduce the need for increased labor as the company crows. In my industry, legal, entire departments (like night word processing) no longer exist. The fact is you cannot extrapolate from 100 years…

It is your work to increase productivity. As tedious tasks are automated, you can deploy people doing new things. As you lower the cost of the product you manufacture or service you provide, you enable more people to afford it. That's how new industries are created. I am not to worried about the amount of work available as a whole. I am more worried about the nature of the work available, which will be increasingly s…

>>As tedious tasks are automated, you can deploy people doing new things.

That almost never happens in my experience. Deploying those people to do new things requires training them on those new things, and most companies aren't willing to make that investment, especially since said people are usually near the bottom of the totem pole and the fact that they just got made redundant by software is regarded by management as proof that they are just cogs.

Re: The Long-Term Jobs Killer Is Not China, It’s Automation

#215

Post by hshhdshdh »

roryisok wrote: post #195
mdorazio wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree that it's "exactly wrong", though I at the same time agree with the secular stagnation concept. It's important to remember that past revolutions in automation have destroyed one field of labor while creating another. For example, the industrial revolution destroyed hand and muscle-driven labor and replaced it with factory labor. In the US we then went from an industrial economy driven by factory jobs to a…

Even jobs in the tech sector are likely under threat. Remember that guy a few weeks ago showing an AI platform be built to design logos for customers? We're not far from having AI build our web pages, and then simple web apps, and then probably native apps, and before long, finding and patching bugs in software, and eventually writing the software itself

We already are automated. It's called C. Python. Java. Go.

How many programmers would it take to write Windows in Assembly?

Re: The Long-Term Jobs Killer Is Not China, It’s Automation

#216

Post by enraged_camel »

dvtv75 wrote: post #116
alkonaut wrote: post #98

I'm not sure what everyone is so afraid of? There will be tensions and a political problem about redistribution if "simple" jobs dry up, sure, but isn't automation a good thing regardless? It means we make more stuff withuot putting in more effort. Automation and industrialization over the last 150 years already meant we went from 120h weeks on farms to 40h weeks in offices and factories, while living standards incre…

Four years ago, I was working full time. That job was automated away, but I found another part-time job that paid minimum wage for fewer hours, so my income dropped dramatically. That job was automated away, and I was very lucky to find a job (that ended up being around double full-time hours, but only paid for half of them, so legally I was paid about half of minimum wage), which went away. Now, I'm working one thir…

Care to share what jobs you had that were automated away?

Re: The Long-Term Jobs Killer Is Not China, It’s Automation

#217

Post by mdorazio »

jganetsk wrote: post #204
mdorazio wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree that it's "exactly wrong", though I at the same time agree with the secular stagnation concept. It's important to remember that past revolutions in automation have destroyed one field of labor while creating another. For example, the industrial revolution destroyed hand and muscle-driven labor and replaced it with factory labor. In the US we then went from an industrial economy driven by factory jobs to a…

> It's important to remember that past revolutions in automation have destroyed one field of labor while creating another. That's exactly right. We've been creating work to keep people busy for 200 years in many more ways than you mention. Consumerism. Marketing. Bureaucracy. We have one industry that makes people sick (food) and another industry that makes people healthy (healthcare). The twin peaks of the sickness…

Because we are in the process of automating away all jobs except consumption this time around. In the past as those new "busywork" industries popped up, human workers filled the new roles. But now we're approaching the point where every new busywork job can be filled by machines, which are cheaper than employees.

Health and food are actually a great example. We've already automated away most farm jobs (in the US at least) and a lot of the food production & prep jobs for junk food type things. And now we're starting to see in the healthcare space that software can reduce loads on doctors, for example ML-based interpretation of X-rays, automated patient record tracking, etc. Fitbit is the tip of iceberg for what's possible in at-home health monitoring based on software instead of humans. I would argue that while the sickness and health industries can grow indefinitely, the number of jobs in each cannot.

Re: The Long-Term Jobs Killer Is Not China, It’s Automation

#218

Post by dwaltrip »

erikpukinskis wrote: post #186
padobson wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, I'm just not sure we'll be able to convince everyone with the capability of making sentient robots that they shouldn't make sentient robots before they make sentient robots. Human labor has solved a lot of problems. The obvious shortcut to solving lots of problems is mimicking human labor. Given the opportunity to take a shortcut to solve a problem (especially at a profit) some manager in some business will…

Zero people have the capability to make sentient robots at the moment. And zero people can even describe how a sentient robot could be constructed, even with theoretical future hardware. "We'll have as many flops as some models say a brain has, and programmers are creative" is about as far as anyone can get, but I don't think that qualifies as a plan. So, it's a fun thing to think about, but like all sci-fi it probab…

The question is whether a silicon brain can acquire the capabilities of a human brain without picking up sentience along the way.

In order to perform at or above human level (in a general fashion), the robot will need a firm, comprehensive understanding of the world. Won't this unavoidably involve an understanding of the self as well?

Re: The Long-Term Jobs Killer Is Not China, It’s Automation

#219

Post by jganetsk »

mdorazio wrote: post #217
jganetsk wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's important to remember that past revolutions in automation have destroyed one field of labor while creating another. That's exactly right. We've been creating work to keep people busy for 200 years in many more ways than you mention. Consumerism. Marketing. Bureaucracy. We have one industry that makes people sick (food) and another industry that makes people healthy (healthcare). The twin peaks of the sickness…

Because we are in the process of automating away all jobs except consumption this time around. In the past as those new "busywork" industries popped up, human workers filled the new roles. But now we're approaching the point where every new busywork job can be filled by machines, which are cheaper than employees. Health and food are actually a great example. We've already automated away most farm jobs (in the US at l…

We have always been in the process of automating all jobs. This is the age-old battle between labor and capital.

Re: The Long-Term Jobs Killer Is Not China, It’s Automation

#220

Post by api »

lhopki01 wrote: post #119
api wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... and economic stagnation. It's basically a permanent liquidity trap.

If you adjust GDP for population growth Japan is actually doing quite well. The fact that it has a growing economy and a shrinking population shows that productivity is going up. Countries like the US have historically had high population growth which is reflected in higher GDP growth.

No issue there. The problem is that this completely breaks all modern finance, which is built on the assumption of permanent macroeconomic growth to deliver returns and permanent inflation to continuously re-price debt.
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