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Jobs Involving Routine Tasks Aren't Growing

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Re: Jobs Involving Routine Tasks Aren't Growing

#41

Post by mapt »

netcan wrote: post #27
petra wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Many backend jobs involve routine work from people who could be doing non-routine work if the CRUD routine job was automated Interesting, could you please expand ?

I'm not the OP, but I think he means this: A bookkeeper/accountant might be manually entering invoices into a system, emailing managers to approve payments and such. It takes 3 hours per day. This work is "routine" in the relevant sense (it can be automated) but our young, congenial and soon-to-be-replaced-by-robots accounts payable woman (her name's Lynne) also does and is capable of doing "non-routine" tasks. She c…

"Generally when technology creates efficiencies, the unemployment rate does not just increase by the number of people that did that work yesterday"

Perhaps not, but it does increase. Because somebody else was calling suppliers and having lunch with the manager yesterday.

Re: Jobs Involving Routine Tasks Aren't Growing

#42

Post by awinter-py »

Scary parallel here with the recent jeff dean talk about NN. He claims he won't let his team touch any 'research task' that takes more than a week, and prefers to stick to experiments that take under a day to set up and run -- that there's so much low-hanging fruit that every ML project should be simple.

Very very scary if tech that most of us still haven't touched is also in a sense routine.

I hope I'm misquoting him. But my takeaway is that between manually coding processes that could be solved with ML & doing infrastructure profiling, most devs are spending half their time fixing problems that are 'routine' at the big three.

Re: Jobs Involving Routine Tasks Aren't Growing

#43

Post by Johnnybe »

ktRolster wrote: post #4

I really like Mike Rowe's viewpoint on unemployment: http://profoundlydisconnected.com/

It's disconnected alright. There's only 3 companies advertising for jobs on his careers page. And one of them is a franchising company (Mr. Sparky). Trades are very competitive. Just look up the number of electricians in your area. It's a race to the bottom in the trades.

Re: Jobs Involving Routine Tasks Aren't Growing

#44

Post by netcan »

mapt wrote: post #41
netcan wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not the OP, but I think he means this: A bookkeeper/accountant might be manually entering invoices into a system, emailing managers to approve payments and such. It takes 3 hours per day. This work is "routine" in the relevant sense (it can be automated) but our young, congenial and soon-to-be-replaced-by-robots accounts payable woman (her name's Lynne) also does and is capable of doing "non-routine" tasks. She c…

"Generally when technology creates efficiencies, the unemployment rate does not just increase by the number of people that did that work yesterday" Perhaps not, but it does increase. Because somebody else was calling suppliers and having lunch with the manager yesterday.

Dynamic effects are really hard to talk about deterministically. Generally speaking, technology is always creating efficiencies and unemployment usually ranges in a range, over the long term.

Some technology advances seem to reduce unemployment. When factories were doubling efficiency several times in an average career-span, employment in manufacturing kept going up and so did pay. This was a long period. It started with farmworkers (replaced by automation) urbanising to work in the rapidly advancing, high tech manufacturing sector. The factories kept automating more and more. Efficiency went up. During long periods labour got a good cut of these gains, salaries rose.

At other times and other technological events (including trade which is economically very similar to technology) unemployment went down in the sectors closely linked to the tech.

Re: Jobs Involving Routine Tasks Aren't Growing

#45

Post by a_humean »

atemerev wrote: post #35
mrrrgn wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Progress implies moving toward a goal. What goal are we moving toward? Our society and economy aren't optimized for scenarios involving large scale unemployment. What use is automation if it only leads to mass human suffering?

Luddites were saying the same around 200 years ago, but it turned out better than expected. Lots of new jobs were created, replacing manual labor.

To counter the unfair Luddite bashing:

The problem the Luddites had is that they were skilled labour facing the possibility of destitution with no welfare state to provide time and money for retraining into new occupations. They could see that there was no future for their occupation, but they were arguing for better terms with their employers so that their short-medium term future wasn't so bleak (e.g. their family being sent to the [workhouse](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workhouse), and likely a drawn out and dehumanising death).

We have a welfare state now in all developed countries (by varying degrees), so the problems that the Luddites faced have been greatly mitigated from those past extremes. However, all welfare states assume that any state of unemployment is merely temporary, and provides on that basis.

The past is not a wholly reliable indicator for the future, and present indications are that with increasing automation there won't be enough good (interpret as you will) new jobs. Further, many of the new good jobs will be out of reach for a significant portion of our populations without the luck of latent ability and/or the luck being born into the right (well-off) family with access to high quality education and social connections.

The institutions that solved the Luddite problem can't solve a problem of truly long-term/permanent unemployment or very irregular employment.

Re: Jobs Involving Routine Tasks Aren't Growing

#46

Post by savanaly »

awinter-py wrote: post #42

Scary parallel here with the recent jeff dean talk about NN. He claims he won't let his team touch any 'research task' that takes more than a week, and prefers to stick to experiments that take under a day to set up and run -- that there's so much low-hanging fruit that every ML project should be simple. Very very scary if tech that most of us still haven't touched is also in a sense routine. I hope I'm misquoting hi…

>Very very scary if tech that most of us still haven't touched is also in a sense routine.

Isn't that more properly regarded as exciting than scary? The long term benefits to automation have rarely failed to outweigh the temporary costs.

I would personally be very happy if my own current job- software developer- were somehow automated out of existence. Not only would it allow me to put my money where my mouth is regarding praising automation but it would mean huge gains for the human race.

Re: Jobs Involving Routine Tasks Aren't Growing

#47

Post by FilterSweep »

savanaly wrote: post #46
awinter-py wrote: post #42

Scary parallel here with the recent jeff dean talk about NN. He claims he won't let his team touch any 'research task' that takes more than a week, and prefers to stick to experiments that take under a day to set up and run -- that there's so much low-hanging fruit that every ML project should be simple. Very very scary if tech that most of us still haven't touched is also in a sense routine. I hope I'm misquoting hi…

>Very very scary if tech that most of us still haven't touched is also in a sense routine. Isn't that more properly regarded as exciting than scary? The long term benefits to automation have rarely failed to outweigh the temporary costs. I would personally be very happy if my own current job- software developer- were somehow automated out of existence. Not only would it allow me to put my money where my mouth is rega…

> but it would mean huge gains for the human race.

This entirely depends on the model the human race is running off of. With the current state of mass-centralization in tech (see, again, the big 3), you will never get to experience such gains. In fact, you would quickly grow dependent on someone else to feed and shelter you, considering you can no longer provide a benefit to society that puts food on the table. In fact, most people wouldn't provide value anymore.

> The long term benefits to automation have rarely failed to outweigh the temporary costs.

For some people, yes. You are correct when it comes to the numbers. GDP increases. A nation has more "wealth" to work with altogether. But the other side of the coin is that wealth disparity becomes more extreme.

Big however - If we ran off a decentralized model - arguably the way the Web was originally intended, I could see how the human race would be placed in an unprecedented position for future growth, and humanity would really thrive.

Granted, regarding the current state as ""exciting"" boils down to what you value, I guess.

When (not if) I automate myself out of existence, I'm sure as hell not telling anyone I did it.

Re: Jobs Involving Routine Tasks Aren't Growing

#48

Post by ska »

atemerev wrote: post #35
mrrrgn wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Progress implies moving toward a goal. What goal are we moving toward? Our society and economy aren't optimized for scenarios involving large scale unemployment. What use is automation if it only leads to mass human suffering?

Luddites were saying the same around 200 years ago, but it turned out better than expected. Lots of new jobs were created, replacing manual labor.

Not for the Luddites. This is one of the most consistently misunderstood and misused historical lessons I run into in tech circles. The true lesson of the Luddites isn't that "things will turn out better than you thought", it is that "there will be casualties".

The Luddites were basically correct - they were trading "good jobs" for fundamental unemployment. Demographically speaking the families involved did not on average recover from the damage for a few generations.

So while from a global perspective the overall change may be positive over time, you can't discount people out of hand for saying "wait a minute, we're going to get screwed hard here". They may well be right. It may still be the right thing to do.

What the policy implications of such are or should be is a separable issue.

Another potentially deep issue: the industrial revolution creating a bunch of new jobs and job categories does not demonstrate that the same will be true of a putative automation revolution that we are entering....

Re: Jobs Involving Routine Tasks Aren't Growing

#49

Post by debacle »

Isn't that the purposeful outcome of technology? "I could replace everything you do with a script."

I know for a fact that work I have done has contributed to the demise of many positions. Could you imagine the industry for "Internet Cataloging" if we didn't have search engines? Email if we didn't have Gmail?

Technology is a job killer. That idea is something that's been a part of society and literature for hundreds of years, sometimes in violent fashion. Our economy needs to evolve in such a way that the destruction of jobs is a net positive for society.

Re: Jobs Involving Routine Tasks Aren't Growing

#50

Post by atemerev »

atemerev wrote: post #35
mrrrgn wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Progress implies moving toward a goal. What goal are we moving toward? Our society and economy aren't optimized for scenarios involving large scale unemployment. What use is automation if it only leads to mass human suffering?

Luddites were saying the same around 200 years ago, but it turned out better than expected. Lots of new jobs were created, replacing manual labor.

But why there is a conception that somebody should be entitled to a stable job for life?

I started my career as a journalist/editor when paper magazines were still a thing. Soon, the publishing house I was working in went out of business, so I have to learn the new trade: software development. Which also may become obsolete soon, at least for simpler tasks, so I'll be ready to learn something new.

Capitalism works because it needs rich enough customers on mass scale, the middle class. If there will be not enough jobs for the middle class to exist, there will be no capitalism anymore.

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