The future of jobs: The onrushing wave

I don't blame technology for the stagnation of the American middle class. I blame poor leadership, but I think there's something else going on that isn't getting a lot of press: latency skew.

Instead of waiting two to three days for a piece of postal mail, we're annoyed if that email takes two minutes. I'm not going to moralize about "instant gratification" as if it were wrong, because it's mostly not conscious and it's not a moral issue; we're just being neurologically retrained to resist delays. From a website, 10 seconds means "never": it's down, or in an unusable state. We're also (some of us, at least) at a ridiculous level of comfort; we have people who program their garages to heat up 30 minutes before they leave for work, because they can't stand the thought of 45 seconds' exposure to winter cold.

What's not becoming instant is human learning. If something can be learned quickly and will become rote, we can now program a computer to do it. So the things that we need humans for tend to be those that require subtlety or experience. That hasn't gotten faster. It still takes 6+ months before someone is good at his job. That's not a new problem. It's just less tolerated because people are more primed to expect instant results. So we're seeing an aversion to training people up into the better, more complex jobs that technology creates.

I'm all for advances in technology making things safer and putting fewer people in harms way. I just don't think there is anything close to a 17% chance that it will happen in the next two decades. I say this as someone who has a foot in both worlds, so to speak... I work in technology, build UAV quadcopters (including playing with various sensors) as a hobbyist, and work at least one shift a week as a firefighter/paramedic.

Technological advances in recent years have made life much better in the fire service. Thermal imaging cameras have gotten lighter, with much larger thermal ranges. Gas detection has similarly lighter and more accurate. Breathing apparatus have gotten 'smarter' and lighter, allowing longer working times, less fatigue, and better insights for incident commanders on the status of their crews.

Research in fire development and behavior has led to significants advances in strategy and tactics. However, those tactical decisions are still well beyond the scope of what computers (and computer vision) are capable of. There is just too much variation in how homes are build and occupied (and modified).

Here are just a few of the issues I see:

-Moving an unconscious victim requires a fair amount of care, and I don't think robotics are there yet...

-'Reading' smoke coming from a structure gives a lot of insight into the design and occupancy of the structure. I think that's well beyond the current limits of computer vision and decision making.

-There are many activities performed by firefighters outside the scope of 'putting water on fire'. Responding to medical emergencies, technical rescue scenarios, etc... Extricating a victim of a car crash is a very delicate operation that employs equipment capable of exerting many thousands of pounds of force, and a few inches is the difference between freeing someone from a deformed care and crushing them to death...

Really the biggest issues I see have to do with tactical decision making based on a huge number of subtle variables (which would involve very sophisticated computer vision), and simply navigating in and around a structure. Designing a robot that can move autonomously through all areas of a house, into closets, under beds, etc, while still being strong enough to lift and move a disabled victim, or employee various tools seems like a pretty difficult problem to solve. How would you power it? Batteries aren't anywhere close to that point, and tethers would limit mobility too much.

Personally I think the next 20 years will see continued augmentation, rather than replacement of the men and women in the fire service. For instance, I would love to see an SCBA facepiece with an integrated heads up display providing an infrared image and levels of various gasses that are good indicators of air quality. Once we have that, I'd love the ability to switch between 'tank' air (which I carry a very limited amount of on my back) and 'filtered' air (which would just come from the environment, filtered for particulates, allowing me to save my bottle for when I need it).

I think there is also an opportunity for improved 'mapping' of structures as a firefighter moves through them (again, integrated on a HUD inside the facepiece). That would significantly reduce the number of deaths and injuries that occur when firefighters become disoriented and lost in zero-visibility situations.

This ended up being much longer than I expected it to be... TL;DR; The next 20 years will see augmentation, not replacement. Who knows what the 20 years after that will bring...

Don't assume that the robotic solution will look anything like the human solution. A fitbit does not look like a "robotic personal trainer" and a roomba does not look like a person with a broom.

I would speculate that the obvious next wins for fire-fighting are drones to visualise the scene from multiple angles, remote control or self-aiming hoses and extinguishers. And various hardened eyes and arms to reach into the fire. All with human oversight, but a reduction in the number of humans involved or in harm's way.

This reduction in manpower is the pattern - e.g. supermarket self-checkouts still have some human staff, but to troubleshoot and supervise.

Sounds like you have a good grasp of the subject. One comment: as for batteries, they are almost there, not at all far away. Metal-air batteries are already capable of over a thousand watt-hours/kg.

As for reading smoke, a machine could be adapted to ready everything - heat, smoke, particle size, explosive residue, gas leak - and factor all that in. I don't mean to denigrate an experience firefighter's skills. But a machine can sense far beyond what eyes and nose can do.

The augmentation idea is very cool. Sensors are clearly an advantage. And soon (sooner than 20 years) the suit will be more powerful than the human. Hands as powerful as jaws of life! A back that can support a roof!

I've pointed this out elsewhere in this thread: That's not what the chart is saying. The description reads "Probability that computerisation will lead to job losses in the next two decades", not "probability that computerisation will completely replace this job".

For example, in economics, there might be a need for fewer economists because computers are able to do some of the work that previously had to be done by humans. But they're not suggesting that there's a 43% chance that there will be no human economists in 20 years, or that there will be such a thing as a computerised economist - it'll be aspects of the work that are automated (at least initially), not the whole job.