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Report: 47% of U.S. Jobs At Risk of Being Automated Out of Existence

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Re: Report: 47% of U.S. Jobs At Risk of Being Automated Out of Existence

#71

Post by JoeAltmaier »

acgourley wrote: post #64
owenmarshall wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So if you think my thought experiment can come to pass - we need to be very concerned. We only need to be concerned if we make the assumption that societal expectations won't adjust as well. "Hard work" is seen as a virtue; someone who takes government assistance is pitied at best, considered "parasitic" at worst. If we take those views into your world it will be a disaster . But instead the real question should be…

Right - each countries choices would be: 1. drastic wealth redistribution 2. revolution Working under the premise (2) should be avoided, I favor discussions around basic income.

Wealth is imaginary points. Standard of living is the true measure. If most folks didn't have any money at all, but food housing and entertainment were a civil right, then who's to complain or revolt?

Re: Report: 47% of U.S. Jobs At Risk of Being Automated Out of Existence

#72

Post by Patrick_Devine »

TheCoelacanth wrote: post #65
Patrick_Devine wrote: post #30

With strong AI, wouldn't 100% of U.S. jobs be at risk? On the bright side, as software engineers, I would think our jobs will be the last to go. My guess is as a species we'll just find something else to do, just like we always do. Who knows, maybe inefficiency will become fashionable at some point.

Yes, but realistically, we are no where near strong AI. We're getting pretty good at making AIs to handle single specialized tasks, even ones that we consider very difficult, but making a generalized AI that can handle any task a human can is probably not going to happen in the near future.

Yes, you're probably right.

I'm glad I didn't heed the advice of my grade 12 computer science teacher in 1991. He was convinced that we wouldn't need programmers in the future because we'd have AI which could write software for us.

Re: Report: 47% of U.S. Jobs At Risk of Being Automated Out of Existence

#73

Post by TheCoelacanth »

cygwin98 wrote: post #36

On the referenced pdf[1], there are two professions related to us: 130 0.042 Software Developers, Applications 293 0.48 Computer Programmer The former has 4% probability to lose to automation, while the later is 48%. What is the difference between the two? [1] http://www.futuretech.ox.ac.uk/sites/futuretech.ox.ac.uk/fil...

They appear to be using the BLS categorizations[1][2]. Essentially, the difference is that Computer Programmers do none of the planning or design that Software Developers do; they only do routine coding. Since Computer Programmers only do routine coding and none of the more intellectually challenging parts of software development, they can more easily be replaced by using higher-level languages or better tools. It's worth noting that Software Developers are already 3x more common than Computer Programmers and the number of Software Developers is increasing 10x as fast, so even many of the people who call themselves programmers are probably classified as Software Developers.

[1] http://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-technology/c...

[2] http://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-technology/s...

Re: Report: 47% of U.S. Jobs At Risk of Being Automated Out of Existence

#74

Post by argonaut »

owenmarshall wrote: post #34
acgourley wrote: post #24

A thought experiment: Imagine a pre-singularity world with near-intelligent anthropomorphic robots which can do most manual tasks - including resource mining, food production and building more of themselves. Imagine most menial white collar jobs have been replaced by clever software written by people on this site. There are still some jobs for humans to do - in game design, fashion, service, music, etc. But any way y…

> So if you think my thought experiment can come to pass - we need to be very concerned. We only need to be concerned if we make the assumption that societal expectations won't adjust as well. "Hard work" is seen as a virtue; someone who takes government assistance is pitied at best, considered "parasitic" at worst. If we take those views into your world it will be a disaster . But instead the real question should be…

> we'd free people up to pursue a̶r̶t̶s̶,̶ ̶p̶h̶i̶l̶o̶s̶o̶p̶h̶y̶,̶ ̶o̶r̶ ̶e̶v̶e̶n̶ ̶s̶i̶m̶p̶l̶e̶ ̶l̶e̶i̶s̶u̶r̶e̶ mindless hedonism.

Corrected.

Positive statement, not normative as below might think.

Re: Report: 47% of U.S. Jobs At Risk of Being Automated Out of Existence

#75

Post by TheCoelacanth »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #71
acgourley wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right - each countries choices would be: 1. drastic wealth redistribution 2. revolution Working under the premise (2) should be avoided, I favor discussions around basic income.

Wealth is imaginary points. Standard of living is the true measure. If most folks didn't have any money at all, but food housing and entertainment were a civil right, then who's to complain or revolt?

Wealth != money. Food, housing and entertainment are all wealth.

Re: Report: 47% of U.S. Jobs At Risk of Being Automated Out of Existence

#76

Post by nawitus »

nilkn wrote: post #61
nawitus wrote: post #27

The probability for software engineers is 4.2% in the paper. All jobs will be automated in 100 years in my opinion (if technological development continues). In fact, work itself will be automated away. (But some will continue to 'work' for other reasons than gatheting resources).

Bertrand Russell hoped for a similar future back in 1932: http://www.zpub.com/notes/idle.html

Yeah, it's a prediction which has always been wrong. However, my prediction depends on the development of an artificial general intelligence which will make human work worthless.

Re: Report: 47% of U.S. Jobs At Risk of Being Automated Out of Existence

#77

Post by owenmarshall »

argonaut wrote: post #74
owenmarshall wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So if you think my thought experiment can come to pass - we need to be very concerned. We only need to be concerned if we make the assumption that societal expectations won't adjust as well. "Hard work" is seen as a virtue; someone who takes government assistance is pitied at best, considered "parasitic" at worst. If we take those views into your world it will be a disaster . But instead the real question should be…

> we'd free people up to pursue a̶r̶t̶s̶,̶ ̶p̶h̶i̶l̶o̶s̶o̶p̶h̶y̶,̶ ̶o̶r̶ ̶e̶v̶e̶n̶ ̶s̶i̶m̶p̶l̶e̶ ̶l̶e̶i̶s̶u̶r̶e̶ mindless hedonism. Corrected. Positive statement, not normative as below might think.

> mindless hedonism.

Ignoring the fact that this is a pretty offensive reduction to apply to most people, I'd ask:

Does it really matter? And if so, why?

Re: Report: 47% of U.S. Jobs At Risk of Being Automated Out of Existence

#78

Post by lostcolony »

argonaut wrote: post #74
owenmarshall wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So if you think my thought experiment can come to pass - we need to be very concerned. We only need to be concerned if we make the assumption that societal expectations won't adjust as well. "Hard work" is seen as a virtue; someone who takes government assistance is pitied at best, considered "parasitic" at worst. If we take those views into your world it will be a disaster . But instead the real question should be…

> we'd free people up to pursue a̶r̶t̶s̶,̶ ̶p̶h̶i̶l̶o̶s̶o̶p̶h̶y̶,̶ ̶o̶r̶ ̶e̶v̶e̶n̶ ̶s̶i̶m̶p̶l̶e̶ ̶l̶e̶i̶s̶u̶r̶e̶ mindless hedonism. Corrected. Positive statement, not normative as below might think.

And this is the real question (not the rhetorical "why does everyone need to have a job?"). Can people adjust culturally to the idea that guaranteed income/wealth/whatever could be a good thing, and lead to a pursuit of creativity and innovation, not merely hedonistic, fleeting pleasures?

I.e., can we as a society accept the possibility, and make it a reality, that a guaranteed income (in whatever form it takes), frees us from mindless grunt work and inspires us to pursue our dreams, or do we force those whose jobs have disappeared to suffer poverty because there is no 'need' for them?

Re: Report: 47% of U.S. Jobs At Risk of Being Automated Out of Existence

#79

Post by [deleted] »

owenmarshall wrote: post #77
argonaut wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we'd free people up to pursue a̶r̶t̶s̶,̶ ̶p̶h̶i̶l̶o̶s̶o̶p̶h̶y̶,̶ ̶o̶r̶ ̶e̶v̶e̶n̶ ̶s̶i̶m̶p̶l̶e̶ ̶l̶e̶i̶s̶u̶r̶e̶ mindless hedonism. Corrected. Positive statement, not normative as below might think.

> mindless hedonism. Ignoring the fact that this is a pretty offensive reduction to apply to most people, I'd ask: Does it really matter? And if so, why ?

[deleted]

Re: Report: 47% of U.S. Jobs At Risk of Being Automated Out of Existence

#80

Post by jrs99 »

akmiller wrote: post #70
jrs99 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that point in time comes, and the computers still "obey" humans, yet still have enough control so that there are no wars between different computer groups, then nobody will have a job and we'll just ask robots to make us stuff and they'll mine other planets and make stuff for us, and we'll live in outerspace in spaceships and relax a lot.

WALL-E?

hopefully we won't be obese though. Because science will have solved that problem by then.
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