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

The rise of the useless class

ideas.ted.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 125 posts

Re: The rise of the useless class

#81

Post by Chardok »

charles-salvia wrote: post #30

I can't help but be skeptical of things like this... historically speaking, humans tend to underestimate just how many things we do that require full "general intelligence" to make "common-sense" decisions. Despite recent advances in machine-learning (i.e. adding more layers to neural networks, i.e. adding more columns to a matrix), we don't really have anything that even approaches an artificial general intelligence…

He addresses this as that AI would be a poor hunter-gatherer, but is actually quite good already at specialized low thought jobs, and there are enough of those out there to cause some economic instability.

Furthermore, AI doesn't have to be 100% error free and spectacularly outperform every human, it just has to be cheaper and as-good or better than the average worker. I can think of a good number of coworkers in past jobs that are ripe for automating away - its just a matter of time when it becomes cheap enough to implement. These jobs are not high thought jobs but the ones where the rules are already set and they just follow them.

Re: The rise of the useless class

#82

Post by athenot »

charles-salvia wrote: post #30

I can't help but be skeptical of things like this... historically speaking, humans tend to underestimate just how many things we do that require full "general intelligence" to make "common-sense" decisions. Despite recent advances in machine-learning (i.e. adding more layers to neural networks, i.e. adding more columns to a matrix), we don't really have anything that even approaches an artificial general intelligence…

This is true.

On the other hand, our society is getting more and more complex, and tasks are getting more and more specific. At the same time, organizations are structuring themselves so that employees are hyper-specialized and are only allowed to perform the exact set of tasks that they need to.

This is where AI can thrive.

Re: The rise of the useless class

#83

Post by sebringj »

pasquinelli wrote: post #68
sebringj wrote: post #45

This is short-term pessimism, inline with the common dystopian future of sci-fi. It is really difficult to predict human behaviors and technology in the long term. Humans have the ability to steer things to their advantage so interesting things can happen. Just for kicks here's a more hopeful approach that I've heard...merge AI with the brain like Kurzweil was predicting. Imagine if everyone was a genius and telekine…

"I'm sure it would be very difficult to hold on to beliefs devoid of reason in that case..." No offense but I literally laughed out loud when I got to that part. Reminds me of what people said about the internet. Doesn't that comparison lend credence to the notion that greater access to information might often lead to a retreat into comforting echo chambers? That greater ease of communication might often increase the…

The difference being...perception right? Currently we have a huge amount of information but the same limits of comprehension. We didn't suddenly get new anatomy when the internet came online. Its apples and oranges. If you are able to understand things at great depth, you are able to understand information at great depth and know the difference between bunk and not. Myths and legend-type information becomes harder to rationalize as truth because the origins of it do not result in a high probability of accuracy in which you are highly capable at that point to determine in a sub-microsecond.

Re: The rise of the useless class

#84

Post by chis »

return0 wrote: post #65
charles-salvia wrote: post #30

I can't help but be skeptical of things like this... historically speaking, humans tend to underestimate just how many things we do that require full "general intelligence" to make "common-sense" decisions. Despite recent advances in machine-learning (i.e. adding more layers to neural networks, i.e. adding more columns to a matrix), we don't really have anything that even approaches an artificial general intelligence…

I can think of cooking as an example of a surprisingly complicated job. OTOH i can think of many supposedly "creative" jobs that are already ripe for disruption. Anything that has to do with visual arts for example, architecture, industrial design, medical, law etc. These jobs may not be fully automated, but the human supervisor will be relegated to a secondary role.

https://www.logojoy.com/ seems surprisingly close to this. If I were starting a small business I'd probably just get my logo from this type of automated service.

Re: The rise of the useless class

#85

Post by crdoconnor »

rdiddly wrote: post #3
sevensor wrote: post #2

My first reaction when I saw (ted.com) after the link was that this would be an essay about ted speakers. I should have known that it would be more chatter about machines making people obsolete.

Nice one! My reaction was more like, we have this already due to plain old economic stagnation and (in the US) offshoring. No AI needed!

The 'nice' thing about technology being to blame instead of offshoring is that there is no clear and obvious villain to point pitchforks at. That's useful for some people.

So:

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/265cd8fb02fb44a69cf0eaa2063e1...

"Blame robots [for your imminent unemployment].

[Proved by] "A study at Ball State University's Center for Business and Economic Research" ("The myth and reality of manufacturing in America").

Which states:

http://conexus.cberdata.org/files/MfgReality.pdf

"We begin by examining productivity. The most common measure of productivity is the average product of labor, which is simply the value of all goods manufactured in the U.S. divided by the number of workers. "

^^

Which literally means that according to the author's calculations, if you offshore 50 workers and maintain sales, you have decreased US employment / GDP ratio and thus increased.

The of the paper then measures productivity, states that it's gone up and segues into a lot of reasons why it thinks the increase in productivity is actually because of machines.

Then they invent a calculation involving the trade deficit to determine the number of jobs lost by outsourcing (where one Chinese person buying a $5 million house/year in Cali "makes up for" losing 20 $50k/year jobs) and finish up with what can only be described as an unrelated whinge about US corporate tax rates (just in case you were left with any lingering doubts about whose side they're on).

Authors: Michael J. Hicks and Srikant Devara, MBA.

tl;dr some people use phony math to explain why it's wrong to point pitchforks at the 1%.

Re: The rise of the useless class

#86

Post by athenot »

Animats wrote: post #77
dragonwriter wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Automation doesn't imply that jobs go away. Classic example, deposits and withdrawals were automated by ATMs. Yet, the number of cashiers increased. Did the number of cashier's per customer (or perhaps more significantly, as a share of the population -- not labor force) increase? If you look at even AEIs graph [0] that they use to try to sell idea that ATMs didn't kill cashiers' jobs, it shows cashiers increasing r…

The US Department of Labor has more detailed info in their "Occupational outlook handbook".[1] They project a 2% increase in the number of cashiers from 2014 to 2024, compared to 7% for all occupations. Bank teller employment is in decline.[2] -8% from 2014 to 2024, says DOL's projection. Although, as DOL says, "Job prospects for tellers should be favorable because many workers leave this occupation." AEI's last data…

My credit union in the US has moved to a similar design last year… except that the tellers are behind a video screen. 2 tellers for 4 screens.

My bank in France took it a step further in 1999: no more tellers at all. Nobody touches cash except for the machines. The staff is therefore considerably reduced and only for less common operations, or high-touch sales.

Re: The rise of the useless class

#87

Post by Asooka »

massysett wrote: post #40
binarymax wrote: post #16

I want to be like my dog, but smarter and with more freedom. Every day I look at the lazy beast and wonder at the simplicity of its existence. Give me that life and an allowance for supplies to create, eat, socialize, and travel and let me loose.

If aliens landed in an American urban area, they would see dogs walking around with people behind them, picking up the poop, and special people who walk around with the dogs in the middle of the day, and the aliens would have to conclude that the dogs are the most important beings on the planet.

That's not too far off. People really love dogs. I've never met a person who would blame a dog for anything, they're treated like angels and any bad behaviour is blamed on the owner, not the dog itself. The dog is without sin and beyond punishment. They're treated kind of like children, really, except even the most cold-hearted scrooge, who would gladly put kids to work shovelling coal for 12 hours a day at a salary of half-penny a month would think twice about kicking a dog.

Re: The rise of the useless class

#88

Post by charles-salvia »

Houshalter wrote: post #59
charles-salvia wrote: post #30

I can't help but be skeptical of things like this... historically speaking, humans tend to underestimate just how many things we do that require full "general intelligence" to make "common-sense" decisions. Despite recent advances in machine-learning (i.e. adding more layers to neural networks, i.e. adding more columns to a matrix), we don't really have anything that even approaches an artificial general intelligence…

What percentage of jobs actually require general intelligence though? Deep learning can only do things that are relatively simple and repetitive. But that covers quite a lot. Sure, they won't be taking the jobs of programmers or doctors any time soon. But what percentage of the population can be retrained as programmers or doctors?

I would turn the question around and ask you: what percentage of jobs are similar enough to repetitive, algorithmic tasks? We can joke around about it, but I think most things humans do are a lot more complicated than we realize (precisely because they seem so simple to us), which is exactly why the early optimism over AI turned out to be misguided. Even a "simple" office secretary would be hard to automate, because many of these sort of jobs are not specialized at all but consist of many ad hoc tasks that range from making phone calls to negotiating with other humans to collecting debts to getting the boss coffee, etc. Many trade jobs like plumbers, electricians, etc., require way too much "common sense" type reasoning and social interactions to be fully-automated at this point or any time in the near future.

Re: The rise of the useless class

#89

Post by hasbot »

binarymax wrote: post #16

I want to be like my dog, but smarter and with more freedom. Every day I look at the lazy beast and wonder at the simplicity of its existence. Give me that life and an allowance for supplies to create, eat, socialize, and travel and let me loose.

That's pretty much my life since I retired at 50. My existence isn't so simple as I have two houses, two cars, ten bikes, etc. but eventually it will be simple.

Re: The rise of the useless class

#90

Post by lodi »

charles-salvia wrote: post #30

I can't help but be skeptical of things like this... historically speaking, humans tend to underestimate just how many things we do that require full "general intelligence" to make "common-sense" decisions. Despite recent advances in machine-learning (i.e. adding more layers to neural networks, i.e. adding more columns to a matrix), we don't really have anything that even approaches an artificial general intelligence…

Here's the thing: let's say that AI never advances past its current level of sophistication (circa March 2017), but it does continue to get cheaper and more ubiquitous. It seems clear to me at this point that even this may already be enough to replace many agriculture jobs, transportation jobs, manufacturing jobs, retail jobs, and perhaps even some higher level jobs in healthcare and law. Even though it's "just" neural nets and fancy statistics, that already seems to be enough to put maybe a quarter, or even third, of educated people in the developed world out of work. Nevermind billions of others in developing countries.
Post reply on HN