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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

#81

Post by JoeAltmaier »

TheCoelacanth wrote: post #75
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Ok, if you change the meaning of words we can't have a nice conversation.

We all understand wealth to be money, stock, ownership. So maybe the housing could come under that (if you owned your apartment) but not the others.

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

#82

Post by arrrg »

3pt14159 wrote: post #60
arrrg wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is (very likely) true in the long run, but it would be foolish to overlook the short-term effects that can be devastating for many individuals. The weavers faced real problems, had a real existential crisis and struggled with real poverty and hunger for many decades. Yes, the industrial revolution brought a tremendous increase in wealth and living standards to everyone, but only eventually to everyone. It is tre…

How is it true in the long run when we have robots that can walk talk and think as well as our bottom 40% but take one tenth the cost in food / shelter?

To be honest, I’m probably not as sure about the long term effects as I might have sounded. Looking into the past I see almost universally massively positive long-term effects. A few centuries ago almost everyone worked in farming, now almost nobody does, all those jobs have been automated away – but it didn’t matter in the long run because more people could work first in industry, then in services.

Maybe future transformations will work out similarly. However, even if they don’t many solutions for the short-term problems can easily be made to work as solutions for possible long-term problems.

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

#83

Post by byoung2 »

acgourley wrote: post #68
byoung2 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would challenge you to paint a picture of a far off future where most jobs haven't evaporated 200 years ago, nobody would have guessed that there would be millions of computer programmers employed in the world today, because the rise of computers couldn't be predicted. It's likely that in an era where basic needs are provided by robots, people are free to come up with new inventions that lead to the creation of new…

It's been well proven adding more developers to a single project has extremely diminished returns, so what you're saying is that there will be a free market demand for a huge amount of different software projects. While it's true that software is eating the world and thus we're seeing a net increase in projects started, we're also seeing a lot of consolidation in the more established software verticals. Once we've di…

so what you're saying is that there will be a free market demand for a huge amount of different software projects

That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that there are currently millions of people of working in an industry that was unheard of a century ago because the modern day computer was invented. There are millions of people who have jobs today related to cars (manufacturing, sales, repair, driving, etc.) because the car was invented. There could be some new invention we haven't thought of today that spawns an industry that will employ millions.

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

#84

Post by bluedino »

batbomb wrote: post #28
bluedino wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Automation eliminates jobs - that's the whole point. One robot replaces 20 workers and you only need 1 person per every 20 robots to manage them. Sure, you've got jobs in robot building and such but when a robot shop with 20 employees turns out 200 robots in one year and displaces 4000 workers...

The problem with this logic is that it assumes a zero-sum game, and a constant demand. Example: If we have 10 guys making hydrogen cells, and all the sudden we can replace them with one robot and one guy, and that takes an unviable industry to a viable one, well then they are going to need a lot more robots and guys, a lot more than the 10 they previously had.

Except that never ended up happening. I live in a rust-belt city which was booming during most of the 1900's and ended up dying off when the 60's and 70's came around.

Today I was at lunch in what's left of our downtown district, and there were old photographs on the wall of business that used to be in the area (mostly manufacturing). I was amazed that some of the photographs showed huge rooms of women sitting at work tables assembling parts, folding boxes, and packing items.

That stuff is all gone. I could imagine a handful of machines replacing that group of people. When you go from a city having 50,000 factory workers to the 4,000 or so that we have now, it's a huge deal.

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

#85

Post by batbomb »

bluedino wrote: post #84
batbomb wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with this logic is that it assumes a zero-sum game, and a constant demand. Example: If we have 10 guys making hydrogen cells, and all the sudden we can replace them with one robot and one guy, and that takes an unviable industry to a viable one, well then they are going to need a lot more robots and guys, a lot more than the 10 they previously had.

Except that never ended up happening. I live in a rust-belt city which was booming during most of the 1900's and ended up dying off when the 60's and 70's came around. Today I was at lunch in what's left of our downtown district, and there were old photographs on the wall of business that used to be in the area (mostly manufacturing). I was amazed that some of the photographs showed huge rooms of women sitting at wor…

The thing about economics though is it's about the average case, not the individual case. There's always going to be winners and losers, but as long as the winners beat out the losers things work okay. I think a future dedicated towards decentralized/distributed micro-economies relying on coordination and communication would be ideal, because it could prevent exactly what your town experienced. Automation in conjunction with networking could make your town a viable manufacturing micro-hub, for example, instead of those sorts of things being shipped off to Shenzhen. I'd argue The reason china is such a power house is precisely because we don't have the automation necessary to compete with them.

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

#86

Post by dpcheng2003 »

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…

The answer is going to be colonizing other planets/moons. As more manual and semi-skilled labor is outsourced to AI and robots in "modern society", the outskirts of humanity will degenerate into a frontier state because human labor will be cheaper than building and maintaining this automated future.

And I just summarized Firefly. Start learning Chinese.

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

#87

Post by ahomescu1 »

VLM wrote: post #42
wlesieutre wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The customers as a whole don't have more money, because half of them just got automated out of their jobs. Maybe enough new jobs come around that it isn't a long term problem this time, but there will come a time when essentially every job could be done by a computer. What then?

Artisan economy? But it can't be monetarily based because only the few remaining capital owners and their very few labor jobs will have all the money. My artisan economy I mean handmade paintings, handmade food, plays with actors instead of CGI movies, musicians, bars...

The artisans can create their own currency (even a digital one, call it ArtisanCoin) and only use it among themselves.

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

#88

Post by dpweb »

sluckxz wrote: post #50

I think PG's essay is an excellent compliment to articles like these. It certainly offered a perspective I hadn't ever considered. "Mind The Gap" http://paulgraham.com/gap.html

Thanks, hadn't re-read this PG essay in a while. It makes some good and important points, but if the theme is don't hate on the wealthy.. I don't think you can ignore the fact that many people don't believe the 100x productive/add value idea.. Although I think many of us technologists and/or capitalists know first hand that it is true, that is, it is possible..

But, all the wealth accumulation is not the result of a pure capitalism/reward system. 100x wealth does not necessarily equal a 100x contribution of value to society.

There does exist undeserved rewards. That perception, sometimes true, sometimes not, is at the core of the wealth haters and quite a bit of outrage.

Much wealth is controlled by entities that have quasi-governmental status, special protection and privileges (ie.. the entire banking system). Interestingly enough a more pure capitalist system may be more effective at leveling the field instead of a socialist system.

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

#89

Post by gremlinsinc »

I say AMEN! Imagine a society where 25 hour work weeks is the norm, everyone gets a living wage, some of it possibly subsidized by the government, -- each household earns a guaranteed 2500 per month to grow the economy. Every worker gets 4 weeks paid leave. Companies move from being self-serving to realizing if they make their employees super happy -- they will go out and buy their products, or other companies products - but support the economy in general and grow all companies.

We are work-a-holics, and then we spend our weakest part of life sitting on our arses waiting to die- if we had more quality of life time to travel, see the world, spend time with our families, while in the prime of our life--time to pursue entrepreneurial ideas, philosophical/artistic endeavors...

Not only would poverty be put to shame, but quality of life would rise universally. Sure, sounds like a Utopia, maybe it is, maybe it's what we're headed towards..it's not like there's not enough money floating around to pay for it...

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