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Robot Workforce Threatens Education-Intensive Jobs
An anonymous reader writes "For years, robots have been replacing workers in factories as technology has come to grips with high-volume, unskilled labor. An article in Slate makes the case that the robot workforce is poised to move into fields that require significantly more training and education. From the article: 'In the next decade, we'll see machines barge into areas of the economy that we'd never suspected possible — they'll be diagnosing your diseases, dispensing your medicine, handling your lawsuits, making fundamental scientific discoveries, and even writing stories just like this one. Economic theory holds that as these industries are revolutionized by technology, prices for their services will decline, and society as a whole will benefit. As I conducted my research, I found this argument convincing — robotic lawyers, for instance, will bring cheap legal services to the masses who can't afford lawyers today. But there's a dark side, too: Imagine you've spent three years in law school, two more years clerking, and the last decade trying to make partner — and now here comes a machine that can do much of your $400-per-hour job faster, and for a fraction of the cost. What do you do now?'"
the manufacturer and retire....
Lawyers and doctors crying over their salaries?
Talk to me when my IT job can be replaced with an automated service that tells them to "turn it off, then turn it on again."
Oh wait...
(CEOs could totally be replaced by machines. Oh yes.)
Learn to build and maintain those machines.
If you're getting $400/hour for something a machine can do, then you wasted your time in law school and clerking. Computers are getting better, but AI still isn't that good. If a computer is making you obsolete, then it's time for you to step up to the next level, use the computer for what it's good at, use your brain for what it's good at, and come up with a package that's actually worth the $400/hour you want people to pay you.
Is 1563649 a prime number?
Buy one. It's a tool, not a lawyer.
Lawyers will make sure laws are enacted to protect their jobs.
The rest of us are screwed.
Just like outsourcing. I have been speculating for 25+ years on what happens to the workforce when we are replaced with AI. My brother told me a few years back, "who needs AI with you have very cheap real human intelligence available."
I'm reading this on the park bench next to my gavel.
Park Benching
Ryans Tutorials - A collection of technology tutorials.
I vaguely understand the economic theory that says this is good in the long run. However, I have always wondered what we will do as a society when there is nothing left to do... One thing is for sure, we will need police and military robots to keeps us in check. 7 billion pairs of idle human hands sounds bad. Perhaps we will begin to leave the planet at that point.
Brought to you by Carl's Junior.
Lisa: Maybe I ought to check with the doctor. ... diagnose. [pushes
[Lisa, Bart, and Homer gather around Lisa's
computer. She starts a program that displays a
medical logo -- the one with two snakes wrapped
around a staff]
Snake 1: Welcome to "Virtual Doctor."
Snake 2: From the makers of "Dragon Quest," and
"SimSandwich."
Snakes 1 + 2: Enter symptoms now.
Lisa: Let's see. [types on keyboard] Crusty sores?
Homer: Yes.
Lisa: Horrible wailing?
Homer: Yes, yes!
Lisa: Any exposure to unsanitary conditions?
Bart: Duh! We're pigs.
Lisa: [finishes typing] Okay. And
a key]
Virtual Doc: You've got: leprosy.
Homer +
Bart: Leprosy?! Aaah! [point at one another] Unclean!
Bart: Unclean!
Homer: Unclean! Help us virtual Doc! Look at me -- I'm on
my knees.
Virtual Doc: Goodbye. [leaves the virtual office]
[Homer and Bart whimper]
Lisa: [to herself, Burns-like] Excellent.
Becoming more efficient in these hard economic times ... oh the horror!
http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/breaking/chi-grocers-start-bagging-selfserve-checkouts-20110926,0,1600176.story
http://consumerist.com/2011/09/report-fewer-supermarket-shoppers-using-self-checkout-machines.html
so maybe you will see some of this being tried out just to have it fail.
The answer is: write the AI code for such a robot.
I'm assuming that a law-trained robot is not possible with just a small code base and a library of law texts. If such a robot is possible at all, it will require thousands of hours of laboriously writing the code for it. The only ones with the experience to write such code would be law professionals, so they still have jobs.
If, on the other hand, a team of 20 law professionals can write all the software for all situations themselves, then the rest of the industry will need to find new jobs. If this is the case, then we have to deduce that it was not a highly educated field after all, and that work in the law profession is actually manual labor after all.
Ask a silly question, get a silly answer, and all that...
Free unix account: freeshell.org
Wow, cool. So other than some monetary issues, we will now finally get to shoot all the lawyers without facing murder charges. I'm all for it, where's my 50 cal...
...you get a subsidy, kick part of it back to your pet senator, and sue your way into perpetual employment.
Think of all the buggy-whip manufacturers! Think of all the typewriter repairmen! And the telegraph operators! It's an assault on the wooooooooorkers!
Not really a joke. For displaced workers, it's going to be a problem, and the first things you reach for are always the lawyers and the politicians. The first thing you seek is protectionism. Career-for-life as an idea is as deeply ensconced as it is unrealistic. The problem is that it's everyone else who pays the cost (doubly so when it's a government function or "public service" job that needs to be deprecated).
Everybody gets what the majority deserves.
It will all have been worth it.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
Will a robotic lawyer be able to be a public defender or will it fail a constitution test?
Marshall Brain described two possibilities of the social impact of ubiquitous robots in Manna -- definitely worth a read.
In the next decade, we'll see machines barge into areas of the economy that we'd never suspected possible — they'll be diagnosing your diseases, dispensing your medicine, handling your lawsuits, making fundamental scientific discoveries, and even writing stories just like this one.
Yeah right. Like i'd believe anything written by a robot.
We really need robots that can farm, harvest, ship commodities, make food, and ship food, for free. Then we can stop worrying about that and then just worry about housing. After that we can start automating the rest of the world, like making robots that fix the broken farmer robots. The idea isn't to put the farmers out of work per-say, but to give the farmers more time to do whatever the hell else they want, even if it's just to stay in the farmhouse and watch pron. Then I'd want to move into the farming industry myself.
First, at the high end, I suspect that a $ 400 per hour lawyer with a robot assistant would run rings around a robot lawyer, and that that would be true regardless of the quality of the robot lawyer (as the $ 400 / hour guy would be able to afford a robot assistant of the same quality.
Second, there is something that is not being broached here - who benefits from this ? And what determines that ? Suppose that robots could do all jobs. So, what, everyone, being unemployed, just sits in the dark and starves ? Or, everyone except a few robot owners sits in the dark and starves ? And, how, exactly, would those starving people afford the goods and services being turned out by the robots ? Believing that would happen is naive in the extreme. Doesn't mean what will happen is necessarily going to be good, but it will be different.
How about the same thing the factory worker does when he's replaced by automation or his job is outsourced to cheaper labor markets. Survive. Adapt. Why is it so unthinkable that highly educated people would be put out of work by progress, instead of simply the low wage laborers?
WE build robots to do work... then we build robots to build the robots that do the work... Then the robots take all of the work... And we wonder why we have no jobs and lots of unemployment... Maybe I should buy a share in a working robot and earn a dollar for every so many it makes... that way I can still have an income.
Rework your assumption that having studied law allows you to charge $50 for reading my email while on the John. I forked over about $60k to have a lawyer help me with the intricacies of overseas inheritances. In practice, it amounted to little more than telling me what documents I needed to have, and then forwarding them to the IRS. I always felt weird wearing shorts and t-shirt to the face-to-face meetings. Then I figured that they were the same as the $2k suit that the lawyer was wearing - after all, I was paying him the money that allowed him to dress the way he did, and that meant that I couldn't spend those on the same suit.
As others have pointed out, it means that jobs that are basically expensive bayesian inference engines need to change how much they charge for their services, and how much the industry charges for teaching the knowledge. There will always be a place at the top for smart people, or at least at the bottom servicing the machines.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Do you understand anything they're saying?
Oh, yes! Remember that I am fluent in over six million forms of communication.
What're you telling them?
Hello, I think... I could be mistaken. They're using a very primitive dialect, but I do believe they think I am some sort of god.
Well, why don't you use your divine influence and get us out of this?
I beg your pardon, General Solo, but that just wouldn't be proper.
"Proper?!"
It's against my programming to impersonate a deity.
Robots, due to the initial investment, may not turn out to be as cost effective as imagined. When Toyota opened their first plant in Japan in the last 18 years, they went for low cost of building the factory, and fast manufacturing times instead of complex robotics to minimize wages/benefits.
In an age where things like company agility is valued, and start-up capital (including commercial lines of credit) is very limited, I'm not sure that robots are going to beat humans on price any time soon.
The possibilities are endless.
In the 1400s and 1500s with the invention of the printing press, book-makers who hand-copied books found their craft obsolete.
With the invention of photography, typing, and modern photocopying, the need to hand-copy for small print runs disappeared as well.
On the other hand, some technical inventions have changed but not ruined some skilled crafts. Prior to the invention of recorded music (phonograph) and robotic sound machines (player piano, etc.), musicians made money off of live performances. While they still make money that way they also make money off of recordings and in some cases off of being sampled.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Anyone who works regularly with lawyers (as I do, (and I'm a geek (as demonstrated by these nested parens))) will know that it will take nothing short of full strength AI to replace them, lawyer jokes aside. There is so much nuance, subtlety, and tweaking of agreements that a using a simple computerized approach won't work for a substantial portion of what (say) normal corporate law firms do. If we magically move to a machine readable contract language, portions of contract verification might be automated, but certainly not the writing. And good luck getting lawyers to move to such a thing any time soon.
Since, it can't cope with people not being needed, as even if it'd be economically feasible, it refuses to provide people with anything free. When human work becomes obsolete, and unemployment crosses some threshold, there will be widespread revolts. Compare with industrial revolution and Luddites.
Maybe because uneducated people do not make the same investment in their careers?
Maybe because we have been taught that education is the way to avoid a job that can easily offshored/ inshored, or replaced by a machine?
It used to be that education was the way to "survive and adapt". If that changes we'll have to come up with something to substitute for it.
I could make more money organizing Flesh Fairs. FUD is FUD.
Gary Dunn
Open Slate Project
Then Communism.
Throw your sabot at the computer
Lobby for a law that requires a human to do your job!
Pharmacists have no need to sweat. They've already passed laws that require a human to do their job. Despite the fact that machines can much more accurately and quickly count your pills and dispense them and instantly check for harmful interactions, they still get paid 6 figure salaries because they're required by law to count the pills. They used fear mongering tactics that "You might die!" if your neighborhood pharmacist doesn't get to know you.
Real estate agents fall into the same category.
Whoah... one of the prototypes is posting on Slashdot!
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Remember the Spencer Tracy, Katharine Hepburn movie "Desk Set?"
What about that Twilight Zone episode "The Brain Center at Whipple's?"
And if you can't, too bad.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
this is not 'buggy whip manufacturers'. this is mass unemployment on an unprecedented scale. there is no 'automobile industry' to replace the "buggy whip industry" in 2011, there is just a yawning, gaping void. once you automate automation itself, there is nothing to go on to. people cannot afford to go back to college a 2nd or 3rd time and get retrained, owing $40,000 in loans, and then, 3 years later, have to go back again and get re-retrained. computer science graduates are a dime a dozen, and a bunch of them are serving lattes and saying 'thank you for calling Verizon how can i help you'.
the middle east and spain and other areas of the world are full of highly educated, highly trained youth with no jobs and no money. they are trying to immigrate, alot of them cant. they just sit there. no work experience, no opportunity, no nothing. its like the people who run society would prefer that they simply ceased to exist. "oh but they simply arent willing to work" .. .yes, they arent willing to work as prostitutes or slaves. Dubai is a perfect example. half the people are prostitutes and slaves who die by the dozen in construction projects, the rest are over stuffed, well fed man-children living in a fake economic bubble that is set to burst any time.
it is echoes of the early 1900s (especially the 10s and the 30s). the only thing we are missing is a world war and mass starvations to prompt some kind of revolution where dogmatists can take power and engage in bizarre social experiements like bolshevism or maoism. if millions of people are starving to death, 'why the hell not, lets get rid of property.. my whole family just died, i dont give a shit, anything is better than the existing system'
people in their ivory towers are the last to understand what is happening in the street.
red light cameras are about income and not safety if they where about safety then why was yellow time cut at some palaces with red light cameras?
Self-checkout still needs some to watch over them so you save like what the costs of 1-2 works per shift? likely less as over night you may of only had like 1 cashier any ways. So with self-checkout you don't need to pull as many people off of other jobs at rush times.
I was being sarcastic about the red light cameras-they followed suit in my theme that adding automation does not immediately benefit the peons/citizens, it benefits the people who automate.
'We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.' RPF
http://mobile.courant.com/p.p?m=b&a=rp&id=856353&postId=856353&postUserId=47&sessionToken=&catId=6225&curAbsIndex=2&resultsUrl=DID%3D6%26DFCL%3D1000%26DSB%3Drank%2523desc%26DBFQ%3DuserId%253A47%26DL.w%3D%26DL.d%3D10%26DQ%3DsectionId%253A6225%26DPS%3D0%26DPL%3D5
"There certainly is intentional theft, but some of it is not intentional," Claire D'Amour-Daley, Big Y spokeswoman said Friday.
In particular, fruits, vegetables and self-serve bakery items can be misidentified by customers using a self-checkout terminal, D'Amour-Daley said.
"We don't just carry one type of apple. We carry apples in a bag, we carry loose applesso it could be an identification problem. It can be tricky," she said.
Losses at stores with self-checkout lines were 20 percent to 65 percent higher than at retailers with all traditional check stands, according to a report by Adrian Beck and Colin Peacock, two British researchers. In total, not just including self-checkout, retail losses in 2009 attributable to theft, mispriced and mis-scanned items and other factors totaled an estimated $278 billion, or 1.65 percent of retail sales. Cutting those losses by one-half, could boost retailers profits by as much as 36 percent, the study said.
stock & commodities exchanges - tens of thousands of traders out of work
checkout registers - countless cashiers out of work
news aggregators - tens of thousands of journalists out of work
lawyering - tons of laywers from top schools cannot find jobs other than 'document highlighting monkey' paying 12/hour
libraries - people with MLS degrees now say 'oh, reboot it' all day long
book stores - experts in literatue, classic, and modern, now say 'you need to upgrade your firmware' and 'venti or grande'
banks - they replaced mortgage lending clerks with 'robo signing' software .... now, they wiped away several centuries of property law, and accidentally screwed up the entire global economy in the process, but hey. it sure was efficient. and they got bailed out by the taxpayer in the end so.. whatever.
http://www.freebooks4u.net/ScienceFiction/Radiant_Doors.html
--and a snippit--
"It was automation that did it or, rather, hyperautomation. That old bugaboo of fifty years ago had finally come to fruition. People were no longer needed to mine, farm, or manufacture. Machines made better administrators, more attentive servants. Only a very small elite–the vics called them simply their Owners–were required to order and ordain. Which left a lot of people who were just taking up space."
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
"Imagine you've spent three years in law school, two more years clerking, and the last decade trying to make partner — and now here comes a machine that can do much of your $400-per-hour job faster, and for a fraction of the cost. What do you do now?'"
Sue!
If the concept behind Nintendo's Teleroboxer wasn't good enough to save the Virtual Boy, what makes you think the broadcast networks will want it?
This is just another scarcity that is being encroached on. Scarcity of labor. Once all scarce needs of humans are met by a self-sustaining system then we will be in the "Star Trek Economy" future where you just do what you want and status is what you fight over by being exceptionally good at something. Like providing "status" human-made (not robot made!) food.
Shh.
I tried reading Manna. But there was (and still appears to be) no table of contents, just a Next/Next/Next sequence that doesn't even say e.g. "Chapter 2 of 12", so I had no idea how long it was and how far it would go.
We're heading boldly into a post-capitalist world, where everything is available to everyone at virtually no cost. Working for a living will no longer be necessary, as the welfare state becomes the majority, but the children of this generation will be artists who will freely create the digital arts and new media through educational institutions or on their own. Innovation has always come through a combination of serendipity and passion. Passion will still drive people to work hard, but for those who would rather just consume media all day, that will be an option.
There remains unsolved problems of overpopulation and resource allocation, left unchecked, we would have to move to a Matrix kind of setup, or something more like Vanilla Sky, where people live forever in pods. Society will continue to advance and we should eventually find cheaper ways into space, then we'll have a world like that in Eve online.
The other option is war, revolt, reducing our great civilization and setting back the progress of science until we find a way to solve these problems.
Have gnu, will travel.
You can bag groceries, that's one area the humans have defeated the machines. "Supermarkets bag self-service checkout"
They're already halfway there!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
the but that can kill people
Leave Goatse out of this.
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=there's%20always%20barber%20college
Being as the medical school system in this country is designed around finding automaton students, and making them into automaton physicians, the transition to robots should be easy. Very few physicians are trained to do more than regurgitate text book information, which a robot could do just as well if not better.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Step 1. Automation cheapens production
Step 2. Production sky rockets, prices drop, and demand sky rockets.
Step 3. New uses for old products increase.
If anyone ever creates a robot/computer that can do everything a human can - it will ask for a raise. The reason we automate is not to get rid of people, but to get ride of the dumb tasks we need to do.
Yes, some people buy ready made "TV diners", but that does not eliminate cooks. Right now, we have computers capable of creating art - but they don't. Why? Because no one wants to build them. No one wants to set them up and make art. Oh, we use them to help create art (Movies, TV, games etc), but we don't build them and have them make the art.
In every industry, at the top is a boss who does not want to build his own replacement. In addition, he does not want to build replacements for his mid level management. They want to replace the low level employees and the crappy parts of their own jobs and those are the machines that get built.
Yes, computer programs will someday diagnose most illnesses - they will take the crappy part of the job of the General Practitioner - the job that is already falling to the way side as doctors become specialists. Yes, low level lawyer jobs - the crappy form filling in stuff will go away as people, just as most people use a computer program to do their taxes.
But the higher end stuff? No, GM does not use a pc program to do their taxes. Instead they use a PC program to HELP the accountant do their taxes.
Same thing for doctors and lawyers etc. etc.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Pass the sabot, General Ludd!
self-checkout is a false economy anyway. you simply can't get the velocity through them that you could with a single cashier, they cost more in maintenance and upkeep (an array of 4 self checkouts has the performance equivalent to 1 cashier), but the self checkout system costs about $30k per unit, then with ongoing support costs and maintenance. it will take a good 10 years before the self checkout makes money back for the company (and by the 10 years, they will need to be replaced to maintain the competitive edge anyway.)
Self checkouts are a convenience to your customers, not suppose to increase the bottom dollar. but it means people are more likely to pick up pregnancy tests in your supermarket then driving for 15miles out to a gas station so they don't have to face someone they know, it also gives the impression that wait times are less (waiting until interaction is less, but total time spent at shops tends to be higher, which also tends to influence how much you purchase.).
source: myself, i work in retail supporting the machines.
When there are no more jobs? Sure costs may plummet, but how will we afford to buy services and products from these 'robot workers' if we have no jobs ourselves?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
This is science fiction. Nothing I've seen in my experience indicates machines are poised to make better decisions in all cases. The reason is that machines using the few dozen or so known natural deductive laws that valid thought obeys, still have to test each case iteratively (does this law lead to conclusion C? no, does the next?). So far they don't have the magic "intuitition" that enables humans to skip the first 12 deductive law tests (for example), and generate a possible solution, before a practical line of reasoning has even been devised, verified and validated.
I'm not talking about machines planning to test hypothesis, either; or pattern matching; I'm talking about how machines use logic to deduce and verify consequences. Inference and implication is not something machines do so well.Humans somehow can do it the other way around, start with a consequence, and find the necessary chain of logic later (the so-called "philosopher's stone" of pragmatic philosophy sought by astronomers and mathematicians in the first half of the 20th century). We've been trying to make computers write code for what, now? Thirty, forty years? Why can't they do it? This is why.
Besides, I know of hardly *a few* linguists and logicians/computer scientists trying to bridge this gap between man and machine, and give machines the magic wand of intuition; until it becomes a major focus, I'm confident humans will continue to out-compete machines in at least quality and ingenuity of solutions - even if not number, quantity and expense of solutions.
Quite a while ago, back in the 1980s, sign painting was forever changed by the advent of computers. Lettering used to be a skill that was learned and practiced over a lifetime. The advent of computer driven plotters carving vinyl letters totally transformed the industry. Anyone with a small investment could create and sell signs quite cheaply.
What happened? Sign painters adopted the new technology. They quickly discovered that it made no sense to compete on price. The race to the bottom produced no winners. Successful sign painters competed on the basis of quality. For a sign maker, quality is measured by results. Does the new sign drive more customers into a store? A good sign that gets customers for a business is worth paying a lot for. A bad sign that drives away customers can never be cheap enough.
Lawyers will experience the same thing. Good lawyers, who win cases, will still command a handsome premium. The overall quality of lawyering will probably increase. Just as sign painters had to compete on the basis of their design ability and marketing skill, lawyers will have to concentrate on things like their ability to negotiate.
I'm always amazed at these job discussion.
Who wants to work 8 hours a day every week?
Even today, everywhere you turn it is jobs jobs jobs. Obama rants about jobs. Republicans rant about jobs. Meanwhile, all the people with jobs are stressed out from all the work they have to do.
And of course, there's all the 'educated' people. The biggest problem with these people is they were all raised thinking they were special. They're 'entitled' to a high standard of living.
It's why society has created all these legal and financial jobs. They do nothing productive or useful for society. Many would argue they even hurt society. Yet, they are these because 'educated' people deserve good jobs.
The poor textile worker who made clothing for people... screw them.... outsource to China. Farm workers... hah... we won't even let our welfare folks work on the farm.
The solution to all this... and the economic collapse we're experiencing... is the following:
less work
more work sharing
Whether socialism or the free market, the tendency is going to be to a more egalitarian society. In terms of producing things people value, there is little that differentiates people. I can do a job. You can do a job. A computer can do a job.
Sure, there will be a small percentage of 'super experts' who will still be able to out do anyone else.... but they are a small number.
I have been arguing that this would happen for at least a decade. In an economy like ours it is a real problem as the number of jobs decreases while productivity increases (or, at least jobs fail to track with productivity). You end up with a lot of broke potential consumers. Ruh-Roh.
Either we start figuring out how to get by with everyone working 20ish hours a week or Marx's economic collapse will finally happen.
I'd much rather work 20 hours per week.
semantics are everything!
You seem to be confusing free market with communism or some other economic system where everyone shares the wealth and savings are passed on to all citizens in a society. Then you find this egalitarian cost distribution to be lacking, and claim this is a defect in free market, which you mis-identified with some other market system? What ???
"We will eventually need to shift to a shorter work-week for the same relative pay or we'll need to find new areas for expansion in space. The alternative is to jump back to feudalism prior to the black death when labor was cheap and most people worked as serfs barely scratching out a living."
Stuff on other alternatives put together by me, starting with a "basic income":
"The Richest Man in the World: A parable about structural unemployment and a basic income "
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p14bAe6AzhA
"A parable about robotics, abundance, technological change, unemployment, happiness, and a basic income."
"Five Interwoven Economies: Subsistence, Gift, Exchange, Planned, and Theft"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vK-M_e0JoY
"This video presents a simplified education model about socioeconomics and technological change. It discusses five interwoven economies (subsistence, gift, exchange, planned, and theft) and how the balance will shift with cultural changes and technological changes. It suggests that things like a basic income, better planning, improved subsistence, and an expanded gift economy can compensate in part for an exchange economy that is having problems."
"Beyond a Jobless Recovery: A heterodox perspective on 21st century economics"
http://knol.google.com/k/beyond-a-jobless-recovery
"This article explores the issue of a "Jobless Recovery" mainly from a heterodox economic perspective. It emphasizes the implications of ideas by Marshall Brain and others that improvements in robotics, automation, design, and voluntary social networks are fundamentally changing the structure of the economic landscape. It outlines towards the end four major alternatives to mainstream economic practice (a basic income, a gift economy, stronger local subsistence economies, and resource-based planning). These alternatives could be used in combination to address what, even as far back as 1964, has been described as a breaking "income-through-jobs link". This link between jobs and income is breaking because of the declining value of most paid human labor relative to capital investments in automation and better design. Or, as is now the case, the value of paid human labor like at some newspapers or universities is also declining relative to the output of voluntary social networks such as for digital content production (like represented by this document). It is suggested that we will need to fundamentally reevaluate our economic theories and practices to adjust to these new realities emerging from exponential trends in technology and society."
See also Marshall Brain's writings and Martin Ford's.
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
"We are exporting our toxic waste to China by sending out the manufacturing. There's more to cost of manufacture than just assembly, but nobody on Slashdot ever seems to consider such things."
This is insightful; thanks. This is a major problem with "free trade" agreements, not accounting for externalities.
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
This is yet another of those articles that assumes advanced artificial intelligence is a solved issue. The lawyers have no more to fear about being replaced by a machine today than they did back in 1990 because AI good enough to come up with new solutions to problems instead of just picking an item from a list is still a very long way off.
Engineers, Lawyers (and many other jobs) do tasks that cannot be put in a simple standard operating procedure and may have the task to develop operating procedures for others.
Seriously? Robot lawyer? It's going to pass the bar... drive to work... walk into the court room and... oh wait... no it's not... There will be services, online, that will do legal work for you via an AI. I'd argue that modern law firms are already doing something like this... But when you've gotta go stand in front of a judge, you're going to need a human. Learn the difference between Software and Hardware before you write an article about either and make yourself sound like a fool.
Everything a human can do a machine can also do, since humans are also machines. So, in the end, humans will be reduntant. Then, the possible options are:
- humans will be exterminated. No longer will be allowed to plunder the resources of this planet.
- humans will revolt and demand machines to be destroyed so as that humans will have work.
- real socialsm will be implemented for the first time in history: humans will be home, resting, while the goods arrive at their home.
Personally, I think trhe extermination scenario will take place.
It's protectionism. Lawyers control the law, and thus are quite capable and willing to ensure the law is written to stop anything from encroaching on their revenue stream. It's too bad really, because the law is very much like a programming language, and writing software to process it is quite feasible.
Free Hans!
Will global warming, propelled by overpopulation, drive homo sapiens to extinction? Or will the singularity, propelled by our intelligent machines, bring the singularity and transform us into non-corporeal homo-post-sapiens who don't need the earth any more. It appears to be a race to the finish line.
I think it would make a really fun SF novel; better than Arthur Clarke's Childhood's End.
When labour is out-sourced, money moves from a wealthier country to a poorer one. Eventually, they don't want your crappy jobs, or you can't afford to hire them. Robots however, only drive costs down. Economic development multiplies labour, so it takes less work to produce the same output. You just have more time on your hands to think big ideas. With universal hands-off automation, demand for labour is almost non existent, but supply is only limited by the mass of the solar system. You can't get work, but everything is free. Computer: tea: earl grey: hot.
404: sig not found.
$400 per hour is insane. It's about time AI drove these prices down. I bet you're going to see a ton of complaining in the future: "how am I supposed to live with less than $400/hour? Who's going to pay for my Porsche?".
Well, I think the line goes:
"The first thing we do is kill all the robots."
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
Give us all a break. The guy who wrote that seems to fall in love with sociopaths and/or just manipulative bastards who connect the snippets of information here and there to impress others. Or perhaps he's just stupid. He even says:
Whatever. All the examples I've seen, or the stories I heard from people I know, are like these:
- Boss doesn't know what to do, gets advice from workfloor guy who knows what's best and how it all runs.
- Manager to do reorganisations for the above boss who left: The same.
- sociopathic boss likes to make herself look good, but doesn't know what's possible. Things go well, she did, badly, the employee is responsible.
The same morons (don't tell me they are smart, they are not, combining stuff, using the right quotes at the right time, is not being smart, that's basic stuff, once someone has identified the way to recognize what's important h can bluff himself into almost anything except when encoutering someone like me, as I look immediately through it all, I can do the same they can, but better and I am not a poser), get appointed to boards of other companies doing nothing to actually review, keeping their friend network intact, mutually appointing all of them to boards of all companies and even universities.
Other people can't deal with the stress? Give me a fooking break...
And if too many people can't handle it, get a board to make decisions instead of the current boards in most companies that are supposedly checking over the company which they in fact don't (they are just those cronies of other a-holes, appointing themselves all over the place), well, no more than coming to some meetings, enough to grab their over the top income for those few meetings they attend.
I've never heard of a high level boss who is reallly good at his job.
If it isn't insanely complicated, it must be because people are lazy. Blame the workers, that's the ticket.
hear! hear!
"Imagine you've spent three years in law school, two more years clerking, and the last decade trying to make partner â" and now here comes a machine that can do much of your $400-per-hour job faster, and for a fraction of the cost. What do you do now?"
Easy enough. You fall back to your second career choice: slaughtering kittens and puppy dogs in creative ways for Rule 34 sites.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
Imagine an America where 80% of the population is out of work or on minimum wage, because of people keep losing jobs, there will be no one to buy ipads, and the likes... businesses trying to save money so they can pay their executives more, or raise their stock price by a few points, are killing the economy for short term gain
To think that humanity's purpose is to sell their time for money is crap!
We are here to expand ourselves, in every conceivable way. The day when we all don't NEED to work will be a beautiful day for introspection and reflection indeed!
http://www.gibby.net.au
consider, even if it takes 4 machines to 1 cashier
they don't take breaks
they work from open to close
they don't take days off
a 24 hour store needs 168 hours per week in labor (not counting someone to cover breaks) at say, $10 an hour,+ 20% for employee tax markup that is 2,016 per week. $104,832 per year
4 machines at 30k, cost 120k
ten years? maybe two with maintenance & electricity and the technician to support them.
a store that's only open 8a-midnight reduces that by a third, so two and a half years
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
"Will robot workers give me cheaper access to services for which I currently get assraped by $400/hr profiteers?"
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Fifty guys used to come with sythes to cut the lawn. Now instead of fifty guys taking all day to cut one lawn we have one guy with a mower and weed eater doing many lawns in a single day. Buy we are learning that certain low paid jobs require quite a few skills while some higher paid positions easily yield to robotics.
And robots are not the only path to labor elimination. The common cell phone costs millions of women their jobs. The small contractor either had to marry or have a girl to answer the phones, take messages and keep track of purchasing etc.. Now a cell phone replaces many tasks and hand held units take care of the rest of the tasks they used to do. Over the road and taxi types drivers will soon be eliminated by robots completely. Construction workers that build single family homes will take a huge hit as well. People need to get the message. Technology is all about replacing human effort. Even actors will soon be eliminated as well demonstrated by an animated John Candy finishing a film well after his death. Yes, we can bring Elvis back from the grave so well that the audience won't be able to tell the difference. Cost control is the obstacle and the cost is coming down for these technologies every day.
But how would I find legal representation to start? Wouldn't my Robotic Lawyer have to recues itself from my lawsuit since he himself displaced a human worker?
-- No matter how great your triumphs or how tragic your defeats, approximately one billion Chinese couldn't care less.
Its far more than the cost of labor. When a country is manipulating its currency to an artificially low level then everything paid for in that country is cheaper.
When labour is out-sourced, money moves from a wealthier country to a poorer one. Eventually, they don't want your crappy jobs, or you can't afford to hire them. Robots however, only drive costs down. Economic development multiplies labour, so it takes less work to produce the same output. You just have more time on your hands to think big ideas. With universal hands-off automation, demand for labour is almost non existent, but supply is only limited by the mass of the solar system. You can't get work, but everything is free. Computer: tea: earl grey: hot.
Most people aren't as well educated as the average /. reader and these changes won't happen overnight. Displaced people will need to find something to do in the interim between losing their job and the automated utopia. And the point of my first comment is that angry, uneducated people tend to react very, very badly when you take away something that 'belonged' to them. What happens if you piss off millions of people? Even on ST before the universal replicator there was a last world war that nearly wiped off humankind.
+Raider of the lost BBS
The article doesn't contain what the /. summary says it contains. The article is actually a come-on for a promised series of blog entries which are supposed to substantiate the claims it makes. The article claims that within about 20 years (i.e., soon enough to "steal your job"), a whole bunch of intellectually demanding professions (including writing magazine articles and doing scientific research) will be automated. It offers no evidence for that claim. Maybe he believes that strong AI is coming within 20 years. Maybe he believes that computers can do these jobs without strong AI. Neither of those predictions seems plausible to me, and since he doesn't give the slightest hint of what he has in mind, there's not much to discuss.
Find free books.
How does "counting your pills" fit into that list? I've long wondered why there are pharmacy techs at all. Robots can fill my cup of soda up at the McDonald's drive-through and mostly pack my order from Amazon.com, but somehow the electronic prescriptions can't be more accurately dispensed by robots? Sure, I'd prefer to have a pharmacist double-checking what was dispensed and letting me know if there are known drug interactions, but there's no reason to pay a person to count the pills out. And yes, I know that the computer already identifies potential drug interactions if you get everything at one place, but there's some interpretation to be done - "this isn't real likely, and this one's really just a problem for the elderly". Also, "which of these prescriptions doesn't have the red dye which will make me break out in a full-body rash?" But I'd love for the robot to just count out the pills and hand them to the pharmacist for inspection instead of being told that I have to come back in an hour so they can put a sticker on the box that the drug comes in.
Side note on why I'd like the extra double-check. A pharmacist caught an order-of-magnitude error on my wife's prescription for some vicodin which would've put her to sleep permanently had she taken it. A machine probably won't be double-checking someone's mass before dispensing. I guess it could, but people get worried about disclosing their weight. The pharmacist can easily see that she only weighs a little over 100 lbs, as opposed to someone who, I guess, would have to weigh closer to 1000 lbs. :)
(Laws | Contracts) are just a set of rules that may have been codified in a sloppy fashion which allows a number of implicit logic errors to slip through as there is no formal testing.
I have worked in areas related to encoding acts of legislation and regulation into chunks of DSL for processing by a rule engine. It was easier than I expected, but was not without challenges.
When compared to normal business process automation, at least laws have a specific definition(s) for every term already defined as well as specific outcomes; whereas the agony of throwing BAs at interpreting a business function that is poorly defined and without any specific outcomes can be a nightmare.
Imagine the first inroads are as supplementary tools to identify legal loopholes and gaps(the implicit logic errors when the rules are combined).
In terms of writing contracts, this has already been heavily automated; remember EDI, umm, trading systems, electronic purchasing?
Judiciary bodies already use software that highlight variations in sentencing whilst guiding judges and magistrates on a range of factors that determined previous sentence ranges(precedents).
If you've trained that long and that hard and are indeed that much of an expert, you'll program the machine. It's that simple.
You needn't learn something only to do it eighty times a day for eighty years. Much like a toy developer doesn't build each and every toy. You build an assembly line that builds the toy for you. Sure that assembly line may have humans on it, but that's got nothing to do with the toy developer himself. Same goes for everything else. Just because no one's automated legal services yet, doesn't mean that they shoulcouldn't have done so; it just wasn't practical to do so -- now it is.
Move on to bigger and better things. Stop wasting your time doing the same thing over and over again. That's what machines are for.
What do you do now?
You get your law school buddies on the phone. One of them knows alumni who are lobbying in DC. You get them to write a law making it illegal to dispense robot-assisted legal services. To, ya know, protect the public. Then you slip the law as an amendment into the Turnip Calibration and Uniformization Act of 2012, and important 450-page text regulating the color, texture, size and water content of turnip for sale in the US that will be passed at 3 AM during the electoral campaign, and that nobody will bother to touch, much less read.
If you think I am joking, look at the way the MAFIAA got artists to work for free: they slipped an amendment in the Satellite Home Viewer Improvement Act of 1999 that turns most new recordings into work-for-hire jobs where the studio owns the copyright.
The exact same thing happened when will-writing software started to appear. The call to ban was not very effective -- only family law practitioners were threatened, after all. But if you threaten the very income of trial lawyers, they'll be surprisingly effective at quashing the threat.
--
Mad science! Robots! Underwear! Cute girls! Full comic online! http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/
All this will do, long term, is concentrate power. Despite what people tell you, there are very, very few truly "exceptional" people. Those at the top will mostly get there (and stay there) through cronyism and nepotism and, later, most likely solely through nepotism. The people at the top will be those who control the design, production, and utilization of these technologies. In the
In the short term, we will have a lot of people out of jobs. Jobs will get sent overseas, until that becomes not profitable enough. They'll be shipped elsewhere, and then elsewhere again. Then, machines will do it as world economies equalize and a dollar is a yuan is a euro, and there are no more capable, trainable populaces. The poor regions of the world will get poorer and the average regions of the world will as well. The rich nations will highly polarize, and the only significant portion of the populace actually still working - and working their asses off - will be those who know, or are sufficiently able to convince their 'superiors' that they know - how to maintain these systems.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
But did you know?
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
obligatory Bill Burr? It's all funny, but you gotta go to 2:10 to get the part related to self checkouts.
If what I just said sounded like a troll, it was probably just a failed attempt at humor.
Obligatory Bill Burr? It's all funny, but you gotta go to 2:10 to get the part related to self checkouts.
If what I just said sounded like a troll, it was probably just a failed attempt at humor.
That's when you go on a robot killing rampage. You won't make much of a difference, but at least you'll feel better about yourself in the end. What's the worst that can happen?
This signature has Super Cow Powers
Up until the machines become intelligent (perhaps self-ware too) to the point of re-writing and optimizing their own AI. Basically they become self-sufficent and thus direct competitors to all but those that own the rights to its intellectual property and royalties. Basically you now have government sponsored lordships of the machines reaping oodles wealth they create. There will be no middle class left. Just a few uber wealthy with the rest of society very very poor. Now while even the poor would live a rich material lifestyle thanks to the tireless working machines, we would have very little political rights and privileges over the wealthy elite.
So the question to be asked is this scenario. Will material distraction be enough to keep people from focusing on self determination and intellectual freedoms?
Life is not for the lazy.
But that's not robot labor. You are doing the same thing the store clerk would be doing, so it's really about moving labor away from the store and into the customer, which when you put it like that doesn't sound so great for the customer. Robot labor would be if you just walked through the exit and the store would automatically have scanned your bags and your cell phone and charged you the right amount through that. The receipt would then be on your cell phone and you could take it somewhere to clear up any errors. I don't use self serve, but if they could make real robot labor like that work out well, that would be awesome. Even more awesome would be Amazon.com with Prime for groceries at low price.
This article sounds as realistic as one of my high school teachers that claimed that by the year 2000 we would have flying cars, under the sea cities and commercial operations on the moon. A decade later, I'm still trying to find a way to buy a flying car.....
Like you say, it won't happen overnight. Progress will be slow enough for people to adjust to it. Plenty of innovations have meant unemployment for many, but we've gotten over it. I don't think many in industrialized nations would like to go back to cutting wheat with a scythe and grinding flour with a big rock, or spinning thread and weaving cloth. We have better things to do now.
404: sig not found.
Option 2 involves creating a new ruling class over the previous. What new jobs are these people at the top going to do? and are the people being replaced by machines capable of handling the next level up?
Rocket Surgeon.
I know that someone has to build those robots, and someone else has to create the control software for those robots, and someone else has to provide the knowledge for those robots, and someone else has to maintain those robots, and if factory robots then someone else has to design the stuff those robots build, and someone else has to oversee and control those robots, ..., point is, there'll be always jobs, you just have to find and adapt.
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
But that's not robot labor. You are doing the same thing the store clerk would be doing, so it's really about moving labor away from the store and into the customer, which when you put it like that doesn't sound so great for the customer.
The machine is doing the calculation and keeping you honest. So the labour that would have been done by a clerk is divided between yourself and the machine.
I also hate self checkout but where I live it's become impractical to avoid. 20 minute wait vs 2 minutes every time is not acceptable.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
SUE!
No. How old are you?
Anything from Buffy or with Natalie Portman?
We invented money, so that people would step up to clean sewers, build shit they didn't want to build out of themselves, etc.
So when we can have robots do all the shitwork for us, we can scrap money and start thinking about the future.
What if everybody could just persue their dreams? Think of it as "I want to make my own OS", "I want to solve environmental issues" and "I want to be the next Mozart".
We don't need the money. Likewise that also scraps communism and all these derivatives, if that's what you're thinking...
Let's all freaking evolve our society into something worth living for!
Here be signatures
I don't see the big problem. The more robots can automate, the cheaper things get and the less money we need and hence the less we need to work.
Today's stock market is mainly ruled by automatic trading in the milliseconds.
So that's robots too.
And when the market starts to move, suddenly all silly automatic trading machines fire off, at the same time, running the stock market against the wall.
But we don't learn.
First we kill our finance system with computers
What's next? Public transport?
Or maybe health care.
Very probably the army. Hello Skynet!
Atari rules... ermm... ruled.
Not everyone is mental - a lot of people are physical and the last thing they want to do is sit around all day blue skying. Whats more a substantial proportion of the population define themselves by their job - take that away and they have very little purpose in their lives or even none at all.
I suspect you must be young , no one with any life experience would have made the statement you did.
Well, it sounds like they have managed to perfect the algorithms necessary to lie, cheat and steal. Soon robots will be our political overlords too. Is this bad science fiction actually coming true?
Legal systems are very badly constructed - after all, they are written by politicians. The problem is, if a system has even just one contradiction in it, then, by the principle of explosion, the whole system becomes contradictory, and you can come with legal reasonings that have different results for the same case. For any man tried, you can come up with a correct legal argument that makes him guilty, and another one that would show his innocence. This is why lawyers and judges have a sort of twisted logic to survive these contradictions, but this is very hard to teach to an AI. The only way I can think of is to let bots learn from previous cases but this would mean that we still would need humans for the robots to learn from.
R.U.R. is a 1920 science fiction play in the Czech language by Karel ÄOEapek. R.U.R. stands for Rossum's Universal Robots, an English phrase used as the subtitle in the Czech original.[1] It premiered in 1921 and introduced the word "robot" to the English language and to science fiction as a whole.
- the play was about robots basically taking over the world, not just taking over all productive work, but killing all humans.
We haven't gone too far in our understanding of these issues since the Capeks, have we?
Don't forget - the absolute worst thing that a businessman can do in USA or in any other Western nation is to become an employer, to hire somebody.
Once you hire somebody, you lose your rights. That's because the majority of voters are employees and employers are a minority, so politicians cater to the majority vote, and eventually this destroys the jobs, because hiring becomes prohibitively expensive, not from point of view of just salaries, but from point of view of all of the regulations and rules and all of the litigation that is going to be brought against you as an employer.
There will be no new jobs in USA as long as all of these rules exist, all of the litigation is possible, as long as employees get all of the rights and employers get all of the responsibilities.
So that's why there are fewer and fewer jobs - it's because cost of employment is competition not between workers, but it's competition between workers and capital.
As long as it is cheaper to build a machine to substitute work than to hire and employee, machines will be built.
This is true for everything, from assembly line work to phone answering, to cashiers and eventually to lawyers.
The best thing of-course would be to replace POLITICIANS with robots that at least could follow some set of rules and not only be interested in enriching themselves at the expense of the public good (and public good, as in general welfare, is about maximization of individual liberties and leveling of the playing field, but it's not about giving some more rights than others, it's not about providing special privileges in order to buy votes).
In reality the jobs in USA are disappearing and will continue disappearing not because of automation, but because of the political climate that is aimed at destruction of individual liberties and catering to the collective.
Of-course politicians cater to the collective in public, but in private they cater to a small number of private moneyed interests, which become your REAL owners. Presidents are just actors. Your real owners are a small number of corporations, that became monopolies/oligopolies, who are using this power to get themselves extremely rich by destroying real economy in this society that is dead set on destruction of individual liberties and free market capitalism.
You can't handle the truth.
I have some difficulty arguing against machines and robots, so long as they're ecologically friendly (renewably electric, no fossil fuels involved, etc.) But the question is valid... in a society that defines life by money, and money by labor, how is anyone to survive? The answer is to abandon those definitions, examine what human being truly needs not only to survive but to thrive, and organize civilization around that. Shelter? Healthy satisfying food? Productive activity? Relaxation? ... food production on earth is in serious trouble given the extraordinary burden seven billion inefficient souls place upon what little arable space we have... still, reorganization can make those souls more efficient, less stressed out and, frankly, less likely to breed (thus tapering off the dangers of overpopulation in the most kind of ways. (i.e., basically all post-industrial nations have stable or negative population trajectories.)
It's a common theme on /. to argue that people should be replaced by robots, especially in remedial jobs like working as a cashier. But don't forget: these low paying and easy jobs are responsible for a great number of people's income across all countries, and often the people working them are just not capable of "doing more."
So, there is already an unemployment problem in the U.S., and we have seen what kinds of issues this causes. What are we going to do when say, 20-40% of remedial jobs are cheaply replaced with robots, and we get a 40% unemployment rate? Can you imagine the kind of chaos that would cause?
There's no easy solution unfortunately, and we must not be arrogant and simply be flippant about the remedial jobs, saying things like "well do something better" because many of "us" hold highly educated positions. I say this because at the end of the day, having that kind of unemployment rate is a death sentence for all of us with the current government/economic setup, not just those who will be out of work.
I fucking hate self-checkout.
That brings me to an interesting point, / . is just "the ramblings of socially-inept, technology-literate news-mongers".
One of the sequences from Animatrix examines this problem and it turns out quite differently, more realistically I'd say. You should give it a watch...
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
No they won't. Why would they? Do you think that the people who are greedy assholes now will suddenly stop being greedy assholes just because all the work is done by robots rather than hirelings?
No, the poor will live in poverty, just like they do now. It's just that all the people who are middle-class now - in fact anyone who needs to work for a living - will be poor too.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
even writing stories far more expertly than this one
FTFY
There is no right to feel safe thru security vaudeville at the expense of everyone's freedom, privacy and tax money.
Uh...no. Money is not the only reason that robots are used in manufacturing. It's a big reason, but not the only. Robots work much faster than human beings. Robots are safer, they don't get injured, need workmans-comp insurance, etc. They don't form labor unions, they don't sue their employers...and above all, they are consistent. CONSISTENT. They can be relied upon. Not only to be at work, but to perform the same operations exactly the same way every time...the basis of quality.
We are on the verge of a new industrial (like) revolution. The production derived by each human being on the planet is about to multiply greatly...even if most of those humans are not directly involved. Lawyers cost too much because they place artificial barriers to entry to their field. Law is become a club, that without membership, a citizen cannot defend themselves. That's about to change.
This revolution will place an enormous strain on our current capitalistic economic system. Production will become "free" (ish). Costs will plummet, prices will plummet, wages will plummet, profits will disappear. What's to motivate people when they don't need a shitload of money to live like a king? Agricultural technology has developed in the United States to a point where a single human, perhaps aided by maintenance contractors or the like, can farm 2500 acres of land. Tractors can drive themselves...and they do this not because farmers are lazy, but to increase their yields because the computer is more efficient. The technology does make *some* stuff cheaper, but it makes other things just flat out *better*. I've seen a dairy barn that's completely automated, from milking to shit shoveling.
And speaking of farmers...yes, there are large "collective" farms, owned and worked by corporations, but many farms are still owned by individual families and are effectively "small businesses". They are on the bleeding edge of technology because they have to be. This mass production technology is no longer the sole domain of the rich. You'd be quite surprised what you can manufacture out of your garage and sell on the internet. No, you're probably not going to be making bulldozers...but you might be able to knock out wiring harnesses, or machined parts or circuit boards or any number of different things.
Wal-mart does not sell everything...not even close. There's tons of room for specialty products, especially as the public becomes more accustomed to waiting a day or two for delivery. Services like Fedex/7-11's drop of boxes will help this increase even more....and you're still not getting anything from China in less than a week...not without paying through the nose. Chinese workers may be getting paid nothing, but the fuel to ship across the Pacific isn't getting any cheaper.
I doubt the economy will hit a wall with this, but there is going to be MAJOR change in the next two decades.
I used to do some computer work for law firms and one day I asked about copyright and the idea of a "limited time". He said to me, and I quote verbatim, and will never forget this, "Unlimited is a limit." Totally straight face, no bullshit. Dude didn't have a funnybone anyway.
I, for one, will welcome our computer overlords...because right now, the Law is whatever-they-want-it-to-be.
Martin Ford has already written a book on these very subjects that many of you might find interesting. Perhaps even worthy of a Slashvertisement as a "book review"? The Lights in the Tunnel
Productivity has been rising in US society, like when better software tools help, say, human medical insurance claims processors be 10% more productive, or when we get other productivity improvements via robotics and other automation, voluntary social networks, or better design including government streamlining. If productivity rises, then in the absence of increased demand, employment goes down. Your statement assumes demand will rise faster than productivity. Most mainstream economists take that as an article of faith (since otherwise their fancy elegant equations suffer divide by zero errors). But we are not seeing increasing demand in the USA.
There are several reasons for this over the past few decades. Here are some of them:
* Environmentalism with a "reduce, reuse, recycle" ethic has reduced demand for many new things.
* A voluntary simplicity movement has reduced people's desire for more stuff.
* As people get enough material goods, they tend to move up Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs towards things like self-expression and self-actualization, which generally (not always) don't require too many personal material goods.
* There is a law of diminishing, and then even negative, returns to more goods and services. Too much clutter in our life makes us unhappy. Too many choices makes us stressed.
* Real wages in the USA have been flat for the past three or more decades while wealth concentrates upward due to supply and demand (too much cheap labor, including as women entered the workforce in big numbers). There were zero net jobs produced in the USA during the last decade, even as the US population grew significantly. Consumption of all the goods produced was supported by the wealthy 1% loaning workers the money that otherwise might have come from wages, but that credit bubble, driven in part by home mortgage refinancing, has popped (and we are about to see the student loan bubble do the same).
* The top 1% are now so wealthy they do not need to buy much physical stuff with their wealth. So, they put much of their cash into the "casino economy" (see Money as Debt II) of currency speculation, stock and land speculation, and so on, that neither creates real wealth or really consumes much of it. This creates a de facto currency crisis in the physical economy, just the same as if the wealthy had just burned all their dollars. Mainstream economists ignore this when they look at the total money supply, assuming that cash on these financial casino tables is the same as cash in the pocket of a middle class person.
* There is the usual fear/greed cycle coinciding with all this (but made worse by 9/11).
* There has been a simple accumulation of infrastructure and high quality long-lasting good-enough goods in the USA (so, when do we have enough?).
(Offshoring is a factor in all this, but is generally a red herring overall, since these trends will affect other countries soon enough, and are in Europe already as the OP mentioned.)
I have collected numerous possible solutions on my website: http://www.pdfernhout.net/
But in brief, solutions include some mix of a basic income, improved local subsistence by advanced technology like 3D printing and solar panels, a stronger gift economy, and participatory democratic planning.
People are making desperate appeals to improve the teaching of economics, but so for the mainstream economists have a monopolistic stranglehold on the profession (which is ultimately choking to death our society as these academic economics knowledge workers desperately fight to keep their own paid positions as professors despite their increasing obsolete knowledge and world views, since economics is the science of the management of scarcity and creation of artificial scarcity, not the creation and management of true abundance):
http://www.responsiblefinance.ch/appeal/
"The authors of this appeal are deeply concerned that more than three
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
I second that. After reading Hitch Hikers I have an irrational hatred of talking machines.
This was a bizarre, one-off niche-case where these workers were just standing in the way of progress. With the kind of talent and experience and connections it took to GET that education specialty in the first place, there is ZERO doubt in my mind that most of these individuals are going to find gainful employment elsewhere: maybe NOT at $400/hr.
There are millions of unemployed in this country - perhaps tens of thousands, even maybe hundreds of thousands, of educated, skilled, engineers who are in the $20-$80/hr range. They were standing in the way of progress too. Most of them fled to other fields. Teaching. Real-estate sales. IT. Other small-business. These people weren't really even replaced by "AI". They were made redundant by industry consolidation, and corrupt trade policy and labor practices.
I would be far more likely to feel sad for "my own kind", than for these elitist bourgeois "lawyers' assistants".
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
But that would be communism. And someone might get something they didn't deserve. We can't have that.
I remember one old discussion about being able to file your unemployment papers online, so you didn't actually need to go to the office. It was more efficient and thus cheaper, yet there were people arguing against that because unemployment should be nasty and degrading.
That is why this - and all other technological advances - that could turn this world to an utopia will instead make it a dystopia: we have too many people who are not even selfish and callous but malicious. Some people are willing to actually pay more for social services if that makes them nastier for the recipient. And they will block you from getting tea for free, even if that also means denying themselves free beer.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Bar them from the practice of law?
Each state's bar association has a monopoly on the practice of law within that state. (Yes, that's the term the courts use, we admit it's a monopoly.) Even LegalZoom is getting bent over in a few states for crossing the line between "offering you forms" and "telling you how to make a will." Anyone can do the former, but only lawyers are allowed to do the latter. We're very good at controlling access to the courts.
-GiH
I'd love to see this sector get displaced. They are the majority of people that believe all these unemployed people are just lazy. It will be nice for them to learn that a service at any price is a service unemployed people will never benefit from. Oh. And maybe they will see why the $1 menu is so attractive.
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
I think most comments so far are looking at it the wrong way. If robots and AI could really do all, and I mean every single one, of the jobs out there, then either
1) we'd have a full utopia -- or at least something like The Diamond Age; or
2) We'd come up with new jobs.
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
You are right that some of the labor is mechanized, which is also true when a store clerk does things. I feel for you if 20 minute waits is the norm.
They'll take their swimming pool full of beer on their private artificial island and like it. If it makes them feel better, I'll give them small metal discs in exchange for turning a crank or something.
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If you think a robot will replace a lawyer within the next 100 years, .it means is you do not understand what a laywer does. Lawyers, at least litigators, persuade juries and judges to their point of view. The idea that a robot will have an advantage here is laughable. HAHAHAHAHA.
If you're a low-wage lawyer reviewing documents in a big lawsuit, OCR and electronic documents and full-text search have already made you obsolete.
As one involved in medical profession, I am witnessing a slow but steady advance of robotic and similar "automatic"/"AI" technologies helping us more and more each year.
I for one, welcome the advent of robotic helpers in OR, ER, radiology or other part of medical profession.
I do believe it will take a decade or more before we can use automatic detection on our x-rays, CT/MRI scans or blood-work. But, to be honest, "robotic" or better said "automatic" diagnosing is already here.
Take a look at you ECG strip/record. It already contains an opinion of the machine.
There are several systems that can make a diagnosis from mammograms with better results than many overworked, underpaid, outsourced (or local) medical professionals (doctors).
These are just two examples, but use your search engines and find for yourself that there is a considerable number of independent (and other) groups that make great efforts to make a software that can give a diagnosis from images, samples or other information about your health.
It is just a matter of time when your portable sensor device, attached to skin or in your hand, will measure some molecules in your breath, sweat or blood, and offer an advice. It will be cheaper, it could not be fooled as easily, and it will be available anywhere, anytime.
Maybe I am dreaming, but take a good, long look at your mobile phone, and then replay to this post.
Doing a good job is like spilling coffee on a dark suit, you feel warm all over, but nobody notices.
This welcome intrusion means that I and the rest of the world will switch to a 4 day workweek, and eventually to a 3.5 day one.
One day less at a time.
And the robots will maintain the robots. Ad infinitely recursive
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
"With automated labor, humans can finally do what humans are best at: creating, exploring, asking questions, researching, discovering."
Right. How many people have the education and training to do that?
Now, how many people would rather just sit on the couch and watch American Idol, "reality" TV, and Fox News?
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
"Humans are creative, proactive, curious animals."
American Idol. Reality TV. Fox News.
I rest my case.
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
The article claims that within about 20 years (i.e., soon enough to "steal your job"), a whole bunch of intellectually demanding professions (including writing magazine articles and doing scientific research) will be automated. It offers no evidence for that claim. Maybe he believes that strong AI is coming within 20 years. Maybe he believes that computers can do these jobs without strong AI. Neither of those predictions seems plausible to me, and since he doesn't give the slightest hint of what he has in mind, there's not much to discuss.
The actual articles do not argue that robots will replace humans in every job. They do argue, that for high priced specialized jobs (pharmacists, medical doctors with narrow specialties, etc) there is financial incentive to automate, and that because the jobs are specialized they are ideal domains for robots or AI to intervene. I think if you read the following articles, the author isn't really claiming that we'll go from having 10,000 people employed in a certain job to 0, but rather that we'll go from 10,000 to 100, and that we'll find fewer people doing the job better than more ever did. This is almost certainly true, and consistent with all standard trends.
The only part that may be objectionable is whether or not the 9900 hypothetical people from above will be able to find other work to do. In short, is the innovation that causes new demand (new products people want) going to be able to keep ahead of the innovation that improves productivity (reducing employment necessary to meet supply). For hundreds of years, demand increased at pace with productivity. For the last decade, it hasn't. The question is, which of those trends will dominate over the coming century.