Rice Professor Predicts Humans Out of Work In 30 Years

kkleiner writes "Rice University professor Moshe Vardi has been evaluating technological progress in computer science and artificial intelligence and has recently concluded that robots will replace most, if not all, human labor by 2045, putting millions out of work. The issue is whether AI enables humans to do more or less. But perhaps the real question about technological unemployment of labor isn't 'How will people do nothing?' but 'What kind of work will they do instead?'"

Comments

Re:What? Again?

[Sir_Sri]

in the US, in 1900 41% of the labour was involved in agriculture, in 1930 it was 21.5%. Today it's between 2 and 3%. Europe is something similar.

And that's to say nothing of the 10's of millions of farm animals that worked in the same period and were replaced as well.

To an extent you're right though, people are still needed to oversee the robots, to replace and repair robots etc. The modern car factory even though it may have thousands of workers is very different than a car factory of thousands of workers before. That doesn't mean an end to work, it just means an end to a lot more manual work.

With opens then next possible revolution in industry. Customization. Rather than 10 different models of cars you can have 10 000 all for the same price and only a tiny marginal cost in deciding which one is best for you. That certainly happens now with cars, the marginal cost is just too high for a lot of it. But that will apply to a lot more goods likely, a lot more 'service' jobs that are are about deciding what you want the robots to do, and telling them how to do it, and fixing them when they fail.

Re:What? Again?

[ultranova]

This guy appeared who said that we would all be better off without millions of useless eaters. There were only 2.3 billion humans on the planet then. Today there are 7.1 billion.

Feel free to stop eating anytime.

The thing is, we can feed the "useless eaters". Most industrial countries struggle with agricultural overproduction, not famine. What actually ends up killing lots of people - and what ultimately causes famine in developing countries nowadays, too - are the socipaths. The kind of people talk about "useless eaters". You - the Hitlers, Stalins and Maos - of this world are the real threat, not the "welfare queens" who are perfectly happy if you give them food and a tv.

Now that we have 7.1 billion, and climbing, and the jobs for them are falling, what should we do exactly?

Learn to ignore monsters like you, so we can start actually solving our problems rather than blaming them on jews, the bourgeois, the educated, the welfare queens, or whatever.

Re:What? Again?

[LordLucless]

What the fuck is the problem with people like you? How can the world possibly support 7.1 billion people who need air conditioning, iPhones, and the right to reproduce as irresponsibly as possible?

Have you looked at what happens when people get air conditioning, iPhones and the right to reproduce? Generally, they stop reproducing so much. Once people no longer depend on subsistence farming, and modern medicine makes the infant mortality rate drop, people stop having so many kids. Most developed economies are struggling to maintain replacement-rate reproductive growth.

Re:What? Again?

[dryeo]

Were you alive and working in the '70s? In many ways things were better. There was enough work and even a minimum wage job could support me better then now when I make 2.5X minimum wage. Some of the toys now might be better and the big thing is that debt is available which is why the average person is in debt to their eyeballs.