45% of U.S. Jobs Vulnerable To Automation

An anonymous reader writes "A new report out of Oxford has found that the next 20 years will see 45% of America's workforce replaced by computerized automation. 'The authors believe this takeover will happen in two stages. First, computers will start replacing people in especially vulnerable fields like transportation/logistics, production labor, and administrative support. Jobs in services, sales, and construction may also be lost in this first stage. Then, the rate of replacement will slow down due to bottlenecks in harder-to-automate fields such engineering. This "technological plateau" will be followed by a second wave of computerization, dependent upon the development of good artificial intelligence. This could next put jobs in management, science and engineering, and the arts at risk.' 45% is a big number. Politicians have been yelling themselves hoarse over the jobs issue in this country for the past few years, and the current situation isn't anywhere near as bad. At what point will we start seeing legislation forbidding the automation of certain industries?"

Comments

My father once said...

[liamoohay]

My father, an early pioneer of automated teaching (and a teacher himself) once told me that computers would soon replace teachers and, he added, not long after that they would replace the students too.

AI and robotics and jobs

[fyngyrz]

Yep. When AI arrives, very few jobs (other than things like ambassador to AI or positions in Luddite cults) are likely to require a human. Whether AI will see fit to participate in our job market is not intuitively obvious, though. Still, with AI in place, lower level robotics should be quite sophisticated.

I've always thought that the current presumption that a job is required and inherently a good thing was an artifact of scarcity of labor. Remove the latter, and the former may well radically change.

Re:AI and robotics and jobs

[Psiren]

Sounds like you're describing Iain M. Banks' post-scarcity Culture (I'm sure there are other sci-fi examples). That can't really happen until we have an abundance of energy and the ability to manipulate matter to create any material goods we may require. I don't see that happening for another millennia or so, assuming we last that long.

Re: AI and robotics and jobs

[houghi]

What would people do without jobs?

Instead of having one person doing a 75 hour job and 2 people doing nothing, you could have 3 people doing 25 hour jobs. That way they still contribute AND have lots of time with friends and family and do whatever they desire.

In an ideal world, the way to pay this is by giving the money that is saved by giving the job to automation to the people who were doing the job in the first place.

However in the real world, we will have one person doing a 75 hour job and have no life and 2 people have nothing and ALSO have no life, just so the person owning it all get a little bit richer.

Re: AI and robotics and jobs

[sustik]

Most people around me suffer from not having enough time to spend it with their family or on vacation or persuing arts or be politically active etc. The latter is actually a serious problem. There are people who tell me they do not vote because they do not know who to vote for because they have no time to keep up with politics. And when they say that they do not mean the 1 minute sound bites from TV etc. but instead reading research papers and in-depth analysis; maybe a whole book about issues like education, poverty, competition, issues of governence or philoshophy.

Instead people spend time commuting to a job and overall more than *half* of their time awake time on a job. If you are an artist or researcher this may well be what you want to do, but I doubt this is the case for most.

Re:AI and robotics and jobs

[TheRaven64]

Sounds like the Brave New World solution is required. Stop demonising drugs, and make freely available drugs that give a sense of euphoria and lethargy. If people don't want to do anything with their lives other than take drugs, then let them get on with it in a non-destructive (to people other than themselves) way and remove themselves painlessly from the gene pool.

First place to an AI replacement

[MickyTheIdiot]

I think this isn't actually a troll... but a REAL posit...

The first jobs to go when there are jobs automatable by real AI should be legislatures.

Let a real intelegence that can't be biased by the current bullshit lobbying system write laws balanced for the common good of EVERYONE and reduce legislatures to one or two people per state as that can vote up or down.

Obviously lots of holes in that half baked idea, but our major societal problem in the U.S. is a lack of real leadership. If you make the leadership job simpler and not affected by the plauge of the lobbyist then maybe we can have a society that works for everyone and not just the select few that can PAY for their free speech.

Re:technocracy - the end of a monetary system?

[modmans2ndcoming]

The future is Communism! You let AI run the economy and the government commissions the investment in the building of the production plants, then people just get their stuff from the corner store using their pre-determined rations based on the AI computations.

you righties think being "slaves" to "socialists" like Obama is bad...wait until the first real AI production plant reduces labor costs to nothing and we see a run-away train toward this future where we are dependent on automated production to survive. you either follow the law or die of starvation because you have forgotten how to take care of yourself.