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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?"
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.
http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm
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The jobs of the future may be done by robots, but they'll need people to build and maintain those robots.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zYu1qW8Dctk
Blessed is he who expects the worst, for he shall not be disappointed.
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.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
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.
At what point will we start seeing legislation forbidding the automation of certain industries?
The day we can automatic politics . . .
:(
I vote to repeal the laws to protect all industrialists. Private property is an anachronism for people of low intelligence.
Unlikely, except as an interim stage. Even without AI, you can have general assembly and repair robots that are competent to build and repair, respectively, the same models as they are, as well as other models. With AI, all need for people in manufacture and repair is gone, and further, the robots can be built to be a lot more effective -- more arms, special effectors, built-in diagnostic tools, etc.
We're less than 100 years into computing systems, even less than that in the type of code required here. Significant changes are likely still in front of us, even in the relatively short term.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Wrong way around - make the remaining jobs more lucrative and reduce the work week. Cut the work week in half and you instantly almost double the number of jobs.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Cull all bright people. Intelligence produces the sort of civilisation which allows such concentrations of population, and the high number of people suffering as a result. If we were to administer an intelligence test and wipe the top 10% of people at each stage, nature would do the rest.
who's to manage?
On that note, Slashdot will not longer be taking submissions for stories or allow for user comments. Instead, machine learning bots will scan the web for content and natural language recognition bots will make witty comments and then debate them endlessly.
If you like spying on your own citizens, agencies and local security forces are hiring. Some people will not be happy with automation, that's where federal and local forces step in and squash any uprisings.
Robots will replace workers due to the nature of profits. Governments and social scientists should be working hard on redesiging society.
Good luck with that. If we don't do something about to domination of corporate money in U.S. government the "redesign" of society is going involve shooting the poor people and charging the government for the bullets.
Seriously... we are going to have even more problems with the low-skilled being automated out of a job over the next 50 years AT LEAST even assuming that A.I. will continue to never materialize. This would be less of a problem if the people were still represented in government. If poor have no seat at the tabe and the middle class are on the virge of losing their seat.
will produce goods and services to the majority of people who will be removed from the workforce by robots.
Anything wrong with that?
...and if we keep our ideals of "being on the government dole is evil/defective/makes you a bad person" eventually there will be a worldwide revolt.
The idea of the ever-decreasing work week is the best option.
Technology has brought so much efficiency, but as it stands, with our capitalist system, the majority of the benefit goes to super-rich who cannot possibly spend all that money. Pay is cut, jobs are cut, and people are demonized for being unemployed, even as we grow ever closer to full automtion of all work.
Imagine a world where there is only one job. Only one...
should the only person with a job get all the money in the world? or...something else.
The jobs of the future may be done by robots, but they'll need people to build and maintain those robots.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zYu1qW8Dctk
But it's not one to one. Meaning, you don't need one person to build one robot and you don't need one person to one robot for maintenance. And we have robots building other robots - who needs people?
See, in the past, automation increased a worker's productivity - it didn't replace them because you still needed some sort of intelligence for manage the operation.
Now computers supply the intelligence. And they've gotten so easy to program their operations (no coding is necessary because you just need someone to "show" the robot how to do the operation by moving it's arms). I'm not talking about the OS, of course. That just took a handful of people.
The trends over the years have SHOWN that less and less workers AT ALL LEVELS are needed.
And that's where there's going to be some huge problems. Our economy isn't structured for masses of unemployed or leisure class (other than the folks with the capital [1%'ers]). We all can't go "up the food chain" because there just isn't that much room up there - abilities aside. There are a LOT of smart people in the World, but there isn't enough positions for all of them. Get it? It's a pyramid that's not getting bigger.
And this "get retrained" fantasy/platitude. As I have experienced, getting retrained is easy. It's getting hired that's the problem - employers demand the 4 years of experience. And then we're back to there's just so much room in an industry. Nurses are having a horrible time getting jobs - and there's supposed to be a shortage!
Our economy is going to go through some drastic changes.
I keep hearing the "economy isn't a fixed pie". True from a strict economic sense, BUT the pie isn't getting big enough to absorb the over supply of workers from: new ones entering, off shoring, automation, and old farts who can't afford to retire. We're are SEEING it in the employment numbers and the only reason they have improved is because people are LEAVING the workforce. (See the disability rolls.)
No sir, get Econ 101/102 out of your head. It's outdated economic theory.
Unfortunately we've got the classic "boy who cried wolf" scenario. When machines were replacing people in the 50s it was common to think everyone would be replaced. It didn't happen, because the machines replaced some people but still needed someone to run the machine. However, with advances in robotics we're going to start seeing the machine operators replaced. I expect within 10 years to see a fully automated car assembly line. So what happens to those people? Nothing, I guess. Those jobs won't come back and there won't be any jobs to replace them. We could just belittle them as "buggy whip makers" and say, "get educated so a robot can't replace you." But 1) there are only so many jobs for the educated, and 2) soon a lot of those jobs will be replaced too.
I'm always amazed by people who say, "get educated and you'll get a job" then turn around and complain, "why can't I find a job I've got a degree and experience!" I don't get how they square saying if some uneducated guy gets a degree he'll magically get a job. There's almost a million auto workers in the US. They lose their jobs then get an education. Do we need a million more teachers? A million more lawyers? A million more programmers? The job market is tight so where are these million educated workers going to go? "Get educated and you'll get a job" is such an easy answer when you don't think about it.
I was an attorney but then decided to do something else (great choice by the way). I expect a lot of mundane legal work to be automated within 10-15 years. First you'll see specialized paralegals do the work then second you'll see Google or LEXIS or West develop an automated system for them to use. Third you'll see that system be allowed for private use for a limited set of issues. What happens to those junior associates that used to do those cases? Do they all become partners? All start their own firms? No, they'll be out of a job. There isn't an infinite amount of jobs for law partners or law firms. We aren't in a situation like the industrial revolution or the 50s where machines helped streamline a process. Technology has advanced far enough to replace whole segments of work and render the worker unnecessary.
It's neither a good nor bad thing it just is. But we can't act like we've been here before. This isn't the Industrial Revolution Redux, it's the automation revolution. We've got to deal with it one way or another, and just saying "get another job" isn't going to work this time. It's taken more than 100 years, but the warning of "these jobs are gone and never coming back" is finally going to occur.
Assume you did that, AND everything went according to plan (no devastatingly bad trade wars, no reverse done by politicians). As a result, things will cost more, maybe even 30%-50% more, but that's a price we're willing to pay. Now all US manufacturing is in the US.
Suddenly, we are going to have a lot of illegal immigrants in the US, because there would be so many jobs, there wouldn't be enough people to fill them all. So ultimately you're either going to have immigrants taking the jobs here, or the factories will be moved out to where they are.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
As soon as they automate politics. That's when politicians will ban it.
I absolutely hate how people talk about the negatives of automation like somehow things are better when humans did all the menial tasks. I remember an old Russian video where a worker was winding a ball of yarn by hand. That is degrading. What is even more degrading is paying a bunch of foreign people a lot less to do manual (and meaningless) tasks to make cheap products and then ship them across the world. Even further degrading is the layers of bullshit we have decided to surround ourselves with in other professions that waste the hours in our days.
The problem is not that 'there will be fewer jobs.' The problem is not that 'there are not enough resources.' The problem is that the jobs and the resources are all allocated wrong. We could (at least in America) have 20-30 hour work weeks, plenty of family time, decent pay, and a low unemployment rate.. if a certain select few did not make ALL the money and take control of ALL the resources.
I am an automation programmer. I work to automate any task I can possibly automate. I do not feel bad about it. Any automation I create has to be maintained.
As far as legislation forbidding the automation of certain industries.. Since the US Government fucks up everything it touches, I believe it will work to create laws to forbid the jobs that should be automated and laws to automate the jobs that should be manual. For example, the NSA said it will fire 90% of sysadmins and replace them with automation. Anyone in IT knows that idea is 100% stupid. Another example is the rise of red light cameras everywhere. As subjective as it is to enforce the law, our wonderful government has decided to make it legal for robots to do that for us. And, since the US military is having trouble finding new hires that have zero morality, they are working to automate drone warfare also. Great..
So, anyway, what I mean to say is.. Automation itself is not bad. It's the way we're using it that will be bad. Instead of using it to free ourselves, we are using it to enslave ourselves.
--- We need more Ron Paul!
Don't we do all of this for survival purposes? If the development of such technology begins to hurt our ability to survive, what's the point? Who would develop the tech? Who would buy it? And ultimately, what government would allow it to get to that point?
I think one of two possibilities are possible. We will either get to the point the tech will find some equilibrium with the human economy, or we will get to the point that the government (especially if it remains a representative one) will step in and prevent further development of the tech. The outcome depends on the prevailing ideology of that country and just how bad it all gets. And even in the equilibrium scenario, I can see some grassroots pushback/rebellion. The only real winners in that case could be the super rich, and by that point people might be ready to shed blood over it.
Or maybe it won't be so dramatic. Poor working people managed to survive in the South before the 1860s. Do we really expect the machines of the future to outdo and be cheaper than the human slaves of the past? Menial labor is one thing... nobody really wants to do that anyway... but replacing the thinker seems kind of self defeating. Why are we even here if we're willing to replace everyone, including artists, engineers, and scientists with robots?
The thing is, automation makes peoples' lives easier. It means that less work has to be performed to get the same results.
A sensible response to the promise of automation is not to be a luddite and ban the practice, but to ensure the benefits of automation are widely-distributed. In short, the answer is to prevent the concentration of wealth (a problem we need to focus on right now whether or not the fears of automation are realized).
First, no trade wars, because there would be no trade. Internal economy. We have both abundant resources and a huge consuming base. Barriers up, both ways. You can't have a trade war if you aren't engaged in trade.
Second, protectionism will have to include hard borders -- no further immigration.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Don't you know beauty is in the eye of the becoder?
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
I grew up in Pittsburgh and remember when the steel jobs just went away. The air was cleaner, but the economy was anything but "green." Fortunately the Pittsburgh has recovered but the jobs shifted to the massive medical/research/college community. A few year later, in Akron, a staunchly pro-labor town, the plants just stopped production. Many engineers proclaimed, "We're engineers, we're safe." I saw the had writing in the wall once and I escaped into technology, for a while. (The plant is now a brown field and the few engineering jobs at that company have moved elsewhere.) While at the plant, I learned a bit of CAD, QA, FEA, statistical QA, vibration analysis, programming, etc. My next move was into writing for the trade press, in the early days of PC-based CAD (mid 1980's). I got paid to write about all the topics previously listed AND I was also paid to play with computers. This gave me a lot of career flexibility, as opposed to the folk who had retired in place.
The task of moving knowledge-base solutions into engineering was dropped when early AI attempts fared poorly. But the success of Watson, should make every engineer quake. The "engineering problem" can be succinctly described as making the best possible stuff with the fewest resources, the least possible effort, and have a low failure rate. This sounds like a computer-solvable problem to me. The STEM crisis may be avoided, but many folks will NOT like the result. There will only briefly be STEM jobs, due to automation. However , STEM may be one of the few professions where the end goal is to put all the profession out of work.
At what point will we start seeing legislation forbidding the automation of certain industries?
Never.
If governments had any interest whatsoever in protecting jobs there have been ample opportunities to stem the tide of automation over the last forty years, and they have done absolutely nothing. The ruins of Detroit and the death of unskilled on reasonable wages should demonstrate that point.
I say this all the time, but we have to start thinking about providing a reasonable standard of living to people who are automated out of a job. The situation as it stands is unacceptable, so what good is legislating against further automation going to do?
Better to deal with the root problem of providing people with income directly than a ridiculous sticking plaster solution where say, a further 10% of the workforce are chucked on the scrapheap (making unemployment 20%+ in a lot of places) instead of 20%. We've seen the sort of devastation and deprivation that 20%+ unemployment causes, are we really going to throw one in four or five people on the scrapheap in sacrifice of our outdated industrial age ideas?
What about the part where people are better off in lockup / prison? Or you have some people who are in a win - win place where they can steal what they need and if they get away with they win and if they get caught and got to jail / prison where the state gives what they need.
lol good luck on that
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
we need will need health care for all that is not tied to jobs if 45% of jobs will go a way and or we move to a systems where people only work about 20 hours a week.
What would the 3 Laws of Robotics look like in actual practice?
The 45% that will lose their jobs? Will be the ones that need a job.
Since 1980, the pay of Americans is not a variable that correlates to the increased income of Americans.
That's not very likely to change in our current political environment. Given that, how the hell are people going to live?
I am for adapting, but we political system in place for it to happen.
At least until we get strong AI, my job programming computers is safe.
The UAW (United Auto Workers) told the big car manufacturers back in the 80s that they could put as many robots on the line as they wanted, but to remember that robots don't buy cars.
HA! The captcha is "humanity".
Inevitable automation makes one wonder why so many countries become worried, when depopulation occurs within their borders. How can governments raise enough taxes to support a large military establishment and national healthcare, when 45% of the workforce become unemployed.
what about banning OT (other then in few limited cases) this will me salary pay may have to pay ot or have some like an 100K+ COL level before it can be used to work some over the OT level. also have an forced added pay level when some at 100K+col needs to work over 80 hours an week.
Let's also move the OT start level to 32 hours a week with OT OK to 40Hours and then after 40 start to limit it.
And the robots and AI won't only be able to, they'll also be better, faster, and cheaper than humans? They'll also require less infrastructure? They'll suddenly be able to build farms in the middle of no where out of nothing with no water, no power, and no roads? And it won't take everyone of us to manage this growing fleet of just-out-of-school autonomous tools? And we'll have the resources to power these things? Good luck with that. Oh, and it's going to be considered murder to destroy a robot?
Please, can't someone develop AI managers, politicians and lawyers?
I, for one, would welcome our robotic overlords. If they just got rid of those first.
brump bumb
My friend, you are already in prison. As are we all. We just don't know it.
There is a balancing point where people cannot afford to purchase which means companies don't sell and don't stay in business. Protecting these companies sort of prolongs it but eventually, there will be a natural reset where people find creative ways to do without. Once the companies close or limit their production, then competition from those creative people will start and it resumed Ad infinitum.
There will be hiccups and so on along the path. There might even be a revolt and the entire system crashed along the way too. But I think succeeding itself to death is defeated by the ability to continue operation along the current path. Companies exist to make money, if no one buys their products or services, they don't exist.
Id say its more like 70%.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
This entire discussion is based on a premise that is no longer true. Once upon a time, wealth was created solely by the performance of labor, the users of the means of production, by people, under the control of capital, the owners of the means of production. But now, wealth is mostly created by capital, either by manipulating the rules of society and of the economy, which is what banks and other financial institutions do, or by the performance of labor by automation. The relationship between the human laborer and the creation of wealth no longer matches the economic model in which people can pay for their living expenses solely through the wages paid to them for that labor.
The solutions that are being offered by governments in the thrall of capital are inappropriate to the reality in which people now live. Wealth derived without the participation of labor is being hoarded by capital. This is the core of the problem. Until and unless that wealth is used to enable people to purchase the products created without their participation, this situation cannot be resolved.
Capital has used the for-profit banking system to control governments and people to their own benefit. Debt money loaded to nations at compounded interest can never pay that debt, because the value of the interest demanded was never introduced into the economy. It's a broken system. Technical people who understand logic ought to be able to work through the math of this, and the network of interactions, to satisfy themselves that this is so. We should also be able to design a better system, rather than argue over how to kludge a fix that can only hide the real problem for a short time.
Debt money LOANED to nations...
First, no trade wars, because there would be no trade. Internal economy. We have both abundant resources and a huge consuming base. Barriers up, both ways. You can't have a trade war if you aren't engaged in trade.
Second, protectionism will have to include hard borders -- no further immigration.
If we suddenly stopped buying from or selling to the Chinese, they would suddenly find themselves with absolutely no incentive to help us maintain our way of life. The single biggest deterrent we have to war with China is the fact that our economies are so intertwined. If we stop trading with them, our economy collapses, but so does theirs. Next thing you know, the Chinese government calls all of our debts, and when we fail to pay, they declare war.
I wish I had a good sig, but all the good ones are copyrighted
If you must keep your freemarket religion at all cost... the costs are going to get too high for an increasing number of people. Capitalism can go too far. It naturally corrupts and the LAST thing it does is employ people. Now maybe you grew up on the Jetson's and think there will be jobs fixing robots or pushing start buttons and helping computers make decisions... and you'd be up in the clouds with that cartoon.
Economics is going to have to change fundamentally... but it'll likely take WW4 with billions more suffering and dying before people are willing to break from traditional beliefs. Even the optimistic Star Trek series charted a dismal early future for us.
Remember the 50s? space age etc? We are supposed to be working 30 hours per week but instead we work MORE hours than a farmer did before the industrial revolution. Our work is also meaningless, most don't do anything meaningful for a living (go ahead and rationalize if it makes you feel better.)
I had an automation project with the local university started and all of us stopped it because it would make 3rd world agriculture cheaply automated. Yeah, we would have solved fully automated farming (it wasn't some ploy topic for students like all other such projects.)
The other issue nobody touches is overpopulation. people selfishly banging out brats who consume more resources and want even more than their parents. 1/3 is in poverty already (it's easy to raise that up to 2/3.)
Some people would argue that Nuclear physics is not bad; but some also regret giving us the bomb. Military automation = skynet.... kind of sad we must resort to shallow movie references to convey an issue with it.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
How will I pay for my material things? Why would someone invest money into building and operate a factory of robots only to give away free snorkles and swimfins?
You imply some kind of utopia on the horizon, but I fail to see a path leading there.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
It's about food an shelter. In Rural areas it's pretty straight forward; in a population of 20 million, logistics are un-ignorable. It might be a good time to start considering marginalizing of the Gravity Well? I don't think that job will get automated
Or to translate into common sense.
US economy can get 45% larger using automation.
Trust The Computer, The Computer is your friend.
Actually this might be humanities 'saving grace'. With all the 'excess' people gone, there might still be things like wildlife. If game weren't owned by the nobility, then the middle ages would likely have seen the end of game. Humans might be displaced by machines in the same kind of way the natives were displaced by the technologically superior white interlopers. Of course there will be a few humans running things for a while at least until a monopoly vertically integrates everything, and the last human who runs it all dies once their family becomes too inbred to reproduce.
...
With a 3D Printer, all manufacturing is done in my shed; who needs a Robot?
The Luddites failed and that was a good thing but if 45% of jobs go to machines, what will all that gun-toting population do?
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
That will be great if it happens
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
They can't call our debts. Bonds have maturation periods. Furthermore, even if the US did have to pay back the entire debt at once, they could do so because it is denominated in dollars and we can print as many as we want.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
In an economic sense productivity amounts to what capital you employ. You can sit on your ass and collect interest and be productive. Unproductive means poor.
...
I used to think like this, but that was before I had a job at a major mail order prescription company.
Middle management tried to impress upper management by purchasing a one million dollar automated packing system, in theory it could do thousands of orders a day.
Far outclassing a single human packer at a packing station.
It only did that occasionally, why?
It was a dumb automated machine, ONE little deviation and it stopped working.
This was on top of other stuff on it not working like printing the wrong order's paper work, it throwing a fit if the rx's did not come down the line in the exact order it expected.
It also did not care if for instance the printers messed up, or the paper came out non flat causing the grabber arm to get it stuck on it.
This is the general problem with automation fantasies, physicly it may be possible to replace the human doing the job with a machine.
But the machine is no where near as fault tolerant as a human.
If one of these machines encounters a minor error such as product being out of order, or objects not being 'exactly' where it expects it to be, they stop at best and at worst ignoring it causing more problems.
For a human worker it's just a fraction of a second routine correction.
Why is management in the second wave? I'm pretty sure you could replace them(or at least upper management) with a Magic 8 Ball right now.
Let a real intelegence that can't be biased by the current bullshit lobbying system write laws balanced for the common good of EVERYONE
You do understand that the system you propose will be defined and limited by the values of its programmers? That the geek carries his own load of bullshit into politics?
Although automation also inherently shifts political power in a few ways (making it easier to concentrate wealth at first like Marshall Brain talks about). If we keep capitalism, we'll probably need a "basic income" for it to keep working (other than pointless mandated make-work), We can also strengthen the gift economy, the subsistence economy, and the democratically planned economy. See my website for related ideas, especially this:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/beyond-a-jobless-recovery-knol.html
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
no, sexbot already exist, just not common yet
automation of the human brain will be last
Where the hell is my extended paid vacation?
What is the point of automation if not to provide am improved life experience?
Problem solved.
Montly "Social Security" payments from birth: http://www.basicincome.org/bien/aboutbasicincome.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income
http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm
Also, to echo your point on "family", raising children well can easily take as much effort as most adults can put into it... And the solar system could support quadrillions of humans in high-tech style in space habitats.
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Slashdot's admins haven't done any work in several years.
#DeleteChrome
I write on my personal website about similar themes related to automation and distribution. A "basic income" is one way forward, as is expanding the gift economy, improving local subsistence (maybe via your 3D printers and energy devices and also gardening robots), and/or better democratically planned economics. While you say "the only way to solve this is individual action", and that is true to some point because individuals (or small groups as Margaret Mead said) can make a big difference, ultimately politics like for a "basic income" is about collective action by millions as far as voting and such.
Note also that "natural selection" can select towards cooperation in various situations.
See also James P. Hogan's "Voyage from Yesterear" for one alternative vision, where human competitive inclinations are redirected towards excellence and gift-giving. See also the "Potlatch" for a historical example of a gift economy in North America (which according to the Wikipedia article politicians tried to stamp out as "uncivilized").
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
The trend for the last 250 years has been for machines to do more and more menial labor. That process creates jobs like web developer, auto mechanic, and cable TV tech. Most of us work in jobs that didn't exist 100 years ago. Machines now do the jobs like "seamstress" and "cotton picker", humans do "biomedical engineer". I'm glad. I'd rather do software engineering than pick cotton.
Apparently 45% of our dogs are also susceptible to being taken over by robots: http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/13/09/14/1224222/dogs-love-robots-prefer-humans
Reduce the work week, and then ultimately make work like jury duty:
"Hey Ralph, I almost had to take a patrol last week, but when I checked in they said there were enough officers".
"Yeah, I went in to maintain my quals for extra pay last week, but they said it'd be unlikely I'd be called in for code review or bug-fixing anytime soon".
"Pass me another one of those worms, I think the fish ate it off the hook again".
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Looking through my thumb and forefinger put together in a circle.
"Be seeing you"
"At what point will we start seeing legislation forbidding the automation of certain industries?"? We won't. The decision on automation will be put squarely in the greedy, greasy palms of business owners and administrative bean-counters, who will see only the bottom line, while leaving the rest of us to fend for ourselves, widening even further the gap between the very rich and the very poor. Politics, being increasingly money-driven, will do what it does now, ie listening to the money and allowing those "who know their industries" to write the legislation, rubber-stamping it as "good for the country" and blaming whatever wash-out echelon it creates for any inconvenient issues... such as the customer base able to purchase whatever product it happens to be. Prices will drop, since automation will do it better/faster/cheaper, still leaving truckloads of profit for the big-wigs while the rest of us collect bottles and cans from the side of the highway for a living. Of course, before too long, THAT will become a crime too. Now that I've spread a little joy, time to move along. ;)
One factor that's often overlooked, is that the jobs themselves were changed so they could be automated.
Human run factory lines were made to have utterly no variation in the parts, products, or in the movements needed. The decisions that needed to be made during manufacture were weeded out. i.e. We'll do it this way as it always works the same rather than this other method that is more efficient but requires a human decision because it works only part of the time.
An example would be the construction industry. Right now, automation would be very difficult. But that's because of all the variation in the buildings the ground under them, and the area where they are built (sewer hookup on the north one place, on the south in another, etc.). You could redesign the buildings and the cities so you could automate building them, but you'd have to change the expectations of the customers to allow it. In that, you've changed the job, not just automated it.
Now is the time to recognize that a job should not be the sole determining factor of human worth in a capitalist society.
There will be far more than enough wealth generation to provide every person in this country a basic minimum income capable of covering housing, food, transportation and basic utilities/connectivity plus a modest surplus for psychological needs such as clothing or occasional entertainment. Add socialized healthcare and education to that and you have the workings of practical utopia.
There would be no need for a minimum wage any more, the basic income provides that. With enough automation, work could become entirely voluntary, rather than a prerequisite for survival. Perhaps a lot of people will choose not to work at all. But most people will not be satisfied with the bare necessities, they will work to acquire luxury goods and services.
It's the moderately intelligent that are the problem. They're the ones that serve their less intelligent upper class masters to prop up the consumer economy. Who's building all this technology and keeping all these idiots alive? It's not the most intelligent of us. We're not the ones breeding and spending our mental effort on designing consumer products for idiots.
I'm thinking America (the US) is going to have a particularly hard time making a change to a post-labor-scarcity society.
We havn't even managed to give ourselves reasonable annual vacation times, and being unemployed is a huge social stigma, along with the whole government 'handout' hate; and a large number of cold war leftovers at peak voting age who think 'Socialism' is a dirty word.
No, productivity to the result of labor alone. Someone who can "sit on your ass and collect interest" is not productive, but a leach on the productivity of others.
and if you don't have a job you don't have money, and no money means no food
No, nobody producing food means no food. Don't drag money into this we don't need it. The average person just need to evolve to a high enough level first.
This is a working paper by two guys. "Working paper" means it has not undergone any kind of review. The paper itself does not appear to be online.
Osborne's cv is here: http://www.robots.ox.ac.uk/~mosb/MAOsborne.pdf Can anyone find Frey's CV?
I see no point saying more without being able to read the paper, but I can't help notice the weasel words "at risk" in the published summary.
At that point, it would be better to throw up your hands and admit that basic survival is a human right, and not tied to ones job. Then just give everyone a basic minimum income, enough to cover rent, food, utilities and transportation along with socializing health care and education.
The people who are bored if they don't work will still want to work. The people unsatisfied with the minimum will still want to work to access luxury goods and services. We can still have a merit based capitalist society, where the driven and capable far outstrip the lazy or weak. In fact, it would likely be a golden age of human productivity as people are more likely to pursue their greatest dreams rather than toil just to survive.
They can't call our debts. Bonds have maturation periods. Furthermore, even if the US did have to pay back the entire debt at once, they could do so because it is denominated in dollars and we can print as many as we want.
Go ahead and print 10 Trillion USD, and see how fast your own people revolt, never mind the Chinese.
I wish I had a good sig, but all the good ones are copyrighted
Why does this say "vulnerable" when it should be "can benefit from".
The ideal world is where NO HUMAN has jobs, the machines do everything, resources are thus managed efficiently and goods are plentiful, and thus you are free to spend your time as you please instead of filling someone else's pocketbook.
I used to be a time-travelling hitman, until they came out with these robots... Um, the CSM-101s... Now I'm out of a job... Hey buddy, can you spare a dime for a fella down on his luck????
(Note to NSA: I was not and am not a time-travelling hitman. The statement was made for the purposes of humour and in no way is a confession.)
That is why you change the economic system. Divorce survival from having a job and then a job becomes a means of pursuing your dreams instead of just putting food on your table or a roof over your head.
Yes, and more and better jobs will appear in sectors of the economy that we can't even imagine today, just like they always have.
If automation hadn't release large numbers of people from slaving in factories and on fields, people who are software engineers, game designers, yoga instructors, etc. would be forced to work in those jobs. We'd all be much worse off.
Hopefully never, because it's a extremely stupid idea. If you want people to do useless jobs, why even bother with that? Why not ensure that there are tons of jobs digging ditches and forbidding anything more complicated? That also eliminates inequality at the same time: everybody will be dirt poor.
You think the US owes China $10trillion?
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Technology companies like Google and Facebook already give us things for free. I imagine that some day maybe they'll do the same with tangible things like food or an apartment.
A Facebook account, though seemingly trivial, is wealth. Seeing and chatting with friends and families across the country is a benefit given us for free.
GMail is a form of wealth. So are the other free Google apps like Calendar and Drive.
Because they're software, if distributed across the world, the cost for Google and Facebook for each account approaches zero, but it is not free for them (R&D, hard drives, electricity, and so on). But I guess somehow they're making enough money with advertising to offset their costs and even make a nice profit.
I can imagine one day food and apartments and transportation will be given away for free by Farmoo, MyPlace, and CarsRUs, if we only put up with a little bit of advertising.
Or also like Google, Pandora, etc., the fees that some are willing to pay for premium services (fancier food, apartments, cars) may defray the costs of the basic costs for the rest of us.
We won't keep capitalism, the 1% will. They have all the power, and they don't give a crap what we think.
They never will.
And what is going to keep them in power? The police, the military? No, mindless entertainment will.
One part of the equation that people never raise is the scale of our ambition. They always assume that the scope of the things we need to do, or that we want to do, remains constant. The medieval man might well wonder why in the world he would want a vehicle that goes 70mph when everyone he knows or has ever known lives within an hour's walk of his home. It would boggle his mind that we should spend so much time and energy fretting about a retirement age of 65 when his forefathers and everyone he knows never made it past 45, except for that one dude named Methuselah. Or, more recently, a fellow with more money than all of us put together calmly assured us 640K of RAM ought to be enough for anybody. The point is, when we can do more we naturally tend to think bigger. And bigger ambitions means bigger jobs, because even with automation and everything else there is still only so much one human brain can hold, and inherent laziness and the desire to have one's cake and eat it too tend to hold our individual productivity well below that outer limit; so we tend to hire others to do part of the thinking/doing for us. Until there is AI, that will always be true. And even after AI, it might still be true because who's to say that AI will do what we tell it to, or that its calculated maximums equal our human ones?
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
Doesn't completely work. a small percentage of people can do that.
the problem becomes a lot of people just are not creative enough to do such things.
If I didn't have to work I know what i would do. I have a list. So does my sister. But we both have to work. the thing is most people don't have enough personal drive to do something they are not forced to do.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
The first is don't anticipate that AI to improve that quickly, they've been promising that for more than 40 years and still the AIs are veery limited.
The second is that in the more advanced the infrastructure and technology the native population decreases.
The third is that even though I am a conservative, I realise that socialism in some form is going to become more common with the demands for less government. Not the kind of socialism Obama pushes, but one starting at the middle class and going outward.
The fourth is that the labor week will generally be reduced. Can anyone say 20 hour work week?
The fifth is that this will lead to higher quality products that are more individualized. The extra capacity has to go somewhere.
The final thought is that it will all depend on what we do. This can be a great thing. Or there are people that believe no one should ever work that will let things go down hill. There are other people who will mess it up by insisting that everyone else work 60 hour weeks "for their own good". Both sides, or even the fight between both sides, can mess things up real good.
Yeah, but they are not sleasy enough.
Depends on just how automated things are. I would say that right now? It isn't really practical. But with another 45% automation things change. There just won't be enough work to go around.
Most people do have the drive to work towards having luxury goods and services, even if their basic needs are met.
Some people will drop out, satisfied by roof over their head, food in their stomach and an internet connection.
But I would bet that most of the things on your list of things to do when you have no work obligation will require something more than that. You may work less, or you may set your sights on higher goals. It would be your choice.
And besides that, there really are only two options. Live... Or die. Unless we divorce work and survival, when there is 45% less work, a major fraction of people will put in a non-survival position. AKA killed, be it by slow starvation or by actual violence. The reason for this is like you said, a lot of those jobs that are automated will not be replaced by similar jobs, and some fraction of those disenfranchised people will not be able to retrain to those creative jobs.
That's only half the problem. The other half are the Utopians.
You know, the ones that are killing businesses in their infancy because the bathroom mirrors are half an inch too high? Or require managers to spend hours a day filling out paperwork that will never be read to "ensure compliance" with various government mandates? Or require each and every business to keep a lawyer on retainer to make sure they don't trip over the inevitable arcane fine or lawsuit? Or how about the ones that wind up paying tons of money to a union, even if they had already been treating their workers well, and even if the workers don't want to unionize? (Unions often demand that worker pay drop to meet "industry standards" when this happens, by the way.)
These nimrods are true believers, though. There is no convincing them to focus on waste and abuse, because they see it absolutely everywhere they haven't caused it... and then proceed to introduce it everywhere in the name of whatever-makes-them-feel-self-righteous-today.
Remember, on the most fundamental level, economics is: people producing goods and services that other people are willing to trade for. There are a lot of very important ancillary bits, but it is production relative to desire that forms the backbone of economy.
You pointed out the greedy rich that take far more than their share off the top. These people need to be stopped. This pales in comparison, though, to the destruction of production that idealists without brains have caused, and are causing.
As I heard this week: In many things, including government, perfect is the enemy of good-enough. It is both unattainable, and will actively prevent that which is.
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
Isn't a big motivator for automation the fact that businesses need to cut costs right now, so if the economy was better employers would be in less of a hurry to automate even if the technology was available? Isn't a big cause of the US economy being bad the fact that it's much cheaper and easier to do business in China, a situation that's gradually changing? As Japan became rich, it invested much and hired many in the US. Will China do the same? Aren't there only so many US jobs that can be cut until companies no longer have customers?
Communism has failed everywhere where it was tried. Most remaining communists are people of low intelligence.
"we"
If wealth was really spread over , you could imagine a society where all is automated and people could have more free time. For example people work only 10-20 hours, for the same salary and power of buying. But this does not happen. people laid off by automation see their jobs class disappear like water on sand and most probably , while a few can retrain to something better, most can only find a lower paying job. And then it is the drop to the bottom rung. If you have 45% of what looks to be middle and low class job replaced by autmation, to WHOM are you getting to sell those ? BY that point that probably means 50% of the population will leave day to day without much wealth.
It is not a question of luddism, it is a question of greed. All those free hour liberated are not used to make the rest of the work force work less, and thus making palce for the liebrated job. They are used to make those job utterly 100% disappear. At some point society will break down and people will simply run amok killing anybody with a bit of wealth and pillaging around, because they will have absolutely nothing to lose.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
So you rebutted the "even if" but not the comments on your incorrect "they can call the debt". Shame, since failing to buy new debt has the same function (so much is constantly up and re-issued, that not buying has the same effect as calling).
Learn to love Alaska
A 3D printer is a robot. Most definitions of "robot" would include common things like printers, which make a physical outcome based on electronic inputs.
Learn to love Alaska
Good points, along the lines of books like "Brave New World" and "Amusing Ourselves to Death". Although it seems lots of systems link together to support power, so there is probably not just one, even if one may be stronger at one time.
The movie "Elysium" features security robots, for example. I envisioned something related here with robots enforcing the "rules":
"The Richest Man in the World: A parable about structural unemployment and a basic income"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p14bAe6AzhA
Marshall Brain talks about robots enforcing things in "Manna":
http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm
But right now, the laws the human police (and legal bureaucracies) enforce are created through political means: ...
http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica
"Q: So, who does rule America?
A: The owners and managers of large income-producing properties; i.e., the owners of corporations, banks, other financial institutions, and agri-businesses. But they have plenty of help from the managers and experts they hire.
Q: Then how do they rule?
A: That's a complicated story, but the short answer is through lobbying, open and direct involvement in general policy planning on the big issues, participation (in large part through campaign donations) in political campaigns and elections, and through appointments to key decision-making positions in government."
That said, perhaps the world will always be run by the "1%" who are paying attention in any community? Even those who showed up at "Occupy Wall Street" were, in a sense, part of a "1%"?
OWS's "We are the 99%" was actually a divisive slogan. A focus on increasing egalitarianism might have been better:
http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/oscomak/
Maybe the main issue is whether those who are paying attention have an egalitarian mindset to some degree, at least as far as distributing most of what nature and industry produces? If you look at Western Europe, there is a somewhat different sense of political and moral accountability among leadership. Granted, that is driven by a more active and aware populace building upon ideas from the USA's past: ... The Allies did it. This whole European model came, to some extent, from the New Deal. Our real history and tradition is what we created in Europe. Occupying Germany after WWII, the 1945 European constitutions, the UN Charter of Human Rights all came from Eleanor Roosevelt and the New Dealers. All of it got worked into the constitutions of Europe and helped shape their social democracies. It came from us. The papal encyclicals on labor, it came from the Americans."
http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2010/08/25/german_usa_working_life_ext2010
" How did Germany become such a great place to work in the first place?
Thus:
"How Germany Builds Twice as Many Cars as the U.S. While Paying Its Workers Twice as Much"
http://www.forbes.com/sites/frederickallen/2011/12/21/germany-builds-twice-as-many-cars-as-the-u-s-while-paying-its-auto-workers-twice-as-much/
"In 2010, Germany produced more than 5.5 million automobiles; the U.S produced 2.7 million. At the same time, the average auto worker in Germany made $67.14 per hour in salary in benefits; the average one in the U.S. made $33.77 per hour. Yet Germanyâ(TM)s big three car companies --- BMW, Daimler (Mercedes-Benz), and Volkswagen -- are very profitable."
That comes down somewhat to culture and mythology and the stories we (including the "1%") tell ourselves about who we are and who we want to be (and why).
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
For everyone that thinks we will have so much free time, or so many unemployed people. It may very well be that we will invent new jobs. Don't forget that we have already seen a huge boost in productivity in the last century. However we are not working less, if anything we are working more. Instead of one bread winner, we usually have two these days. For an interesting analyses that everyone who read this article should read, see this link: http://www.smh.com.au/national/public-service/the-modern-phenomenon-of-nonsense-jobs-20130831-2sy3j.html
Can do the rest so there now no one has a job, hope all you geeks are happy.
Not true, actually. Prior to WW1, the intellectual elite did not believe that future war was possible. Economies were too intertwined, and the financial interests of the wealthy would prevent all future conflict.
We see how well that turned out. The single biggest deterrent to war with China is that nobody, yet, has wanted to start one. Let's hope it stays that way.
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
Oh, we are. We're just trying to do it slowly to prevent the public from noticing.
US M1 money supply.
(If someone has a similar chart for M0, or MB, please link.)
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
... and the last human who runs it all dies once their family becomes too inbred to reproduce.
Actually, that's not how genetics work. Inbreeding brings recessive variance to active use. Most such variance is detrimental, which is why inbreeding generally leads to physical, mental, and emotional developmental problems. In other words, we don't do it because we don't want to see our children suffer.
In the long run, though, natural selection weeds out the worst of these and the population continues, albeit with less genetic drift. (not recommending it, but it wouldn't be the end of the species, as you seem to claim)
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
Some Sci Fi has speculated that people will mostly not HAVE to work to have abundant goods and services. That future may be at hand. It's a good thing!
What is needed are: (1) Continuing encouragement to those who are able and willing to advance or maintain this state of affairs; (2) reasonable re-distribution for all others; (3) sea change in how we look at work - from a prerequisite for having stuff, to a matter of having an option to be useful to others for purposes of dignity and possibly access to the latest and greatest.
We've seen the sort of devastation and deprivation that 20%+ unemployment causes, are we really going to throw one in four or five people on the scrapheap in sacrifice of our outdated industrial age ideas?
Yes
The best thing about UDP jokes is I don't care if you get them or not
" 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?""
Given how efficient Congress is now and how many holidays the new GOP management is taking to handle the workload, I predict that Congress will be the last industry to be replaced by AI. Besides, it boggles the mind to imagine constructing a machine that dysfunctional.
It's amazing what can be automated.
The sad part about that, is that it is not going to make you work 2-3 hours a day and having a better life. This will lead to the greedy making more and throwing people on the street...
So technically on the long term you either code AI or you are a millionaire or you are FSCK'd...
Yes, well, when your in-garage 3d printer can make more than shapely lumps, as in, solid state integrated circuitry, working mechanicals, etc., such that you can (for instance) print something as complex as say, an R/c car, please let me know. In the meantime, your 3d printing does not stand as a general manufacturing capability.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
oh, look, how cute. a "-1, I disagree" mod.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Not arguing with your point but the way productivity is defined by economists, it is how much you produce with your labor, which of course depends on the capital you use. Since you are only one person you can only labor at most 24x7 if you were some kind of mutant that didn't require sleep, and could multitask while eating and using the bathroom.
You labor the same whether you use a hand shovel or a backhoe, but you are far more productive with the backhoe. However, 'being productive' doesn't somehow make you superior. For instance I hired someone with a backhoe to dig a trench after calculating that it would take me three months of digging with a shovel. Now, I've never used a backhoe, but I am sure that it would be quicker to learn even by trial and error than it would be to dig even a small amount of that trench with a spade.
And imagine how long it would take someone to scratch the trench out with no shovel but just a sharp stick!
...
Oh, I don't expect it to *happen*, I said it was what we needed. We're headed for a completely crashed economy. We're pretty far along already. Three million unemployed in the gulags, unemployable when they come out, and tens of millions more depending on the government for a dole of one type or another, already far exceeding said government's ability to deliver. Congress isn't going to do what's needed, they're already rich, and getting richer, off of destroying the country. The business sector is similarly engaged.
Nope, just making an observation. Y'all have inherited a broken economy, a corrupt political system, and a set of values that makes you mortally afraid to lift a finger against it all. It's fascinating to watch.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
If 45% of workers cannot live on their work anymore, I do not see how today's capitalism can sustain inside a democratic framework. People will vote to get a share of the wealth, the only outcome I see is a strong wealth redistribution system, or a dictatorial capitalist regime (i.e.: get rid of democracy).
The subject matter is by its nature incendiary. So, this is likely to another of those cases where discussion based on the paper's abstract is going to be a wee bit under informed. I poked around the Oxford Martin School's domain, but wasn't smart enough to dig up an on-line copy of the working paper... prolly just as well. I look forward to the published version.
I'll take a shot at working with what we've got:
- There has been massively disruptive technology in the past. We adjusted. How?
- The disruptive technology freed capital (human, raw inputs, financial) and added enough value that new economic niches developed.
- Broad example: farmers to industrial workers to service workers.
- The working paper seems to suggest that in addition to a continued reduction in human labor inputs per unit of industrial output, we'll see massive reductions per unit of services output.
- Where does the freed, excess capital get deployed next? What happens to the surplus value? We haven't a clue now, just as we didn't have a clue during the previous transitions.
- Past performance is no guarantee of future results.
Luke, help me take this mask off
When you did into the details, having a mass of jobless people cannot work with our current economic system.
Which is presumably why it would have to undergo massive changes.
Da derp dee derp da teedly derpee derpee dum. Rated PG-13.
You're one of the 1% on slashdot that actually has taken the time to stop reading SciFi comic books long enough to understand the issue. I'd love my Roomba to fix that leak under the sink, but first it has to figure out how to get out of the corner behind the sofa.
Sure, you can automate an iShinyToy factory that produces thousands of iShinyToys a day, eliminating almost every human in the place. But not one of those sophisticated machines is going to be able to reset the circuit breaker when the main fuse blows. You might not work at Apple again, but Joe's Plumbing will still be hiring for a long time.
Suppose automation brings manufacturing back to the U.S. What happens to all the Asian manufacturing countries who can't employ their people? I think the U.S. has a lot of figuring out to do to figure out how people can get along without jobs if automation can handle most of the labor, but I think the vacuum left in the export countries would be a more immediate problem.
Not that I'm against it. I've always thought robots doing all our work for us would be fabulous. I don't need a job to fulfill myself, but as of this moment I need one to feed, house and dress myself for about the next 10 years or so.
Welcome to 2013, time to pass some more stupid laws to protect those buggy whip makers.
Too late, that was 2008, when those failed banks, insurance companies and auto manufacturers were bailed out.
Capitalism operates through a process of creative destruction. Stop the destruction, and you lapse back into feudalism by way of fascism.
Let's take jobs that are vulnerable to being replaced by automation and make them more expensive by mandating high minimum wages and extensive "free" benefits.
Or, you know, revert taxes back to how they were under Reagan, spend a little less on Defense Contractors, and pay everybody a basic income.
this is a joke right? You assume that the progress is happening at the same pace everywhere and brings benefits the same way everybody which is not the case. how are you going to stop immigration is also interesting. It never worked except for extreme use of violence - NK is a good example because nobody wants to go there - problem indeed solved.
You forgot a word: yet.
See my comment above. All the technologies required for a room-painting robot exist and are being used commercially. They're just rather crude at this point, and no entrepreneur has yet seen the market opportunity given what there is.
As for bathrooms: if the incomes of the middle classes had kept up with productivity, there'd be a market for self-cleaning bathrooms. There are no technological road blocks.
The ultimate problem with automation at the level we're approaching is that no matter how much cheaper or reliably you can make stuff, if nobody can afford it, you CAN'T make it cheap enough. The engine which drives the economy is the purchasing power of the middle class. Automate too many people out of productive work without them having another way of earning a living and what you've done is to eliminate the market you sell your goods to.
I'm going to assume that you're aware that this is an oversimplification.
(Things get more complex in the EU, so I'm not positive that this is always the case.)
Governments don't take out loans. They sell bonds. Bonds have a face value, and a maturation date. Bonds sell for as high a value as they can fetch in the market place. The sales price reflects confidence in the agency's ability to pay-out at maturation. When bonds come due, governments sell more bonds, to pay off the old ones. Because bonds are payed out at face value, but don't sell for quite as much, they must either pay the difference, or issue more bonds to make up for it. Technically, there is no compound interest, but the effect is almost the same (follows the same mathematical rules). Perhaps the key difference is that the rate is not fixed, but floating, and is driven by some measure of perceived trustworthiness.
Bonds are the credit cards of government. And like credit cards, they allow both responsible use, and reckless spending. Governments that don't zero out their account periodically (pay off all bonds without fresh issuance) are living on credit. The end results are predictable, and tragic.
(Said as a resident of the State of California, where we too, are broke.)
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
I think everyone will agree that automation is good at it's core. We can discuss details or is it applied effectively enough to be economically reasonable in each scenario, but in the end, that's how our society has evolved, for better or worse.
So discussion is not about technical progress, but progress of society. In Capitalism it is clear and cut that such scenario will end in disaster - destroying so much paying jobs will bring down economy overnight. So society is lagging behind.
user@ubuntubox:~$ stfu This server is going down for shutdown NOW!
And when the singularity comes, 100% will be obsolete.
Which resolutely refuses modernization and sees itself as the employer of first and last recourse.
You have a great example when you mentioned "supermarket cashier". Cashiers ARE going the way of cotton pickers. Cotton pickers have been replaced by equipment operators who harvest 100 times as much cotton, sitting in an air conditioned cab making 50 times as much money.
A cashier used to type in prices. Machines took over that part of the job and the cashier would just point the UPC reader gun at the product, then count the money.That made cashiers faster and therefore more valuable. Next, the machines took over the gun part, so the cashie just passes the product over the machine and counts the money. Now, the machine counts the money, so one cashier can manage six checkout lanes, making them six times as productive and valuable. I note that here in Texas, cashiers now start at $11-$13 / hour. I'm pretty sure that's an improvement over the $4.25 they were paid a few years ago when they had to use the scanner gun on each item. Automation is here, and it's been good for cashiers.
I won't be me that tells ya. For me, a 3D Printer is like a wrench. I don't make wrenches, I use'em. I figure when someone figures out how to make a multi-headed 3D Printer that can create an object in a 3 meter cubed area, marketing will step in. Why 3 meters? It's the size of my shed.
That's just an engineering problem, it will be solved.
That's the smartest idea I've ever heard! You go first!
Offer people a moderately luxurious free ride in exchange for sterilization.
As technology grows so does the capability to automate almost any tast, I doubt it will be only at 45% in 20 years as I really suspect that it will be closer to double that or 90% as manufacturers are getting a mouth full of business as usual in china are looking for ways of saving money. Ways that don't include out sourcing and the unseen cost of training a new work force to manufacture product 'X' for the reduced price they want. Automated assembly lines are where most of the major manufacturers are heading to. Take Foxcom for instance when his workers started committing suicide at its high-rise factory in china when they began suffering from work related depression, Foxcom then hung nets to catch the suicidal workers, when the workers then went on strike, Foxcom(Alan, 2012) then announced they were going to automate their entire manufacturing process. The companies logic was that machines don't complain about work place stress or low pay they just work. There are a lot of reasons to automate industrial work as it relieves people from doing dangerous or just tedious work. But in business the bottom line no matter where you live is king. The real King of all reasons to automate is to save money, and automating a job does that. You just have to amortize the automation systems cost out through the saved wage expenses and expanded production capacity. When the cost to automate a job becomes the equivalent of four years of an employees cost to do the same job then automating then becomes attractive. Now if you want to have an debate on the ethics of the logic behind this business evolution, I would agree that I too find it distasteful, but, also totally unavoidable. Alan, F. ((2012, October 06)2012, October 06). Foxconn workers go on strike to protest working conditions while assembling the apple iphone 5. Retrieved from http://www.phonearena.com/news/Foxconn-workers-go-on-strike-to-protest-working-conditions-while-assembling-the-Apple-iPhone-5_id35255 (Alan, 2012)
Spain are really advanced in this area compared to the rest of the world. Way, way ahead of us in unemployment.
Sure enough, the cow costume was hanging up next to the superhero outfit and sailors uniform. (S,Spud)
I've been hearing about this since the 50s (yes I'm old). It used to be considered a good thing, because we'd have more leisure time. The problem isn't the lack of available work; it's the distribution of wealth.
What we need to do is accept the inevitability of automation, and figure out how to either redistribute wealth or make it irrelevant. This isn't a trivial task, but either we're going to do it, or we're going to fail as a society (or worse yet, become entirely irrelevant).
Using a backhoe, YOU are more productive.
Someone else using a backhoe doesn't make YOU productive.
Here is where the fundamental problem with Capitalism comes into play and the big bad wolf Communism (actually more like basic socialism really) should come into play.
One would think, with the advent of technology, automation, that this would free up people to do other less menial things. Which is sort of true. Also robot repairmen, etc... however just like the agrarian roots of our past the bottom line is it takes way less people to do these things. So what do all those unemployed people then do? Well share work. However that would mean more wages, and shorter hours, except we are and have been going the opposite direction to that. In addition if you look at how this all comes into play, the reason for the automation, the saving of money to make more profit, which is being concentrated at the very top of the economic food chain, our current course of more unemployment, and greater disparity between wealthy and poor is pretty much an obvious outcome of our current path.
I mean wasn't it futurists of the 50's that foresaw automation allowing us to work less and live more comfortably and wealthy than ever before, not the exact opposite of that.
but only if we get benefit from it. I could have automated 90% of my job out of existence when I was working in managed technical services in California, but I didn't. A couple months of Python and almost all my responsibilities would have been out of sight, out of mind, and my user base would seldom see the problems they called me for. But I didn't. Why? I was paid by the billable hour, and even if I charged the fifteen-minute minimum to run a script manually once per call, my total income would slip to less than half what each of my sisters each made part-time at a smoothie shop, a pizza place, and a Starbucks.
Now I'm salaried, and I automate the hell out of our network's computers and their upkeep. But I'm well-aware that if I weren't in a one-man IT department, that could easily reduce the number of jobs available in our company. It might not get people fired, but it could certainly prevent new hiring when a job was vacated. Good for the company, but bad for those who need to make a living.
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I didn't directly use the backhoe, but used capital ( money ) to hire a backhoe. My labor was phoning in the request ( and also the other non-digging stuff I had to do for my home improvement project ). A backhoe is capital, money is capital. I was working for myself using my customer's money. My customer just happened to be me. If I didn't have the money, then I wouldn't have gotten the job done nearly as fast, or maybe not at all.
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More free time! Not more profits.
And that is a political choice.
We already have more than 45% job loss. Guess what people do now? Sales. Totally non-productive but since there is so much product and competition they seem the only way to get people to buy stuff (shove it down their throat). Heck, take a look at medications. Only 10% of the cost to bring a new med to market is research that creates it. Sure, there's a bit of production cost, but as an example generic benedryl is less than 1 cent per pill... well, that's a pretty low production cost.
this is more or less how Australia works. Incomes are high, safety nets strong, necessities are cheap and toys and games are expensive as hell.
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