Slashdot Mirror
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
Join the Slashcott! Stay away entirely Feb 10 thru Feb 17! Close all tabs to prevent autorefresh!
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.
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!
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.
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.
My friend, you are already in prison. As are we all. We just don't know it.
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.
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
Or to translate into common sense.
US economy can get 45% larger using automation.
Trust The Computer, The Computer is your friend.
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?
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.
Yup and the ratio will be 1 new job to 100 jobs replaced by robots... then 1 new job to 1000 jobs replaced by robots.
Robot designers will require a certain degree of creativity but robot repair (especially of modular design) is highly automatizable.
As for building then. I think you need to reconsider that. Apple's new factory to build iPhones is going to have almost no human employs and Foxxcon intends to replace a million humans with robots. They are currently about 10% along the way.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
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.
I suppose we start with goatse bots....
http://xkcd.com/810/
Make it more economically feasible to just quit and a lot of the compliance stuff can just go away. Most of it exists because people can be trapped in a job.
Dig deeper into the union rules. For every arcane rule there is an equal and opposite attempt by management to exploit a loophole that necessitated the rule.