One In Three Jobs Will Be Taken By Software Or Robots By 2025, Says Gartner

dcblogs writes: "Gartner predicts one in three jobs will be converted to software, robots and smart machines by 2025," said Peter Sondergaard, Gartner's research director at its big Orlando conference. "New digital businesses require less labor; machines will make sense of data faster than humans can," he said. Smart machines are an emerging "super class" of technologies that perform a wide variety of work, both the physical and the intellectual kind. Machines, for instance, have been grading multiple choice test for years, but now they are grading essays and unstructured text. This cognitive capability in software will extend to other areas, including financial analysis, medical diagnostics and data analytic jobs of all sorts, says Gartner. "Knowledge work will be automated."

Comments

Yes yes yes

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure sure, I've been hearing about the leisure society since the 1970s when I was a kid. I believed it too. Turns out that the people in charge in this world have serious issues with other people working less than them...
We'll find even more creative ways to distract ourselves with ever more bureaucracy in public and private affairs. Everyone I worked with 15 years ago as an engineer is now in management. What are they managing? Where is this productivity I keep hearing about?

I want a ten hour workweek. I want to be able to have the same lifestyle as my parents had 40 years ago with one income!

Re:Yes yes yes

[peragrin]

Because the only people who get regular pay raises are managers? Every one else gets screwed.

In the future I expect more and more small businesses and boutiques. You can run a small yet profitable business with just two or three people. You don't need an army of accountants, managers or other people who provide only a drain on resources for no increase in value.

Re:Yes yes yes

[SimonTheSoundMan]

Well software and robots will do some of the tasks we do today, which means people of the future will be doing other tasks. Walk in to a factory these days in Western Europe, the factory has possibly 5 employees on the floor, go to China and there are thousands to make the same product. This is what is different with out economies, wages will in China will get to a point where robots are more cost effective, and efficiency is needed. People keep on going on about Foxconn buying in robots, this isn't anything new, just they are shifting just as Europe did decades ago to automated lines - a cover glass for a product is no longer manually stacked and trollied over to the next workstation by workers, it is now done by a robot with suction cups and the trolly drives itself to the next workstation. Skilled engineers will go off designing new robots, some will become managers as their jobs are more service sector jobs working in sales or maintenance for example. You'll find 4 of the 5 workers on the floor are simply cleaners or loading materials, the 5th person in an engineer that managers the floor, workers and maintenance.

If you're not the one designing these robots or software, and your not in these management roles, you're stuck in the last decade of engineering in manufacture. Same can be said for many other disciplines of engineering.

Re: Yes yes yes

[peragrin]

We need to separate employers from healthcare anyways.

Re:Yes yes yes

[TubeSteak]

In the future I expect more and more small businesses and boutiques.

Small businesses fail/close at an extremely high rate.
It's something like 25% after 1 year and 50% after 4 years.
After that, there's a roughly 5% attrition rate per year.

Of course, this varies by industry, but for the most part, it's +/- 5%.
If you want exact numbers, you'd have to dig them up at SBA.gov

Re:Yes yes yes

[PopeRatzo]

which means people of the future will be doing other tasks.

Yes. Cleaning the homes of people who own factories.

What happens when we get to a point where we just don't need everyone to work in order to provide the goods and services people want? I'm thinking we may have already reached that point in some developed countries. Then what?

Unless we're prepared to have some big (and forced) reductions in populations, we had better get comfortable with larger welfare states.

I always get bothered when I hear politicians and pundits talk about "labor participation rates". Until the 1960s, we had much lower labor participation rates in the US. Families were able to get by and make progress only having one person in the family working full time. Today, if you're a stay-at-home parent you are counted as "out of the labor force" and politicians will use you as a statistic for why the economy is bad. But that's an ass-backward way of looking at it. If we had a good economy, we'd be able to thrive on a much lower labor participation rate. I mean, what are we talking about here. If someone in 1980 had told me that in the 21st century we'd all have to work harder, for longer hours, and longer into our lives in order to survive, I would have thought they were crazy. But that's where they're at.

Productivity is at record levels, but everyone has to work harder and longer. Does that really make sense to anyone but a "free market conservative"?

Re:Yes yes yes

[peragrin]

Your parents got pensions too because companies cared about employees.

Caring about employees affects the bottom line. In order to maximize human resources those resources. Must be step mined and discarded. How else is the CEO supposed to get his annual bonus? Improve sales?

Re:Yes yes yes

[PRMan]

It's worse, universities are still putting out tons of art majors, lawyers, English majors, History majors, etc. that will NEVER find a job. But if you look at all the jobs available (simple programming of factory equipment, for example), there is NOBODY teaching those skills.

Not only are universities charging outrageous amounts, but they are putting out useless graduates that can't get jobs because they are trained for things that no longer exist.

Re:Yes yes yes

[BarbaraHudson]

21st century organizations need rule breakers -- agile, inventive, and interconnected with specialists on the 'Net

Like Anonymous, Snowden, Bradley, Silk Road, - the FBI wants to talk to you, citizen!

Re: Yes yes yes

[mschwanke97402]

Still on the gubment and Obamacare I see. Don't we need a new dead horse to beat already? I am against Obamacare but not for the usual reasons. I believe that the for-profit health care industry is the root of the problem and that insurance in all forms private and "Obamacare" are just the trough from which the industry feeds. The sooner everyone loses their insurance and has to pay the ridiculous prices the health industry charges themselves the better. A lot of people will stop taking their kid with the sniffles to the urgent care. Plus, the health system will collapse under its own weight. Perhaps then we can get back to some common sense medical care. Anyways... Employers have long been a convenient place to mandate social spending and taxing. But what to do now? Trust that if we shift all of the social security taxes from the employer to the employee that the employer will give the employees a matching raise? Fat chance. Shift the cost of health care from the employer and let the worker pay for it? Already happening through higher deductible/copay plans. Employers are pocketing the savings from the lower premiums or avoiding premium increases. No reimbursement for the higher employee costs, though. Employees are expensive to have and it is always the first thing that business cut when the bottom line needs improving. So, any surprise that in the Brave New World (or was it the New World Order) that we're going to lose 33% of our jobs? Sounds like a capitalist heaven to me. The billionaires soon become trillionaires and the rest of us become more and more afraid to fight for better working conditions, pay, etc. as we're just happy to still even have a job. Don't believe for a minute that all that increase in wealth is going to go for providing a safety net for the redundant employees who will join the ranks of homeless. But i rant on too long...

Re:Yes yes yes

[puz]

I would think that art and humanities majors, such as a history major, would be able to discern the global macro trend and ride the big wave to financial prosperity, no? An example that comes to mind is Overstock chairman Patrick Byrne, who is a great visionary, probably owing to his PhD in philosophy.

Re:Yes yes yes

[Beck_Neard]

Oh it definitely is a leisure society - for the top 1%. See, a while ago the rich assholes figured out that as computer technology was improving, people were working less and less. But they couldn't bear to have people working 20-hour weeks and getting paid for 60 hours of work. Instead they decided that they would fire 2/3 of the workforce, push the remaining 1/3 to insane limits, end silly stuff like employee bonuses or overtime, and call it 'restructuring'.

And what about the possibility that the government will catch on to this scheme and force them to pay their dues back to society? They've insured themselves against that - by making the word 'Socialist!' toxic and propping up Fox News.

Re:Yes yes yes

[PopeRatzo]

People work more because they want more, they see that shiny new Iphone as a necessity rather than a privilege.

You really believe everyone secretly covets an iPhone?

I saw a 12 year old kid playing with his iPhone. You think he had to go to work to get it?

You didn't address the most important point I made: Why should everyone be expected to work? By making the "labor participation rate" an important indicator, that's what we're saying. What we're told we should have is 100% employment. Unfortunately, three year-olds aren't really good for a whole lot of productivity.

So I'll repeat myself, just for you: What happens when all the goods and services we want no longer require 70% of the population to work? Or 50%? Or 30%? What happens to the rest? Either we figure out as a society how those people are going to live or... I don't want to think about the alternative.

Re:Yes yes yes

[PopeRatzo]

You can have a much higher standard of living today with one person working than you could in the 60s!

You are absolutely wrong. Real incomes are way down from 1960's standards. In 1960, my parents could own their own single-family home, send two kids to private school and college (no student debt!), set themselves up for a comfortable retirement, and take a couple of vacations every year. Buy a brand new Chevrolet Impala every 4 years. And then leave the paid-off house to their kids, along with a nice bit of change. And my father was a machinist who did not finish high school.

Tell me, do you really believe that a family of four could live like that today on one salary? Let's have a show of hands: How many of you reading this believe a family of four could have this type of a lifestyle on one salary? I'll be most of you won't get this lifestyle with two. And your kids will start life with six figures of college debt.

I could certainly make enough helping people install their home theater systems to have them help me with interior decorating, and so on.

So, you see us going to an all-barter economy? When? And what are you going to use to buy food? You going to trade home stereo installations for a loaf of bread?

Re:Yes yes yes

[PopeRatzo]

You'd be amazed how much some people struggle with technology.

There it is. The tech bro in full. He thinks society is always going to need him because he knows the difference between a HDMI cable and an eSATA cable.

I'm telling you, there are going to be a lot of little John Galt wannabes pissing in their pants when the day comes when buggy whips go out of style.

Re:Yes yes yes

[swillden]

What happens when we get to a point where we just don't need everyone to work in order to provide the goods and services people want?

You assume there is a limit to the goods and services people want. I don't think there's any evidence that such a limit exists. Much of what the developed world spends its money on today would, a few decades ago, have been considered either pure frivolity, or just inconceivable. I see no reason that trend will not continue. I know a guy who makes a great living helping other people buy cars, kind of like a real estate agent, but for vehicles. You would think that the Internet, with the wealth of information it makes available to anyone who wants to research what car to buy, would make his job redundant, but in fact it is what has made his business successful. Personalized attention from a human who not only knows the area but is capable of understanding your needs and tastes, and of making you feel good about his understanding of your needs and tastes, is what has made him successful. And note that his clients are not wealthy; he doesn't even know that much about the luxury car segment.

Rather than everyone just becoming unemployed, I think we'll find more and more specialized and arcane uses to which to put all of that freed-up labor. And for my evidence... I'll just point to the economic shifts caused by every technological advance in history, and all of the people throughout history who have made your argument and been consistently wrong.

Re:Yes yes yes

[PopeRatzo]

You assume there is a limit to the goods and services people want.

How many 60" TVs can you fit into your house? How many cars in your garage?

How many people do you need to cut your lawn or cut your hair or shine your shoes? We're already seeing the service employment numbers starting to plateau. How many telephone solicitors do you think we need?

I mean, we could have government make-work jobs, but the only reason we'd do that is because of our Calvinist heritage where there is some religious belief in the morality of hard work.

Re:Yes yes yes

[knightghost]

Parents got pensions because that's what it took to hire them. "Globalization" dragged pay down to the bottom of the world.

Re:Yes yes yes

[lgw]

Tell me, do you really believe that a family of four could live like that today on one salary?

Absolutely 100% they could. You can afford a 1960s-quality car and a tiny house as was normal then with 1960s-quality plumbing and electricity, 1960s-quality appliances, no electronic gadgets of any kind, 1960s-quality health care, and so on. Don't romanticize it - it was not at all a high standard of living compared to what you can buy for a single median income today.

So, you see us going to an all-barter economy? When? And what are you going to use to buy food? You going to trade home stereo installations for a loaf of bread?

Poor people in America have access to effectively unlimited calories already. Food is damn cheap - why would it get more expensive? Why would that multi-century trend suddenly reverse? Because there aren't any manufacturing jobs? (They are almost none today). Because the jobs that currently pay minimum wage go away?

I honestly can't see where these doomsayers are coming from. You heard the same shit with every revolution in automation, wrong every time. Making stuff more efficiently means ... everyone has more stuff.

The stuff we each have is just the total of all stuff made divided between us, and divided fairly evenly. The 1% don't each 10x as much food, or typically own 10 cars, or drink 10x as much beer, or whatever - they barely make a difference in the amount of stuff divided among the rest of us. You seem to be confusing money with stuff - don't do that.

Re:Yes yes yes

[geoskd]

The end of mindless menial labor is a good thing.

Only if our economic systems are capable of handling that set of circumstances. What should the roughly 20% of people who are below 85 IQ do to survive? They simply will never be able to handle jobs requiring more than simple manual labor, so when those jobs are gone, how do they earn a living? Welfare? Charity? They starve to death?

I could almost even live with any of those options as long as it was on the table for general public discussion and debate. As it stands now, the politicians treat it like social security: a third rail of politics...

Re:Yes yes yes

[PopeRatzo]

That's when suddenly industry stopped fighting the child labour laws

I'm pretty sure you know that the Koch Brothers are fighting to repeal child labor laws in 18 states, right?

Now school is still one of the ways to get people out of the market.

And now they have huge student loans from those schools. You think there's any chance we're going to see government pay for college any time soon in the US?

new labourers

Oh, I see why you have such an optimistic view. You don't live in the US.

Re:Yes yes yes

[PopeRatzo]

Absolutely 100% they could. You can afford a 1960s-quality car and a tiny house as was normal then with 1960s-quality plumbing and electricity, 1960s-quality appliances

Now you're just trolling.

All you have to do is look at the change in percentage of income that a family pays for housing to see what's changed.

And you still haven't addressed the biggest elements, education and health care. You know where I can get a 1960's quality University of Chicago education and not end up in debt?

You must know that median income has been dropping,

http://www.shadowstats.com/img...

The bifurcation you see in 1996 is when the CPI stopped tracking education, energy and health care.

Re:Yes yes yes

[lgw]

Health care? Sure, 1960s health care is dead cheap - no MRIs, no PET scans, no CAT scans, no tonsils, no modern drugs. We're as far from 1960s medicine is it was from medicine before anesthetic and antibiotics.

Sure, we're in the middle of a tuition bubble, it's as insane as the previous bubbles and will only get worse till it pops.

And, again, I don't care how much a 60s family paid for a car, when that car had no modern safety features, emissions controls, performance, or any of the other things that have made cars better over the past 50 years. Technology is a good thing - really it is. Why do all the Luddites keep posting on /.?

Re:Yes yes yes

[Beck_Neard]

Give it a rest.

I founded a successful business, from concept to turning a profit. Made a good amount of money too. I've seen the ins and outs of the 'capitalist' system, and it's ugly. You're right that small businesses are being destroyed. But gov't is not the (main) culprit. It's large businesses.

You're right that what we have isn't capitalism. But it's not socialism either. It's socialism for the rich and 'fuck you' for the poor. At least if it was free-market capitalism we wouldn't be hypocrites.

Take healthcare. Believe it or not, we have enough money to, for instance, offer affordable health care for every single person - without shoving the premium onto the shoulders of young people like Obamacare does. But we're not going to do that. Because 'socialism is evil!' or something.

Re: Yes yes yes

[dcollins117]

"Obamacare" had no robust public option for that reason; the Big Pharmy, Big Insurance and Big Healthcare chains instead get even more money.

Single payer healthcare is still the objective. The ACA is a solid first step toward that goal, which is the main reason Republicans oppose the legislation. Both the GOP and the Pharma/Insurance/Healthcare corporations they represent have good reason to be worried.

Re:Yes yes yes

[RuffMasterD]

Wait and see what Japan does over the next few decades. They have a high proportion of baby boomers heading into retirement, with longer life expectancy than ever before, and low fertility rates. There should be far more people leaving the workforce than entering right about now. My guess is the people who still work by 2025 work will have to pay more tax than they do now to cover social welfare for those that don't, and the people without work will have to learn to live on less (smaller apartments, fewer gadgets, public transport, etc...) so as to be a smaller burden on those that still work. Less consumption all around. Probably need an entirely new economic model to keep a country running like that.

Re:Yes yes yes

[phantomfive]

lol if you can't afford food get yourself out on the street and beg for a bit. You'll have enough for food and left over for beer.

Also learn to budget so you don't buy that stupidly expensive house.

Re:Yes yes yes

[BringsApples]

You're 100% correct. And let me add that there are currently (according to google) 1,645 billionaires in the world. Knowing that, we must insert that there are 7.125 billion (7,125,000,000) people in the world. Looking carefully at what it takes to support the life of a billionaire, we find that each billionaire requires a certain amount of people to support them. So just running simple math here, divide 1,645 into 7.125 billion and you get 4,331,307. Does that mean that every billionaire requires 4.331 million people to support their existence? Well, seeing as how money is nothing without attached-debt, I'd say so. No one can have a bunch of money, without a bunch of people in debt.

So not only are people working harder than they were in the 80's, the rich folks are living much more lavishly than they were in the 80's.

Re:Yes yes yes

[RabidReindeer]

Well, when you invent the grandparents that don't need tech handholding, I'll be lined up outside your store to buy a pair!

Meanwhile, I just spent a weekend hanging a TV from a wall for a relative who's actually pretty handy, but will be recovering for surgery for some time. People will always need help of one sort or another from one another, and there's always ways in which skilled labor can make each of our lives better.

Robots will replace unskilled labor - and more power to them - but those jobs suck anyway.

Hanging a TV from a wall isn't skilled labor. And, in fact, a TV-hanging robot would probably not be a bad thing to own, if you're Best Buy or somebody like that.

Re:Yes yes yes

[AmiMoJo]

Look at Japanese companies. They pay reasonable wages, support their staff, offer pensions. They often get undervalued by western investors who see the cost of their staff as a liability, when they see them as an asset.

I don't know what the US was like back in the 50s and 60s, but it isn't inconceivable that a company could actually care about its employees.

Re:Yes yes yes

[swillden]

You assume there is a limit to the goods and services people want.

How many 60" TVs can you fit into your house? How many cars in your garage?

How many horses can pull your wagon?

Your questions all have the same implicit assumption, that technology and society will remain as it is now... and that is clearly not true.

Re:Yes yes yes

[Casualposter]

Running a small business is being on the job 24 hours a day seven days a week. Starts ups, especially small ones don't pay much in the way of money. So what kills the business is fatigue. People get tired of 18 hour days and burn out after a couple of years. Remember, running the business is being the marketing guru, the advertising designer, the customer service representative, the tax accountant, the book keeper, the maintenance person, the person that runs the website and other internet services, on top of what ever the business actually does. Or you can pay for those services, and that is money going out the door. And you have to have been both wise and lucky at the timing and location of the business.

I know. I started my own business in a down economy and that business is still running six years later.

Re:Yes yes yes

[HeckRuler]

in the context of what was available at those times.

And that's the point he's trying to make.
The standard of living NOW is vastly greater then it was THEN. Things are different.

"The context" is what has changed. People today simply have it better then people of yesteryear. Yay progress!

The fact that we didn't have microwave ovens in the 1960s does nothing to alter the fact that we still had to obtain food and cook it somehow back then,

Yes, perfect example. You still had to do it somehow, and that somehow was with an oven or a hotplate. If you wanted a hot meal, it took longer with more skill required. AND SO, there were a lot of lonely bachelors who didn't know how to cook and simply didn't have a lot of hot meals that they would have had if they had microwaves. It's an extra cost that we take in stride in today's society, but it makes life better.

Re:Yes yes yes

[PopeRatzo]

Your questions all have the same implicit assumption, that technology and society will remain as it is now... and that is clearly not true.

I don't understand what you're trying to say. Do you think there's going to be some technological innovation that will allow people to fit more 60" televisions in their living rooms? How many can you watch at once?

Re:Yes yes yes

[lgw]

World population and consumption rate is well beyond the sustainable threshold. Population reduction is going to happen anyway, the soft or the hard way.

Reverend Malthus? Aren't you dead? You've been wrong for about 130 years now, can't you take a hint?

Technology changes things. That's rather the point of technology, really. WTF is with all these Luddites on /.?

a lot of people today are hopelessly unemployable and basically incapable of caring for their family

Really? They can't complete the vocational training to be a plumber, or a welder, or an HVAC repairman? Learn to repair A/Cs, live in the South, and you won't starve, that's for sure!

Much more that "mindless menial labor" went down the sinkhole, and too little sprung up to replace it.

All those carpenters who made furniture by hand - where are they going to find work now that furniture is being made cheaply on assembly lines? All those poor cobblers, where will they find work now that shoes are being made on assembly lines? All those poor coopers - why, I can imagine a future where barrels aren't even made of wood! All those poor blacksmiths, no one can even afford hand-smithed equipment any more! And even farriers will be hard hit if this no auto-mobile thing takes off!

Re:Yes yes yes

[lgw]

You could work the same hours (per family) today and still have a vastly higher standard of living than people had in the 60s. You might have a lower standard of living than your neighbors, with 2 earners, and that's mostly what people care about, but that's a relative, not absolute, measure. And we are absolutely doing better now.

Re:Yes yes yes

[roman_mir]

Capital is valued much more than labour because there is a huge lack of capital in the face of labour that has no capital and no skills that are useful enough to be combined with any available capital in a profitable manner, that is why.

Capital is not always valued more than labour, however the system that we are in set up the government that is destroying capital formation with inflation, rules and taxes and because the capital is being destroyed and the formation of capital is disincentivised with all the inflation there is a huge shortage of capital, so the real interest rates are so high that new businesses cannot afford to borrow at that cost of money and the existing businesses are engaged into the asset bubble creation with the fake money supplied by the Federal reserve.

So instead of building new businesses we are supporting the failing existing business models that are not providing utility that would reflect positively on the huge trade imbalances.

As to risk, you don't know what risk is until you started your own business (or maybe went to war).

Re:Yes yes yes

[TsuruchiBrian]

Are you telling me you believe that an education in 2014 that will leave a student with six figures of debt is a better education than an education in the 1960s when many students left school with money in their pockets?

I would not say that the state of tuition prices is not better than the past. But I don't think the actual quality of the education is worse. Also, the number of ways to become educated (aside from 4 year universities) is truly amazing in 2014.

I think we are in a bit of an interesting time right now where we are starting to question the idea that a degree from a 4 year university is a good investment at any price, but this is just one hiccup on the way to a much better society

You're looking only at consumer goods, which actually make up just a fraction of the cost of our lives. You want to bet whether the house that was built in 1953 that is affordable to the average family, isn't better than the same house (more likely a condo) that the average family can afford today?

You can get houses in detroit for pretty cheap. You may not want to live in detroit. I would not want to go back to living in the 80's for many of the same reasons. The reasons that houses are expensive now is because they are bigger and better. You are not forced to by a big modern house that is free of asbestos and aluminum wiring.

Houses are also more expensive because the land that the houses are built on is more valuable (i.e. more desirable to more people). People who bought houses in the middle of lemon orchards in the 60's now find their houses to be in very nice city centers. Those people are certainly better off now than when they initially made their investment. There is nothing that stops you from buying a nice house in the middle of nowhere and hope it becomes a nice location.

Also interest rates got up to 20% for a 30 year mortgage in the 80's. Now it's at like 4%.

You really think the houses built today are going to last a hundred years? Do you think the materials used are anywhere near what was used 50-100 years ago?

I think absolutely materials used today are better than materials used 100 years ago. This is why new houses on average garner a higher price than older houses. They are safer for things like earthquakes, fires, floods, infestations, etc, they are easier to upgrade, they are more energy efficient.

You've been so brainwashed by marketing that you believe your life equals the consumer goods you own. The iPhone and the LG TV are the markers of your existence. They will be gone, and after your inevitable reverse mortgage runs out you will leave nothing behind, because our society has been structured so that your children will be poorer than you are.

The fact that I gravitated toward consumer goods does not mean that I am brainwashed anymore than the fact that you gravitated towards only 4 year college tuitions and house prices means you are brainwashed into thinking that those are the only things that matter.

For that, you can thank the lower exposure children have to lead.

I count lower lead exposure as a benefit of not living in the past (i.e. we are better off now and our society is wealthier as a result). We had a

And police forces armed with military hardware. And the highest incarceration rate in the developed world.

The higher incarceration rate only accounts for a fraction of the lower violence and crime. In fact about half of the incarcerated people are in prison for non violent drug offenses. The fact that we consider victimless crimes motivated by drug addiction to be crimes is unfortunate, but it is not even just crime that is lower. Violent crime is also much lower. If the violent criminals we are imprisoning are leading to lower violent crimes, then that part of the prison system we have is working.

Ye

...the same company that predicted that OS/2...

[dpbsmith]

...would be running on more computers than all other operating systems combined by, IIRC, 2003.

Re:...the same company that predicted that OS/2...

[KitFox]

Are you implying their predictions have as much clarity as an obsidian crystal ball in a sewage treatment tank? As much fidelity as a wax cylinder on a 120 degree day in Arizona? As much accuracy as somebody trying to blindly roundhouse kick the Andromeda Galaxy? And hold as much water as a clogged ink jet nozzle? If you are, I agree.

Re:automation + liberal capitalism = disaster

[ShanghaiBill]

We already have the capability to feed, house, and clothe everyone on the planet and look at how many people do without their basic needs being met.

Yet almost all of those unfed and unclothed people live in countries that are not liberal, and most of them live in countries that are not capitalist, or were not capitalist in the recent past. Meanwhile, the top countries by per capita GDP, and by income equality, are liberal, capitalist democracies.

If liberalism, capitalism, and automation were the cause of poverty, then America, Western Europe, and Japan would be starving, while Afghanistan, Liberia, and Somalia would be on top.

THis automation will include....

[goombah99]

.. THe forecasting done by Gartner research.

Re:THis automation will include....

[Dragonslicer]

I'm pretty sure random chance is more accurate than Gartner anyway.

Only 1 in 3?

[MMC Monster]

Or do they mean 1 in 3 remaining jobs?

As it is, automation has already taken the vast majority of jobs. You can run a small store with just a few employees, something that needed a couple dozen just a century ago.

Humans Need Not Apply

[The Raven]

There are a lot of comments here about how this is futurist doom & gloom. And it certainly could be. But the difference between the doom of the past and the doom of now is that we now have working, commercial examples of the robots that could replace humans. It was theory before... now it's just a matter of economy of scale and refinement.

CGP Gray did an excellent piece on this already.

Re:automation + liberal capitalism = disaster

[Kjella]

Not really. Qatar is the richest country in the world by per-capita GDP. It's not liberal at all. Norway is the fourth richest, and its government basically owns all of the biggest companies in the country and has set high import tariffs too, making it what many americans would call "a socialist economy", and quite a successful one.

Both Qatar and us here in Norway have oil, basically we won the natural resource lottery which is rather independent of any political system. Try Sweden or Denmark if you want more fair examples of social democratic countries. In any case, we're part of EUs inner market so there's not really many import tariffs but we do have a large public sector, many things are paid for by taxes and provided as public services.

10 Hour work weeks are here

[Overzeetop]

Average, that is, or approaching it.

Ever notice how more and more of the unemployed are unable to re-enter the workforce, and college grads are giving up and moving home? Humans can be worked for 40 hours without undue complaining given a large enough reward (flat screen TVs and SUVs), so that's how long the working humans will go. That leaves more and more people in the 0 hour/week class.

In the US, there are (roughly) 330 million people, and around 120 million of them are employed full time. In a gross simplification, we're already down to an average of a 15 hour work week. If we convert one in three current full time jobs to computers, and presume that the general employment ratio trend were to remain constant without that, that would put us a (surprise) an average of 10 hours per week per person.

So, remember that as you work your 40 hour week that there will be 3 unemployed people who are balancing out that equation. (And before the far right chimes in, statistically 2 of those 3 loafers will be in your own family, though there certainly will be a (bigger) class battle on the horizon if the unemployable start living it up too well)

Re:10 Hour work weeks are here

[__aaclcg7560]

My current employment contract allows me to work 40 hours per week, five days a week. I'm not allowed to work 80+ hours per week, if I wanted to. The flip side is I could always quit my current job, don't work at all, and sign up for a free iPhone that the government hands out like candy. Maybe I'm doing something wrong?

Re:Article not titled correctly.

[the eric conspiracy]

Since the invention of the wheel machines have been replacing labor. The result has always been temporary displacement in the labor force and increased overall standards of living.

It won't be any different this time.

Work week's been rising

[rsilvergun]

it's up to 50 in the United States. Most houses are 2 income and 66% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck. Real Wages stopped growing in 1979.

Just because something took 20 years longer to happen than we expected doesn't mean it's not going to happen. The one's that are making it happen are the ones with the most to gain, the folks at the top. They take a much, much longer view than you or I. They're not just thinking about leaving the kiddos a house or two, they're thinking about a legacy.

What part of America is Liberal?

[rsilvergun]

We've been swinging far right for 30 years. Ever since the right wing figured out the "Southern Strategy". And up until some very liberal reforms mostly put through when a few members of the ruling class turned on each other (FDR mostly) we've had mass starvation and poverty just like everywhere else. We have a lot more farm land and less drought, so we had a little bit less. But we also had slavery until the 1800s.

Also the countries with Starvation aren't even vaguely liberal or socialistic. They just fascist dictatorships that happen to borrow Marx's writing for Rhetoric. Look at real liberal countries. Countries that didn't go the Reagan/Thatcher route. Germany, Netherlands, Canada even France is doing better. Now watch Canada following in America's footsteps and go down the drain for everyone but the top 1% too... :(

Coincidentally, Hatsune Miku is on Letterman

[Al Al Cool J]

Japan's computer-generated grassroots indie pop phenomenon Hatsune Miku makes her US TV debut Wednesday on the David Letterman show.

http://sgcafe.com/2014/09/hats...

Not exactly what the article about, given that Miku is massively crowdsourced, and provides opportunities for musicians, rather than taking away jobs. But a funny coincidence nonetheless.

Re:Article not titled correctly.

[Anonymous Coward]

The result has always been temporary displacement in the labor force and increased overall standards of living.

It won't be any different this time.

Why?

Why won't it be any different?

Do you think the factory workers will all quit and become engineers, to repair the robots?

Do you think the factory workers will all quit and become writers, writing books?

Who will buy them? The factory workers that are now authors?

What about the drivers? Won't be too many decades before self-driving cars are the order of the day. There go a lot of jobs right there.

Not everyone is capable of becoming an engineer. Not everyone is capable of becoming a writer.

Not everyone wants to.

What happens when there are fewer jobs than now, but the population is about the same? The new jobs that will appear will be far fewer than than the jobs that disappear.

The advent of even semi-intelligent robotics will displace millions. We don't need 50 million robotic engineers. We don't need 50 million authors, or 50 million interpretive dancers.

What happens when the bulk of people can't afford to house or feed their familes? Something must change, something will change, but what? How soon?

Wealth is being concentrated at the top and what's going to happen is they'll find that robots are cheaper and make fewer mistakes in a variety of roles.

You must have some remarkable insight, other than "This has all happened before..." to be able to say so confidently that "It won't be any different this time," because this time is nothing like anything that has happened before.

This time, we're replacing ourselves with machines that can perform the same jobs faster, cheaper, and without error.

Mega Rant

[JimSadler]

Why is it that people are deaf, dumb and blind?? The purpose of all technology is the elimination of labor. Most employment has already been eliminated. So a statement that one third of existing employment will be eliminated soon is not a shock at all. I would be shocked if it is as low as one third by the way. Most of us recall the offices with one girl at a desk to answer phones and type a bit and do books. Cell phones eliminated those employees by the millions. And computers enable people to type nice correspondence that only skilled typists could accomplish with a typewriter. Meanwhile accountants took a severe hit when Turbo tax and the like were used by the masses as well as small businesses. It is just a part of a trend. Go back to the days when we used horses and mules to transport ourselves and our products. Is anuone even slightly aware of how much work is involved in keeping a horse? TRUTH: we will be forced to abandon capitalism soon. Some kind of social welfare state will be the only possible answer. It will be normal for most of society to be supported by taxes paid by businesses. It is not because of beliefs or values or any of that junk. It is because it is the only system fit to survive. We will experience shocking changes in the way we live and some will be for the better. You can also bet that we will be regualted in our behaviors more than at any time in history. Things like vacation cruise ships may cease to exist. international travel may be banned. And there will be all kinds of conflicts on allowing imports and exports.

Re:Mega Rant

[roman_mir]

FALSE. It is not possible to have meaningful trade with somebody that does not provide you with any value. I run a business and the reason I run it is that I believe that by making money I am going to get something from other people who run their businesses. I would not run a business to sell my product to anybody if they were only able to afford it from taking the money that I make on the sales and then using MY OWN MONEY to buy MY OWN PRODUCT.

That makes 0 sense, of-course that is what the Chinese are currently doing for the Americans and maybe you are looking at that and thinking that it is a viable option, but it is not. Chinese will not do this forever and nobody in their right mind would run a business, would work so that their productivity could be stolen from them this way.

The only reason to run a business is to trade for the productive output of other businesses. The purpose is trade, if there is no trade there is no need to run a business. Sure, you can have a hobby doing something, which even may be a business, but very few people would run a business if their productive output was actually stolen from them in order to subsidise somebody so they could take the productive output of that business and actually give nothing back.

Using my own money to buy my own productive output is not trade, it's not actually a purchase, it's theft if it is enforced by the system, the collective, the government, the oppressive power.

No, everybody here who thinks that people have a purpose in life that is to be born into a welfare state, where somebody else does everything for them in their lives are mistaken. A system like that will not live long.

Also people here are mistaken about something else: if you don't need as many people to run the already existing businesses and you can downsize the workforce in the existing businesses, this frees up people to find new ways to satisfy customer demand and the actuality is this:

HUMAN DEMAND IS INFINITE and this simple reality is why all of these socialist / Marxist and of-course fascist notions are complete nonsense.

Everybody would have a 600meter yacht if they could buy it for 10 dollars.

Everybody would have their own 787 if they could buy it for 10 dollars.

Everybody would have a 1000 square meter mansion if they could buy it for 10 dollars.

Everybody would have 10 servants if they could pay as little as 10 dollars a person a month.

Everybody would have their own space ship and would want to spend some time checking out views around Jupiter and Saturn.

Everybody would have much more stuff, everybody would want a much longer life if only this was possible and achievable with money and people will always look for solutions to make things cheaper, more plentiful and more accessible.

People will always look for solutions against aging and against death, people will always look for more entertainment and for new experiences.

People will always be interested in new things and ideas, so new things and ideas will be generated.

Your fears of the future and what it brings are limited by your personal box that you are placed in by yourself, by the society, the sick society that places you in a box rather than letting you be free and actually learn to think on your own.

Re:Mega Rant

[roman_mir]

How tired I am of you and your nonsense on the Great Depression and the false reasons behind it that you believe in and the actual facts that you cannot get through your thick skull. The Great Depression was not caused by oversupply of anything, it was caused by the Federal reserve bank of America buying up bad UK debt from France and creating giant inflation in the process, which inflated the stock market bubble, which was not sustainable because bubbles are not sustainable. The recession that resulted from the burst of the bubble would have been dealt with swiftly, just like the depression of 1921, if the government stayed away, but instead Hoover and later FDR stepped in and turned the recession into the depression (which by the way only had about 25% unemployment, which is actually no worse than what USA is experiencing today) and many of the 'solutions' of the idiots that believe in nonsensical Keynesian garbage was to print more money by government to DESTROY PRODUCTS that farmers created, they literally destroyed food, ploughed it into the ground rather than allowing the absolutely necessary reduction of prices that would have absolutely helped the people of that era and prevented any unnecessary suffering.

The government, that you fucking love so much, took farming output and literally ploughed it into the fucking ground so that the prices wouldn't drop, you unimaginable unintelligent creep.

THE HUMAN DEMAND IS INFINITE. The ability to satisfy the demand is limited by productivity of the humans that have those demands and that is why 600 meter yachts are not selling for 10 dollars and that is why people do not have their own 787s and space ships, because the human productivity today is minuscule on the grand scale of things, which prevents most humans from owning such items (where those items are even present in existence to be owned).

Again, human demand is infinite and thus the opportunities to satisfy the human demand are also infinite.

Stop replying to my comments, you never add anything to the discussion beyond complete waste of time.

Re:Mega Rant

[Katatsumuri]

You had me until the cruise ships and the international travel ban. Now I'm scratching my had about whether the rest of your post is just as groundless, and if I should review my own wishful thinking that prevented me from filtering it earlier.

Re:automation + liberal capitalism = disaster

[roman_mir]

You got your logic all fucked up. USA economy was first of all a capitalist, free market economy, which generated enough wealth for the socialists to start coming to power because now they had something to steal and something they could rally the troops around by promising to steal and redistribute.

USA is no longer a wealthy economy, but for a while it was, when it was a productive economy and then the socialist scavengers (I see socialists as something akin to Ebola virus) took over and destroyed the host economy.

Socialism is a disease, it is a rot of the mind, rot of the will, annihilate of the individual freedoms, zombification of the individual. Socialism is a parasitic, vomit inducing toxin that destroys everything it touches, but the bigger the host, the more time it takes for the parasitic disease to destroy it. The host can stay a zombie for a while, it takes a while for it to be fully destroyed.

Re:...with greater instability.

[RabidReindeer]

In the future I expect more and more small businesses and boutiques. You can run a small yet profitable business with just two or three people.

Never mind that you are operating in a high-failure part of the private sector with people that cannot really afford to fail. That, and you have no scale to offset purchase costs, especially those relating to benefits.

You don't need an army of accountants, managers or other people who provide only a drain on resources for no increase in value.

Just try and run a small business without retaining an accountant or lawyer. Or these days, a computer tech.

Yes, you can do it all yourself, but if you do, you won't have time to do what you do well. And you'll have a half-rate accountant, a failure for a lawyer and an incompetent security menace for a computer tech, unless you happen to have talent in those fields.

Re:No.

[peragrin]

If you don't know how health insurance currently works please stop talking.

companies of 500 or more employees are self paying. if you think those companies pay for insurance like you pay for health insurance you are wrong. In those companies you pay your company for health insurance. it is managed by an outside entity. all employee contributions go into a pot. Payments for various claims are paid from the pot. the outside entity manages the cash flow. at the end of most years the company either has to pay a little directly out of it's own pocket or gets a little bonus. Direct employer contributions is normally little to none.Exceptions happen like this past year when AOL had two employees with horrible problems that needed several million dollars in care. the managing entity raises rates every year to keep the actual average employer contribution close to zero.

Their is very little direct health insurance in the USA it is one reason everything costs so much more. it isn't like car insurance where you have competing firms.