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What To Do After Robots Take Your Job
sarahnaomi writes In 2013, researchers Carl Frey and Michael Osborne of the Oxford Martin School dropped the bombshell that 47 percent of US jobs were at risk of computerisation. Since then, they've made similar predictions for the UK, where they say 35 percent of jobs are at high risk. So what will our future economy look like? "My predictions have enormously high variance," Osborne told me when I asked if he was optimistic. "I can imagine completely plausible, incredibly positive scenarios, but they're only about as probable as actually quite dystopian futures that I can imagine."
In a new report produced as part of a programme supported by Citi, he and Frey outline how increased innovation—read: automation—could lead to stagnation.
In a new report produced as part of a programme supported by Citi, he and Frey outline how increased innovation—read: automation—could lead to stagnation.
I agree with the basis of this argument in general, but as usual an entire group is forgotten.
We do have people who are not as smart as others. We have a very solid N% of people who will never be knowledge workers, who can't understand complex concepts, etc. In the US, with it's politics going out of control, we've also got a large group of smart people who won't make it because they won't have access to education they need (or the education becomes indoctrination and corporate training instead).
These people have to live somehow. Will we go the "Player Piano" route and guarantee a wage, or we will we go full GOP derp and just hope they die?
If we create true AI then most of the population will never be able to get a job of any number of hours because robots will be able to do any work they can do for a fraction of the price.
Robots don't need cars, houses, TVs, holidays etc.
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Will we go the "Player Piano" route and guarantee a wage, or we will we go full GOP derp and just hope they die?
We can learn something from both the liberal and conservative views. I'd like us to both guarantee a wage, and eliminate the minimum wage.
Let me explain. Minimum wage directly affects only those employers whose business model depends on low-wage, unskilled labor. But wages can be guaranteed directly by society (via government) instead. Take the following example:
You hire someone to take after-hours calls at home, jotting down any messages received. It's a part time job, about 10 hours per week, and typically about 2 or 3 calls an hour come in, and otherwise that employee can do whatever... watch TV, read a book, work on some other job, play games, whatever. You both agree $2/hour is an acceptable wage. But, with minimum wage laws, you're on the hook for $7.25/hour. You decide that is too expensive, and replace the employee with an answering machine. It's not your wish, after all the answering machine lacks true human feedback. And of course, the potential employee doesn't have any job or income. Sucks all around.
Now let's say we push the burden of guaranteed wage on society instead of the employer. Government writes that employee a check for $72.50 every week (10 hours X $7.25 guaranteed wage). The employee also gets $2/hour from the employer. Society gets what it wants by providing employment opportunities to everyone.
So if we are going to redistribute wealth, let's put that burden directly on society instead of placing it on markets and industries that thrive with unskilled labor.
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
There has to be an economic incentive to automate a job, and that usually means "expensive."
Another way to look at this is that automation makes things so cheap that it is no longer worthwhile to hire a human to make them. If everything is automated, then most things will be far cheaper than they are today. So addressing things like poverty and inequality, will be easier. In America, 60% of households in the bottom quintile (20%) already have no earned income, and overall, bottom quintile households get 40% of their income in government transfer payments. The cost of that is not particular burdensome (most govt spending goes to rich people and corporations, not the poor), and will become much less burdensome in the future. Incomes for the bottom quintile have stagnated since the 1970s, but they are still significantly better off on average. They live in bigger houses, drive safer cars, have better TVs/computers/cellphones/consoles, breathe cleaner air. As automation continues, the poor will likely fall further behind rich in relative terms, but their lives will still improve in absolute terms.
If bot-corp can build robots to do jobs and make a profit from that then why wouldn't they? If Acme Ltd can hire the robots for 20% of the price of a worker then why wouldn't they?
Why would a robot want to join a union, you have anthropomorphised them, given them emotions. What would a robot want with a union?
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That's ignoring U6. A lot of people have dropped out of the workforce entirely because they couldn't find work at any wage.
If you use unemployment the way we used to use it before all the definitional changes, unemployment is holding steady at about 23%. By the same methodology, unemployment was 25% during the great depression.
Businesses are abusing labor. 200 people show up to apply for a job and the 1 who gets it has to work over 40 hours a week and on weekends.
The USA raised retirement age because it couldn't afford to continue to support age 65 without raising social security premiums (sad thing is that a mere 2% would have fixed it). The main result of that is a surge in disability claims as people hordes of people who are 60 and unable to work are going on disability instead. They are not really disabled so much as "too old to work long hours like a young person". That and massive age discrimination since the SCOTUS 2009 ruling that gutted protection from age discrimination.
If the government went back to enforcing a lower work week by removing exempt status for anyone who wasn't actually an owner or a supervisor who hires/fires/gives raises/can control working hours, unemployment would drop enormously and the abuse might stop.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
30 years ago a bank was loaded with employees. 20-30 people was not uncommon, and several minutes in line was the norm just to speak to a teller.
Consider that greco-roman slavery allowed people to lay back, relax, and ponder the universe. The only problem was harming innocent people.
So robots are going to replace human labor. So what? They will make us clothes, food, and housing.
Eventually AI will supersede human intelligence. So what? They will make better decisions.
Why so-celled tech geeks keep demanding job creation is bizarre. Ideally, you'd want to eliminate labor entirely.