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5 White Collar Jobs Robots Already Have Taken
bizwriter writes University of Oxford researchers Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael Osborne estimated in 2013 that 47 percent of total U.S. jobs could be automated and taken over by computers by 2033. That now includes occupations once thought safe from automation, AI, and robotics. Such positions as journalists, lawyers, doctors, marketers, and financial analysts are already being invaded by our robot overlords. From the article: "Some experts say not to worry because technology has always created new jobs while eliminating old ones, displacing but not replacing workers. But lately, as technology has become more sophisticated, the drumbeat of worry has intensified. 'What's different now?' asked Leigh Watson Healy, chief analyst at market research firm Outsell. 'The pace of technology advancements plus the big data phenomenon lead to a whole new level of machines to perform higher level cognitive tasks.' Translated: the old formula of creating more demanding jobs that need advanced training may no longer hold true. The number of people needed to oversee the machines, and to create them, is limited. Where do the many whose occupations have become obsolete go?"
I agree, PURE click bait...
How did this get past the editors?
Financial and sports reporters - the examples are the types of stores that are full of facts and figures, and are better done by computers anyway. It's kind of like bemoaning computers taking away the human job of compiling telephone directories (remember those?). Not a lot of human touch needed there.
Online marketers - Really? Creating email subject lines? And I've stumbled onto those sites. They are only effective because they make it hard to click on anything OTHER than an ad. Not exactly stealing a desirable human job there.
E-discovery - i.e., Google for lawyers. And Wikipedia says they have 53K employees. Wait, I thought we were eliminating human jobs!
Financial advisers - good riddance. Most of them are just trying to get you to go for the investment with the highest commission, not the best for you. Computers will follow suit, but whatever.
Here's one they missed: radio DJs. You've heard these stations that are totally automated. No human touch, dry as a bone. The ones you want to listen to are still emceed by humans.
Solution: use the technology of money creation to fund a basic income, so people can pursue their happiness, and explore their natural creativity and wonder.
In the 50s it was container shipping that caused all the fuss that made the papers.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Automation changes the source of production from workers to machines. And that separates the source of production from the source of consumption.
To put it simply, robots produce wealth but does not consume it. Humans consume wealth, but (in this possible future) can no longer produce it. Robots have owners of course, but even if you ignore what happens to the majority of people, a few extremely wealthy people can not possibly make up for the consumption shortfall. Ten-thousand people with 10k each vastly outconsume (by necessity) a single person worth 100M.
So, if the entities making wealth and those using wealth become separate, you need a way to transfer wealth from one to the other. If not, you will see a slow-moving economic collapse, as lack of demand and cost-cutting automation drive each other down.
A basic income, generated from a tax on production (transaction tax, energy tax, direct tax on machinery) is one way, and has the benefit of being simple, straightforward and having low administrative overhead.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
Unemployment is created by government rules, laws, taxes, nothing else.
Unemployment is a function of capitalism in order to create fear and a willing pool of people prepared to do awful jobs for rubbish pay.
With no government intervention, corporations would wipe out trade unions and any form of worker protection, and pay even less than they do now, as a near-starvation wage is better than actually starving.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
With no government intervention, corporations would wipe out trade unions and any form of worker protection, and pay even less than they do now, as a near-starvation wage is better than actually starving.
The unemployed aren't actually starving right now, and they are free to sit in the park on a sunny day. Sounds better than be kept as slaves inside a factory for 24 hours a day.
Yes, but the reason that the unemployed aren't starving is precisely because the government pays them something.
In the libertarian/free market utopia, they would be free to starve to death in the park on a sunny day.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it