Robots Are Coming For Our Jobs, Just Not All of Them

szczys writes: There was a video published on YouTube about a year ago called Humans Need Not Apply which compared human labor now to horse labor just before industrialization. It's a great thought-exercise, but there are a ton of tasks where it's still science-fiction to think robots are taking over anytime soon. Kristina Panos makes a great argument for which jobs we all want to see taken by robots, others that would be very difficult to make happen, and some that would just creep everyone out.

Comments

If your job can be described by an algorithm...

[Austerity Empowers]

...then it will be automated somehow, eventually.

commentsubjectsaredumb

[Falos]

There's jobs? Great! I was worried that the 5,000,000,000 work-aged people in the 99% would struggle to find things the 1%'ers want done. Apparently each rich guy needs a city-sized army of artists and musicians for each of their mansions.

It's hilarious to see people in denial about this coming to a head, when it's long since started.

Bobby McGuy is 18 and trying to pay for school instead of suckering into the predatory scam of student loans, because he knows he's fucked if he doesn't get exclusive education (which, by definition, not everyone can have). He's healthy, ready to work, an optimized subject on a silver platter, and there's nothing for him to do unless he undercuts the robot's $2/hr. He's worthless. If, IF there's anything for him to do, 4,999,999,999 others want to do it too.

Re:jobs?

[rockout]

Most of those trolls actually do have jobs; they're just convinced they'd be making more $$$ if the current Congress and/or president weren't so whatever it is they're angry about. In other words, Archie Bunker.

The corps are in danger as well here

[Karmashock]

Consider that if everyone has a robot, that you could get your robot to make things for you rather than buy them.

Here you say "but what about chemicals and compounds"... all of that can be automated.

People in cities might be fucked. I don't know... they can live it up with Judge Dredd in Mega City 1. But people with some land might be able to enjoy a modern high tech life style and produce most of what they want and need independently.

3d printers... CNC machines... that magnetic auto refinery/chemical plant/bio sample handler... there are a lot of things you could make with that. And those things you made could make pretty much anything else and so on.

Keep in mind, everything we have today from satellites to submarines was built with human hands... or built with things built by human hands.

We could see a democratization of industry in the same way that computers have democratized a lot of things.

Rather than wondering if you'll have a job... consider if you'll even need one. Why do you have the job? To make the money to get the things you buy with the money. What if you could just skip that middle step and go right to the end?

You might say "this thing I want isn't practical to build that way"... maybe... but also consider that you might build things differently if your industrial model were different.

Consider how things were made 30 thousand years ago. Pretty much all we have from that period are "hand axes"... bits of stone chipped into sharp shapes... or smooth rocks used as hammers.

Look at how things were made in every era from then to now. The way they're made and the way people thought about the things they made changed from one era to the next. That relationship between the thing, what it is meant to do, who made it, and how society sees the person that made it influences the thing that is made.

A skilled craftsman in the 1700s is not going to make something the same way that an assembly line worker will in 1938. And just the same, a person that instructs his machinery to build him a whatever that he wants is not going to build it the same way that assembly line worker would either.

the great take away many people have with this is that we should just get welfare and have the big government or corporations pay us for breathing. The reality is that if the industrial complex doesn't need us then it doesn't need us. You might think you can vote yourself some political power but if you provide nothing the society actually needs... then why does the society need to care what you want? Your vote won't matter.

So you had better hope you're better than just a welfare sink. Because if that's all 80 percent of humanity becomes... then 80 percent of humanity is expendable. I'm not saying I'd kill them off... I'm saying someone will do it though. And when it happens... those that do it will lose nothing when they do it because the people they're killing are of no value at all to the society.

So pray you're not as useless as some would suggest. Because if you are... you might just be the walking dead.

Re:The corps are in danger as well here

[Pfhorrest]

Being too poor to afford your own land and robots to do all your work for you does not imply that you are "useless".

Your are a blind self-entitled prick if you think that the rich deserve their riches and the poor deserve poverty. We do not have equality of opportunity, so outcomes are not only the product of hard work and intelligence. There are plenty of hard-working, intelligent, "useful" people in the world who, because of the circumstances of their birth and other bad rolls of the dice, are not fortunate enough to be in the position of the one to whom other people are deemed "useful", rather than the other way around.

I'm not saying the solution is everyone living off the welfare of some big centralize robot-and-land-owning minority (either government or corporations). The solution is to make sure everyone gets access to land and robots and gets to be "self-sufficient" on the back of that productive capital, the same way the stinking rich few who are already rich enough to charge others to borrow their capital and then pay those borrowers their own rent money back to labor for them are.

How's that going to play out

[rsilvergun]

with modern militaries and information control? Also, if you look at history it's really only happened once when FDR and a few others broke ranks among the 1%, and even then it took the loss of life after WWII trimming excess population plus an irrational fear of communism to get the 1% of open up their coffers. They're over that fear and they're not bothering with large scale wars anymore. Hell, back around 2000 a bunch of Pakistani terrorists attacked India's capital, there was strong evidence the Pakastani gov't knew about it (maybe bullshit, but still) and there was _still_ no war.

I don't see us throwing off the yolk of oppression with violent revolution ever again. If there's any hope it's male birth control and a general lack of interest in having children that'll do it (queue /. jokes). Seriously, about the only thing that makes the bastards in our ruling class treat us well is if there isn't enough of us. That's why the chruches say no to birth control. They've long since noticed the drop in happiness that happens after childbirth for all but the richest and they'll be damned if we're gonna stop giving them fodder for their factories...