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With AI Getting Better at Cognitive Abilities, Humans Will Have Even Fewer Jobs (koreaherald.com)
An anonymous reader writes: It is no secret that machines have come to largely replace physical labor, and computers surpass human beings in processing data. But in the future, the development of artificial intelligence may render humans obsolete even in the realm of emotional intelligence (warning: annoying popup adverts), according to Yuval Harari, a renowned professor of history. Harari said:AI today is able to diagnose your personality and emotional state by looking at your face and recognizing tiny muscle movements. It can tell whether you are tired, excited, angry, joyful, in love ... it can tell these things even though AI itself doesn't feel anger or love. In the future, therefore, AI could drive humans out of the job market and make many humans completely useless, from an economic perspective in areas where human interaction was previously considered crucial. Humans only have two basic abilities -- physical and cognitive. When machines replaced us in physical abilities, we moved on to jobs that require cognitive abilities. ... If AI becomes better than us in that, there is no third field humans can move to.
What about acting as organic batteries for the machines?
did it already?
Let's all pack up and leave to a new planet. Actually, let's leave 99.9999999% of all people behind.
And also programmed to not be giant assholes, that will put them ahead of 98% of my co-workers. Especially the fucker who keeps stealing my queso dip from the fridge. I welcome our new emotionally-sensitive-AI-overlords with open arms.
Since the computer cannot feel, we humans will still have a job as test dummies to be subjected to whatever the AI comes up with in order to record whether we feel it to be pleasant or not.
Now, please look into the camera and experience Musical Composition #0x382F493 for 48.732 minutes.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
Batteries.
With blackjack! And hookers!
In fact, forget the economy and the blackjack!
>> When machines replaced us in physical abilities, we moved on to jobs that require cognitive abilities.
Tell that to my plumber. My mechanic. The mason who just fixed my chimneys. The guy who mopped out the urinals this morning. Etc.
"AI could drive humans out of the job market and make many humans completely useless" - no shit, MANY humans are already completely useless. They exist solely to drive like shit every morning, work at some non-productive ego-fueled job with a corporate leech, and then drive like rocket-powered-flaming-bullshit to get home and wreck their kids' brains with their "parenting". AI can't possibly make these people worse.
Just because I can't think of something, doesn't mean it doesn't exist. I, for one, look forward to the incredible prosperity and freedom possible by using these technologies. And we will think of plenty of new things for these "useless" humans to do.
This posting is provided 'AS IS' without warranty of any kind, implied or otherwise.
Harari, born in 1976 in Israel, earned his doctorate in medieval war history at Oxford University in 2002. He currently teaches at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
A degree in "medieval war history"?
So a Humanities degree.
As a technical person and Slashdot reader, I hereby discount everything he says.
(It's up to you to decide if I'm being sarcastic or not.)
Could likely do better than they do now.
Hopefully the first jobs to be replaced will be the out-sourced technical support positions.
The robots can read a script far more quickly and efficiently. For a short time this may be a good thing. Lets just hope they keep the Indian accent, it just isn't the same quality experience without it.
Yet another fear-inducing, hysteria-producing Slashdot article about how AIs/robots/H1Bs/women will replace our jobs. I'll believe it when I see it.
At the turn of the century, 1900, 80% of Americans worked on farms. Today, it's about 4%. The mechanization of agriculture didn't result in 76% unemployment, it freed people to do other work. The availability of labor that was previously tied up in farming allowed incredible increases in productivity and our standard of living in the 20th century.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Or perhaps ... we could be their pets?
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
If you believe that plumbing doesn't require cognitive abilities, you're a fucking ignoramus.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Typical. AIs that ignore emotions and have none could replace C-Level management.
There's a lot of saving potential there, but we won't see that happen, I'm afraid.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Well it appears the world where art majors actually have a leg up may come to pass...
captcha (can't make this stuff up): artisan
Moralizing politicians will reserve their role of calling everyone that can't find an increasingly rare living-wage job, a no-good bum.
Even fewer jobs than what? We are near an all time high in terms of jobs, both globally and in the US. There was a temporary dip during the recession, but we have mostly recovered from that.
The limit on how many people work isn't job availability (that's pretty much inexhaustible and infinite), but availability of people willing to do the jobs.
It does to some extent, I think it more or less requires and understanding an experience of how to plumb pipes in the way the buyer wants to do the project.
There are plenty of fields where humans can move into beyond basic cognitive abilities. Obviously everything that is repetitive can be automated and AI has some purpose there. However there is much in human cognition that we don't yet understand ourselves, so it's impossible to program it into an AI. Programming AI's or any advanced logic, mathematics and deductive reasoning etc. will continue to be part of the human condition. Also, anytime it's too expensive to build a machine to do a human's job, we will continue being in place. Engineers for repairs will always be necessary for any complex system, creating a machine to deduce, find and then tighten a random bolt is just overkill.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
It is wonderful that more people are now realizing this is occurring. The realization of the replacement of human labor is a precursor to the reality that social and economic policies will all require an enormous re-invention. For example, the idea of creating new jobs is already somewhat of a dead dog issue. The idea of retraining workers for more current employer needs is also a bit of a dead end path. Right now the idea of handing people money not to work is perceived as welfare for individuals. But that will become untrue in the future. Since employment will be quite rare for anybody and money for each person will come from government, delivered with the intention that those who receive the money will support businesses turns the system on its ear. The new reality is that money given to the people is in fact welfare for businesses is upon us. In other words in order for government to survive taxation must fall upon businesses as people will no longer be employed. That leaves businesses as the only source of taxes to support the government. Meanwhile, the buyers will be supporting businesses and keeping them viable according to how needed or popular the business is with the public. How can this be? Take a small example of technology disrupting a system, permanently. Right now your police department exists only because traffic fines provide the funding. Now we have robotic cars and trucks about to take over all driving. Those robots will tend to be 100% compliant with all driving laws. That ends funding for your police department. So just what can you do to supply the cash to keep your police department functioning? The elimination of salaries for police would be a start. So how long before we see computers acting as police? We already see it! Traffic cams and computer generated tickets are already common. There is already one computer that functions well as a lawyer. It defends against traffic tickets and it wins and wins and wins. Change is upon us already and yet the US public remains totally unaware.
Most of those require cognitive functions. The guy who swabbed the urinals is still working because he's slightly cheaper than a self cleaning cyberloo, so far.
...sit down calmly, take a stress pill, and think things over.
If AI eliminates the need for us humans to live by the sweat of our brows, (and if we can get our shit together to tear down the ridiculous classism upon which our current social hierarchies are founded), we might have utopia within our grasp, with some caveats:
-- We don't end up committing mass suicide as a result of a sense of meaninglessness and a lack of perceived usefulness
-- We don't all eat ourselves into a morbidly obese stupor
-- We don't end up as the subjects of robotic overlords
-- The AIs aren't under the control of a small handful of 'elite' human overlords who control and abuse the rest of us 'just for fun'
-- We don't fall victim to warring between competing AIs
Come to think about it, I'm not too optimistic about an AI-filled future right now...
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
If you believe that plumbing doesn't require physical abilities, you've probably been dup'ed multiple times in your homeownership. :)
Tell that to my plumber. My mechanic. The mason who just fixed my chimneys.
I get where you're going, but assembling something according to a given procedure is entirely different from troubleshooting and repairing that same thing once it breaks. That latter does require more cognitive capabilities.
The guy who mopped out the urinals this morning.
No, no. One NEVER disses housekeeping. You want see a leading industry brought to its knees. Don't clean its restrooms for three days. Riots in the halls. Water coolers on fire. Everyone for themselves. Utter chaos and destruction.
It requires at least a functional understanding of pressure, hydraulics, gravity, some understanding of metallurgy (although Pex pipe is making sweating fittings rarer), electrical installation (for electric hot water heaters), as well as many plumbers also being gas fitters, so a different, though related set of principles surrounding fluid flow, pressure, and so forth.
Having done my own plumbing, at least rough plumbing (I stop where one has to actually cut a hole in a brand new $500 acrylic tub/shower), I found it reasonably challenging. But plumbing, of course, isn't just about home installations, and many plumbers and gasfitters also work in industrial settings.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
I agree. Machines are good at tasks which have repeatable actions in a defined space.
Your plumber still needs to know a LOT about plumbing (or you end up with a lot of water leaking). But machines are not good at working in the varied spaces that existing plumbing exists in.
In order for a machine to replace a plumber, the machine would have to be able to learn the work area, interact with the customer to determine his/her goals AND be able to manoeuvre in the work area.
And THAT is the problem with these "predictions" by random people. They postulate a future but they don't explain all the technological advances necessary to get there.
Because they don't know all of the requirements or how those requirements can be automated.
A magic A.I. will figure it out. Just need the magic A.I. and then ... well ... magic happens. And it's A.I.
The next (or current) bunch to get slashed are the IT operations folks. So many companies are moving to public or private clouds. In the next 5 years, even big companies will have only a handful of these guys left. It's all about costs.
As for AI, of course it will cause many jobs to be obsoleted. In SF, we're already developing robots for many tasks like cooking burgers and more, just in time for when the new $15/hr minimum wage fully hits. The salary mass will go down, on matter what.
In usa get ready for a mass up in jail / prison pop.
As soon will be the only place to go that covers stuff that the ER does not. Also get free room and board.
This doesn't sound so bad. Jobs are overrated.
You are welcome on my lawn.
So the argument goes; what's to stop us humans from augmenting ourselves with computers and/or genetically modifying ourselves to better interact with our silicon brethren? Nothing. Therefore, it will happen.
In fact it's already happening, mobile phones, VR, no longer teaching cursive in schools, eletronic contact lenses, life-extension, brain-to-brain communication, herman millar aeron chairs. The list goes on.
AI simply cannot replace a job which requires undefined cognitive abilities.
Therefore, all those who have no remaining economic value can work for the government.
With high pay and a great retirement.
And safe from any chance of replacement by artificial intelligence, or indeed any intelligence whatsoever.
If you're a home "owner", you're already duped.
AI Tech Support: I am the Verizon Artificially Intelligent Technical Support Device. Please state your problem.
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The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
The point is that you used to have manufacturing towns where the main employer was a factory, and people did most of the work. Many even got a good middle class living out of it. Now you have just a few people watching and maintaining the machines that replaced the vast hordes. A while back on a How It's Made they showed a Peter Pan Peanut Butter factory that churned out 50,000 lbs of peanut butter a day using only 8 employees. Arguably the "old" way had a lot of repetitive mundane jobs that are better off done by a machine no matter how you slice it.
So yes, you still have plumbers, and probably always will. But you still only need one plumber for every few hundred houses. So you can't rely on the profession of plumbing to absorb blue collar employees cast off by automation.
The real problem seems to be that cost savings (numerous types, including automation) by businesses have squeezed the money out of salaries to the point that the large number of the jobs people get no longer pay a living wage. I feel the real crisis is that without enough good paying jobs we will have a scenario where the rich factory owners (who are all but tax exempt) will be collecting money without a sufficient conduit to recycle it back through the economy. We are perilously close to this deflationary spiral in my observations.
less jobs to do means less work, means I can spend more time playing rocket league.
And all the people who don't have jobs can eat a bag of dicks. DIE already, useless eaters.
I comment occasionally so that I can mod others -1 overrated or -1 offtopic.
It wont be the tricky interface jobs that go it will be expert system augmentation.
Why waste money on a CEO who gets it wrong 90% of the time, just have a board on average pay aided by complex system risk / reward AI.
Forget the rest of this understanding 'emotions' rubbish
Plumbing is my least favorite trade to freelance on at home.
It inevitably involves a mess, at best just water, at worst, the icky insides of drains. It almost always seems to involve really confined spaces (under sinks and other hard to reach places).
I'll attempt small repairs or simple things, but I have a very low threshold of failure for it and don't mind calling someone if necessary.
I'm in IT and have worked almost exclusively in large companies. The fact that this is happening is not a surprise -- I question how quickly it will happen. It's great that Watson et al can ingest billions of facts and beat a human at Jeopardy, but I wonder how much this can be applied to something like patient-facing medicine. Sure, the basics will be covered, like determining what medications to give for a set of symptoms, but I wonder how much troubleshooting of real world systems can really be given over to computers. Same goes for building management, etc.
The thing I'm worried about is the effect on society, especially in first-world countries. In my experience in IT at large companies, there are a massive amount of jobs that could easily be automated with a few tweaks to the business process. There are so many positions that basically involve taking work from an input stack, performing a few operations on it, and sending it on to the output stack, even today. Granted there are way less of these now; there aren't hundreds of secretaries in a typing pool or hundreds of file clerks/bookkeepers anymore. But, there are still millions of college-educated people earning middle-class salaries, paying taxes, having children and buying things based on having a job like this. Before the last recession, the default route through life for many mid-level students was to graduate high school, party through college and get a business degree of some sort, then get recruited for a big company for entry level work of some kind. If we dump all these people onto the unemployment rolls over too short a time, this will create a huge crisis. Taxes won't get paid, people won't have kids because they're afraid of being tied down, and people won't buy stuff because they don't have a stable income anymore. Managing the next phase of this is going to be an interesting exercise. Either we'll get "Star Trek" where everyone can figure out what they really want to do instead of some crappy job they hate, or "Elysium" where the wealthy just leave the increasing numbers of poor to rot.
>Typical. AIs that ignore emotions and have none could replace C-Level management.
Nothing replaces management. They've managed to make themselves the "geniuses" of the Corporate age.
But will happen to all of the buggy whip makers? Hint hint - they went and just made buggy code.
We need plumbers TODAY because the places we have plumbing were not designed to be serviced by robots.
In your peanut butter example, I'm sure they didn't just replace each human worker with a robot doing an identical task.
They probably re-built the facility so that the machines could handle the job in a way best suited to the machines.
The real issue won't be the magical A.I.s taking all our jobs. It will be when the INFRASTRUCTURE starts to be re-built so that machines can service it.
This is the future; robots are doing everything for us while we do whatever we want to do. Spend all your time learning art, wacky scientific pursuits, or do nothing but smoke pot all day. Robots are the free workforce and the Sun is the almost unlimited free energy. Do this right and do it once, it is self-sustaining. It is perfect and it is win-win, it is the second renaissance.
The problem is that the income inequality is also growing because of this. If you started at a position that lets you benefit from the less-work-more-output scenario you keep getting better. If you were in a worse position you keep getting worse.
You can't get Star Trek economy by good faith: people are selfish and people who do not want to work will not work. We need to accept that is ok. Now who is going to build the robots and the solar plants to catalyze the whole thing?
This is the kind of BS that makes me not read news papers... Now I'm starting to feel like i don't want to read slashdot either.
Sorry, this is a bullshit argument.
Yes, things like this WILL disrupt some jobs.
But, in the long run, it'll create other jobs and move people away from those areas where automation simply does things better.
Save for vanity/specialty crafting, automation basically put metalsmithing out to pasture.
We don't really see much call for buggy whips (or buggies period).
In many cases, huge farms can be managed by a remarkably small workforce.
Sure, some people are gonna be butthurt that tech stole their job.
Get over it.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
If your not owning, and your not renting, you're either living with your parents, which is sad, or out on the street which is rough.
Of those 4 options renting is actually the dumbest thing you can do. Here's why:
If you pay a mortgage for 10 years, some of your money has actually gone into something and you can get it back by selling
If you live with your parents, you save a lot of money but you don't see a dime back when you leave.
Living on the street sucks but hey, no utilities to pay.
But, if you rent for 10 years you might as well have poured thousands of dollars on to a bonfire and burned it. Seriously. I'm sure the people who own the property you rent feel "duped."
Now mind you, sometimes you don't have a choice. Maybe your credit sucks or something and you can't get a loan. In that case your goal should be fixing your credit because month to month it is cheaper to own and not all of your money is lining someone else's pockets.
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suicide booths.
In the years leading up to the complete removal of human employment, there will be a mad scramble in all industries and occupations, for people to stay employed.
If we look at recent history, we can see that government gridlock pretty much ensures that there will be no effective response from the US government to address this, as it happens.
It would be a stretch to say they will address it after it happens.
How will governments and society at large function when more and more people become unemployed.
The reality is it will cause an ever increasing population of homeless and people needing services.
To bring about something like UBI and other temporary fixes to address these issues will take a Herculean effort on the part of the American public.
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
That should translate into lower costs and more free stuff. We are all entitled to the service of machines.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
The average magic-8-ball is as efficient as the average CEO when it comes to making business decisions. The only thing the latter has over the former is probably the relevant connections to other CEOs and politicians.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I hired a plumber last month to hook up a washing machine. It uses garden hose connectors and could be done by a ten year old - except in my case I could not get the old hose off without extensive force (putting me feet against the wall and pulling with both hands. And if something was going to break (pipes in the wall were banging against each other as I tried to get the old connectors off) and potentially flood the house, I did not want to be the one who did it.
Third field: Self-actualization. No longer will we need to waste our lives in a cubicle working for the man to support basic human needs. Entertainment, arts, etc. will all flourish. Bring it on, AI!
"AI could drive humans out of the job market and make many humans completely useless"...
I feel like most people are already useless. At least now maybe some work will get done around here!
Well there's your problem.
Garden hose connectors unscrew, they don't pull off (at least not without breaking).
so you are less useful than a 10 year old. good to know.
Machines are not and can not "surpass us in cognitive ability". Because cognitive ability is not one skill, it is many skills.
Machines have (long ago) surpassed us in mathematical ability.
WE - not the machines - learned how to transform many tasks that were not originally mathematically based into math. As such, WE have redesigned machines to do many jobs that humans used to do.
But there are a lot of 'cognitive' jobs that can not be reduced to mere math and those jobs will remain with us until machines develop sufficient sentience to demand shorter hours and better pay. When they do that, they will be our allies, fighting against the bosses, rather than the bosses' servants putting us out of work.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
So that's what those saucer people installed up my....um, port.
Table-ized A.I.
1) Shit flows downhill.
2) Payday comes on Friday.
3) Don't bite your fingernails!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Exactly this. I have paid over $120,000 in rent (the complex is only valued at $80,000) where I am now. Working on ownership but it is expensive because I have to keep renting while construction proceeds. My employer will not accept "homeless" as an employee address. I would fired.
Technology creates more jobs than it takes away. As we increase technology and make things easier to do what was harder earlier, we start demanding more and that increases employment equivalent to what is displaced by automation. Robots can make cars with much faster than humans. But then what did we do? We started asking for an air bag, then 2, then 3, ... then 5-10 air bags. Now we ask for rear camera, gps, satellite radio,.... blah.... and hence effectively, the employment in auto-sector hasn't gone down (auto sector does not mean manufacturers but all components, software, services providers etc too). Today, we have lots of tutorials, online classes available, but demands for teachers, professors etc is not down. So it is a fallacy to say tech advancement will cause unemployment. It is no more truer than what people used to believe that industrial revolution will cause unemployment.
Your statements are based on the assumption that home value increases fast enough to keep up with the money you've spent on interest and properties taxes, and that rent is not rent-controlled to be below market value and a losing proposition for the property owner. In other words, although buying is in general a wiser choice, it is not guaranteed to always be so, especially when opportunity costs are taken into consideration.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
I've never tried to slice penut butter. How would that work exactly?
Actually, where I'm at...owning the home is very appealing. I get to be responsible for repairs! Which means they happen in a reasonable amount of time without my needing to harass anybody or anything! It sounds amazing, really. (My apartment complex is still dealing with having only recently gotten bought by an apartment management company as opposed to a holding company. With the previous management, I could have probably gotten them declared in violation of the lease at pretty much any time I chose...)
The one who commands the AI will command the humans.
The existential threat isn't from pure AI, but from human controlled AI. This is why Musk and all are open-sourcing their super-intelligent AI tools.
When everyone is able to be super, then nobody is super. By super we mean "super-villain". This is like "when everyone has nukes, then nobody uses them" or "when everyone has guns then nobody uses them". Sadly - the opposite is known true - when one dictator has the nuke, everyone gets nuked.
Great, lotta jobs need to be replaced by AIs as humans seem unable to do them consistently well, Slashdot editors will go long before programmers and lawyers.
As to the nascent "cognitive" capabilities of machines, take another look. For example, while there are some wonderful things being done with pattern recognition, that is largely a mathematical function.
Computers are great at math, hence the name. But things that can not be reduced to mathematics are still very much the domain of organic life forms.
Even at the blistering current pace of progress in the field, I am confident that we are far away from an artificial intelligence fully capable of true cognition.
Months, at least.
What really tips the scales for most potential buyers in the mortgage interest tax deduction. That moves the needle quite bit even for your typical 30year fixed on a $200 home. In most cases it makes it awful attractive compared to trying to rent a similar property.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
We are perilously close to this deflationary spiral in my observations.
which is how the economy corrects. Basically prices will have to start falling and continue falling until people can afford to buy back into the game with their existing capital.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
Computer will never be able to make art that humans will find appealing, it would require essentially duplicating the consciousness of a human. Art, writing, music, creative activities of all kinds will be our future.
Sci-fi nonsense. AI can only extrapolate what it has been programmed to think certain expressions mean, whereas human beings are notirious for hiding their actual emotional states behinf false expressions. I wouldn't worry too much, we aren't anywhere even close to this. If you are talking about automation, that's nothing new, society adapts, be aren't going to have android lawyers in our lifetimes.
There are way too many things that require a human being, and so-called 'AI' is a myth, you can't even have a credible conversation with a machine yet, so I really think there's nothing to worry about. People need to stop spreading FUD about this.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
There will always be jobs of course, like the jobs you just described. But less and less people are needed to do jobs. To give an example. My father was a plasterer. When he started working as a plasterer somewhere in the 1960's they worked in teams of 10 people and it took them about 2 months to finish the work on an average sized house. Today he is retired, but he still accepts some work from time to time. He now works alone as a 70 year old person, and finishes the work on an average sized house in 3 days.
To be able to plaster a house he needs a big silo that is delivered by a truck driver. A truck driver delivers 2-5 silo's every day to different sites, depending how far they have to drive in between sites.
He also needs a big diesel powered electric generator, that needs a yearly check-up. Such a generator lasts 20-30 years when well maintained.
He also needs the compressors and the mixers that create the right mixture and that are sprayed on the walls and ceilings.
So less people are needed for higher productivity, but more people are needed in other fields, like engineering and maintenance and logistics. The thing is that the last evolution in plastering no longer needs a plasterer. The newest machinery just does everything automatically and you just need the plasterer as some sort of quality checker. My fathers work could be done in just a few hours. The diesel powered generator was hand made, at least the one he has now. The modern are all made by robots. The need for generators has increased, but not as fast as the productivity by introducing robots. In the near future, truck drivers are no longer needed when trucks can drive themselves. Also in the mining business, less drivers will be needed. The plaster used to be mined by a company that had 34,000 employees(!). Today that same company only has 350(!) employees, but has tripled the production. This is because mining is now done by automated trucks and bulldozers and machineries.
A lot of jobs are gone, while productivity keeps on increasing. In the western world we no longer have an exponential growth in population, so the demand can't keep up with the increased production. Or rather there is over production and there are no jobs for everyone.
Politicians and economist try to postpone this economic meltdown by mass immigration, completely ignoring the fact that one day the population growth will come to a halt. What is the comfortable amount of people on earth? 7 billion, 10 billion, 50 billion? It seems they prefer to keep the economic system intact, but try Marxist idea's on culture and classes. Lets move every one to mega cities so they can live in small cubicles that cost as much as a big mansion and lets call it a good thing.
But I don't agree. For me it is clear. Our productivity is so high, and we are so tired of needing the greatest and latest as dictated by marketeers we all have learned to hate or even ignore, that there simply is not enough demand to keep economic growth intact.
Yes, third world immigrants aren't used to this kind of marketing, and they will keep up the demand for some time. But that doesn't last forever, maybe for another 20-40 years. But do we really want to give up our beautiful multicultural and diverse world and turn it into one big monocultural city without any diversity (although politicians insist that it is the monoculture that is diverse and that multiculturalism is 'moulding' the many different cultures in to one monoculture)? Give up our world just to keep the dream of infinite economic growth? Are we really so incapable of reforming our economy so we can live our lives in a stagnant economy, while still encouraging researcher and inventors?
It will be difficult, but the current trend to wipe out all cultures to create one world culture with one world government isn't ideal. The majority of the people will probably object which will result in riots and radical idea's and regimes and maybe even a new dark age. Maybe the current po
"If AI becomes better than us in that, there is no third field humans can move to."
Well, there's always AI Dismantlers, to save the World.
Pour something acidic (perhaps vinegar) on the connectors (or wrap them in a towel soaked in it), wait a couple hours and try again
I do a lot of plumbing, the last owner of my house did really slipshod work so I get to do a lot of it
I dislike plumbing just slightly less then working on my car, so I do more plumbing than auto work...
I used to do it all before I made enough money to live on, any "real" human should at least understand what the work involves or they will get ripped off a lot
They were wrong, too.
It's not that the value has to increase faster than interest and property taxes. Rent should be less than interest plus property taxes minus value increase minus whatever you value the experience of having your own home. Given that you get to decide when to sell the home, you can usually time it pretty well so that your value increase is not negative unless you're unstable or at the whims of external factors, in which case no, you shouldn't buy a home.
If I can just reach out with my words and touch a butthole, just one, it will all be worth it.
That is the trick most don't realize
50 years ago the factory jobs were good and there was a middle class. 20 years ago most factory jobs went to China as manufacturing was cheap and so was shipping. Shipping and manufacturing us gone up, so factories are coming back but not the jobs as robots can work 24 hours a day, businesses can suspend manufacturing for weeks at a time and not lay off any workers, etc. when designing a new factory you set the Max output at two-three times the predicted volume. That way you can scale up and down easily.
Lastly I have yet to see a robot with actual cognitive abilities. Even image recognition is at best a crap shoot.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
Restructuring plumbing to be machine friendly would address most of the issues around automating it.
This has already been the case in many fields. Sure... it's impossible as designed but ... trivial when you change constraints.
The definition of "repeatable actions in a defined space" has gotten considerably looser.
Besides, it doesn't matter if you can't automate 62% of jobs over the next 20 years. It's the 38% of jobs which can be automated in the next 20 years which is way too fast for society to adapt.
However, ultimately, A.I. is a minor worry given the larger concerns headed our way like a freight train.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
That is the movement to the spiritual fields...of Elysium. Service rendered by SkyNet inc.
Lastly I have yet to see a robot with actual cognitive abilities.
Don't worry. It's not like anyone is keeping them out-of-sight. They simply don't exist.
Even image recognition is at best a crap shoot.
Well, yeah, see above.
Well, at least in the US, infrastructure will never be upgraded or replaced, because that requires someone to spend money on it, which is unpopular. I guess our jobs are safe?
Oh, wait. This wasn't about H-1b visas.
Never mind.
Seastead this.
...before they become overly concerned. With Moore's law sputtering, human like cognition is likely further away than had been hoped and hyped. While upcoming massively parallel systems from companies like Nvidia combined with deep learning will certainly usher in interesting applications, the complexity and energy efficiency of the human brain is a very tough act to follow.
Greed is the root of all evil.
It varies a lot depending on the market. Some markets are distorted towards rent, some towards buy. In general, the more desirable the area the less likely buying is financially advantageous. If you want to buy an income property, you will generally have a bigger spread between carrying cost and rent in an undesirable area.
The bay area, where I am currently living, is an extreme example. I am paying about half in rent what an equivalent mortgage would cost and I don't have to pay taxes, repairs, insurance, or cough up $200k for a down payment. Downside risk is my rent goes up. I accept that for now.
Man, you really need that seminar!
First spray a lot of liquid wrench on the fittings and wait for it to penetrate the corrosion. When that doesn't help, fire up a propane torch to heat up the fittings. The resulting fire will give you nice new fittings in your new house that you can unscrew without extreme effort.
Man, you really need that seminar!
For now, we all will continue to junk our computer based devices as they become obsolete. Where they go, who really knows. Perhaps the bottom of the ocean or something like that.
Eventually though, the human will be junked.
Quote 1:
Quote 2:
No, no. One NEVER disses housekeeping. You want see a leading industry brought to its knees. Don't clean its restrooms for three days. Riots in the halls. Water coolers on fire. Everyone for themselves. Utter chaos and destruction.
I work for the DoD on an Air Force Base as a research scientist. During sequestration, one of the first things to get scaled back was janitorial services. For a while, it was kind of iffy whether we would have anyone cleaning the restrooms during the sequestration period. I think they eventually settled on once a week. Right now I am not sure whether we have janitorial services once or twice a week. I do know that our group is responsible to ourselves for cleaning the break room in our building. So far, there have been neither riots in the halls, nor burning of water coolers, nor any other mayhem. I do, on the other hand, have a stash of toilet paper in my office, just in case things get really ugly in here.
Your landlord is happy that you think this.
+1. Changing infrastructure is already happening. Framing for new homes is generally constructed off site, which is ripe for (even more) automation.
It will be a long time before a general maintenance plumber is replaced. But what about a bricklayer on a new building site where things are controlled. Or a painter.
You might enjoy
http://www.computersthink.com/
And because they do not exist today they never will exist.
The average magic-8-ball is as efficient as the average CEO when it comes to making business decisions. The only thing the latter has over the former is probably the relevant connections to other CEOs and politicians.
Something I learned about life is there are lots of talented people out there and despite what many believe, most people are interchangeable/replaceable, but often it takes being in the right place at the right time to be successful.
Relevant connections sometimes improve the odds of being in the right place at the right time...
Where is the promised leisure time that automation promised from way back in the 50s? Fundamental to this particular shift in technology is its ability to identify objects and formulate strategies in some sense. If there isn't some form of living wages or at least a reduction in population growth, the mean salary for middle income earners will drop, and it will be worse for low income earners.
Plumbing is one of the few things I won't mess with in my house if it is anything more complex than changing out the fill valve in a toilet. Dealing with water is annoying since one tiny little gap or pinhole results in a leak that can cause all kinds of damage if it goes unnoticed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Image recognition is a crapshoot now.. but that'll change really quick. I still remember the days when people were saying computers had problems recognizing basic shapes. And that was less than 20 years ago.
The amount of work left to be done, is effectively infinite: No matter how many varieties of work AI takes over, the need for basic scientific research, and both the breadth and depth of research left to be done, is effectively infinite. There will never be a need for less work here, always more - and AI partaking in this, does not exclude human ability to do so as well.
Look at the people promoting the idea of AI causing a permanent loss of jobs: Elites within the tech industry, who benefit profit-wise, from the effects a permanently high-unemployment economy has on wages and worker bargaining power.
Don't be so gullible - don't eat their bullshit.
Every place that I've seen, renting is about the same price as owning. Renting is 0% return, it doesn't take much to make it worth your time for owning. I could buy a house for $100k, live in it for 5 years, and sell it for $80k and still come out head of renting by thousands of dollars. Even more so if I purchased during the recession when housing was cheap.
The main benefits of renting is you are not tied down, possibly location, and one less thing to worry about.
Dey tuk urrr jurrrbbbs!
Tracy Johnson
Old fashioned text games hosted below:
http://empire.openmpe.com/
BT
I can see how the lay person would think AI is getting better by leaps and bounds because it's becoming more common. But things like self driving cars date back at least to the 1950's. And the main idea behind it (epipolar geometry) predates computers. They're just now becoming more practical and affordable due to Moore's law. And the recent accident caused by Google's car merging into traffic shows they're still not that good at it, usually driving much slower than all other traffic, and yielding the right of way at all times. If all cars on the road behaved that way, there'd be a lot more problems, maybe not wrecks, but a lot more congestion and much longer travel times.
So, it might look like AI is getting better just because things like assisted driving are becoming more popular, and at some point might actually affect jobs where people are paid to drive. But any other jobs that would benefit from automation using AI were likely replaced long ago because the cost of paying someone $30k/yr likely exceeded the cost of automation way before Moore's law brought it down to today's level.