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Robots Will Eliminate 6% of All US Jobs By 2021, Says Report (theguardian.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: By 2021, robots will have eliminated 6% of all jobs in the U.S., starting with customer service representatives and eventually truck and taxi drivers. That's just one cheery takeaway from a report released by market research company Forrester this week. These robots, or intelligent agents, represent a set of AI-powered systems that can understand human behavior and make decisions on our behalf. Current technologies in this field include virtual assistants like Alexa, Cortana, Siri and Google Now as well as chatbots and automated robotic systems. For now, they are quite simple, but over the next five years they will become much better at making decisions on our behalf in more complex scenarios, which will enable mass adoption of breakthroughs like self-driving cars. The Inevitable Robot Uprising has already started, with at least 45% of U.S. online adults saying they use at least one of the aforementioned digital concierges. Intelligent agents can access calendars, email accounts, browsing history, playlists, purchases and media viewing history to create a detailed view of any given individual. With this knowledge, virtual agents can provide highly customized assistance, which is valuable to shops or banks trying to deliver better customer service. The report predicts there will be a net loss of 7% of U.S. jobs by 2025 -- 16% of U.S. jobs will be replaced, while the equivalent of 9% jobs will be created. The report forecasts 8.9 million new jobs in the U.S. by 2025, some of which include robot monitoring professionals, data scientists, automation specialists, and content curators.
We'll all look like the lazy fucks stuck on the spaceship in WALL-E.
Considering 80% of jobs are either sedentary or require light activity, it's at least likely that people would get in better shape on average if everyone becomes unemployed. I was in great shape when I had the time to spend 15-20 hours per week working out or playing sports, but now that I have a job with real responsibilities I've gained a lot of weight. I was unemployed for about six months during the last recession and I lost 40 pounds. It only took a couple years of working to put it back on.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
Just out of curiosity, I yanked a copy of the Communist Manifesto off Project Gutenberg the other day and was rather amazed to discover that all this had pretty well been already anticipated by Marx and Engels.
We have been programmed to think of Communism solely in terms of "rob the hard-working rich and give to the useless parasitic poor", but that wasn't the primary focus there. Instead it was based on the idea that industry would become so productive that without communal ownership of resources, we'd ultimately end up with exactly what we fear we're heading for.
Not to say that the Communist Manifesto presents a viable solution to that problem. After touching on the above, it goes on to promote things that have either been demonstrated not to work and/or morally offend, but it does indicate that we haven't discovered anything new here.
Robots have already done a pretty good job of replacing unskilled and semi-skilled labor.
What should concern us more is that they're replacing now.
Stop thinking about robots as tin-plated mechanical men or blind automated arm-devices. Start thinking of them as disembodied algorithms. Think of them as Watson. Think of them as Siri. Be afraid.
It's been happening for some time now. AI-directed securities trading programs that make decisions at speeds so fast that the SEC has had to take measures just to give mere humans a chance. In the last few years, we've seen AI playwriting, AI recipe-design, and a lot of other things.
Mostly the AI approach to creativity is pretty primitive at the moment, but when it comes to raw decision making, AIs can often do at least as well as humans. Although to be fair, in some cases, dart boards have been shown to do as well as humans. Machines and dart boards don't let their emotions or their greed cloud their judgements.
What happens when the day comes that major corporations can only be competitive when their executive decisions are made by machines? First you clear out the executive suite - who needs all those VPs and C-levels? Then, might as well dump the CEO himself, since he's nothing but a figurehead. The actual decision-making is done on a rental basis from IBM. Sales people? We've been training people to be "self serve" when buying for decades now.
This is the real SkyNet and it's already happening. Hopefully it won't make a computed decision to kill all humans, but that doesn't mean that it has to keep them on the payroll either.
People have been claiming that automation will lead to vast numbers of unemployed since the early days of the industrial revolution - the original Luddites - and, to date, have been demonstrably in error.
The key phrase there is "to date". At one time it was inconceivable that we would ever run out of oil, or forests, or that we could have any significant impact on a thing so vast as our planet's weather. Yet today we recognize these things as real threats to our survival as a species. I would say the idea that "we'll always have jobs for everyone" is a similar fallacy; there may always be opportunity for humans to work and create, but will there always be an economic need for them to do so? When robots do all of the physical work, and Artificial Intelligence makes all of the necessary decisions to keep the supply chains and the factories and the mines running smoothly, and there are robots that repair other robots, as well as maintaining the machines that the AI's run on, and the electrical plants that power them - what need will there be for man to work? Check out Marshall Brain's Manna for a compelling picture of how our advancements in automation and AI might well effect our economy and our society.
The increased use of robotics in industry, manufacturing, and other sectors, is almost certainly just the latest change that will ultimately just result in another redistribution of the labour pool to areas that have not been automated.
"areas that have not yet been automated". FTFY
It still sucks if you are one of those put out of work by a robot and have to try and find employment elsewhere, but doom and gloom on a national scale is just FUD.
It shouldn't suck, and it doesn't have to suck. If the benefits of automation and increased efficiency were spread around as they should be, instead of being the new currency of the hoarders in the "point-one-percent" class, we could all have better lives.
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
I know right? A potential ballet dancer was dropping off a pallet of canned goods at the store last week. I thought- just a little training and he'll be dancing in tights in no time.
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By definition, half the people are below average intelligence.
Being more honest, about 1/6 of the population is 1 standard deviation lower than normal. That's about 1/6 of the population who literally won't be able to work for less than the cost of the robot that replaces them.
Many of the new jobs require you to be close to 1 standard deviation above normal. That's about 1/6 of the population.
It's not just about intelligence- it's also about drive. And with a labor glut, compensation for labor (has been) and will be depressed. Over time- without higher taxes on those earning outsized compensation you'll see societal unrest and instability.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.