Slashdot Mirror
Japanese White-Collar Workers Are Already Being Replaced by Artificial Intelligence (qz.com)
Most of the attention around automation focuses on how factory robots and self-driving cars may fundamentally change our workforce, potentially eliminating millions of jobs. But AI that can handle knowledge-based, white-collar work is also becoming increasingly competent. From a report on Quartz: One Japanese insurance company, Fukoku Mutual Life Insurance, is reportedly replacing 34 human insurance claim workers with "IBM Watson Explorer," starting by this month. The AI will scan hospital records and other documents to determine insurance payouts, according to a company press release, factoring injuries, patient medical histories, and procedures administered. Automation of these research and data gathering tasks will help the remaining human workers process the final payout faster, the release says.
Calm down everyone. This is just a continuation of productivity tools for accounting. Among other things I'm a certified accountant. This is just the next step in automation of accounting and it's a good thing. We used to do all our ledgers by hand. Now we all use software for that and believe me you don't want to go back to the way it was. Very little in accounting is actually value added activity so it is desirable to automate as much of it as possible. If some people lost their jobs doing that it's equivalent to how the PC replaced secretaries 30+ years ago. They were doing a necessary task but one that added little or no value. Most of what accountants do is just keeping track of what happened in a business and keeping the paperwork flowing where it needs to go. This is EXACTLY what we should be automating whenever possible.
I'm sure there are going to be a lot folks loudly proclaiming how we are all doomed and that there won't be any work for anyone left to do. Happens every time there is an advancement in automation and yet every time they are wrong. Yes some people are going to struggle in the short run. That happens with every technological advancement. Eventually they find other useful and valuable things to do and the world moves on. It will be fine.
It's the buggy whip story just being retold with a new product. Not anything to get worried about.
The buggy whip story shows that an entire species which had significant economic value for thousands of years found that technology had finally reached a point where they weren't needed. Instead of needing 20 million of them working in our economy in 1920, by 1960 there were only about 4.5 million. While they were able to take advantage of the previous technological revolutions and become even more useful because of better technology in the past, most horses could not survive the invention of the automobile.
The human intellect has enabled our species to keep up with technology for at least 100 years longer than arguably the second most productive work bearing species in our economy, but that doesn't mean we will forever. Most likely the fate of the horse in the early 1900's gives us a good view of what will happen to human workforce participation in the next 50 years. Around 9 million horses are still part of our economy today, but if horses had kept up with humans in our economy there would be more like 60 million.
Using the automobile revolution as a guide for what will happen in the AI revolution, human working age workforce participation could be at 15% in 40 years.
40 years from now you will see a totally new set of companies doing amazing things you never even imagined.
Of this we have no disagreement. But these new companies will continue to need less people to do the work. The oldest 5 companies to be added to the DJIA employ 1900 people per $1 billion in revenue. The newest 5 companies require only 1100 employees. Looking at the 10 largest companies by market cap, the companies founded in the last 50 years require 1270 employees per $1 billion in revenue. The companies founded earlier than that (all three of them founded over 100 years ago) require 1850 employees.
You may not see the people being displaced by these changes already, but we all heard them loud and clear during the Brexit and US Presidential campaigns. Unfortunately their rage is misplaced towards outsourcing when the real culprit is a technologically advanced economy that doesn't need their skills anymore. Not enough to justify living wages in their society that is.
Customer service bots and automated vehicles alone have the capability of displacing 10's of millions of workers in a very short time. Whether we look at 100 years ago or just this century so far, it is clear we won't find new industries for many if not most of these workers.
You may have a better imagination than me, but a belief in Santa Claus doesn't make him real.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
The GP is likely referring to the conservative Christian homeschooling movement who homeschool their children explicitly to avoid exposing their children to a common culture. The "mixing pot" of American culture may be mostly a myth, but some amount of interaction helps understanding and increases the chance people will be able to think of themselves as part of a singular nation.
I believe in freedom of speech and association, so I do not favor legal remedies, but it is a cultural problem that may have social/cultural remedies.
Were those people able to get hired elsewhere? The answer in general was almost certainly yes.
Actually, the answer is probably no. Labor force participation rates have fallen steadily since about the year 2000. Feminism caused the rate to rise from 58% (1963) to 67% (2000). Since then, it has fallen to 63%. In other words, we've already lost almost half of what we gained from women entering the workforce en masse. And the rate will only continue to fall in the future.
There is another effect. When the buggy whip manufacturers were put out of business, there were options for people to switch to and new industries were created. However, if AI gets apply across an entire economy, there won't be options because there is unemployment in every sector. And if AI obviates the need for workers, investors in new industries will build them around bots, so no real increase in employment. That and yer basic truck driver ain't going to be learning how to program.
The wealthy have been pocketing all the productivity gains.
love is just extroverted narcissism