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'We Need Robots To Take Our Jobs,' Veteran Tech Reporter John Markoff Explains Why (recode.net)
Former New York Times technology reporter John Markoff used to think robots taking jobs was cause for alarm. Then, he found out that the working-age population in China, Japan, Korea and the U.S. was declining. From a report on Recode: "We need the robots for two reasons: On the one side, there are not enough workers," Markoff said on the latest episode of Recode Decode. "The demographic trends are more important than the technological trends, and they happen more quickly. On the other side, there's this thing called the dependency ratio, the ratio between caregivers and people who need care," he added. "For the first time last year, there were more people in the world who are over 65 than under five. First time ever in history. By the middle of the century, the number of people over 80 will double. By the end of the century, it'll be up sevenfold, globally."
In theory it's great, in practice it will "hit" people in different ways unevenly, and is part of the reason the rich are getting richer while the rest stagnate.
We don't know how to organize an economy to take advantage of such. We only have theories that have yet to be tested. That means we are guinea-pigs. But if we do nothing, we are still guinea-pigs, because doing nothing means changes in jobs and automation will still impact us, but without any planning.
Such displacement is arguably why T won: he gave a voice to the displaced of the Rust Belt, which are swing states. His reasoning about solutions is all off kilter, but he at least gave the problem top billing.
Managing change is politically tricky.
Table-ized A.I.
Population decline is an issue in many countries, primarily with low birth rates, but I think here they're speaking of the problems with population aging.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
As soon as you can guarantee Basic Income and health coverage for everyone i'd be happy to let a robot take my day job while i go do more interesting stuff instead! However until that happens robots taking over all the jobs would be a disaster.
(I don't care one way or the other if the healthcare is single payer or not, as long as i'm guaranteed coverage at an affordable price, regardless of preexisting conditions.)
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
There aren't enough workers to make everything we want with no robots. Therefore, we need robots, because there aren't enough workers. The question is, how many workers do we need, and can we make stuff better and with fewer workers with robots? And that answer will always be "yes".
Here I'll explain for the Min Wage worker.
You can have a Big Mac, Fries, and a Coke for $8.50 made by a Min Wage worker
OR
You can have a Gourmet Burger, steak fries and a Coke for $11:50, made by a Robot.
Yes, you can save 1/3 of the price by going to Mc D's. But you'll miss out on a better patty, better bun, better veggies, better condiments ....
Yes, they are coming to take your job. But consider this, if you can be replaced by a robot, perhaps you should be.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Corporate-speak translation: "There are not enough highly-educated workers who are cheap, docile, and single so they have no family distractions."
In that sense, yes, there is a shortage.
Table-ized A.I.
... think again: The vast majority of elderly people do not have the monetary resources to acquire some "robot care taker".
All those robot fantasies are based on the illusion that somehow, once there are enough robots around, people will magically start to share their wealth with others in need. It has been proven time and again that this does not happen. Not even with much more basic things like food/shelter/healthcare.
The more likely situation will be that a few robots will aide some rich elderly people, while a lot of armed robots will be in charge of putting down any rebellion from the have-nots.
And I'll explain for you. The minimum wage worker can probably manage the $8.50 meal once in a while. If he loses his job he has $0 to spend on any sort of burger.
That trend will not go well for anyone unless you're prepared to implement a basic income that will allow him to manage that $11.50 meal once in a while.
I think its better to have population decline than population increase, as indefinite increase is not possible. You need to stop at some point.
Your point being? You can hire 5000 dudes in China to dig a ditch. Doesn't mean that you aren't better off with an excavator or other heavy equipment.
"Robots" have been taking jobs for hundreds of years. Water wheels and wind mills have taken jobs of men manually grinding flour. The steam engine took the jobs of horses and people in the field. Hydraulics took the job of people manually manipulating plows. Bigger tractors took the place of more people driving more steam engines.
What used to take a few hundred men with shovels can be done with an operator in a heavy equipment cab. What used to take a few hundred men underground hauling coal and other minerals can be done by a handful of men and heavy equipment. What used to take hundreds of teachers across the US can be done by online courses.
We need robots to take over the boring repetitive stuff of now so we can work on the jobs of the future. Just like has been done to now.
Does anyone really pine for the days that it took 50+% of our workforce just to make food for the other minority? If so the Amish are 'hiring'. We leave them well enough alone and they make great meats and cheeses for us to buy.
(The more aware) citizens also know that without illegal labor, their costs will rise precipitously.
The questions to ask there are:
Do you want to pay $4.00 for an orange, and $30/hour for a babysitter, and $50/hour for lawn care? Do you want the lowest level jobs being skimmed for taxes the way the middle-level jobs already are to make up for the zero taxes people like Trump pay?
Or would you prefer to continue as we are, possibly with the benefit of taco trucks on as many corners as possible, and Trump and his cronies actually having to fork some over, possibly at the cost of not having every toilet seat made out of gold?
Now, me... I'll take the tacos.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
For the first time last year, there were more people in the world who are over 65 than under five. First time ever in history. By the middle of the century, the number of people over 80 will double. By the end of the century, it'll be up sevenfold, globally.
SEVENFOLD? At that rate, by the first half of the century after that, everyone will have died off! (unless we've figured out how to halt/reverse the aging process, and then "age" won't really matter).
Ya gotta question these numbers, but there's definitely a trend among developed nations toward not having kids, while better healthcare helps keep people alive longer. I think the former is ok (and if you don't now, someday you will), but not having kinds is a weird offshoot of how our world has evolved. Without a chance at a sustainable income in those golden child-making years (think get a job at the steel mill right out of high-school after knocking up your prom date... see the first half of The Deer Hunter to get a glimpse of those long-gone happy days), if you have anything to do with it you put off having kids, at least until you and your SO (if you have one) have enough reliable income to support the little tyke (or maybe you're lucky enough to have one or more sets of parental units living nearby who offer free nanny service because they really want grandkids).
The putting-off process very easily becomes indefinite. In some countries in Asia and Europe, this is becoming a big deal. Even in the U.S., population numbers are largely because of immigration.
I think we're gonna need those robots. Nice ones who will make our toys, take out the trash, help us up the stairs, mix up the medicine, and wipe our asses, everything the children of immigrants won't do because they're parent made 'em study real hard and make it into Harvard and MIT, so they can major in robotics 'cause maybe that'll make 'em enough money to someday pay off their student loans so they can maybe, you know, get married and have some kids.
Maybe. Gotta work long hours in that industry. Word has it that working in tech is bad for your sex life (if you believe the opinion of an at least semi-crazy gay billionaire).
Take it easy, Charlie, I've got an Angle...
Yeah, look how our culture suffered when the Italians and Irish started coming over with their habbits of having huge families. The people back then even warned us, "the catholics are breeding us out!" but sadly no one would listen.
Or maybe they just all became Americans like the rest of us and it wasnt a problem at all. The vast majority of immigrants acculturate within a few generations. This is incredibly obviouse when looking at American history and can be seen happening today with Mexican and other Latin American immigrants. Most first gens are pretty Mexican in culture, second generation tends to run a wide spectrum and by the third generation they're American as all hell. At least that's what I've seen from every third plus generation American of Mexican descent that I've ever met. In my experience most dont even speak Spanish at that point. (unless they live near the boarder)
So anyways, stop your fear mongering. Western cultures (where most of this is happening right now) arent going anywhere.
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i think he was worried about the native American culture... ;)
"Basic Income can never work because it is "central planning" and that has never worked."
No it's not, you're making that up. The government sending its citizens a check every month is not at all the same as central planning of the economy.
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Not to mention "idle hands make for mischief". Paying people to sit around and do nothing is dangerous for any society.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
In the long-term view of things, that's what I worry the most about, on behalf of humanity in general. In some places in the world (not going to name any names) human life is already seems to be considered virtually worthless. I see a possible future where an aging population is just 'thrown away' like so much garbage, nobody caring whether or not they starve to death or die of disease, because while young, able-bodied people will be a dime-a-dozen because of automation, elderly people, who are not capable of doing much work, will be considered to be a liability to be liquidated. Do you really think anyone wants to live in a world like that? Sadly in some ways we're already there, the elderly are not honored or taken care of, they're dumped into 'homes' that treat them worse than animals, keeping them alive, but quiet, so they continue to get paid for their 'services' to them. Really, seriously, honestly, some of you seem to think that there's going to be some sort of utopia created by all this automation and robotics and fake 'AI', but the reality is already all around us, and it's just going to get worse when people are made more and more obsolete by a corporate world that has no reason to care about people, only profits, and many governments that are not much better, more interested in their GDP than the welfare of old people. When the entire world is run by money, who is going to advocate for these people? Don't act like you don't care, either, because no one is exempt from aging, and saying you'll just kill yourself when you get too old is a lie.
John Markoff - is that the same asshole who made a career writing inaccurate shit about Kevin Mitnick and repeating the same erroneous stories? Even though he knew they were wrong? The same asshole who presented himself to law enforcement as an expert on Mitnick even though he never met him? The same asshole who spent half his time ridiculing Mitnick's body? Is it that asshole?
So we should confiscate all the money of the idle rich, most of whom didn't earn it anyway.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
The math doesn't work. The worker with $0 income can't afford even a $0.01 burger. Unless you go to universal income, robots are part of the problem.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Both for skilled and unskilled labor in the US the demand has always been enormous. Yet the people and most of the companies can not pay a decent wage to workers. If we have any delusions about supply and demand let's confront a bit of reality. Just how do we excuse not paying lofty wages to laborers when the demand is so enormous. For almost all of us we would perish faster without migrant farm workers than we would if we had no doctors, lawyers or accountants. But the people that labor on our crops almost live in slavery and they die young from that labor as well. We have a total failure of economic justice in America. And it is not new. It has always been that way.
I've always said (only half jokingly) that jobs were invented by the ruling class to keep people too busy to cause trouble for the rich.
how many burgers will that robot of yours buy again? Gourmet or not.
Jack of all trades,master of none
We need to Start to cut down full time and remove job based health insurance But still keep some form of worker comp (contractors covered as well if an IRS like test to set if they really are independent contractors) (yes higher risk jobs like tower climbing have been dumped on low paid independent contractors with deadlines that make safety get pushed to the side) and lack of safety gear.
The idle rich are a very small set of people. Most people do something with their lives given the opportunity. And that's the problem we need to solve: giving everyone that opportunity. We as a society suck at vocational training, and we can fix that.
In Germany if you want to work at, say, Mercedes, you'll be an intern on the factory line by 16, having gotten an education specifically tuned for that job and the chance to do the work. By graduation, you're there in that well-paying skilled manufacturing job.
America has over a million high skilled manufacturing jobs unfilled due to lack of trained workers. The companies aren't going to do that on their own -- they aren't schools -- but we as a society can surely work together with those manufacturers to make it happen. But instead we turn up our noses at blue-collar work, dismiss the working class as stupid racists, and generally separate education from labor as far as we possibly can. It won't end well.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
"You don't understand. Ferengi workers don't want to stop the exploitation, we want to find a way to become the exploiters."
Versus the smart non-racists? See, this is just another way of saying, "I'm better than *those* people and hence will never be like them."
Because manufacturing is a dying industry. Or, more precisely, it's a booming industry for productivity because we keep automating things.
It didn't start well either, so we're pretty par the course.
I don't like him as an entertainer, either. A lot of people here on Slashdot like that he's modified the H1-B process, a lot of blue-collar workers like his wall building for the same reason.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Basic Income was conceived of in response to the idea that human labor might become obsolete in a wide sense. If all of the manual labor is being done by robots then what are the masses going to live on? Likewise, if we are able to meet all or most of our manual labor needs through automation why waste human potential on manual labor?
You're conceptualizing basic income in a world exactly like ours. If you conceptualize it in the context of a post manual labor world, which we do seem to be heading towards, then it comes out as the only logical alternative to butchering the excess population.
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That didn't work out so well (for the aristocracy) in France. It didn't work any better for the Tsar.
We don't have to break into your bunker. Filling the entrance and vent with concrete will be sufficient.
No. This time it will be completely different. The Muslims will kill us all and then steal our women and then replace our Constitution with Sharia Law. But Trump will stop them!
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
The people back then even warned us, "the catholics are breeding us out!" but sadly no one would listen.
Now the (same ?) people are warning Europe: "The muslims are breeding us out!", does anybody listen?
"Trump!!", the new Godwin.
Thanks to the support of Alex Jones, right?
"Trump!!", the new Godwin.
No one has mentioned this solution yet?
When I'm old, senile and can't even wipe my own ass, I want to have the option to check out a little early.
Maybe watching a peaceful video as I drift off to everlasting sleep.
Win for me, win for the rest of society that I won't be a burden on any more.
The companies aren't going to do that on their own -- they aren't schools
Why not? They used to. It seems to be the ultimate form of freeloading to expect other people to pay for the training they need.
we turn up our noses at blue-collar work, dismiss the working class as stupid racists
We don't. We dismiss racist people as racist and people who are too thick to understand what is racism and what isn't, we dismiss as thick.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
H1-B is a great example of this problem. The problem is companies abusing H1-B visas, and the simple solution is to get rid of (or severely limit) H1-B visas. Thing is, you need some level of skilled immigration for any modern economy, and the idea that if companies can't abuse H1-B they will just pay an American a good wage instead of laughable. They will either offshore or they will move to some state with weak employment laws and abuse Americans with low wages and awful conditions.
The more complex solution is to fix the H1-B system to prevent the worse abuse, and then concentrate on making US workers more attractive. Set up new tech hubs and encourage companies to move there, so that their employees can enjoy a reasonable cost of living and thus don't need super high salaries just to pay the rent. Require companies who are having to get H1-Bs in because of lack of local skills to invest in training locals to give them those skills, and encourage them (e.g. with tax breaks) to invest more in apprenticeships.
So on the one hand you have "ban the thing that is a problem, instant solution, problem solved" but doesn't really work, verses "do multiple things over several years and be interventionist, and eventually things will get better". The latter is a much harder sell, especially when the other side is whipping up anger and resentment.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
I wouldn't rush to invest in torch & pitchfork futures if I were you. What if a new series of Honey Boo Boo comes out?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."