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US Workers Face A Higher Risk Of Being Replaced By Robots (cnn.com)
There's a surprising prediction for the next 15 years from the world's second largest professional services firm. An anonymous reader quotes CNN:
Millions of workers around the world are at risk of losing their jobs to robots -- but Americans should be particularly worried. Thirty-eight percent of jobs in the U.S. are at high risk of being replaced by robots and artificial intelligence over the next 15 years, according to a new report by PwC. Meanwhile, only 30% of jobs in the U.K. are similarly endangered. The same level of risk applies to only 21% of positions in Japan.
61% of America's financial service jobs "are at a high risk of being replaced by robots," according to the article, vs. just 32% of the finance jobs in the U.K. (Those U.S. finance jobs tend to be "domestic retail operations" like small-town bank tellers, whereas U.K. finance jobs concentrate more in international finance and investment banking.) The firm's chief economist sees a world where new jobs are more likely to go to higher-skilled workers, and he ultimately predicts "a restructuring of the jobs market... The gap between rich and poor could get even wider."
61% of America's financial service jobs "are at a high risk of being replaced by robots," according to the article, vs. just 32% of the finance jobs in the U.K. (Those U.S. finance jobs tend to be "domestic retail operations" like small-town bank tellers, whereas U.K. finance jobs concentrate more in international finance and investment banking.) The firm's chief economist sees a world where new jobs are more likely to go to higher-skilled workers, and he ultimately predicts "a restructuring of the jobs market... The gap between rich and poor could get even wider."
You mean machines that will accept deposits and dispense cash from my accounts? That's just crazy talk.
Would it kill CNN (or slashdot for that matter) to include things like references, facts, and arguments to back up conclusions?
It would since those often don't exist.
Anything can be found funny, from a certain point of view.
It's one thing to deliver a pizza, other food, or small parcel to a house where the person can come to the door easily. But currently when delivering to a large building you let the person in to bring it up to your door. If you use drones/robots/self-driving cars or some combination of them they will have to get a lot more advanced to get to that level. People aren't going to want to go down to the lobby to wait for their orders. And if you keep the person to deal with the building you might as well have them do all the work.
Some tractors already drive mostly by themselves today. The operators handle the turns and let the tractor drive the straight part while they are able to focus on what they are doing (seeding, applying something, harvesting, ...). When they get near the end of the row the operator takes control again for the turn and repeats the process. It's the overseeing what is happening to ensure nothing is going wrong that is being automated now. The automated driving of tractors has been done already. The operators don't really have to handle the turns when in the cab but do it more out of habit.
Regardless if people fight the idea or not, automation and AI decimating the concept and capability of human employment is no longer science fiction. And when US states started crying out for $15 minimum wage rates, the initial response back from corporations was to look towards automation, because that option was now worth the investment.
Coming to the conclusion that automation and AI would target countries with higher wage costs seems to be rather obvious. The real question is what will be done to control unending Greed from turning the planet into a Welfare state.
We keep talking about UBI, which is another concept that will become inevitable as automation and AI decimate human employment. The problem lies with funding UBI, which will likely be done through taxation. Unfortunately, corporations are some of the worst entities when it comes to actually paying taxes by employing armies of lobbyists to minimize or hide those obligations, with the end result being trillions sitting in offshore tax havens today. Since this will never change, unending Greed will all but guarantee that UBI will become nothing more than Welfare 2.0 for the masses.
You can forget the American Dream. You can forget the Human Dream. The reality of automation and AI is a global Welfare state, all because of Greed.
It would be just like in the USA before the civil war of secession, where you can buy and sell slaves. The rich people get access to slaves, and those slaves displace the workers who would otherwise get paid.
A machine doesn't have to replace all of the things a tech can do in total, or in one machine.
For example, a washing machine doesn't replace all the things a domestic servant did in 1900, but a washing machine, dryer, dish washer and a vacuum cleaner in total replace a significant fraction of them.
Some machine learning algorithms actually do better than humans in some cross-correlation activities than humans, but are generally relatively specific to the task to which they are designed. This is becoming less a function of programming in the traditional sense, but more a case of selecting strategies and components and training and validation sets, although that's still a complicated task, but ironically one that can be increasingly handled by automation to select those elements and I've used genetic algorithms to select elements for machine learning tasks before.
It has been standard practice to swap modules and then send those modules elsewhere to be troubleshot for as long as I can recall. It's nothing new.
Nobody said it was new. It is, however, becoming more common. There are still a lot of parts not wrapped up in modules which you have to replace to make repairs. That's going to change as robots do more of these jobs.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I understand and accept that jobs that rely on someone simply following a process given down by management, without needing to apply judgement or on-the-spot thinking, is a piece of very low hanging fruit for automation. Baristas, fast food counter staff, checkout/till staff in supermarkets etc. are, as we already know, all going to find their jobs disappear in the near future.
However, many skilled jobs make use of IT systems for data analysis and calculations, where much of the setting up is still done by a squishy human on a PC in an office paid a high salary for their work and knowledge in using the system and explaining the results to clients. Many professional services firms are already automating much of the calculation and systems work to other countries, or to a computer.
Many first world governments are actually encouraging ways to make such work more standardised and easier to automate. The UK government's consultation into the way final salary pension schemes in the UK are valued every three years is one such example, although you have to really dig into the detail of the green paper to find it:
https://www.gov.uk/government/...
Many of these highly paid staff will see themselves as safe from automation, but their bosses certainly don't.
If you use drones/robots/self-driving cars or some combination of them they will have to get just a tiny bit more advanced to get to that level.
FTFY
Look around you / do a little search engine work. We have walking robots, ramp-ascending robots, stair-climbing robots, door-opening robots, button-pushing robots, robots with internal cargo storage, robots that can navigate offices and homes. Right now.
That stuff doesn't even have to be developed at this point, it just has to be aggregated. As the financial case has now been made to do it, it's going to happen very quickly. Within ten years, max.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
The Moravec's paradox of jobs
This is just another aspect of de-skilling. Since the 1990's the fad has been for people to perform "processes" rather than jobs. The idea being that so long as you adhere to the "process", all your actions will be of the same high quality as your co-irkers. Ha!
But as soon as you are able to write down a formal description of your job, you have effectively written a computer program for doing it. So the most easily replaceable jobs will be the ones that require little judgement, little experience (esp. when there is no possibility of having to deal with exceptions) and simple interfaces to other "cogs" in the great machine.
So if you can replace a personnel officer with a computer, then companies will do it. Just feed in the parameters for the sort of people you wish to hire. Merely give the machine stock replies to the most common workplace complaints. Give it an algorithm for employee assessment - and let it it do its thing. It won't replace the entire personnel dept. But if it can perform the mundane operations, it should considerably cut the number of actual people required to support the company.
And it it this reduction - rather than complete replacement - of mid-level and managerial posts that is where the job losses will occur.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
The surface of the Earth is finite and solar power is becoming cheap and effective for mobile robotics. In 50 years I will likely not be able to afford a place where I can still see the sky. If I can't afford even that small luxury, how can I afford to live in space where I'll have to pay for air?
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Eminent domain is supposed to be a process to consolidate property for a purpose that serves the public good. It almost never works out that way. Usually a state or local government use the laws to rip people's homes away from them and hand it over to some special interest.
Indeed, I know I don't own my house or the land it sits on. Not only can someone file some paperwork and take it away from me. If I stopped paying my property tax for long enough, I would be removed and my house auctioned off. Private property is an illusion.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Mmm... anyone think that a global accountancy firm might be somewhat biased in their reporting on this subject? The most helpful and interesting article I've found to date has been this review of a report that seems to be fairly rational: https://3starlearningexperienc...
In a world where no one works, and no one earns income - who is left to buy the output of the robots?
Capitalism driven production REQUIRES consumers with disposable income. The one cannot exist without the other. To save capitalism, you need to save the consumer.
Mmm-hmm. Well, if you can't keep track of your spending, I suppose that'd be a reason to want to have others do it for you. I don't have that problem, personally, so it's difficult for me to emphasize with your use case. As for needing to show where you were... who do you need to show this to? The very fact that you think you need to show it to someone is worrisome, and speaks more to the problem than any solution.
Because the government thinks it's perfectly okay to directly violate the constitution that authorizes its existence, that's why. Because the government is trying to look at the people's persons, houses, papers and effects without warrants, that's why. Because the government will, if given a chance, interfere with personal and consensual choices it has absolutely no ethical reason to concern itself with, that's why. Because the government runs a system of unjust gulags, driven by a manifestly corrupt legal system, which one should avoid with great care, that's why.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
The great news there for us technical folk is that if 20 programmers are working today, you can be sure they will need 40 in a few years to clean up the mess the 20 left.
Maybe, maybe not. High Frequency Trading is losing its luster and might be on the way out.
http://www.investopedia.com/news/high-frequency-trading-flash-boys-losing-steam/