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Andrew Ng Wants a New 'New Deal' To Combat Job Automation (technologyreview.com)
Andrew Ng, formerly the head of AI for Chinese search giant Baidu and, before that, creator of Google's deep-learning Brain project, knows as well as anyone that artificial intelligence is coming for plenty of jobs. Speaking at a conference on Tuesday, Ng said he would like to see a "new New Deal" that pays people displaced by technology to study, offering an incentive to learn new skills and reenter the workforce. From a report: Speaking at MIT Technology Review's annual EmTech MIT conference in Cambridge, MA, on Tuesday, Ng said he's visited call centers and spoken to workers, knowing that his teams of software engineers will then write software that will automate aspects of their work. "There are many professions in the crosshairs of AI teams across the world," he said. Ng, who's currently working on a startup called Deeplearning.ai that helps train people on deep-learning technology, has some ideas for helping those in jobs he thinks will be automated, from call-center workers to radiologists, truck drivers, and the like. His suggestion is for an updated version of the New Deal -- the Depression-era economic programs that invested in, among other things, getting unemployed Americans back to work -- that pays displaced workers to learn new job skills.
And build roads and state parks, just like the original New Deal. Trees fight global warming, and road infrastructure needs some serious work.
So far as I have perceived AI is just more advanced if-then-else routines albeit on much faster systems with magnitudes more ram than existed in the old DOS MUD days.
Humanity has a unique way of freaking itself out over shit it makes.
~ People that think they are better than anyone else for any reason are the cause of all the strife in the world.
after making millions in the private sector. News at 11.
I've crossed paths with this guy. His expertise does not extend very far beyond his technical background. His politics...well he's entitled to his opinion and that's about it.
So he foresees his work causing another great depression? What is the value proposition?
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
Not just a new deal, a new economic system will be require as we approach the point where human labour is no longer something of value.
I have saved and invested ferociously since entering the workforce, and now that I'm into my 40's I have a 7-figure portfolio and no debt. I would like to keep working, but if someone comes and tells me to clean out my desk I'll just say fuck it, smile, and start planning my vacation. Living below your means when you really don't need to is difficult, but the payback is peace of mind.
We need to remove inefficiencies from the system and implement basic income with a requirement of 10h/month volunteer work for persons without dependents.
Inventing 9-to-5 is highly ineffective, nearly all of this will be wasted labor. We already have plenty of this baked into corporate workforce culture (e.g. HR, recruiters, web marketing). Instead, let people volunteer for causes they care and/or work part time jobs.
I hear talk about retraining workers and can't help but wonder if it's a realistic solution. The people I know that are really good at things, be it computers or music or martial arts, started doing it when they were young. How is an older, newly trained (inexperienced) worker going to compete with them?
Re-training seems like just kicking the can down the road. If autonomous systems keep improving, the new jobs created will be on the chopping block sooner or later. Universal Basic Income would give the people who are inclined and have the aptitude to take on the harder to automate jobs more flexibility to pursue those options, while laying the groundwork for the eventuality that the human workforce will become all but obsolete and a means for transitioning to a post scarcity economy.
I'd like to buy a vowel, Pat.
Ng said he's visited call centers and spoken to workers, knowing that his teams of software engineers will then write software that will automate aspects of their work.
This is a Good Thing. The need to staff a call center is a clear indication of a poorly functioning product or service. It means that some process or product has room to be made better. Call centers are necessary sometimes but really are a waste of human capital. I severely doubt that any near term AI is likely to do away with call centers any more than phone trees have. The better way to do that is to design a product or service that doesn't need the call center in the first place. Using AI to improve call centers pretty much is the most costly way to deal with the issue. Call centers should be a last resort.
There are many professions in the crosshairs of AI teams across the world," he said. Ng, who's currently working on a startup called Deeplearning.ai that helps train people on deep-learning technology, has some ideas for helping those in jobs he thinks will be automated, from call-center workers to radiologists, truck drivers, and the like.
Radiologists aren't going anywhere any time soon. Yes they have software to aid in diagnosis but that isn't going to get rid of the job - at most it will simply shift how they do it. There still will need to be a human in the loop for quite some time to come. Furthermore even if AI did supplant them, radiologists are MDs and are well trained to get started in a different specialty should the need arise. They'd have to do a new residency if they want to be a practicing doctor but that is all. Or there are countless other jobs (research, etc) which they are amply qualified for.
If someone's only skill is driving a vehicle then perhaps that person should consider educating themselves further.
That's what this sort of shit is. Shitty half-assed excuses for AIs are not going to take everyone's goddamned jobs! Believe it! They are OVER-HYPED GARBAGE that can't THINK, therefore they will NEVER replace human beings. EVER.
How do you determine whether a person has been displaced by AI? When AI takes away all financial planner jobs and they flood the plumber and electrician trades so much so that the wage goes through the floor, are we going to allow plumbers and electricians this training as well?
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Anything done toward retraining is a temporary bandaid. As soon as the specific tasks required to perform a job are identified, that job can be automated. Only tasks that specifically require a human are exempt, and not always even then. Prostitute, nurse, doctor, stripper, waiter, president.... There are some things only a human can do because being human is part of the job requirement. For the rest, there's automation. I'm not saying it will happen by this time next week, but we need to prepare for it.
Your idea is stupid regardless of the delivery.
Automation is inevitable. Impoverished, starving, desperate masses become violent. As automation increases, we need to take steps to ensure that we don't end up with the aforementioned impoverished masses.
Note that it doesn't require empathy or feelings to embrace this line of thought. It only requires a strong desire to avoid civil disruption and violence.
Let's be honest, there are pro's and con's to AI. If more jobs are automated it results in loss of jobs, but that means those people can spend more time to better themselves in a number of ways. Invent new types of jobs, invent things, etc. etc. Those with intelligence will succeed and those lacking will become the poor and cast out.
100 years ago people spent every waking moment on their farms plowing, feeding, gathering etc. Then we began to automate a lot of things and people now spend more time doing other things.
As I see the movie tickets now being sold by Kiosk, and tables being waited on by a button on the table, is becomes clear that more robts are replacing jobs. and that is common sense.
We also have talk about the Universal Basic Income, and if that is provided, then we really don't need prople to do the manual labor jobs because they can spend their efforts bettering themselves, inventing things, advancing our society.
The negative side of this is the fact that somebody will be in control over it and you, and history has shown they always take an unfair advantage and use that power to stack the deck in their favor. The Universal Basic Income will have "Terms and conditions".
I take control of my life, I never give it up, and I advise you to do the same. But there are ways you can adjust to this model without giving up control. Use your head and figure it out.
Creimer, go home you are drunk again.
See guys, this is what we warned you about, no one listened, now deal with this guys bullshit.
We should be able to provide everyone the ability to live as well as an 1890s farmer plus some kind of smart phone without them needing to work.
Basic housing, decent food, and entertainment.
But a lot of people are going to get wierd and destructive in that kind of environment as long as "rich" people exist and the things they do are displayed as entertainment.
Already, a lot of entertainment used by rich people is no longer shown or reported on. Areas become private domains for wealthy people and you never hear from or about them again.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
pays people displaced by technology to study, offering an incentive to learn new skills and reenter the workforce
While I admire his faith in humanity, this seems like a pipe dream. The job market is flooded with so many educated people right now that there's an implicit ranking:
If you're not in the first category, you're fighting for scraps right now without post-AI scarcity. Do you really think adding a fifth category is the solution? There just ain't enough work to go around.
Proud neuron in the Slashdot hivemind since 2002.
that includes Medicare for All, College for All, a $15 minimum wage and end the 7 wars we're fighting (be 'cha didn't know there were 7, and NK would make 8).
It's what used to be called a 'Party Platform' before money took over politics. There's a group calling themselves the "Justice Democrats" trying to push it through by primarying a bunch of the right wing Dems that got in on Clinton (Bill)'s coat tails. They're hoping they managge to knock Diane "Supports gun control but carries a gun" Feinstein out of office.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
With the best of intentions we do new deal stuff, but it doesnâ(TM)t stand test of time. Consider tweaking concept of money to fit what no longer an industrial age. Itâ(TM)s kind of happening now crypo-currency
We’ve been mired in a long term slow growth economy, and a huge part of the reason why is that productivity grown has slowed. AI is one of the key technologies to get productivity growing again.
Other productivity tailwinds: Trump's fight against regulation, Uber, Amazon, and eventually self-driving cars. We need these things to overcome demographic headwinds.
Productivity increases are the key to sustainable economic growth that outpaces population growth. More GPD per capita means people will lead better, more prosperous lives.
The future looks good.
There are a lot of things that are "pay me now, or pay me later" issues, that should be addressed:
1: No jobs or income. A guaranteed minimum income may cost something, but sure costs a lot less than having to deal with a constant insurgency of people with no hope or future, who view the only thing they can do is violence. Add to the fact that there are strong "shit stirrers" like the Nazis and Daesh, and random people who used to be just gangbangers now would have the desperation to do things never even thought of. Even with 100% gun control and none on the streets, one can still amass a death toll with a vehicle. Even with very Draconian laws with people going to prison for small things, eventually the guerrillas will win ("rednecks" in Afghanistan drove the best two war machines in all of human history, the USSR and the US out) unless the US decided to go the genocide route... and that won't happen because the press will show it to the world. So, pay me now with a GMI or New Deal jobs... or pay me later with guns, troops, mercenaries, green zones, and defending against constant incursions... which will destroy any quality of life in the country.
2: Global warming. Pay me now, or pay me later. Pay me now with moving to clean energy, redoing nuclear energy so it is trustworthy and advancing it from 1950s tech to 2010s Gen IV or thorium reactors, work on thermal depolymerization and CO2 abatement... or pay me later with ecological refugees, wars for arable land (Africa), people who have no hope and again... turn to Daesh because there is nothing left. Not just "those people in Africa". Everyone in the world is threatened by this... and paying for wars is VERY expensive.
just have student loans bankruptcy and then the costs will go down.
The "red" part of USA would rather have their left nut cut off than allow such "socialism". They'll blame such unemployment on factors such as "too much" regulation or taxes, foreigners, a foreign country, Hollywood elites, Canadian cows or bees, Soros banking conspiracies, Hillary's emails, etc. etc. before they will submit to New Deal 2.
Table-ized A.I.
just lowering the medicare age can help alot / maybe have modified SS system for older people pushed out of the job market.
and add in more OT pay at least the 60+ levels
But the real question is, is Andrew Ng and the companies working on AI willing to pay a 200% sales tax on AI products to pay for the displacement?
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Whenever considering any economic policy, do not just look at what you THINK you can see; you also have to look for the unseen effects of capital reallocation.
https://fee.org/articles/why-universal-basic-income-is-a-pipe-dream/
there are other parts of the minimum wage laws then just the pay like not being forced to pay for tools / uniforms and other costs to work your low paying job. Or being forced to pay for dine and dash.
This is fine for some people, the ones that respond to training quickly,
but not everybody is equipped with the intelligence to deal with the more and more complicated jobs that are still beyond automation.
There is a sizable amount of people who can only do a few basic, repetitive jobs, and automation is eating those up.
What is the long term plan to deal with that problem?
It'll never get off the ground because "OMG socialism" but I think we're going to need something like this. If we're truly ready to say there are no more manual labor assembly line type jobs, the majority of people in the US are suddenly unable to sell their labor. This includes white-collar assembly line jobs as well...think about all the paperwork processing type jobs you may support in IT and wonder why they still exist.
Not everyone is capable of training for a higher-level job. Consider the assembly line worker who has been doing the exact same job for 25 years. The odds are that they don't have the capability, intelligence or motivation to be full-stack web developers or data scientists or marketing managers.
The reason I like the New Deal analogy is that we're basically saying that if you can't find work that pays what you want, the government is the employer of last resort and has projects that need doing. It would keep the staunchest opponents of universal basic income at bay because the workers would have to work for their pay, but it would protect the population least able to make the transition to knowledge work...and IMO it would sure beat violent revolution once things get bad enough for enough people. Unemployed, uneducated workers with nothing to do and nothing to lose aren't going to sit around waiting for the upper class to share the wealth; you may see the return of the guillotine within our lifetimes.
And Hoover's tactics would have worked? The New Deal not just got farmers working, but fixed the dust issues, educated farmers on crop rotations, and also got workers working (and paid.) Without that, there would have been no work anywhere, with capital being destroyed, and people becoming desparate enough to revolt. Once that happens, the president after Hoover would have had to fight just to keep the country together, much less help with an economy.
The Mises school is like Liberty University, a biased, libertarian source that has no real accreditation. It can be lumped in with Breitbart and Infowars for the credibility (or lack of) that is has. It is no wonder why they want to rewrite history, because Libertarianism was what failed the US in the first place.
We live in a capitalist society. It's the responsibility of the individual to develop and maintain their skills in order to make themselves relevant in the workplace. I don't see how or why it's our responsibility to provide anything for people who aren't willing to do what they need in order to stay relevant. The automation is happening now, and slow enough that people should be able to see it coming and do what they need to do.
As a software engineer, the best piece of advice I got from a mentor was that our job is to automate everyone's work, including our own, and then move on to bigger, harder tasks. I have no qualms with automating away other people's jobs, I've automated my own.
Cars put buggy whip producers out of business. We survived that. Not every job is automatable, and I am confident that we will create entirely new types of work for people to do as more trivial work is no longer necessary for humans to do.
I don't see any reason to complicate the issue by bringing AI into it. Jobs get created and destroyed all time time for lots of reasons. For example, lots of companies are eliminating cashier and checker jobs in favor of self-service kiosks/self-checkout/mobile apps. Is that because technology and AI became good enough and cheaper? Because the minimum wage went up? Because customers prefer self-checkout? Because it improves throughput? Who knows? I certainly don't.
If we want to help re-train people who lose their job, that's all well and good. I don't see any reason to make a special case for people displaced by AI. And I strongly suspect it would be very hard to really determine who was displaced by AI and who wasn't.
This is not an argument. It seems you are incapable of mounting a real argument and so must resort to baseless mockery.
... there will be many jobs hand-pollinating the plants we need to eat.
Ah Yes more of the von Mises and Hayek bovine excrement. I'm willing to bet you just cann't for the Kansas miracle to come to your state as well.
You don't want a job. What you want is income. Why is everybody so confused about this??
Might makes right irrelevant.
Alas, too many folk refuse to admit that if we don't admit a bit of "socialism" soon, the masses of the unemployable will force a lot of it on us later. And it will more resemble the oppressive regimes of the 20th century than those of today.
Listen you dumb commie UBI will never happen in the U.S. as libertarians like the post above will oppose it. The best hope is to push for massive expansion of civilian role beauracratic jobs in govt/military for 25-30 hours a week with a minimum pay of $50k with full health benefits. Currently those jobs are limited but neoconservatives will jump at increasing those and commie libs will also realize some work has to be done for conservatives to agree to govt jobs.
For those who prefer not being in the parasitic private sector where they squeeze your life for more productivity, they should be allowed to get one of these make work desk jobs. I see a ton of those at the local municipal office where the bums do nothing 90% of the day and get a full pension. I want in on that scam too. Thus you will have enough support to override any libertarian opposition. UBI will not happen so this idea is a way to get a decent income for people without saying it should be given even if I sit home all day.
The AI book that everyone should get is available for pre-order (April 23, 2018). "Artificial Intelligence For Dummies" by John Paul Mueller and Luca Massaron.