How Will Automation Affect Different US Cities? (northwestern.edu)

Casino dealers and fishermen are both likely to be replaced by machines in coming years. So which city will lose more of its human workforce -- Las Vegas, the country's gambling capital, or Boston, a major fishing hub? From a research: People tend to assume that automation will affect every locale in the same, homogeneous way, says Hyejin Youn, an assistant professor of management and organization at Kellogg. "They have never thought of how this is unequally distributed across cities, across regions in the U.S." It is a high-stakes question. The knowledge that certain places will lose more jobs could allow workers and industries to better prepare for the change and could help city leaders ensure their local economies are poised to rebound. In new research, Youn and colleagues seek to understand how machines will disrupt the economies of individual cities. By carefully analyzing the workforces of American metropolitan areas, the team calculated what portion of jobs in each area is likely to be automated in coming decades. You can run your city's name, and also the job position you're curious about here.

Comments

Ridiculous data

[110010001000]

The backing data is ridiculous. A house cleaner has a 94.5% likelihood of being automated? How? What planet are these people living on, where they see automated robots appearing soon that have the ability to clean a house? The best we can come up with is Roomba, and that is a complete joke. These "researchers" need to get a real job and learn about technology.

Re:Ridiculous data

[SirSlud]

Automated doesn't mean "get replaced by an android". It just means that you'll need less people to do the same work due to advances in automation. Your robot may not clean the whole house, but it will let house cleaners clean a house faster, with less people. It's certainly easy to just say that we don't have the technology now, but in 20 years given advancements in robotics and automation ... I'd put my money on the human not doing the brunt of the work in cleaning a house.

Re:Ridiculous data

[110010001000]

OK, that isn't what it means, but please explain when this technology will appear that will "automate" house cleaning? Why will it appear in 20 years? Is there some sudden advancement in technology that I am not aware of?

Re:Ridiculous data

[ShanghaiBill]

We do not have 'AI', we have 'pseudo-intelligence'

According to my dictionary, one of the synonyms for "pseudo" is "artificial".

Something is seriously wrong

[rsilvergun]

Based on this finding, Youn says small cities could see an exodus of workers, as well as exacerbated income inequality, since robots are likely to hollow out the middle class there.

Something is seriously wrong with our civilization when robots taking over dull, repetitive tasks leads to an overall worse quality of life.

Re:Something is seriously wrong

[thinkwaitfast]

I make less than $20k/year, yet am extremely wealthy by 1900's standards, probably 1980's standards by most measures.

Re:Something is seriously wrong

[thinkwaitfast]

Inflation adjusted, a 26" color tv would have cost me 21% of my income in 1980. In 2018, a 32" flat panel tv costs me 0.9% of my income.

In 1972 (because I couldn't find 1980 prices), a refrigerator would have cost me 21% of my income, while today it costs 3.7% of my income while using 1/3rd the amount of energy. And the $ ammounts do not include the intangible increases in quality (better for the environment, safer, less energy useage).

Re:Something is seriously wrong

[DNS-and-BIND]

People of below average intelligence - you know, 50% of the population - have no problem with dull, repetitive tasks. In fact, they find learning new things to be a difficult chore. It is only the intelligent people who delight in learning. Because they're good at it, duh. How does an intelligent person overlook such obvious facts?

If you don't have a job, you don't have a place in society. You're not contributing. This is very destructive to the human soul, and people will start killing themselves because they don't know why they're alive. It's not like instead of a job people are going to start going to see independent films and creating art all day. That's just what a very small segment of the intelligent population - the ones high in creativity and trait openness - wishes they could do. They don't speak for humanity, this is painfully obvious to any observer.

Re:Something is seriously wrong

[Maxo-Texas]

Not only that. Training isn't free.

If you pay $6k for a skill and then lose the job within 2 years, you are in debt and can't retrain.

We need basic income, universal health care, and free education (that includes trade school). Not *debt*.

Re:Simple Answer

[Anonymous Coward]

Casino dealers likely won't go away anytime soon as the gamblers who play tables like the human element, otherwise they'd all be only using the video poker machines and such that have already existed for decades now.

I live in California. The McDonalds nearest me already has ordering kiosks. Tap what you want, swipe your card, and wait for your number to be called when your order is ready. No human interaction at all. My estimate is that about half the customers use them.

I've seen those kiosks at a few around here in the Midwest, I've not seen anyone using them so far as it's much quicker to just go to the register and say "Number 4, large", pay and be done with it. I was surprised that I couldn't just to that when I did try one of those kiosks, it wanted me to select everything separately and I ended up just canceling and going to the counter anyway.

Maybe they get used more when there's a big line or by someone who really wants a complicated custom order (but those people probably aren't going to McDonald's anyway to begin with.)

Re:Casinos

[DickBreath]

Humans have an important role in being casino dealers. Sex appeal. Are you going to the table with the automated dealer, or the table with the hot guy?

Now consider the role of machine learning. With or without a human dealer, machines might learn to recognize certain subtle human reactions that indicate things. Like when the sucker is about to give up and leave the table. What responses by the dealer are statistically more likely to keep him at the table losing more of his mortgage payment money.

Maybe machines can learn to recognize when players are more or less likely to be manipulated to gamble more. (eg, more susceptible to gamblers fallacy. (google it)

Re:Simple Answer

[glenebob]

Casino dealers likely won't go away anytime soon as the gamblers who play tables like the human element, otherwise they'd all be only using the video poker machines and such that have already existed for decades now.

I agree with this. It seems like a rather glaring flaw in TFA. People like people, and as such, the service industry will exist for a very long time. People like waiters, bar tenders, dealers, etc. should continue to do pretty well. OTOH, the people in the service industry that you don't see, are in real danger. People don't care about people they don't see, such as line cooks and dish washers.

There's so much wrong here it's hard to unpack

[rsilvergun]

it all.

First is the implicit notion that people have to be contributing to society to feel fulfilled. Bullshit. The upper class is full of layabouts, so much so we've got a term for it (the Idle Rich) and I don't see them offing themselves. People will watch TV, sports, drink and hang out with friends and be perfectly happy. Hell, our ancestors had _more_ free time than we did since they spent a lot of it just waiting for crops to grow.

Then there's the subtext that people who can't contribute don't have worth as a human being (e.g. you're comment about "If you don't have a job, you don't have a place in society"...). Here's the thing: from a philosophical, moral and civilization standpoint you've got two options: Either human beings have intrinsic worth or they don't. And if they don't then _none_ of use have any worth beyond what we can claim for ourselves. As Alistair Crowley put it: Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.

If that's your bag fine man. But don't be surprised when somebody bashes your skull in and feasts on the goo inside (or more likely, forces you to work for slave wages 90/hr/week in a factory breathing poisoned fumes). And if that's _not_ your bag, then you need to realize that the line of reasoning your following leads there and turn away from it ASAP.

TVs are junk

[rsilvergun]

fun junk, but junk. How much is college tuition? How about transportation? Or Housing in a safe neighborhood with good schools and jobs? And if you're an American don't get me started on health care.

Chinese slave labor has made electronics cheap. I just read a story where a US boat went down in a storm and it causally mentioned that the Chinese lose a boat every other day (along with it's crew). Then there's Cancer Villages. And smog so bad you can't go jogging. That's why your TVs are .09% of your income. For the stuff that matters (and that they couldn't outsource to countries with slave labor) you're paying through the nose. As a result your wages have not kept pace with inflation.