A Study Finds Half of Jobs Are Vulnerable To Automation (economist.com)

The Economist reports of a new working paper by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) that assesses the automatability of each task within a given job, based on a survey of skills in 2015. "Overall, the study finds that 14% of jobs across 32 countries are highly vulnerable, defined as having at least a 70% chance of automation," reports Economist. "A further 32% were slightly less imperiled, with a probability between 50% and 70%. At current employment rates, that puts 210 million jobs at risk across the 32 countries in the study." From the report: The pain will not be shared evenly. The study finds large variation across countries: jobs in Slovakia are twice as vulnerable as those in Norway. In general, workers in rich countries appear less at risk than those in middle-income ones. But wide gaps exist even between countries of similar wealth. Differences in organizational structure and industry mix both play a role, but the former matters more. In South Korea, for example, 30% of jobs are in manufacturing, compared with 22% in Canada. Nonetheless, on average, Korean jobs are harder to automate than Canadian ones are. This may be because Korean employers have found better ways to combine, in the same job, and without reducing productivity, both routine tasks and social and creative ones, which computers or robots cannot do. A gloomier explanation would be "survivor bias": the jobs that remain in Korea appear harder to automate only because Korean firms have already handed most of the easily automatable jobs to machines.

Comments

Hmm

[cascadingstylesheet]

This time it's half? Last week it was something else.

Nobody really knows.

Re:Hmm

[JonahsDad]

As long as no Wozniaks are vulnerable to automation, we'll be OK.

Re:Hmm

[geekmux]

This time it's half? Last week it was something else.

Nobody really knows.

Actually, history has shown us the one thing we humans do know when it comes to predicting the future; we can underestimate the shit out of damn near anything.

Re:Hmm

[greythax]

So sticking our head in the sand and pretending the problem doesn't exist is probably the best course of action.

Re:Hmm

[HiThere]

Bingo!

Each of these studies is making particular assumptions to reach their conclusions. But they don't list the assumptions in the articles presented. With the right assumptions you could even get a massive increase in employment rates. (I saw some like that around a decade ago.)

My general belief is that with any plausible set of assumptions you will get different results at different stages of technical advance, until at the end you reach the stage where nobody needs to hold a job. But one of the assumptions that requires is that energy production is sufficient, and population is stable or declining. So one of the main assumptions that is varying is the rate of technical progress...and that contains the hidden assumption that "technical progress" is a unitary term, which is false, but required if people are going to think about making a projection that's intelligible.

I generally assume that over the long term technical progress will be a lot faster than is assumed, but over the short term there will be unforeseen problems. Here the problem is picking what's short term and what's long term. Back in the day the division happened at about 15 years, but it seems to have been shrinking, probably as the result of an increasing number of independent entities working on the problems.

Re:Hmm

[Maxo-Texas]

Yea, it used to be 35-38% was commonly accepted.

It wasn't a week ago, but it wasn't that long ago.

Also the study seems massively optimistic in the face of what's happening in the real world.

China is automating in a big way too... even jobs with salaries as low as $2400 per year.

Re:Hmm

[thinkwaitfast]

In 1780, it was close to 100%.

Re:Hmm

[thinkwaitfast]

Premature optimization is the root of all evil.

Re:Hmm

[Matheus]

The real answer is it's always 100%... some jobs are just harder to automate than others.

I for one welcome our new singularity-enhanced automation overlords!

gloomier?

[Wycliffe]

How is that gloomier? If Korea has already managed to automate away most of the jobs than can be automated away and they don't already have mass unemployment then that should be a positive sign that other countries can do the same.

Re:gloomier?

[ShanghaiBill]

If Korea has already managed to automate away most of the jobs than can be automated away and they don't already have mass unemployment then that should be a positive sign that other countries can do the same.

We should also look at countries that have almost no automation. Some examples are Ethiopia, Afghanistan, Mozambique, Guinea, Somalia, and Mali. If automation leads to poverty then by avoiding it, these countries should be doing GREAT! Are they? I haven't checked.

Re:gloomier?

[mentil]

Clearly, the cause of the problem is that all of those countries have I and A in their names. Glad I'm safely in the U.S.A. instead of Canadia!

Re:gloomier?

[Plus1Entropy]

We should also look at countries that have almost no automation. Some examples are Ethiopia, Afghanistan, Mozambique, Guinea, Somalia, and Mali. If automation leads to poverty then by avoiding it, these countries should be doing GREAT! Are they? I haven't checked.

This is like saying there can never be too much oxygen in the atmosphere, because people with too little oxygen suffocate.

Pretty much everything in the Universe is non-linear. Almost anything that appears linear is only within a particular domain. Outside that domain, things become non-linear again. Clearly, if every job is automated, then everyone will be unemployed by definition. However, as you point out, there have been huge economic benefits to automation.

It's a fundamental law of mathematics that any function which is increasing at one point and decreasing at another contains at least one extrema in between.

Haven't you ever checked the oil in your car? You do know there is a minimum AND maximum marker on the dip stick right?

Re:gloomier?

[Wycliffe]

Clearly, if every job is automated, then everyone will be unemployed by definition. However, as you point out, there have been huge economic benefits to automation.

It's a fundamental law of mathematics that any function which is increasing at one point and decreasing at another contains at least one extrema in between.

The problem isn't when everyone is unemployed. At that point it should be relatively easy to come up with a fair distribution method. The problem is when 20% of the population still has to work long hours while the other 80% have nothing to do. Currently we distribute wealth roughly based on the amount of work you do (or capital you control that does the work for you). That is obviously not going to work very well when only 20% of the population is working and only 1% controls the capital. The solutions are to change the way we distribute wealth, distribute capital more evenly, or distribute work more evenly. UBI is in the #1 camp. #2 is communism. #3 seems the most viable in the USA. We could do this by reducing the workweek below 40 in lockstep with the gains in automation until everyone is only required to work 10 hours a week to get their share of the pie.

Re:gloomier?

[ranton]

The problem is when 20% of the population still has to work long hours while the other 80% have nothing to do. Currently we distribute wealth roughly based on the amount of work you do (or capital you control that does the work for you). That is obviously not going to work very well when only 20% of the population is working and only 1% controls the capital.

I don't agree it is obvious that what you describe wouldn't work. You are essentially describing a society where 1% are wealthy, 20% are synonymous with our current upper middle class, and 80% are working class / poor. That isn't much different than today. The only significant difference is that the 80% wouldn't have jobs at all, but would instead be part of more substantial safety net programs. Or more likely most would also be working in the part time gig economy for supplemental income.

I am currently part of the upper middle class, making over 4 times the median household income in the US. If I had the option for my wife and I to stop working but have our income cut by 75%, we would both choose to keep working. I doubt I am alone in this. In fact I would bet this is the majority opinion.

If the 20% of working adults were making a median household income of $200k, and the 80% of unemployed / underemployed adults had a median household income of $50k, there would likely be plenty of incentive for the 20% of economically useful adults to keep working.

Re:gloomier?

[Big Bipper]

In reality, Korea has exported its unemployment to the countries that now purchase its automation-produced products, because those countries' workers used to produce the produsts themselves.

Re:gloomier?

[thinkwaitfast]

In the beginning, everybody was unemployed. What happened?

Re:gloomier?

[thinkwaitfast]

Eloi and Mordocs

Re:gloomier?

[Wycliffe]

In the beginning, everybody was unemployed. What happened?

Land ownership or the lack thereof. But even then nobody was unemployed. They had to find food, build shelter, etc... to survive.
These type of articles are talking about what happens when growing food, building shelter, etc... are all easier done by machines.
You still have the option today of finding 20 acres somewhere and growing all your own food but it's more cheaper and more efficient
to buy food than to grow it yourself.

Re:gloomier?

[Vitriol Angst]

"Hey, the 1800's called and wanted their industrialization dogma back!"

Re:gloomier?

[Vitriol Angst]

If the 20% of working adults were making a median household income of $200k, and the 80% of unemployed / underemployed adults had a median household income of $50k, there would likely be plenty of incentive for the 20% of economically useful adults to keep working.

This is pretty much the economy NOW. Not when 20% more jobs have been automated never to return. The incentive for people right now is not starving, because there isn't a backup plan. $50K is a dream salary for most people now, so they don't have insurance, a safety net, piano lessons for the kids.

Most people who make $200K think there are safety nets for people to fall back on. They are hard to get and most people don't have backup. So there's absolutely no margin for more economic stress or flat tires.

Not surprising

[Trailer Trash]

100 years ago 95% of the US labor force was in the agricultural sector. Now, it's just a few percent. We don't have 90%+ unemployment, though, because now we have jobs that we didn't even know existed 100 years ago.

Hopefully most of all current jobs can be automated so we can find new things for people to do.

Re:Not surprising

[apoc.famine]

I really don't understand how people can continue to make this argument. It does not appear that this time is going to be like the previous times. And it ignores the massive social upheaval during the switch that happens every time as well.

In the past, when we've automated low skill jobs, we've pushed people into higher skill jobs in the process. Farmers ended up working in factories. Factory workers ended up working in offices.

But right now, we're automating the higher skill jobs. And there is a very distinct limit to how highly skilled a large percentage of the workforce can become. We're on the cusp of automating away what a large percentage of office workers do every day. What are they going to do instead? Train to be doctors? Oh, wait, we're throwing machine learning and automation at medicine too, and that's showing a lot of promise.

We are fast approaching the time when we're going to be making robots and machine learning ("AI") that do almost anything better than the average human could do it. What do the average humans do then?

When we put all of the agricultural laborers out of a job, what are they going to do instead? What else are you going to train a migrant produce picker to do that can't also be done by a robot?

When we put several million truck, taxi, and bus drivers out of jobs, what are we going to train them to do? Stock shelves in the store? Cut hair? Make coffee?

When most of the accounting jobs go away, what do they do?

We've got no shortage of things for people to do. The problem is that inevitably, robots and machine learning are going to be able to do most of those things better and cheaper.

Re:Not surprising

[ShanghaiBill]

100 years ago 95% of the US labor force was in the agricultural sector.

Your timeline is WAY off. The migration off the land happened long before 1918.

The McCormick reaper was invented in 1831.

The steel mouldboard plough was available in 1837.

Even by 1870, agriculture was only half the labor force. By 1918, it was less than 30%.

Re:Not surprising

[vux984]

"Hopefully most of all current jobs can be automated so we can find new things for people to do."

That only works if somehow they are also things robots can't also do better and cheaper.

If you develop AI/automation that generically approaches or exceeds median human capability, then it doesn't really matter what 'new jobs' you invent, because robots will do them cheaper and better than most people can.

Most people won't be able to find work at that point; it doesn't matter how many jobs there are. Either they'll be jobs they aren't able to do, or they'll be jobs the robots can do cheaper and more efficiently.

Think about it.

Heres another example. Most of the world's land mammal mass is in cattle, bred for slaughter. billions of them. Suppose we come up with vat-meat-substitute that is cheaper, needs less space, and tastes as good. What happens to the cattle?

Are we going to find a new use for the population? Sure a small number will survive, perhaps let wild, others in small organic farms for wealthy people to 'eat the real thing'. But the rest? There's nothing for them to do, we can't retrain them to help operate the vat-meat plants, they can't write novels... we'd pretty much wipe them out relative to their current number.

Humans are no different. If we come up with something that can outperform what the majority can do, the people displaced will not be able to find new work... without a fundamental change in how we think about work and wealth distribution there will be a revolution, war, and massive loss of life.

Re:Not surprising

[gweihir]

I really don't understand how people can continue to make this argument. It does not appear that this time is going to be like the previous times.

People are, on average, stupid. The ones that make this argument are afraid in addition and are trying hard to ignore reality by explaining it away. Said stupidity is the core reason this time will be different, because before it was always a shift to other jobs that the average idiot could still do. This time is different, because while most people can learn to read and write (making them capable to be bureaucrats as a last resort and we certainly have a lot of those today), this shift will only create a small number of new jobs and these will have requirements that 95% of the population cannot meet. The ones that are safe are engineers and craftsmen, because these do custom jobs were automation does not help, since automation scales with repetition of the same or similar jobs. ("Where "similar" is getting broader and broader...) Everybody else is fair game this time, with many jobs not about to be eliminated but to be done by a much smaller number of people because they only get to do the jobs that the automation cannot hack.

Re:Not surprising

[hazardPPP]

In the past, when we've automated low skill jobs, we've pushed people into higher skill jobs in the process. Farmers ended up working in factories. Factory workers ended up working in offices.

You're making a rather false assumption here, thinking that factory jobs are necessarily "higher skill" than farming. No. Especially in the early 20th century, working in a factory was a lower skilled job than farming. That's why any Joe could go to a city and find a job in a factory - they all used cheap unskilled labour en masse. In fact, the assembly line was invented for the exact purpose of using unskilled and low-skilled labour - divide the manufacturing process into a series of relatively simple repetitive tasks, and any idiot could learn to do them very quickly. That was the whole point. Industrialization allowed the use of unskilled or low-skilled workers to produce, en masse, cheaply, things that previously required highly-skilled workers that took years to train and made each product by hand from start to finish in a rather long process (in a word, artisans).

But right now, we're automating the higher skill jobs. And there is a very distinct limit to how highly skilled a large percentage of the workforce can become. We're on the cusp of automating away what a large percentage of office workers do every day. What are they going to do instead? Train to be doctors? Oh, wait, we're throwing machine learning and automation at medicine too, and that's showing a lot of promise.

The reason that so many jobs can be automated (and have been automated) is exactly because we turned them into a series of well-defined repetitive tasks...that's easy for any human to learn, but is also easy to design a machine for. It's therefore no wonder the first place industrial robots took off was the factory assembly line. Many office workers just shuffle paper (or computer files), so they are also automatable. In fact, we already had one huge wave of office worker replacement by machines a few decades ago - when computers became widespread. What one accountant can do today on a computer used to require a full room of people on abacuses and typewriters.

This stuff about AI and ML "showing promise" in medicine - is just you taking it too far. AI/ML will certainly be another diagnostic tool which will help doctors make decisions, but they will not replace them, just like MRI scanners have not replaced them. We just don't know enough about how the human body works to fully automate medicine, and that's not going to change in the near future.

We are fast approaching the time when we're going to be making robots and machine learning ("AI") that do almost anything better than the average human could do it. What do the average humans do then?

This is pure conjecture without any actual evidence to back it up.

When we put all of the agricultural laborers out of a job, what are they going to do instead? What else are you going to train a migrant produce picker to do that can't also be done by a robot?

When we put several million truck, taxi, and bus drivers out of jobs, what are we going to train them to do? Stock shelves in the store? Cut hair? Make coffee?

When most of the accounting jobs go away, what do they do?

We've got no shortage of things for people to do. The problem is that inevitably, robots and machine learning are going to be able to do most of those things better and cheaper.

You are showing a distinct lack of imagination (as are most people). Go back to 1750, and tell people how many millions will be employed in 250 years directly and indirectly, by the various entertainment industries (professional sports, TV, film, etc. etc.) - they would probably laugh at you, and if they manage to take you seriously, would probably say what a hedonistic and amoral society that must be. Yet here we are...doing much better than the folks in 1750, thank you. In 50 t

Re: Not surprising

[hazardPPP]

Today we have different jobs but on average they require a bit more brainpower than plowing a field did...

Right. I'd challenge any average office worker of today to go run a farm...not to make money, just to feed themselves. I'd wager they'd starve in a year.

Stop underestimating farming. Running your own farm required more brainpower than working on a factory assembly line. There are many studies which have shown that industrial work actually makes people dull, zombified, and stupid.

Re:Not surprising

[Opportunist]

100 years ago the US was, outside the large cities on the coasts, mostly a developing country with little in terms of machinery or infrastructure. But even that aside you're facing a different problem today.

First, the situation was a completely different one. Back when machinery replaced manual labor in agriculture, we actually had a shortage of workforce. Actually, one of the key reasons machines became a thing in agriculture was that they already were a thing in manufacturing, albeit in such a way that required a LOT of manpower. Industrial centers wanted cheap labor and that cheap labor was found in the displaced agricultural workers. Back then there was also no problem with any kind of training, the jobs necessary could be done by anyone.

When the industry started to reduce its manpower requirement, the service industry and menial office jobs (like typewriter copiers) emerged. Again, jobs you didn't really need a high level skill set for, though it did already disqualify a few that could not be trained to transport food from kitchen to table.

The problem we face today is that we have pretty much eliminated all these low-level jobs except for a few in the service industry. And they are prone to being automated away. What do you do with all the burger flippers and shelf stockers then? You can't retrain them to be robot engineers, process managers and SAP consultants.

There will simply be no job for these people. Yes, new jobs will be created, no doubt about this, but the skill level required will be beyond the capabilities of about 50% of the people you have available. What are you going to do with 50% of your workforce are essentially unemployable?

Re:Not surprising

[Opportunist]

Being available does not mean being ubiquitous. Using machines requires an infrastructure to keep them running, the US was until the beginning of the 20th century, I would say until the middle of it in some remote places, not really in a position where you could rely on the infrastructure being in place in rural areas, which are, by definition, the areas where agriculture happens.

Re: Not surprising

[TheRaven64]

Right. I'd challenge any average office worker of today to go run a farm...not to make money, just to feed themselves. I'd wager they'd starve in a year.

Both you and the grandparent are making the same mistake: conflating education and intelligence. Most people are sufficiently intelligent to run a small self-sufficient farm. That's pretty much what 95% of the population was doing a few hundred years ago. The difference is that, back then, they were taught the basics of farming from when they were old enough to walk. Now they are taught to read and write instead. Most of those peasant farmers would have been able to do simple office jobs with the same training.

The real problem is the amount of time that the training takes. If you need skills that take 10 years to acquire to move to a new job, then that's not a good short-term solution for you. And it's also not a good long-term solution if that job isn't going to be around in 10 years and you don't know what skills will be required for the ones that will be.

Re:Not surprising

[drinkypoo]

This stuff about AI and ML "showing promise" in medicine - is just you taking it too far. AI/ML will certainly be another diagnostic tool which will help doctors make decisions, but they will not replace them, just like MRI scanners have not replaced them. We just don't know enough about how the human body works to fully automate medicine, and that's not going to change in the near future.

Lots of doctors will be replaced. We have a health care professional shortage due to the influence of the AMA. They're responsible for the nature of health education, which is designed to keep the supply of health professionals low in order to keep prices high. However, that only means there's more motivation to come up with automated health systems, so AMA member doctors (under 40% of doctors, mind you) are shooting themselves in the foot hardcore here. The doctor shortage will be solved primarily by arming nurses with expert systems.

Re: Not surprising

[hazardPPP]

Both you and the grandparent are making the same mistake: conflating education and intelligence. Most people are sufficiently intelligent to run a small self-sufficient farm. That's pretty much what 95% of the population was doing a few hundred years ago. The difference is that, back then, they were taught the basics of farming from when they were old enough to walk. Now they are taught to read and write instead. Most of those peasant farmers would have been able to do simple office jobs with the same training.

The real problem is the amount of time that the training takes. If you need skills that take 10 years to acquire to move to a new job, then that's not a good short-term solution for you. And it's also not a good long-term solution if that job isn't going to be around in 10 years and you don't know what skills will be required for the ones that will be.

I'm not conflating anything. I'm just saying farming takes a lot of skill, which the average office worker doesn't have - not because of lack of intelligence, but lack of training and experience. So, I agree with you on that count. I was just pointing out that farming is not a low-brainpower activity just because it uses a different skill set from being a middle manager in an office, or something like that. I also wanted to point out that it was easier, in the 20th century, for a former farmer to become a factory worker, than vice-versa. It takes less training to become a factory worker.

As for the other stuff - you are absolutely correct. If you keep having to "reinvent yourself" every 10 years, that is very stressful. Certainly isn't a long-term solution. The thing is, our industrial civilization had, in the 20th century, essentially made low-skilled but high-paying jobs plentiful. One could finish high school (or in some countries, just elementary school), and become a member of the "working middle class" with just an extra year or two of practical education or on-the-job training. People grew to think of this as "normal", when in fact, for most of civilized history, this was not normal at all. Compare that to tradespeople or professionals, who invest a lot of time into education and training, and for the most part then remain in that profession for their entire working life.

Re:Not surprising

[hazardPPP]

Lots of doctors will be replaced. We have a health care professional shortage due to the influence of the AMA. They're responsible for the nature of health education, which is designed to keep the supply of health professionals low in order to keep prices high. However, that only means there's more motivation to come up with automated health systems, so AMA member doctors (under 40% of doctors, mind you) are shooting themselves in the foot hardcore here. The doctor shortage will be solved primarily by arming nurses with expert systems.

First, you're assuming the AMA (and whatever other organizations exist in other countries) will not change their behaviour. They might as well be blackmailed by politicians eager to solve the shortage by importing doctors from abroad to loosen up their rules under the threat of being automated out of their jobs (even if the threat is not necessarily credible).

Second, you're assuming that people will accept being treated by nurses with computers instead of people with "M.D." next to their names...not to mention the question of liability for malpractice. That opens a few more cans of worms.

Third, you are generalizing the situation in one country to the world - while other countries have their AMA equivalents (notably Canada), many European countries do not have such a convoluted system designed for reducing the number of physicians available (accordingly, physicians in those countries don't make millions of dollars per year, on average).

Fourth, you are forgetting the role of regulators such as the FDA...hospitals, even if they wanted to, cannot just rollout AI to treat patients. It will be baby steps, with each baby step being stringently controlled. This will give lots of time to doctors to adapt to working with the machines, rather than being replaced by them.

Re:Not surprising

[drinkypoo]

First, you're assuming the AMA (and whatever other organizations exist in other countries) will not change their behaviour.

It's better in many other developed countries, but the pressure here will make it happen here. The USA is still a tech leader, we can always hire in talent.

Second, you're assuming that people will accept being treated by nurses with computers instead of people with "M.D." next to their names...not to mention the question of liability for malpractice. That opens a few more cans of worms.

They'll take what they can get.

Third, you are generalizing the situation in one country to the world - while other countries have their AMA equivalents (notably Canada), many European countries do not have such a convoluted system designed for reducing the number of physicians available

Maybe they'll keep more doctors around.

Fourth, you are forgetting the role of regulators such as the FDA...hospitals, even if they wanted to, cannot just rollout AI to treat patients.

Trump 'fixed' the EPA, he can 'fix' the FDA too

Re:Not surprising

[rtb61]

Do you remember when in the 50s and 60s when they dreamed of a 16 hour work week. Then psychopaths took over the system, corrupted democracy, corrupted main stream media, they dream of mass unemployment, labour housing camps and the gig labour force. Where the overseers with tasers and pepper spray, turn up to the labour housing camps, you know stacked hovels, and the workers bid for work, the lowest hourly wage bidder wins, hell they can just bid for three meals. Do not expect any different until you remove psychopaths from positions of governance, control and influence, it is their nature, their desire to control, to gloat, to pose over those in poverty, to exploit and abuse them to feed the psychopaths ego and lusts. Let the insane run the asylum and do not expect a society with good mental health. That is the only change that needs to be made and the majority will quite readily solve many problems.

Re:Not surprising

[CastrTroy]

I would say that we never really moved people to higher skilled jobs, but just pushed them around to other low skilled jobs. I don't really see a farm hand as being any different in terms of higher skilled than somebody working as a cog in a manufacturing plant. But I do see a big difference between people who are working in factories or doing simple repetitive office tasks to making the jump to being computer programmers, chemical engineers, or whatever else actual high level jobs are left after automation takes over.

Re:Not surprising

[dfenstrate]

Unless they can vat-grow leather, we'll still need lots of cows.

Re:Not surprising

[vux984]

I wonder how much work is being done on that. You'd think vat growing leather might actually be easier. Since it doesn't have to taste good. And it doesn't even have to feel or look exactly like leather either to be an acceptable substitute. And it could theoretically even be taken beyond leather, grown in specific shapes, colors, or patterns that don't appear naturally, or be made even more durable etc...

Vat meat is a challenge because we don't *really* want to eat vat-meat it has a bit of a stigma for being unnatural, and if we do eat it we want it to be indistinguishable from real chicken, and real steak, and we want the same flavor and texture and taste. It has a high bar to being accepted as desirable food.

But vat leather -- we already readily accept all kinds of synthetic and hybrid textiles ... plastics, vinyls, nylons, polyester, polyurethane, blends of plastics like alcantara, and blends of plastic and leather -- so-called bonded leathers, etc. If we could vat grow leather that competed with top-grain leather that would be quite the revolution, and likely readily accepted in the furniture/upholstery and clothing/fashion industries; not to mention the accessories -- from leather bound books, wallets, phone cases, laptop bags, etc, etc...

Re:Not surprising

[MooseTick]

Say all the easy jobs go may away. I think people will get smarter and the average intelligence will rise. In 1800 only about 12% of the world could read. Today, the opposite is true (https://ourworldindata.org/literacy). I suspect back then it seemed crazy to think over 90% of the world population would be able or have a need to read.

Even if people don't get smarter, they will still need to find a place to live, eat, etc. When economies collapse after wars, disaster, etc people figured it out. I guess the hope is to minimize the turmoil between accelerated automation and whatever happens after that.

Re: Not surprising

[djinn6]

Right. I'd challenge any average office worker of today to go run a farm...not to make money, just to feed themselves. I'd wager they'd starve in a year.

Given that I've managed to grow more fruits than I can eat in my 3000 sqft. backyard by doing nothing more than going to Home Depot, digging a hole and putting in the tree... it's really not that hard. I also planted beans on 40 sqft. of it, and during the harvest season (which lasts about 2 months) I had one meal's worth of beans every other day. If I had 10 acres I'd have no trouble at all.

Beyond just putting things in the ground, there's a lot that can be done to increase yields and fight pests. But even for that all you need is knowing how to Google. Just type in "how to grow X" and there's all the information you'll ever need.

Re:Not surprising

[impossiblefork]

People have already done that. There's a company called Modern Meadow that seems to be experimenting with collagen-based materials. There are also people who manufacture leather-like materials by hot-compaction of mycelium. One manufacturer, Mycoworks, claims that they can make it as strong as deer leather.

Re:Not surprising

[Green Mountain Bot]

Say all the easy jobs go may away. I think people will get smarter and the average intelligence will rise.

That takes time, and assumes that the people who can't make a living just go away peacefully. But history is littered with the corpses of societies where they did not.

Even if people don't get smarter, they will still need to find a place to live, eat, etc.

Our current economy only cares if those people have the money to pay for places to live, eat, etc. Need is only demand if it is coupled with the ability to spend. Without that ability, it doesn't get addressed.

Re:Not surprising

[Green Mountain Bot]

100 years ago 95% of the US labor force was in the agricultural sector. Now, it's just a few percent.

I guess you can just handwave away the two world wars, massive depression, and enormous economic upheavals that occurred in the meantime. But that doesn't mean that there was no cost to this shift.

Re:Not surprising

[thinkwaitfast]

Farming requires higher skill than working in a factory.

Re:Not surprising

[thinkwaitfast]

Unless you are a picker, it takes a lot of skill to work a farm from complex machinery, to repairs of said machinery to knowing when and what to plant, how much seed to save, how to save it as well as a lot of experimentation.

Re:Not surprising

[thinkwaitfast]

You are confusing skills with intelligence. Knowing a bunch of facts and being literate dos not necessarily make you intelligent.

Otto: Apes don't read philosophy.

Wanda: Yes they do, Otto. They just don't understand it.

Re: Not surprising

[thinkwaitfast]

Sounds like you'd still starve.

Re:Not surprising

[thinkwaitfast]

I have a 16 hour workweek....but then I also lead a 1960's lifestyle. It's entirely possible. On an even more positive note, a 60's lifestyle with 2020's conveniences and automation is pretty sweet.

Re:Not surprising

[Trailer Trash]

What people like you don't get is that a large part of "automation" is used to make humans even more efficient. That means there are new jobs - jobs that we can no more imagine now than someone in 1905 could imagine a "computer programmer". Farming equipment such as tractors reduced a lot of manual labor, but there's still a guy driving it. Now he does the work of 10 men. As tractors become fully automated (already happening) the guy managing a herd of tractors is now doing to work of 10 of those men. But there are still jobs there.

What happened as jobs were automated in the past is that productivity increased tremendously. As a normal middle class American in 2018, I'm well within the top 1% of all humans who have ever lived with regard to wealth - probably the top 1% of the top 1%. It's unimaginable how rich we are.

Your side has been claiming for centuries now that everybody'll be out of work due to automation. It's never been true in the past and there's no reason to believe it will be in the future.

Re:Not surprising

[dinfinity]

The key thing here is that we are counting down, not up. We always have been, but a lot of people haven't realized that yet.
Going from 3 to 4 to 5 can seem very similar to going from 5 to 4 to 3. The real kicker however is going from 1 to 0.

People perceive the advancement of technology as counting up, as a number that will increase for the foreseeable future. And it will. But the issue at hand is not whether technology will advance. It is whether humans will be able to contribute to the economy in a significant way. That depends on our capacity relative to everything else, which is a declining number. Sure, some technology has boosted our capacity, but in the end we must face the very real limitations of our bodies: signal processing speed, maximum strength, sensor resolution, actuation accuracy, etc. The question is not whether we will be surpassed by more efficient beings, but when.

Re:Not surprising

[fluffernutter]

What do I care

I'm assuming that you don't have kids?

Re:Not surprising

[fluffernutter]

If you're using 2020 conveniences then you aren't really living a '60s lifestyle, what ever that means.

Re:Not surprising

[Tony Isaac]

It does not appear that this time is going to be like the previous times

This is what they said in the dot-com boom of the 90's, "This may be the end of the business cycle as we know it!"

This time is ALWAYS like the previous times.

This is about the 8th or 9th of these

[rsilvergun]

maybe 10th. I've lost count. But at least half, maybe more, of all jobs are going to be automated in the near future. Hell, even even half of that is true it's 25%. Now would be a real good time for us to figure out what we're going to do when a quarter of the population is unemployable. In America if you don't work, you don't eat. And when people don't eat, they get violent and prone to suggestion. And we've got a _lot_ of bombs....

All I'm saying is, If the rest of the world doesn't want that 25% to start looking for some kinda strong man to get them jobs of the military persuasion maybe they should start doing something. Maybe stop destabilizing our politics (Russia, I'm looking at you) and stop encouraging right wing, authoritarians from getting into power.

Or don't. Nobody bothered much with Germany in the lead up to WWII.

Re:This is about the 8th or 9th of these

[IGnatius T Foobar]

We'd take you more seriously if you didn't imply that Donald Trump is Hitler. But you did, so your post is disqualified.

Re:This is about the 8th or 9th of these

[apoc.famine]

Speak for yourself. If you don't want to call a duck a duck, that's on you. Using "we" speaks for me, and you don't speak for me.

Making global pronouncements declaring what people think and laying judgments on others is rather....authoritarian of you..... Since that's the way you lean, I can see why the GP's post triggered you.

Re:This is about the 8th or 9th of these

[ShanghaiBill]

Now would be a real good time for us to figure out what we're going to do when a quarter of the population is unemployable.

Try reading a history book. Automation has eliminated WAY more than 25% of the jobs in the past. In fact, it has happened multiple times, with the invention of the steam engine, again with the invention of the automatic reaper, and yet again with electrification.

Re: This is about the 8th or 9th of these

[mapkinase]

Yes, they did bother with Germans enough to help Hitler by ridiculous Versaille treaty conditions.

Re: This is about the 8th or 9th of these

[Opportunist]

It's interesting how, of all the leaders of the world, the French leaders are great at assembling a German Reich and making it their enemy. Napoleon III enabled the Second Reich 1870 by declaring a ridiculous war on Prussia, Clemenceau with his attempt to annihilate German with insane demands after WW1 gave Hitler the ammunition to become Chancellor and create the Third Reich...

France, please stop doing that, ok?

Re: This is about the 8th or 9th of these

[hazardPPP]

It's interesting how, of all the leaders of the world, the French leaders are great at assembling a German Reich and making it their enemy. Napoleon III enabled the Second Reich 1870 by declaring a ridiculous war on Prussia, Clemenceau with his attempt to annihilate German with insane demands after WW1 gave Hitler the ammunition to become Chancellor and create the Third Reich...

France, please stop doing that, ok?

France was reacting out of fear in 1870 trying to prevent German reunification, which Prussia wanted to achieve anyway. Remember, the Austro-Prussian war was four years before that (1866). Bismarck actively sought war with France after that in order to galvanize the southern Germany states (minus Austria) into joining in a union with Prussia. You can say Napoleon III was stupid to fall for it, but let's not paint France as the problem when Prussia was the problem. Prussia was the problem in the start of WW1 as well, since German unification as it happened allowed Prussian militarism to infect all of Germany. It's no wonder that in 1945, the Allies disbanded the state of Prussia. Good riddance. Now I'm no fan of the Hapsburgs, in fact I intensely dislike the f*ckers, but I do think a unified Germany ruled from Vienna would have been vastly preferrable to one ruled from Berlin.

As for the Treaty of Versailles - yes, it was highly punishing, perhaps over the top. However Germany *was* the main culprit in WW1, the main reason for the most destructive war in human history up to that time. So being pissed off at Germany, that was kind of understandable. Actually, by the 1930s, most of the reparations were restructured as to no longer burden the German economy. France, Britain, America et al. had realized they had been too harsh and changed the terms of the peace. Arguably, the problem was being too soft on Germany that is, Hitler, in the mid 1930s. The pendulum swung the other way, and Germany was left alone until it started attacking other countries. France and Britain followed a policy of appeasement instead of striking early, while Hitler was weak, to topple him - for example, when he remilitarized the Rhineland in 1936, a clear violation of the Treaty of Versailles.

Finally, one can argue that WW2 demonstrates that being even harsher on Germany than after WW1 was actually the way to go. After WW1, Germany lost a bit of territory, had a bunch of limitations and reparations imposed on it, but was then left alone. In WW2, the Allies first intentionally levelled Germany to the ground (did not happen in WW1), then occupied it completely, disbanding all local government above municipality level (again, didn't happen in WW1), pillaged a great deal of what remained of its resources (again, didn't happen after WW1), put its entire political elite on trial and in jail (minus the ones they hanged - didn't happen after WW1), enforced on Germany their own political and historical narrative of the war pervasively (so you didn't get all the bitter revisionism as after WW1), and then rebuilt Germany in their own image from the ground up, making it an occuppied non-sovereign country for 45 years (occupation ended in 1990). Oh, but they didn't charge reparations. Right...

Re: This is about the 8th or 9th of these

[Plus1Entropy]

However Germany *was* the main culprit in WW1, the main reason for the most destructive war in human history up to that time.

Says who? The victors write the history books. The Germans were only the main culprits because they lost.

The Triple Alliance/Entente balance was supposed to make war impossible, instead it made it inevitable. It ensured that any minor conflict would become a major conflict. Coupled with the rise of new technology, this ensured the war would be the bloodiest in history. It's not like the Germans were the only ones making machine guns.

What Germany did in WWI did not warrant the Treaty of Versailles. What Germany did in WWII did warrant what happened afterwards.

And I would caution digging too much into European history looking for "who started it". You know, before there was Napoleon III, there was Napoleon I. Just like turtles, it's warmongering dickheads all the way down.

Re: This is about the 8th or 9th of these

[Opportunist]

Yes, Bismark wanted a war with France, and France had to start it so the defensive pacts with the other German states would come into effect. And Napoleon III was enough of a fool to hand him that gift. There was exactly zero reason for Napoleon to start this war. None.

World War 1 was a different beast, though. While Wilhelm II was someone who had a spleen for uniforms and military hoopla, he was not the reason for WW1. That war started because Vienna got greedy and wanted that war more than anything to stabilize its already dissolving empire. The Austrian-Hungarian empire sent an ultimatum to Serbia after the attack on their heir apparent that was absolutely impossible to accept by any state. It was essentially the demand to cease to exist as a independent country and become annexed by the A-H empire. They accepted pretty much all of it, including that Austrian troops may search for culprits of the attack (to give you an idea just WHAT they accepted: Foreign military conducting search&seizure on your soil without you having any say what they can or cannot do), pretty much anything short of surrendering independence, which A-H did not accept as sufficient and declared war. Which set the whole system of alliances into motion.

Wilhelm himself said later that, had he known just WHAT Sarajevo accepted, he would not have supported that war, that (what Serbia accepted from the conditions) was more than anyone could sensibly expect.

If you're looking for a culprit of the war, look further south. Berlin was dragged into this mess.

Also, please remember that the general attitude towards war and starting one was completely different to what it's today. War was something you'd do if you run out of other options, not something that you got ostracised for by other nations. WW1 changed that attitude, but until 1914, wars were something where you'd go and kill a few soldiers, then trade land and everyone goes home eventually to prepare for the next. War was something nations do when they compete.

That attitude had changed by 1918, yes. But still the demands Clemenceau made were insane. If those contracts stood, Germany would have paid back its "fine" up until the 2000s. How exactly did he expect this to work? It's understandable that after this war people were pissed. On all sides, don't worry, I doubt that there was a huge amount of love for France in Germany either. Only one side had the means to flog the other, though.

You cannot found peace on oppression, though. Would you accept it? Imagine a war between your country and its neighbor, your neighbor wins (which you consider fake, too, because you still had guns and ammo when the ceasefire came into effect, you didn't lose, you were "assassinated" from the back), then makes ridiculous demands that your grandchildren will still be paying for. Will you pay? Or will you follow whoever promises you to get rid of that?

You don't need to be Germany for this to work. This works in any country. Anywhere on the planet. Anyone would try to stop this kind of treatment as soon as he even remotely sees any chance to do so.

Re: This is about the 8th or 9th of these

[Opportunist]

WW2 is a direct result of the outcome of WW1 and how it was handled. Do you really think a WW2 would have happened without Versailles and what it meant for Germany?

Re:This is about the 8th or 9th of these

[Shotgun]

In America if you don't work, you don't eat.

This is so obviously and completely wrong, it is ridiculous. If you've not seen how fat our homeless are, you've not been paying attention. The biggest health problem we have among our poor is OBESITY!! Stop being willfully ignorant.

Re: This is about the 8th or 9th of these

[Plus1Entropy]

You are one of those people that sets a zero point for history arbitrarily and then references everything to that as if nothing before that ever happened.

So say all the historical documents, where you have German generals, politicians, and the Emperor repeteadly pushing for war in the 1890s and 1900s.

These same documents of course also show that during this time the British, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Russians, etc. were all pacifist nations. Clearly, only German leaders looked favorably on conquest as a means to an end. No one had ever heard the word "Empire" until the Germans came up with it. Expanding your power and territory through military conquest? The British and French would never do such a thing! It's inconceivable!

Please. Germany was following the example set by every European power since... well, since there were European powers.

What was different about WWI was the technology and the alliances that brought so many nations into the conflict at once. If not for those 2 factors it would not have been the "Great War", but rather just "another war" in a very long (and incomplete) list of wars between European nations.

Re: This is about the 8th or 9th of these

[hazardPPP]

WW2 is a direct result of the outcome of WW1 and how it was handled. Do you really think a WW2 would have happened without Versailles and what it meant for Germany?

You have to be careful with the qualification "direct result". In a way, yes, it was a direct result. Does that mean WW2 was inevitable just because WW1 happened the way it did? Of course not.

I can just as easily argue that had the Entente allies been harsher on Germany in 1918, had they occuppied it and then rebuilt Germany's political system while purging the political elite of militarists and nationalists (the way they ended up doing in 1945), WW2 would've never happened. Of course, you can also argue it would not have happened if they had been kinder on Germany. Many different paths and outcomes were possible. Nothing was set in stone by Versailles. It's just like WW1 - the Germans wanted war on numerous ocassions since the 1890s, and pulled back each time - until they decided not to in 1914. They could have pulled back then for some reason or another, and then decided to pull the trigger in say, 1916, or 1920...or whatever.

Personally, I think that in 1918, some things should've been harsher on Germany, some kinder. For example, less stringent reparations, and no ban on unification with Austria (given a democratically expressed mandate for unification in both of those German states - to satisfy popular German nationalistic tendencies). On the other hand, the Allies should have insisted on a complete purge of the Prussian military elite - the people who were most responsible for pushing Europe into war (it wasn't the German Socialdemocrats who were the problem...).

In the 1920s and 1930s, there were numerous opportunities to stop Hitler's rise, Germany's rearmament, and prevent WW2 (or, at least, make history turn out differently than it did). There is nothing which makes Versailles = Nazis in power some sort of intractable mathematical identity.

Look, for example, at Italy: it was on the winning side in WW1, yet still the Fascists came to power there, very shortly after the war. Fascism (of which Nazism was a particular strand) was a reaction to the problems of modernity and industrialisation (as was Communism), and many countries without the same history as Germany acquired Fascist/quasi-fascist/right-wing dictatorships without being humiliated at Versailles.

Re: This is about the 8th or 9th of these

[hazardPPP]

You are one of those people that sets a zero point for history arbitrarily and then references everything to that as if nothing before that ever happened.

And you're one of those people in the hand-waving school of history: things just happen, you know, wars and stuff, always has been the case. Well, yes, wars have always happened, but each war has a very definitive set of causes. Sometimes they are many, sometimes they are complex and difficult to identify, but they are there. Germany is the main culprit for World War I, that is a simple undeniable historical fact.

These same documents of course also show that during this time the British, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Russians, etc. were all pacifist nations. Clearly, only German leaders looked favorably on conquest as a means to an end. No one had ever heard the word "Empire" until the Germans came up with it. Expanding your power and territory through military conquest? The British and French would never do such a thing! It's inconceivable!

Please. Germany was following the example set by every European power since... well, since there were European powers.

No one ever said the others were pacifists. Likewise, what Germany did - instigating a continental war it, in the final few weeks before it pulled the trigger and decided to go all in, knew it would be catastrophic, is a relatively rare occurrance. European powers went to war all the time, but very rarely to all-out catastrophic continental wars where almost everyone fought everyone. That has happened about 4 times in European history, and twice it was Germany's fault. Not a stellar record.

The Germans were paranoid of France and Russia. They wanted to defeat them while they still felt they could. Furthermore, the German generals were paranoid about their own populace - with increasing liberalization of German society, they feared that at some point a government of social democrats and liberals would not be willing to fight their imperial wars. So they pushed and pushed and pushed for war - until they finally got what they wanted in 1914.

If the Germans would not so belligerent, would some kind of WW1 have happened anyway, at some other point? Maybe - who knows. Perhaps Russia and France would have become paranoid and attacked Germany. Then however, we would be talking about how it was their fault, and not Germany's. Or maybe, Germany would have continued to rise economically, and accordingly, politically, and would have peacefully become the most powerful and dominant European country and a maybe at some point, even world power. Think of China today - rising extremely in wealth and importance, but without fighting huge regional or world wars.

What was different about WWI was the technology and the alliances that brought so many nations into the conflict at once. If not for those 2 factors it would not have been the "Great War", but rather just "another war" in a very long (and incomplete) list of wars between European nations.

I'm sorry, but no. It was catastrophic because everyone fought everyone, not because of the technology. Of course, the technology helped a kill a lot of people, and more efficiently than ever before. However, the fact that a lot of people died also had to do with the fact that there was a lot of people - the population of Europe, and the world, had never been larger in history. Europe had experienced catastrophic wars in which everyone fought everyone twice before - the Napoleonic wars, and the Thirty Years' War. They had less casualties in terms of absolute numbers, but in a relative sense, they were just as catastrophic as WW1. So it was not just "another war", it is comparable only to those two in previous European history.

Re: This is about the 8th or 9th of these

[Plus1Entropy]

They had less casualties in terms of absolute numbers, but in a relative sense, they were just as catastrophic as WW1. So it was not just "another war", it is comparable only to those two in previous European history.

Not even close. Comparing to the Napoleonic Wars, around 5 million people died over 13 years, or around 385,000 per year. In WWI, around 13 million died in only 4 years, or around 3.3 million per year. That is almost an order of magnitude difference.

Scaling to the population at the time helps your argument a bit, but not that much. From what I can find it approximately doubled in that time.

How hard would it be to ...

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

... to take some report from some organization with an axe to grind and dress it up make news story out of it?

Is that job vulnerable to automation?

Re:How hard would it be to ...

[Opportunist]

Twitter bots exist already.

Look backwards.

[0100010001010011]

Rail museums are fascinating once you realize all the bits that humans had to do. Prior to the self lubricator being invented it was someones job to go around and make sure all N hundred points were properly lubricated. You had to have people physically down on each switch. The locomotives themselves had a 50% duty cycle.

All of it has been 'automated'. No one is pining over not being able to fire a tinder box. A modern locomotive may take a handful of people to do what used to take hundreds if not thousands.

The same goes for every other industry from food production to transportation. Humans are industrious creatures in that we'll find something else to do and new ways to be lazy. 50 years ago making your living in eSport or drone racing would have been unheard of.

Re:Look backwards.

[jeff4747]

The difference is there was some other job the workers could move to.

The trick with this round of automation is if we develop advanced enough AI to do the automation, there isn't going to be something else. Because that new job would also be automated away.

What we're bickering about is when it's going to happen, and what is "advanced enough AI". But it's going to happen. We might want to plan for it instead of hoping that the 1890s repeat themselves.

Re:Look backwards.

[ShanghaiBill]

The difference is there was some other job the workers could move to.

Nope. That is NOT different. During every other wave of automation, there were people like you who firmly believed there would be no new jobs to for the displaced.

When manufacturing jobs were disappearing, NOBODY could foresee that the new jobs would be for pizza deliverers, graphic artists, app developers, and Starbucks baristas.

But do you really think that ubiquitous, immediate, and dirt cheap transportation by autonomous vehicles won't open up huge opportunities for new businesses? Your toaster broke? Just scan the QR code on the side, and put it on your porch. Ten minutes later a robotic vehicle picks it up and delivers it to a repair shop. An hour later it brings the fixed toaster back to your house. There will be millions of businesses like that.

Re:Look backwards.

[jeff4747]

Nope. That is NOT different. During every other wave of automation, there were people like you who firmly believed there would be no new jobs to for the displaced.

It's probably pretty easy to automate someone who only reads one sentence before smashing the keyboard.

When manufacturing jobs were disappearing, NOBODY could foresee that the new jobs would be for pizza deliverers, graphic artists, app developers, and Starbucks baristas.

Uh...you're kidding, right? Pizza delivery (and food delivery in general) is not new. Try 1800s. Nor are artists. Nor are the wait/kitchen staff that you now call baristas. And "app developers" started being a thing in the 1950s, when manufacturing jobs were massively growing. Changing the name of a job is not inventing a new job.

Ten minutes later a robotic vehicle picks it up and delivers it to a repair shop. An hour later it brings the fixed toaster back to your house

Why is the repair shop staffed by humans?

See, it's the nexus of AI and robotics that's different this time. The previous times the advances in robotics/machinery could replicate some relatively simple tasks, but left work for the humans because those advances could not handle anything outside their narrow scope. Good enough AI can fix anything that went wrong with your toaster without human intervention. Especially one designed with automated repair in mind. And that AI does not need to be anywhere near pseudo-human to fix any problem that comes up with a toaster.

And that's assuming you're dumb enough to pay 3x the cost of a new toaster to get the old one repaired. It's not like autonomous vehicle service is going to be free, nor are the parts and the repairs.

It's the shitty quality of replies like yours that make this a worthless subject to discuss. You're unwilling to see the train roaring down the tracks because you personally were not run over in the last 10 minutes.

Re:Look backwards.

[gweihir]

Indeed. And this time, there is not much left that actually _needs_ doing and was not done before. Each time before, that was the case. Food, shelter, clothing, transportation, entertainment, bureaucracy (apparently a human need...), all hacked now and all scaling or about to scale. So yes, we will find something to do, but the time were it was driven by need (other than to do something with one's time) is over and that is the real difference this time. That has not happened ever before, except to small classes of society.

Re:Look backwards.

[Opportunist]

When agriculture didn't need farmhands anymore, industry scooped them up. That was easy, no retraining required, no skill required.

When industry automated and robotized everything, the service industry took over. The skill level of a burger flipper is probably not that much higher than that of a person putting a screw on a bolt and tightening it.

How do you turn that burger flipper now into an AI writer or robot designer? Remember: 50% of the people have an IQ lower than average.

Re:Look backwards.

[Opportunist]

You do know that they aren't going to simply register for neutralization, right? People in general don't really like the idea of having their life terminated, it's rather likely that they will resist, and given that the alternative is death, nothing short of killing them will keep them from killing you.

I'd be wary what I wish for. Not only because chances are they have more experience with violence than you do.

Re:Look backwards.

[be951]

Humans are industrious creatures in that we'll find something else to do

The trick with this round of automation is if we develop advanced enough AI to do the automation, there isn't going to be something else

I think you're both right, to some extent. There will be new types of jobs and perhaps new industries that either can't be done by machines, or that people would rather have (and pay a premium to have) humans do. But personally, I don't believe those will come near to matching the numbers of people who become unemployed, perhaps even unemployable, due to automation.

There are some hard-to-predict variables that confound discussions like this. For one, how fast is machine learning/AI/automation getting better? How soon jobs can be replaced depends on that. Will it be three years before we see significant impacts, or 5 or 10 or 15? Also, how fast will the adoption of new tech be? That depends on how costly the tech itself is, how much money it actually saves, how much retrofitting/redesigning is needed to incorporate it, and how good it is. I am sure that we will see companies that go out of business because they are ahead of the curve and try to deploy new tech before it's ready, as well as ones that wait too long and get out-competed by more automated businesses.

And if you can answer all those questions for AI/machine learning, for many jobs you will also have to answer them for robotics/sensors/physical environment components.

On top of those considerations, we can't really predict yet how automation might change business processes. There are certainly going to be things made obsolete by automation. There are also going to be things that are currently obsolete, but are still being done, that will be exposed by looking at whether a job/function/task can be automated. Very likely, there will be cases where one function or task prevents a job from being automated, resulting in that function or task being eliminated rather than holding on to human workers to do that bit. It won't always be possible, of course, but there will probably be a fair number of people surprised at losing their jobs because they thought it was "impossible" to get rid of some aspect of what they do.

How soon and how fast are the big questions, and that will of course vary by industry/job type. For something like self-driving cars, you would expect "how fast", i.e. rate of adoption, to be pretty fast once level 5 is reached since nearly 100% of any given driving job will likely be handled by the automation, and there are other advantages aside from the direct cost reduction of replacing the human labor (e.g. more than doubling the available operating time of vehicles in trucking, since human drivers have strict limits on hours of operation/service). Whereas if you have an automated system that can do 10 or 20% of a job, there is less incentive/advantage to adopt quickly.

Re:Look backwards.

[fluffernutter]

Because people with low intelligence can get a GUN in the US no matter whether they are working or not. It doesn't take much intelligence to take that gun and rob you or worse.

When will it be time to cap OT / lower full time?

[Joe_Dragon]

When will it be time to cap OT / lower full time? at the very least come down hard on 1099 Abuse

Mass retraining

[tepples]

During this shift away from agricultural labor after World War I, who funded mass retraining of the workforce? That might help us figure out who will retrain the current workforce for the age of automation.

Re:Mass retraining

[hazardPPP]

During this shift away from agricultural labor after World War I, who funded mass retraining of the workforce? That might help us figure out who will retrain the current workforce for the age of automation.

You didn't need a lot of retraining to work on a factory assembly line in the 1920s.

I should be safe

[Eloking]

Well, I'm an automation engineer so I'm making those machines. I should be safe.

Re:I should be safe

[AndyKron]

You'll be the first to go! Robots don't want stupid humans designing them and building them with their greesy meat hands.

Re:I should be safe

[argumentsockpuppet]

It sounds like a joke, but it's been true so far for me. I (and our team) have automated away about half of our IT jobs and our department has doubled in size. Our job is to do more with less, and each time we do more, we get more to do. IT went from being 25% of our company's work to 80%. The jobs that took up 90% of our department's workload 10 years ago don't exist anymore. What was done by a handful people then is done with no human interaction now. At the same time, half the work that our company does now is done by our department, where it was maybe 10% then.

The jobs of the future are human relations, art, and IT. They won't stay the same as they are now, but everything else can and will (eventually) be done by robots and AI. Some day in the far distant future, the year 2525 or such, if mankind is still alive, maybe even those will be done by machines. I'm not optimistic I'll live to see any of that, but I can imagine a world where computers understand me more fully than humans, art by machines is better than that producible by humans, and machines are better designed and managed by AI than humans.

If all goes well, in the next decade IT will be doing 90% of our company's work. If that happens, we'll have similarly proportionally more work and our company's workforce will grow slowly while our customer base grows near exponentially. That or we'll go our of business because some competitor transitioned faster than we did.

Re:I should be safe

[Opportunist]

I don't care what my slave wants.

workers could move to after an student loan!

[Joe_Dragon]

workers could move to after an student loan!

30 years

[AndyKron]

It will happen when energy from fusion becomes reality. Luckily, life is finite and I'm on the downside.

Automation? HAAAAA!

[mikeiver1]

Service electrician here, Love to see it happen. No debt and always have a reliable and good paying job, recession or no recession.

Rise in crime

[wolfheart111]

Half of all jobs for humans will be crime.

Re:Rise in crime

[Opportunist]

Don't be ridiculous, there will never be enough jobs in corporate boards and politics.

OTOH - Tesla

[John.Banister]

On the other hand, Tesla just found out the hard way that replacing people with automation doesn't always work out. But, I expect that it seemed like it would work out before they made the attempt. So, I wonder how many more of these predicted replacements of people turn out to be more successful in theory than in practice.

Re:OTOH - Tesla

[gweihir]

It is a medium-to-long-range thing. Tesla tried to do it too fast. You have to have a working, optimized assembly process before you can successfully automatize, i.e. they tried to cut out a major step any good engineers knows is absolutely critical. Now they are paying the price for that incompetent decision. The problem is probably that Musk is not actually a good engineer but fancies himself one. (He is a very good businessman though.)

Re:OTOH - Tesla

[drinkypoo]

It is a medium-to-long-range thing. Tesla tried to do it too fast. You have to have a working, optimized assembly process before you can successfully automatize, i.e. they tried to cut out a major step any good engineers knows is absolutely critical.

You also have to have excellence in design. Parts designed to be assembled by robot look much different from parts designed to be assembled by humans. For one thing, you hold onto the part and never let it go until it's in place. Humans can shift parts from hand to hand and move them around, but if you do that with a robot, it's a very slow process. That's why so many steps in typical factories are semi-automated. A robot does the job, and a human helps them line up the part. As long as robots are bad at fine positioning, they're going to need human helpers. Once that's solved, the humans will be out of the mix entirely.

Re:OTOH - Tesla

[houghi]

Automation does not always mean that your function becomes obsolete, it means that you need fewer people to do whatever it is that you do.Imagine that whatever you do can be done in half the time. The same goes for your cow orker.

What would be nice is that you only need to work half the time. What will happen is that either you or your cow orker will get fired and the person staying will do the work of both.

Re:OTOH - Tesla

[be951]

What would be nice is that you only need to work half the time. What will happen is that either you or your cow orker will get fired and the person staying will do the work of both.

You're close, but more likely, they'll lay off two out of three (three out of five, if you're lucky) instead of just half.

Re:Automation? HAAAAA!

[jeff4747]

Imagine how much easier it would be to pull the wire if you actually were the fish tape. Well, advanced enough robotics and AI and you get something that can pull wire better, faster and cheaper than you.

There were lots of masons also saying "Love to see it happen". Then this thing got invented.

He's not

[rsilvergun]

but I'd argue he's a prototype for the next authoritarian. Trump's a fool, to be sure. He won't be able to galvanize the country into a blood frenzy like Hitler did. Also It'll probably take another 10 or 20 years for things to get bad enough that those 25% something workers turn to a fascist to solve their problems. But the same folks turning to Trump to solve their problems will turn to a fascist and for the same reason: they're being ignored. Marginalized. Put off.

Eventually those people won't have food and shelter. When that happens they're going to do the same thing people have done throughout history. They're going to get violent. I brought up Germany because it's the most dramatic and well known example. But history is littered with atrocities perpetrated when food got hard to get. The difference is today we've got more than enough science and information to stop it. So far we're not.

Re:He's not

[DNS-and-BIND]

Gosh, maybe the globalists in the US government shouldn't have pursued policies deliberately designed to ruin the American working and middle classes? Because that's what's happened. All this job-destroying globalism didn't happen in a vacuum. It wasn't some inevitable natural process. It was deliberate enemy action, designed to ruin our people while enriching distant, hostile countries.

Comparing Americans to the Nazis sure does feel good, doesn't it? Puts the blame on them instead of the perpetrators.

You shouldn't act like this doesn't affect you

[rsilvergun]

or is it effect? I forget. What matters is you're part of that 'we' whether you like it or not. You're part of human society. That fact that you read my post proves it. And if you can read my post then you must be educated enough to know that we've danced this Charleston a hundred times before. People get abandoned, don't have food, people find a fascist who promises them the good 'ole days, fascist turns them into a violence machine and sets them loose.

Did you even read my post?

[rsilvergun]

You are absolutely right. Automation replaced way more than that 25% I'm citing. There were decades of unemployment, social unrest and wars following that. Where the hell do you think WWI and II came from? It wasn't because some stupid Duke got his head blown off. People get dangerous when they don't have food, shelter, money for families, etc. This has happened over and over again throughout history. We know it's coming, now's a good time to do something about it for a change.

Re:Did you even read my post?

[ShanghaiBill]

Where the hell do you think WWI and II came from?

WW1 was preceded by prosperity not economic contraction.

WW2 was preceded by the Great Depression, which had little to do with jobs being lost to automation.

Lumping them together is odd, since the economic conditions that preceded them were totally different.

Re:Did you even read my post?

[Opportunist]

WW1 was preceded by the same kind of prosperity we have today: Prosperity for those that already have everything, at the cost of a more and more impoverished (and growing) group of people. If it hadn't been for WW1, a few of those empires would have been blown away anyway, actually it's likely that the Russian and the Austrian-Hungarian Empires would not have lasted as long as they did without the war. Russia was underdeveloped and shaken with domestic terrorism (IIRC in the late 1800s one Czar was assassinated and every other has survived multiple attempts, among other attacks). Austria-Hungary was about to fall apart (pretty much like it did after the war).

WW2 was essentially a continuation of WW1, an extension after a 20 years truce. And a good example how a dictated peace will only lead to worse and more bloody wars.

Re:Automation? HAAAAA!

[mikeiver1]

And there sir you are wrong. I am a service electrician. I am the guy that gets called when the other electricians can't figure it out. I work in all areas of electrical from the basic outlet and switch stuff in the home to PLC and motor controls, networking, conduit work etc. In this trade the adage of "you get what you pay for is very true". The employers know this and are more than willing to pay for the skills, attention to detail, and especially the deep knowledge people like me bring to the table. I work and make a decent living with no problems supporting myself and the GF on my income. Seldom are those with a 4, 6, or 8 year degree able to say that out of the chute. The construction trades are a very good place to go now and for the foreseeable future. Electrical, plumbing, and HVAC especially so.

Re:Automation? HAAAAA!

[mikeiver1]

And your robot is going to come in and asses the best way to lay out the pipes in the ground based on conditions? Nope. Its going to layout and install boxes in the walls, drill wire paths, and pull in the wire in the walls and then staple? Nope. It is going to install pumps and motor controls and time them into EMS? Nope. I could go on but I won't. And your brick layer there, its one thing to put bricks dry stacked on one another with no rebar. It is a whole other matter to mortar the joins, set the blocks perfect and straight and control the slump and settle of them. Then follow up and point the joints. I am willing to bet that an experienced crew will put up as much or more block in a day than the machine and it will be finished just as straight and nice. Automation is not the answer to every job. Also, when your fancy machine breaks down you will spend more than you save getting a guy on site to trouble shoot the system and repair it. I will not mention the lost productivity.

Re:When will it be time to cap OT / lower full tim

[mentil]

I'm thinking that time and a half isn't enough to fix overtime abuse, and that it needs to be higher to encourage usage of more workers. Otherwise, reducing the 40 hours work week won't be as effective.

Before you come up with ...

[Qbertino]

... the "back than all was fine eventually and so it will be this time" shtick, I recommend you watch this.

Re:Automation? HAAAAA!

[gweihir]

Academic education with the right mindset can do the same. I have an engineering PhD in the CS area and my job description is pretty similar to yours. But, just like you, I do not get called for the simple stuff. It is always when regular guys do not know what to do anymore.

My take would be that anybody that is really good at their job is basically safe this time, but that is a small group.

Re:Not worried

[gweihir]

We are in the exploration and design phase. That is when both old and new run in parallel. As soon as the new way (automated) works, most of the old jobs just go away. And there are no blank areas anymore they could go to. For example, the popular historical precedent of automated weaving ignores that most people did not have a lot of clothing before and hence there was ample opportunity for growth. Today, all these needs are covered and efficiently so. We kept jobs available by bureaucracy and to a degree, by having wars. Bureaucracy is the next automation target and wars have become prohibitively expensive. And there is no new field to move people into that is actually driven by a real need (except the individual need to "do something").

It is the pace of the change that matters

[Laxator2]

Whenever a story about automation comes up most of the replies are of the type:

"It happened 100 years ago and then again 50 years ago, it we ended up better. We'll figure it out this time."

What these posts don't say is that the _pace_ of the change was much slower back then. Also, we keep on comparing mostly physical industries (e.g. railways) with the current tech industries.

In the tech industry the pace of the change is much faster and during the 80's 90's and 00's it was accelerating. I remember growing up in the 80's when studying electrical engineering and making money from repairing TVs was a perfectly good way to make a living.

Then TVs became almost disposable and computers came along and in the late 80's and early 90's many people made a living writing stuff in BASIC and Pascal. Try making a living from those skills today, only 15-18 years later.

The point is that in the past the major changes took longer or at least as long as the turn of the generations. You could learn a trade and it kept you going until retirement.

However, nowadays you can expect 3-4 major changes throughout the employable years of a person, and not everyone is able to keep up the pace with such change.

Re:It is the pace of the change that matters

[AbRASiON]

Rather then use my points, please, someone mod this guy up, this is the problem, big big time.

Lifelong careers are finished, this is bad and getting worse.

Re:It is the pace of the change that matters

[shbazjinkens]

Both of those seem like pretty poor examples. A programmer would migrate from BASIC or PASCAL to C, and then whatever else they needed if that didn't cut it. A TV repairman is an electronics technician, and they'd move into some other electronics repair, maybe even the PC repair you mentioned.

Computers were on a slow rise from the 1940's on. Even the Apple II didn't get us to 50% adaption. I think the adaptation speed of modern tech is overstated. Better examples are the stablemen who used to keep after horses being caught in the whirlwind of the Model T suddenly taking over, which was as fast or faster than any other recent technology adaption we've had. What happened to them will be similar to what happens to career drivers when the vehicles that took the place of wagons no longer need someone commanding them.

Although I'm not sure what will happen to this large unskilled labor pool, no one was sure during the Model T era either. You're arguing that this is different somehow, but I'm not seeing the differences. The large unskilled labor pool might bring us back to the days when it was way more common to have home servants. That might not seem like a good thing, but I'm not sure what's so much worse about that than being a driver or factory line worker. In Singapore most people have a live-in maid. The oversupply of cheap labor created by their relaxed worker visa laws actually works against automation despite it being one of the most modern cities in the world - I've never seen a dishwashing machine there and most people don't use their clothes dryers. There will be an economic dividing line where it's cheaper to use labor than to use machines that require expensive automation workers to repair, re-program and maintain them. It's there today, it'll be there tomorrow too. There isn't yet a visible horizon where affordable and reliable humanoid robots can replace all of us.

Re:It is the pace of the change that matters

[Laxator2]

You are making some good points here however, that people did have to face change in the past and learn a new trade.

However, if the changes happen once per generation, you can expect a person to face such an event once in a lifetime. Most people would go by with the one trade they learned when they were young.

Nowadays you cannot expect to face less than 3-4 major changes in a career.

Re:They are going to pay me for not working anyway

[geekmux]

A lot of people are saying that the government is going to pay us for not working anyway,

They do already. It's called welfare. Yeah, I'm sure we'll give it a fancy name in the future like "UBI" to appease the Starbucks hipsters and make it feel like something other than welfare, but in reality it won't be any different. The trillionaire owners and rulers of the future who will be asked to fund UBI will dodge that responsibility like they do taxes today, so certainly don't expect UBI to pay any better than welfare today.

Even Nobel Prize Economists, like Krugman, is saying the same

I would certainly hope a Nobel Prize winning economist would know a thing or two about welfare. As automation and AI create a global welfare state and put billions of unemployable humans in it, the real question will be mental health and stability.

Do I need to worry that AI is going to take away my job?

Yeah, but feel good knowing it will only take automation or perhaps "good enough" AI to take your job away, and that will be the same for the other 80% of the human population.

Do I have to worry?

Probably, but look at the bright side. You won't have a pesky job consuming 40 hours a week, so humans will be free to pursue their life's dreams. Or at least as free as welfare recipients are.

Re:Trump's job will be automated alright

[Opportunist]

Trump's job can already be fully automated. Twitter-Bots exist and any Magic-8-ball can take over the decision making.

Re:Automation? HAAAAA!

[Opportunist]

What makes you think that only "dumb" people will enter your field? It's not unlikely that people with PhDs in relevant fields will be replaced by AI, looking for jobs, finding yours and deciding to hop in.

You wouldn't be the first person who suddenly finds in suitable job descriptions ridiculous degree requirements just because suddenly people who actually have those (rather superfluous) degrees move into them. And then try to argue with HR why those degree expectations are ridiculous and nonsensical.

Re:"Vulnerable"? Editorializing much?

[Opportunist]

So we'll also be suitable for civil war? I like the wording, it's so much nicer.

But I learned, no matter how you paint a turd, it still stinks.

Re:They are going to pay me for not working anyway

[Kiuas]

The trillionaire owners and rulers of the future who will be asked to fund UBI will dodge that responsibility like they do taxes today, so certainly don't expect UBI to pay any better than welfare today.

You're missing something quite important here: consumption. Companies need customers, and if and when due to automation a significant chunk of consumers can no longer work because they have no marketable skills, consumption will come crashing down, which will hurt the companies and thus the bottom lines of the trilionaires. Think about the major tech companies for example: Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple, etc. In a world where the majority of people would be making just enough money to survive these companies would collapse, because the goods and services they're selling all require consumers that can actually be marketed to effectively, meaning consumers with disposable income.

Put another way: the benefits of automation (reduced manufacturing & logistics costs) will help no-one if as a result of automation and reduced purchasing power the consumer-base will collapse and is replaced with a massive amount of people living on just the bare necessities because that will slash demand for most consumer products and services and cause a lot of these companies to go under which in turn will reduce the demand for B2B products and services.

This is not a matter of empathy for the poor, this is a matter of game theory. The economy is essentially a giant game that requires people to be buying things for it to stay viable. The more corporations embrace automation and cut the amount of jobs, the more inevitable it will be that the amount of UBI/income transfers per person will have to go up in the future. That is unless one maintains that the rich will suddenly stop caring about making money and will be fine with seeing their profits collapse.

Re: They are going to pay me for not working anywa

[cascadingstylesheet]

Maybe he could become an artist or something... hat tip Nancy Pelosi

Re:They are going to pay me for not working anyway

[gettin2old]

But the UBI will come from somewhere. A lot of people propose a corporate tax to pay for it. So if I'm a business I pay for it either way. Either by a lack of sales or a tax to give people money so they can buy my goods. That's just the beginning of another spiraling system. Government taxes the business so they can tax the UBI recipient (just like social security) and then tax the sale. The business makes "income" so we tax that. Then we add the next round of UBI taxes. All those taxes take value out of the system. Sure, maybe they get a few years/decades. And if business taxes are too high will startups be able to "start"?

Re:Trump's job will be automated alright

[Opportunist]

Less pointless yammering and more money?

Gimme!

Re:They are going to pay me for not working anyway

[Rolgar]

I suppose we could drop the number of hours people work to 20, and force them to employ more people for half the time for the same amount of work?

More bullshit

[Rick Schumann]

The sky is falling! The sky is falling!! EVERYBODY PANIC!!!!1!!

Don't believe the hype. We do not even have real AI, all we have is half-assed 'pseudo-intelligence'. It's not anywhere near as good as the marketing hype says it is. Stop panicking.

Re:More bullshit

[Rick Schumann]

Do I really have to explain this to anyone? It's not real AI. Apparently 99% of everyone thinks that this crap they keep trotting out is the equivalent of a human being. Little could be farther from the truth. A hamster is smarter than this so-called 'AI' they keep trotting out; for the MILLIONTH time, it's not going to destroy everybody's jobs. Never have, never will, believe it.

Re:They are going to pay me for not working anyway

[Green Mountain Bot]

Business taxes are not much of a hindrance to startups. Businesses are taxed on profits. Startups take time to become profitable, and in the meantime their losses can be carried forward to offset the profits when they come.

Re:They are going to pay me for not working anyway

[Maxo-Texas]

Welfare is limited to 2 years in most if not all of the united states.

After that, you can be like the human skeleton I saw begging two weeks ago. By the time I got back with food, they were gone. So I just gave out money indiscriminately to beggers instead of going to get them food several times since then.

I also help at the food bank and stuff but this was terrible. I think things are getting worse for those on the bottom. The social safety net is constantly being cut back in my state.

Re:They are going to pay me for not working anyway

[Big Bipper]

Then either all those currently employed would see a pay cut of 50%, or the companies employing them would see their labour costs rise by 100%. Thus it would be even more economic to automate those jobs, or to move the whole enterprise offshore to some country that didn't force companies to double their workforce.

Re:They are going to pay me for not working anyway

[thinkwaitfast]

unemployable humans in it, the real question will be mental health and stability.

They could always go back to being farmers and work for their own living like Amish.

so superficial it makes my head explode

[epine]

In South Korea, for example, 30% of jobs are in manufacturing, compared with 22% in Canada.

So superficial it makes my head explode, and stupid, too.

Employment by industry

All industries (2017): 18,416.4 (thousands)
Goods producing services: 3,875.9

That's 21.0% of jobs in Canada in the "goods producing services" sector as of freshly updated statistics for 2017.

This sector further breaks down:
* agriculture
* forestry, fishing, mining, quarrying, oil and gas
* utilities
* construction
* manufacturing

Actual manufacturing: 1,724.8

That's less than 10%.

Right, Canada hasn't manage to integrate "social tasks" into driving those oversized, bitumen dump-trucks up in Fort Mac. To a first order, I'm guessing that 60% of this entire correlation could be explained by Canada being (geographically) just a tiny bit bigger than Korea, with correspondingly more jobs anchored behind a steering wheel (all of which would be categorized as "at risk").

True manufacturing sectors that remain in Canada and the United States are generally the hardest manufacturing jobs to automate, and with the largest value add.

Here's just one in depth discussion of the matter:

Adam Davidson on Manufacturing — 2012

Adam Davidson of NPR's Planet Money talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about manufacturing. Based on an article Davidson wrote for The Atlantic, the conversation looks at the past, present, and future of manufacturing.

Davidson visited an after-market auto parts factory in Greenville, South Carolina and talked with employees there as well as with executives at corporate headquarters.

What is the future of factory work in America? Why are some manufacturing jobs in America while others are in China or elsewhere?

The conversation looks at these questions as well as how well or poorly the U.S. education system prepares students for the world of work.

Snippet:

Russ: Which is surprising. Because I think what is surprising, at least to a novice like me, we have in the back of our mind this idea that all these factories are so mechanized, there's so much robotic help--a robot, that's as smart, as precise, as careful, as repeatable, replicable as you'd want. So, why is it that there are--how can there be a quality difference between what a factory stamps out here versus there?

Guest: That was one of the big lessons that I learned. As the machinery that a factory uses gets more and more expensive, sophisticated, it requires more and more human intelligence to operate it. It doesn't require more people. It requires a lot fewer people. But the people that these new machines require often have to have far more skill and be able to think through problems with much greater sophistication.

Many of these jobs could be further whittled away, but mostly by re-automation. And this gets way harder with each iteration (and with less immediate ROI from the scant number of workers displaced).

———

Half the time Russ drives me nuts, because I'm not a neoliberal at heart, but I take my anti-neoliberalism seriously, because it deserves an informed critique (this requires endless hours wading into murky waters you don't really like, but that's simply the cost of not being an idiot). True neoliberals don't find it as painful as I do to be generally well informed; their posture is primarily to dismantle, and there's simply no end of things that suck and on the surface appear to justify hasty extermination, with only the selfish hand (powered by whose industry, exactly?) to fill and close the gaping wound. (Hard not to love the perpetual-motion-machine immune system of the invisible hand when it

You're ignoring history

[rsilvergun]

there were decades of poverty, social strife and war following the various industrial revolutions.

It takes a long time to replace jobs lost to automation. Entire new industries had to be created. Somebody in their 70s doesn't really care that somebody in their 20s can make a living on eSports or drone racing today if they were unemployed 50 years ago.

Automation is very, very expensive

[Tony Isaac]

Sure, we CAN automate things. My son worked at a McDonald's where they had a machine to automatically fill soft drink cups for drive-thru customers. But the machine is so expensive they only bought one, so walk-in customers still got their drinks the old fashioned way.

The truth is that the easiest 20% of jobs can be automated, but 80% are still much too complex and varied to spend the money required.

Yes, automation will increase, as it has for centuries. But we're not going to suddenly fall of an automation cliff.

you forget time in this theory...

[Herve5]

Who will prevent me to automate faster than you, sell at a lower price immediately, and kill your company while developing mine?
All ordinarily sane companies will consider this, verify it to be true (even if globally bad) and play the move as fast as they can.
The global result may be bad : they are not responsible for the global result.
And the fastest within them companies will actually demonstrate you that they have improved their results...

you won't have a century to adapt now...

[Herve5]

All is in the title -from agricultural US 100y ago the shift was managed; from now to next year with 70% of our work AI-fied will it be managed too?