Bank of England Chief Economist Warns On AI jobs Threat (bbc.com)

The chief economist of the Bank of England has warned that the UK will need a skills revolution to avoid "large swathes" of people becoming "technologically unemployed" as artificial intelligence makes many jobs obsolete. From a report: Andy Haldane said the possible disruption of what is known as the Fourth Industrial Revolution could be "on a much greater scale" than anything felt during the First Industrial Revolution of the Victorian era. He said that he had seen a widespread "hollowing out" of the jobs market, rising inequality, social tension and many people struggling to make a living. It was important to learn the "lessons of history", he argued, and ensure that people were given the training to take advantage of the new jobs that would become available. He added that in the past a safety net such as new welfare benefits had also been provided.

Comments

Easy solution.

[Anonymous Coward]

Train your existing people. Problem solved.

Re:Easy solution.

[Anonymous Coward]

How do you train, say, a lorry (truck) driver whose being replaced by AI-powered self-driving lorries? If the training involves a desk with a computer... one person can manage several of those self-driving lorries, so you might re-train a few. What do you suggest for the rest?

Re:Easy solution.

[fluffernutter]

Compound that with the fact that people generally find the job that is intellectually right for them. If the lorry driver was capable of being Elon Musk, then he probably wouldn't have been a lorry driver in the first place, or at least as a stepping stone and not for long.

Re:Easy solution.

[Anonymous Coward]

The same way we trained the people who made buggy whips.

Re:Easy solution.

[Anonymous Coward]

That is their problem. If they want an income, they figure out how to train themselves.

Re:Easy solution.

[jellomizer]

Easy solution, complex implementation.

For centuries, we have measured peoples "smarts" on their ability to remember things, focus on a task, and be able to work out problems quickly.

Skills like imagination, out of the box thinking, creativity, people relations... A lot of soft skills that havn't been associated with "smart" people, but with people who get kicked out of school, because they didn't fit the mold.

With AI and robotics taking a lot of the jobs away, this is actually an opportunity for a "Kindness Economy" Where a lot of these jobs that are making us miserable and irritable people are being handled by computers, leaving opportunity to work more with people and help them with their problems. Vs. being a cog in the wheel causing their problems.

A "Kindness economy" will be difficult to setup. Changing over a century of culture, changes in education, and human relation expectations. While there still be jobs for the Anti-social people, they will be less in demand, and probably not needed to be filled with the random social person making their jobs even more miserable.

Re:Easy solution.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah. Fuck you, I got mine!

Re:Easy solution.

[lgw]

Well put, though in the specific example it takes a modicum of intelligence and a lot of diligence to be a truck driver. You could probably learn a skilled trade. (Heck, you could probably finish your career before we actually have self-driving vehicles.)

Re:Easy solution.

[fluffernutter]

And when all lorry drivers learn skilled trades? As a person who is having a lot of renovation work done I look forward to the day there are 100, or even 20, electricians in my area begging for work. More likely a good one will accept a minimum wage rate.

Re:Easy solution.

[fluffernutter]

Oh and since we now have the 'gig economy', they can buy all their supplies, tools, and a ride to the job site with that minimum wage as well. No need for the customer to cover expensive overhead.

Re:Easy solution.

[lgw]

As with everyone who things we "measure intelligence wrong", you should take a look at the Big Five personality traits. Those plus IQ explain all statistically measurable factors of human psychology.

What schools measure is intelligence plus conscientiousness, which is probably what matters on most jobs as well. Your "kindness economy", euphemistic at best, would be jobs for people who are high in agreeableness. Problem is, stubborn people need jobs too. Further, we already have a large economy around elder care, and that's only going to grow until the Boomers die off, so there's your existing "kindness sector" in our economy.

Only communists "set up" an economy, mostly by starving millions of people to death. Successful economies emerge naturally over time, as people who have needs seek people with the skills to provide for those needs. There will certainly be new jobs, and many of them may be "kindness-related", but you can't force it.

Re:Easy solution.

[Anonymous Coward]

People always look down on trades and jobs that don't require a broad, generalized education (engineering, medicine, law, etc) as being simple. This is taken to the extreme with "skilled trades" such as teachers, carpenters, electricians, plumbers, et al, who are sometimes seen as dolts because of their lack of broad education. At the bottom of this list are the "unskilled trades" such as truck (lorry) driver, athlete, etc.

In reality, the skilled trades take yeas to master and, although their education path might not encounter subjects such as art, music, literature or philosophy, the majority of practitioners have a better understanding of these subjects simply because they needed to pick them up on their own. Taking Art 101 as a required course is very different from learning to carve wood or assemble metal sculpture.

Even the unskilled trades are populated by broadly educated people. Although sometimes this education is scatter-shot, it can be very broad and outside even what the most educated person could learn in school.

Elon Musk is Elon Musk in part because of his upbringing and the situations in which he found himself. To say your cab driver is less than Elon Musk because he hasn't assembled a team of people to build a rocket is like saying a whale is less than a tiger because the whale kills fewer people. How many people has Elon Musk personally driven around London or New York?

Re:Easy solution.

[jellomizer]

To paraphrase a TV commercial for an energy bar and Doctor Who.

There is a difference between Nice and Kind.
Nice is the person with a big smile who makes you feel good.
Kind is working to help someone with their long term goals.

So for example say currently your job is to approve or reject a license, say to build home extensions. You have a large collection of applications to deal with. You could be a perfectly pleasant person, but will rubberstamp reject on the bulk of them. Leaving the requester having no idea on what the next steps are.
With this process automated, in the "Kindness Economy" A person would deal with the rejected list, and help the requester out to make sure the rejected reasons are dealt with and addressed so they will be able to put out an acceptable application. This job, may require the person to be tough and tell them the hard news, however that may be needed for the customer to go further.

I was not implying that we force this "Kindness Economy" but more of a prediction of that is where the natural progression probably will be in. And that we should prep for this. Just as my generation had kids learn how to use computers, write simple programs, because back in Gen X, The Computer Revolution (or "Data Economy" ) That we live in now, was only a prediction of things to come, but those pre-boomers and early boomers decided it was a good idea to adapt to this change. As their grandparents prepped them for the industrial revolution.

Re: Easy solution.

[Anonymous Coward]

You train him to be a security guard. You don't think companies are going to let their stock drive itself around unattended?

Re:Easy solution.

[HeckRuler]

How do you train, say, a lorry (truck) driver whose being replaced by AI-powered self-driving lorries?

Same way you train anyone else. You just train/teach them to do something OTHER than driving a truck. They're probably not going to stay in the shipping industry. Same way that all those weavers never found work as weavers after the automated looms took over. "Trucker" as a profession will simply be gone.

The problem is that training and education has diminishing returns on the old. Which is why we send kids to school. Nobody wants to give a 50 years old a scholarship because they'll be dead or looking to retire in a mere 20 years.

1) Teach kids the skills they need for tomarrow.

2) Retrain, teach young adults that are displaced by disruptive technologies.

3) Early retire with a shitty-ass pension the elderly with no other options. It's got to be shitty because we WANT them to go find alternatives. But just throwing them to the curb would be cruel. For us in the USA over here, it'd be something like handing out exceptions that lower the age for Social Security.

4) Don't forget that the government giving away free money to institutions will raise prices. You ALSO have to encourage additional competition in academia and tech schools.

Re:Easy solution.

[lgw]

There is currently a serious labor shortage in the skilled trades. It's likely good work for someone with the skills to drive a truck. There are over a million skilled manufacturing jobs unfilled in the US right now.

We could do a better job as a society of making training available, but it's really not the people who already do skilled work that will be left out in the cold here. Unskilled labor has been going away for decades now, and will eventually vanish. What the heck happens to the 10% or 15% of people who simply can't cut it in a skilled job?

Re:Easy solution.

[lgw]

Well, I wouldn't call that a kindness economy, but I could certainly see jobs expediting permitting.

Personally, I already see a lot of new jobs around convenience - things people could do for themselves, but wold rather not be bothered. I've seen startups around car washing, lawn mowing, pickup/deliver clothes to the cleaners, and similar. All new companies, internet-dispatched, paying better than you'd think. Talking to a friend at a startup where they send people to wash your car, they pay $20/hr, which isn't bad at all for semi-skilled labor. They make a nice profit, and are growing like crazy.

As with every previous economic revolution, the new jobs will be doing things for the middle class that, previously, only the rich could afford. Wish I had a better idea for what, specifically, as I'd make my own startup.

Re:Easy solution.

[fluffernutter]

The labor shortage is good for people in skilled trades. It's a good thing because it keeps their wages up. End that and people struggle to survive.

Re:Easy solution.

[fluffernutter]

You can master skilled trades all you want, your wage will always be capped by the number of people in your trade.

Re: Easy solution.

[fluffernutter]

Now we're talking about working for minimum wage all night. So awesome.

Re:Easy solution.

[religionofpeas]

Teach kids the skills they need for tomarrow.

What skills would those be ?

Re:Easy solution.

[drinkypoo]

As a person who is having a lot of renovation work done I look forward to the day there are 100, or even 20, electricians in my area begging for work.

Electricians control the supply of electricians. They've lobbied for laws which require that new electricians apprentice themselves to existing electricians, which sets an upper limit on the potential growth of the number of electricians. [A subset of] Doctors have achieved the same thing WRT the supply of doctors through the lobbying efforts of their trade organization, the AMA. The day when there are all those electricians in your area begging for work will never come, at the current rate. And the rate is artificially limited by people with effective lobbyists, so it's not likely to change soon.

Re:Easy solution.

[drinkypoo]

A "Kindness economy" will be difficult to setup.

We literally cannot get from here to there without a revolution, because the people in charge of all the money now are so vehemently opposed to being kind. We know this because they are sitting on literally more money than they can possibly spend, but are unwilling to give it away to make the world a better place.

Re: Easy solution.

[Anonymous Coward]

I look forward to the day annoying programmer autist sons of bitches are put put of work. They pride themselves in being smart like a computer, but the future is for the true humans, those with actual hearts, that have feelings.

Training yourself to be a computer is not a smart move my friends. Try smiling more often, ask girls out.

Re:Easy solution.

[HeckRuler]

Posted below, but here it is. The common refrain is STEM:

Science: Make sure you get more than a BS. What do you do with a BS in physics? Teach highschool.

Technology: Because politicians are too dumb to distinguish between sysadmins and programmers. This is like.... everything the slahdot crowd does.

Engineering: It's all the other fields, but with more bloody paperwork and an extra $30K.

Math: Practically nobody is employed as an actual mathematician, but holy shit is it useful everywhere else. It's like the Jack-of-all-Trades skill from Traveller but for the job market.

And also business, because with all the disruptive tech, there's opportunity for people to carve out their niche. Mostly likely to be swallowed up by some megacorp, but they get rich in the process and the megacorp (in theory) gets new capabilities.

Re: Easy solution.

[Anonymous Coward]

Physical security field is probably hit very hard by the rise of the machines that happens any day now. A security guard is acting with the rights of the property owner and lacks the right to enforce public safety, so a centrally managed fleet of mobile robots, security systems and drones might be able to outperform any legally operating mobile security team in terms of response time. The security guard of the future will be trained more thoroughly as they now have to face much more often the situation where they have to use reasonable force to remove a person from a property to the waiting mechanical arms of the autonomous police vehicle. And give first aid if needed.

Re:Easy solution.

[lgw]

Hired a plumber recently? Electrician? AC repair? They aren't just barely getting by. It's a labor shortage when it stops being a matter of price, and becomes one of availability. We have cultural issues preventing people from taking good jobs they could do.

Re:Easy solution.

[fluffernutter]

All of the above; as we are renovating our whole house. I'd say they're comfortable, but they're not driving new vehicles around. Low-middle class to dead center middle class. Not upper middle class.

Re: Easy solution.

[Anonymous Coward]

That has already been automated, it is called insurance.

Re: Easy solution.

[Anonymous Coward]

If we are all doctors, physicists, mathematicians... whoâ(TM)s going to do my plumbing? Beecause I would way too busy to try anything myself.

Re: Easy solution.

[Anonymous Coward]

Ironically enough, microsoft (?) os develping an AI able to code a program from very basic defined objectives [1]. So, who knows. Even Zuckerberg may find himself out of his job...

[1] https://www.wired.co.uk/article/ai-write-code-microsoft

Re: Easy solution.

[HeckRuler]

The existing current plumbers? They're not losing their jobs. Neither are all the people currently training to be plumbers. Everyone that employs plumbers will of course complain that there's a lack of plumbers, the same way that the tech companies complain about a lack of tech workers. Which is "we don't like paying them so much".

But yeah, sure, it's good to remind kids that the trades are also a viable career path. Especially if you can't pass calculus.

(Home plumbing has gotten way easier these days now that everything is plastic. Still kind of a bitch, but easier.)

Re:Easy solution.

[lgw]

The guys who own the plumbing businesses do quite well, but starting your own small business (and succeeding) will always be the most valuable skill.

They're all "working class", by the way. It's not a dirty word. In fact, that's the cultural problem we need to fix. Especially the realization that a good working class job beats a crappy white-collar job any day. The difference is not one of how much you're paid, but the kind of work you do.

The point at which the lifetime earnings of a dentist (net of education costs) pass the lifetime earnings of a plumber is the early 40s. And that's comparing the dentist who owns his own business to the plumber who doesn't. If the plumber is successfully running a "two truck shop" by 40, the dentist may never pass him.

Re:Easy solution.

[fluffernutter]

Yes, it does matter how much you get paid. Maybe some people like going to another person's house or business to sit on the floor for hours, but you would have to pay me a lot more to do that.

Re:Easy solution.

[Anonymous Coward]

Heaven forbid a good electrician should be able to make a living wage. Off to the workhouse with them.

Re:Easy solution.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, it is terrible that electricians should have to learn to be competent, rather than just make it up and cause an electrical fault that burns your house down. And why should doctors have to learn stuff before rummaging around in your internal organs. It's regulation gone mad. Galt wouldn't stand for things like that.

Re:Easy solution.

[Anonymous Coward]

Obviously literacy is not one of the skills that will be required.

Re:Easy solution.

[Anonymous Coward]

Having seen a few mcmansions done by day laborers I am *perfectly* fine with these guys knowing what they do. As in wired 100 wrong and would eventually set a fire in the wall wrong.

Re:Easy solution.

[Anonymous Coward]

How do you train yourself without an income? How to do you know what to train yourself in when you do (you can't train yourself in everything)? How do you make sure you have enough income to train yourself if you are on minimum wage? How do you make time if you are working three jobs already?

Re:Easy solution.

[lgw]

The difference between "working class" and "middle class" in America is not one of income, nor is the difference between "middle class" and "upper class". The middle class tends to make more than the working class, on average, but that's not what distinguishes the two, and there's a lot of overlap in income.

Re:Easy solution.

[fluffernutter]

The difference is that the working class generally do jobs that are physical and hard on the body. Which is exactly why not everyone wants to do those jobs.

Re:Easy solution.

[drinkypoo]

Yes, it is terrible that electricians should have to learn to be competent, rather than just make it up and cause an electrical fault that burns your house down.

The part that makes sure that doesn't happen is the examination, not the apprenticeship. Except it actually doesn't do that, it only makes it more rare. The apprenticeship should not be mandatory, and the examination should be better — maybe harder, maybe more hands-on.

Re:Easy solution.

[lgw]

Sure, and we've developed too much of a cultural aversion to those jobs. Given the stream of people replaced by robots we expect, I think it's time to fix that. It does seem to be where the new jobs are, as the "real work"-adverse middle class is willing to pay for it.

Re:Easy solution.

[fluffernutter]

Well, I know a couple of people who did these jobs as their career, and by age 50 their backs and knees were destroyed and they couldn't do those jobs any more. Now what? Our medical care will fix them up somewhat but they can't do those jobs any more.

Re:Easy solution.

[lsatenstein]

There is currently a serious labor shortage in the skilled trades. It's likely good work for someone with the skills to drive a truck. There are over a million skilled manufacturing jobs unfilled in the US right now.

We could do a better job as a society of making training available, but it's really not the people who already do skilled work that will be left out in the cold here. Unskilled labor has been going away for decades now, and will eventually vanish. What the heck happens to the 10% or 15% of people who simply can't cut it in a skilled job?

You need to make the salaries in the skilled and semiskilled trades attractive. When a waitress has to live from her tips, that is not what "American" humanity is about.

We need to rethink the concept of work

Re:Easy solution.

[kaatochacha]

So you've essentially described a group of people occupying roughly the upper end of a bell curve.
What do you do with the 25-50% of the population on the lower end that can't do this?
Because if you let them get poor and desperate, they're certainly capable of bashing your head in and taking your stuff.
The world is fully of people who are probably in the 90% IQ range: Just slightly less smart than average.
They're not bad, they're not lazy, they're not useless: but they are incapably of doing a lot of mental heavy lifting often required of the tasks listed above.

Re:Easy solution.

[HeckRuler]

"Can't do this"? Harsh. These people aren't worthless. They just can't figure out calculus or architect 15 different bloody packages all working cross purpose.

I think we need code janitors. The grunts in charge of.... all that worthless shit that gets tossed around in code reviews. And to have the arduous task of pulling in legacy software and just documenting what it currently does. They don't have to write code, they might not even have a need to read it. We need a "tech school" of programming.

And we DO need people to teach highschool physics.

Help desks need workers.

SWQA isn't glorious at all, but it's vital and needed. Mostly paperwork checking, but all those Internet of Things devices could sorely use some more test.

Soooooo much of engineering isn't that hard. It's just crossing t's and dotting i's. If you employed an independent team of minimum wage quality checkers, even if they only caught something a fourth of the time as the high'n'mighty engineers, they'd pay for themselves. ...uh... The world has 1,930,182,352 people with an IQ of below 90 (and more every ~2 seconds). That's the bottom 25%. By definition.

I'm not worried.

[Mr. Dollar Ton]

Every conservative British outfit and talking head, from Theresa May, to BJ, to Nigel Farage has repeatedly told me that with the savings we realize from the Brexit, we can pay for anything.

And with fredumz to negotiate our own trade terms, we can profit from everywhere.

We will negotiate bigly with the AI and get a great deal.

Re:I'm not worried.

[Sir_Eptishous]

I think what you really need from a negotiating stand point is a really, really hard Brexit.
The harder the better.

Re:I'm not worried.

[Anne Thwacks]

a really, really hard Brexit. The harder the better.

You mean like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Re:I'm not worried.

[Mr. Dollar Ton]

Yes, we need it very hard and hairy. The only problem is that it will not be only for the fans, everyone will get shafted.

Re: I'm not worried.

[Anonymous Coward]

We would have been better off staying in, IMO. But given that we are leaving, a hard Brexit is actually preferable to an in-between, neither-one-nor-the-other purgatory.

Re:I'm not worried.

[umghhh]

Yes the end of the world as we know it. It may mean lots of lost opportunities. It may also mean lots of new ones. We will never know for sure whether brexit is better than no brexit and staying with the big EU 'democracy'. Try to make the best out of it.

Re: I'm not worried.

[Anonymous Coward]

When something is a bad idea, doing it in the most destructive way possible, a way likely to cripple the economy for a couple of decades, and lead to the loss of cherished services like the NHS is rarely the best option. It's like saying "now we've agreed to shoot ourselves, which we'd assumed would be in the foot, it's probably best to shoot ourselves in the head instead"

Re:I'm not worried.

[Anonymous Coward]

Brexit will allow the UK to shut off the tap for immigrants. Once out, Blighty can then give the finger to Brussels and tell them where they can shove their immigrants. I've got family in a county constabulary, detectives both. They just busted open a ring of muzzies coming over claiming they were homosexuals and feared for their life. They come over and started raping women and taking advantage of the white local girls who want nothing to do with the muslim trash. The harder Brexit is the better. I remember England back in the 80s as a teen. What a great place? Now? Filled with wogs on the dole, muzzies thinking they can dicate rules, the sickness of sharia law, the ruination of a once-great culture. It sickens me to even see a veiled woman walking down the street. Kudos to France and Denmark for making it illegal. Now, if only England could grow a set of bollocks.

Re:I'm not worried.

[Anonymous Coward]

You do realise that 50% of the immigrants come from outside the EU, an the UK already has and has had the ability to restrict immigration from anywhere outside the EU?

I remember England back in the 80s as a teen. What a great place

So do I. Riots, mass unemployment, miner's strike, god awful food.

Re:I'm not worried.

[Anonymous Coward]

OP here. Awful food? Nothing was awful about it. Same stuff as before except now curry shops outnumber pubs and chippies, which is sad. My mum used to always say I was going to become sick down my shirt after the amount of pickled onion crisps, scotch eggs, and Aero bars I consumed. About the only benefit from before was the amount of choices, but this is now overwhelming. I still shop at Sainsbury's, almost never at Tesco, never at Waitrose.

And you could smoke everywhere. Now? You're looked upon as a criminal in most places. Not too long ago I was down in Pompey at Gunwharf Quays visiting family and we were sat out IN THE SMOKING AREA. People passing by were staring at us like we has swastikas on our arms. England needs to look back a little and get rid of this horrible PC everywhere crap.

Training for what?

[rsilvergun]

We can't all be doctors. And even if we could whose going to pay us when the jobs base collapses and with it wages? This is the same sort of nonsense I heard when the manufacturing jobs went overseas and again when the tech jobs fooled them. It was biotech last time, but this time they're not even saying what I'm supposed to retrain for...

Re:Training for what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just start playing the lottery...

Probably the same success rate as retraining today for the job of the future

Re:Training for what?

[Anonymous Coward]

> We can't all be doctors.

Can you imagine an AI that can diagnose what is wrong with a person and can you imagine that AI can do this with super human accuracy? Can you imagine that it can be done with the currently existing tech, once we just collect enough data to train it?

If you can, then consider this (this is a true story): A patient went to hospital. At the hospital the patient had clear symptoms of allergic reactions and the patient even asked the nurse that could this be allergy. The patient had also described the symptoms to the nurse. Later the patients condition got worse and the patient could no longer speak. The nurse called doctors, but didn't relay the important allergy-related information to the doctor, just said that the patient lost ability to speak, and the patient couldn't correct the nurse at this point, so doctors suspected some brain related illness. Doctors did magnet imaging, several blood tests, etc. and patient was getting worse and worse. After several hours one smart doctor decided to give some anti-allergy drug to the patient and in 15 minutes the patient was well again.

I am fairly certain that if an AI had been there monitoring the patient, the AI could have immediately given the correct diagnosis, the drug could have been given by nurse, and none of the several doctors would have been needed for the trip that lasted hours, not to even mention expensive tests that were done + all the pain that the patient had to suffer + treatment of that pain.

And remember, this is not an uncommon story, this is the current normal. Imagine how much less doctors we would need if we simply had better initial diagnostics, something that is really easy for current level of AI to handle.

Re:Training for what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Imagine how many fewer doctors would be needed.
Now that doctors are out of work they could retrain as grammar Nazis, flood the market and push those 50c trolls down to 45c at least.

Re:Training for what?

[Anonymous Coward]

True or not that's a stupid scenario. I totally get your point and agree with it, but in that situation any half-reasonable person should be waving frantically for a pen to write with. It'd make a lot more sense if they patient just wasn't a part of that conversation at all.

I don't think people realize that the robots aren't coming just for the manual labor or simple jobs... jobs requiring a lot of training and expertise are also going to be replaced. It's going to be a while before robots are running sewing machines in all the complex 3D patterning and visual inspection tasks that general usage of that entails, for instance... doctor diagnoses are in contrast actually easier to train an AI for.

There's really nothing that's guaranteed to be safe. Once a real AGI appears, even if it's a mostly substandard one and further progress is stalled a bit, massive waves of unemployment will follow much faster than anyone's ever seen before.

We're going to have to shift to a basic income system, no way around it. That's probably going to be hardest here in the US, since culturally so much of a person's worth is tied up into what their job is. So, I'm expecting things to get pretty bad before they start to get better.

Re:Training for what?

[HeckRuler]

We can't all be doctors.

Actually, doctors are the exact sort of thing that are probably on the chopping block. Sure, everyone is concerned about truckers and factory workers, as well they ought to be. But AI or expert systems or big-ass if-else chains given a list of symptoms and lab results and patient history can outperform the general practitioners that do the initial diagnostic and refer you to specialists. And there are a TON of GPs out there. A generation of people are going to get bit in the ass when they spend two decades in school only to find out that a computer took their job in the end and they have to retrain to go be a nurse.

AI is going to EAT the white-collar class of people who have boring repetitive jobs.

but this time they're not even saying what I'm supposed to retrain for...

The common refrain is actually STEM:

Science: Make sure you get more than a BS. What do you do with a BS in physics? Teach highschool.

Technology: Because politicians are too dumb to distinguish between sysadmins and programmers. This is like.... all of slashdot.

Engineering: It's all the other fields, but with more bloody paperwork and an extra $30K.

Math: Practically nobody is employed as an actual mathematician, but holy shit is it useful everywhere else. It's like the Jack-of-all-Trades skill from Traveller but for the job market.

Re:Training for what?

[HeckRuler]

oh, and also, BUSINESS.

With all the disruptive tech, there's plenty of call for people willing to try and carve out their own niche. If you look at the statistics, there's a big call for business degrees.

Re: Training for what?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's because there's nothing to retrain for that some pencil neck accountant or VC somewhere won't try to automate. AI is total buzzword bullshit but the threat of machines mismanaging jobs at an accelerated pace is not.

It's time we all grow up and decide if the economy exists to serve us or if it's the other way around.

Re:Training for what?

[Anonymous Coward]

> person should be waving frantically for a pen to write with.

The person didn't need to do that, the medical stuff immediately said "we should get some paper and pen to the patient", so patient waited. Time passed and at the time, when paper and pen finally arrived, the patient was in so bad condition that the patient could no longer keep eyes open, so writing became nearly impossible. The medical stuff was just not very interested in communicating with the patient.

The patient was completely calm and tried to communicate with hands, which the doctors thought to be some kind of panic reaction, so they even wanted to give him some medication to calm the patient down. At the point when patient could not keep eyes open, doctors panicked and hit hard to the chest to get the patient to open eyes, which obviously didn't help, because it caused caused by allergic reaction.

> True or not that's a stupid scenario.

Yes, it is really stupid. And like I said, this is common. People make mistakes all the time.

Re:Training for what?

[barc0001]

> AI is going to EAT the white-collar class of people who have boring repetitive jobs.

Going to? It already is. Hell, even "smart" jobs like investment portfolio management are in the sights now. One of the banks in Canada laid off hundreds of investment advisers recently and replaced them with a piece of software and an automated phone tree.

Re:Training for what?

[jythie]

*nod* other disruptive shifts have depended on only impacting a small part of the economy at a time, and thus other industries that were not benefiting from new technology absorbing the displaced workforce... and even then, well... as much as we mock the luddites for 'being wrong', the majority of them died in poverty so we could 'win'.

But the big danger in these upcoming shifts, if they hit large industries, large percentages of the population, you no longer have the unaffected segments of the economy to absorb the excess population. All that awaits is death, and future people talking about how wonderful things were after all those useless people died.

Re:Training for what?

[jythie]

I've been watching software development teams shrink for decades now. People tend to forget that automation doesn't completely remove jobs, it just means fewer people doing the same work, with higher pay but less than the larger team would have made.

Re:Training for what?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm seriously thinking to start working on home repairs, mostly electrical jobs. It's not regulated here, and well available everywhere. The one thing that stops me for now is I hate to interact with random idiots. Going to people's houses/flats feels like a terrible job, even if easily available.

Also it's not trainable to like these interactions.

Re:Training for what?

[Kargan]

Then some of those people will have to become skilled labor, of which there is a massive shortage (at least in the U.S.).

AI is not going to replace pipe fitters, plumbers, HVAC installation and repairmen, carpenters, electricians, etc. etc., at least not any time soon.

Re:Training for what?

[Mal-2]

I'm not sure I understand the value of a math major. I've worked with people holding math degrees who were intelligent and competent, but never got to apply their field of study in any meaningful way. Meanwhile I was busy writing tools to make my job (and by extension, theirs) easier because I realized I was doing the same shit every month, and for the same clients. Why the fuck shouldn't I automate that? (Musicians are often thinking "how do I take this thing I want to do, and do it more accurately, faster, and with less effort?") And once I had, everyone else started using the tools as well.

Re:Training for what?

[HeckRuler]

The value of a math degree is tied to the fact that everyone who knows people who hold a math degree appear to be intelligent and competent, even outside their field of study. That's a large part of what any degrees does for you. It proves you're a smart cookie and can learn.

That's real cute you automated something. Good job. Now do some discreet signal processing and frequency analysis to determine which songs have stenographic messages hidden in them. If shifting from the time-domain to the frequency-domain blows your mind, you'd best get back to the math books.

Re:Training for what?

[RespekMyAthorati]

I've known lots of tradespeople.
The top 25% are booked up for months, the rest barely scrape by.

Re:Training for what?

[Mal-2]

Fourier transforms don't blow my mind, and I use them quite frequently, but there's not much value to understanding them when working in an insurance agency.

The gal with the math degree absolutely was intelligent and competent, and I wouldn't claim otherwise. But she definitely wasn't looking for ways to change the way things were done, she just followed the guidelines.

Re:Training for what?

[HeckRuler]

So? Your surgeon also "just follows the guidelines" but is pretty damn important, skilled, well paid, and "has value".

Automating repetitive tasks is a very common and well spelled out process in the software industry. All you did was apply best practices and following the guidelines.

Most jobs, when you look deeper into them, are way deeper and more complicated that you initially think. But hey, there are also lazy sacks of shit that are complete wastes of oxygen whose job really deserves to replaced with a three-line script. If she came off as intelligent and competent though, she's probably not one.

Re:Training for what?

[HeckRuler]

huh. That'd be a really interesting pile of histograms. The distributions of income (and hours worked [and years experience (and cost of living)]) of the various industries. There are literal rockstars but most artists starve and are desperate for gigs. Something like civil servants have pretty flat and fair wages (at least among themselves)..... I think.

banks like student loans

[Joe_Dragon]

banks like student loans

This is only the beginning

[Quakeulf]

We are a solved specie. In the future even the majority of developer jobs will be automated. Systems will be fully automated with a fully non-human supply chain, economy, and customers. I am looking forward to seeing "100% human made" on products as opposed to what the automated systems will create. At this rate, it will come in our lifetimes.

Re:This is only the beginning

[Anonymous Coward]

I am looking forward to seeing "100% human made" on products

Let's hope it won't be meat

Re:This is only the beginning

[iampiti]

Non human customers? The product or service will eventually have to benefit a human, if it doesn't what's the point?
Also someone will have to pay the product/service manufacturer /provider

Re:This is only the beginning

[Anonymous Coward]

In the future even the majority of developer jobs will be automated.

Then again, they've been saying this for decades, or variants of it, including "no programming ability required", "build your own custom reports" and "Javascript is great"

Re:This is only the beginning

[radarskiy]

"We are a solved specie."

Speak for yourself. I, for one, am a federal reserve note.

Re:This is only the beginning

[dinfinity]

1. Ultimately, there is no point and there can't be.
2. Most products/services humans buy are unnecessary or highly redundant for an advanced inorganic species. A lot of those things are dedicated to maintaining and dealing with the needs and drives of our current high-maintenance biological substrates.

Take a seat somewhere in your house. Look around and determine, for everything in it, whether you would have any use for it if your consciousness had an inorganic substrate ('uploaded to the cloud' or whatever).

Brexit will (not) solve this

[Anonymous Coward]

The sad truth is that a large proportion of the UK is under the impression that chucking out all the Eastern Europeans who stand in cold fields plucking cabbages 12 hours a day will solve the job problem.

You can remove the low skilled workers if you want, but sooner or later (most likely sooner) a robot will take their place anyway.

Re:Brexit will (not) solve this

[Anonymous Coward]

Brexit believers are exactly the same kind of people as Trump supporters. Poorly educated, guillible, naive, but also afraid of losing what little they have, and therefore desperate. And desperation drives even the brightest people to commit unspeakable acts, simply because they feel they have nothing to lose.

When you feel powerless, and basically left for dead by a sociopathic society that moves forward without even a single look back a those it leaves behind, all you want to do is a last desperate act of empowerment, regardless of the consequences to that society that doesn't give a shit about you anyway.

Re:Brexit will (not) solve this

[Train0987]

Your superiority complex is showing. Keep believing how 65 million people are just beneath you, poorly educated and gullible. He's going to get even more votes next time because of the arrogance of the Left.

Re:Brexit will (not) solve this

[Anonymous Coward]

How absolutely wrong you are. Stop smoking your ganja.

Re: Brexit will (not) solve this

[Anonymous Coward]

65 million? I think you underestimate the numbers. Try 6.5 billion.

Here's the thing, you're so desperate to believe that your anger and resentment over your obvious gullibility and willful ignorance is nothing more than your arrogant pride leading you down the path of desperation as you embrace the worst tendencies of your own humanity.

Just watch what happens. You've already got of crimes on your conscience, not that you're capable of accepting responsibility.

Re:Brexit will (not) solve this

[Sir_Eptishous]

Your superiority complex is showing. Keep believing how 65 million people are just beneath you, poorly educated and gullible. He's going to get even more votes next time because of the arrogance of the Left.

Your authoritarian complex is showing. Keep believing how a megalomaniac propped up by Americas long time enemy will stay in power. His authoritarian base are belong to Putin.

Re:Brexit will (not) solve this

[Anonymous Coward]

Keep denying reality just because it displeases you. How typically human.

Oh, and keep downmodding posts that say things you don't like. Aren't you trumptards always complaining about liberals doing the same thing to you ?

Your stupidity is only rivaled by your hypocrisy.

Re: Brexit will (not) solve this

[Anonymous Coward]

lol, it was teh Russians! Keep trying and maybe one day someone who isn't a racing conspiracy theorist will believe you!

Re:Brexit will (not) solve this

[Anonymous Coward]

My goodness you brainwashed fools.

Re: Brexit will (not) solve this

[Anonymous Coward]

I tire of being told I'm an example of "the worst tendencies of humanity" simply because I favor putting limits on the number of immigrants allowed into my country.
I view immigration as a net benefit, when moderated. Unsupervised it's a complete and total disaster. It ruins culture of the country it's affecting through too rapid change. As an example: I had a guy who I was holding a door for the other day ask me a question in Spanish. I replied, in terrible Spanish, that I don't speak Spanish. He then proceeded scream at me. As much as I could make out, he was chastising me for not speaking Spanish.
This also limits the chances of those who immigrate to the lower levels of the society. Gangs aren't formed by happy people. My immigrant ancestors wouldn't have been successful if they'd been forced into the lower rungs of society with no land.
Instead of addressing, we get "you're a racist!!!!"

When AI takes over our jobs

[byteherder]

"We must become masters of our AI overlords"

It stops being an economy

[evanh]

without people to pay.

Money's purpose is to manage a human workforce.

Re:It stops being an economy

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly. If people can't earn money, they can't spend it.

Re:It stops being an economy

[evanh]

Products don't have to have a price. If machines can make everything without human labour then the cost price is zero.

Re:It stops being an economy

[Anonymous Coward]

Machines ruling the world is not going to happen over night. The jobs that machines take over will escalate in that time period. And in that time period, more and more people will be unemployed, without money, and things won't yet be free. That spells disaster for the economy. This will be a real problem, and we cannot go to the extreme and assume the path there is going to be painless.

Re:It stops being an economy

[evanh]

I replied to this: "We are a solved specie. In the future even the majority of developer jobs will be automated. Systems will be fully automated with a fully non-human supply chain, economy, and customers."

Re:It stops being an economy

[Anonymous Coward]

Your claim that "it stops being an economy without people to pay" is false. There certainly are economies in non-human species, such as ants:

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/01/two-lessons-from-ant-colony-organization/

And it's certainly possible for there to be robot economies without any people involved.

Re:It stops being an economy

[evanh]

Lol, ant colonies ain't no economy. For sure, you can say there is feedback loops and all sorts of functional behaviour. Many engineering and natural systems have feedback. It's a wave action, not an economy.

Assigning money to robot ownership for the purpose of faking an economy is pointless.

Re:It stops being an economy

[Anonymous Coward]

Products don't have to have a price. If machines can make everything without human labour then the cost price is zero.

Incorrect. There are still material costs, operating costs (electricity, water, rent, etc) to build things.
Also, can't tell when you say "cost price" if you mean the price or the cost. Not the same thing.

Re:It stops being an economy

[drinkypoo]

Money's purpose is to manage a human workforce.

Nope. Money's purpose in capitalism is to manage the means of production. If humans aren't the means of production, how are they going to get a piece of the money?

Re:It stops being an economy

[mark-t]

With or without human labour, the cost price is whatever the person who controls the supply can get people to pay for the end product.

If there are enough people that can pay the price the the supplier wants, then it's probably not going to matter to them how many other people might do without it, because presumably reducing the price to appeal to a larger market wouldn't necessarily increase their own bottom line.

Re:It stops being an economy

[jythie]

You don't need poor people for an economy, only people WITH money. If systems get fully automated, money goes to the people who own the systems and natural resources that feed into them, producing products of interest to other people who own the machines and natural resources. Money can be traded between owners just as easily as workers, they just have demand for different products. You don't actually NEED low income people.

Re:It stops being an economy

[Anonymous Coward]

In an ant colony, labor is used to produce products that are distributed and consumed. It might more closely resemble a communist economy than a free-enterprise economy, but it certainly is an economy.

Re:It stops being an economy

[Kjella]

If there are enough people that can pay the price the the supplier wants, then it's probably not going to matter to them how many other people might do without it, because presumably reducing the price to appeal to a larger market wouldn't necessarily increase their own bottom line.

Well this is classic micro-economics, if they're not your customers they just disappear out into the great void. But if you're talking about society-level changes then those people don't just go away, they go on welfare, join gangs, create slums, start riots and if things get bad enough even revolutions. And things cost money for other reasons than labor, it doesn't help if you get something 20% cheaper but the labor now pays 50% of what it used to. The last decades capital has been diverging from labor, those who make real money owns working capital like stocks. Those who work for the money are lagging behind, even the well paid ones.

Re:It stops being an economy

[Anonymous Coward]

Humans don't have to BE the means of production to OWN the means of production.

Some cluster-fuck of robot factory backed securities will probably end up being the basis of the ecconamy if a UBI based on taxes on capital goods doesn't beat it to the punch.

Re:It stops being an economy

[mark-t]

My point is that it doesn't matter if the labour cost is zero, the person who controls the supply is still going to try and charge as much money as he possibly can for the product, and if there is nobody willing or able to pay the price that he wants, he may simply decide to not produce the product in the first place.

The ideal that savings are somehow always passed on down to the consumer is a myth in any industry where the supplies can be easily controlled, which is almost everything these days.

Re:It stops being an economy

[evanh]

Ant workers are effectively slaves, in human terms. Slaves are not part of an economy.

Just the same as the minerals mined are not part of the economy. It's only the paid workers doing the mining, and mining equipment built by human labour, that assigns any economic price.

Re:It stops being an economy

[evanh]

That's back to slavery. I don't see that working when production becomes free cost.

Re:It stops being an economy

[evanh]

Those are all human labour costs.

Re:It stops being an economy

[evanh]

This branch of the thread is about further in the future when machines are doing it all.

Without paid humans, there is no costs. Which also means no need for money or an economy.

Any attempt to maintain a financial system would be fully broken.

Re:It stops being an economy

[evanh]

Crap, my reply above was meant for mark-t

Re:It stops being an economy

[mark-t]

Perhaps it has escaped your attention that whether or not there is a need for it is irrelevant. Humans are greedy, and will charge accordingly for products that they control the supply of, regardless of how much or how little it costs them. If that means that only the rich will be able to afford them, then so be it... if the nonworking poor cannot afford their products, that's not the capitalist's problem.

Re:It stops being an economy

[evanh]

Money does encourage that thinking.

Re:It stops being an economy

[evanh]

It costs zero at that point. Money has no purpose then. Everyone gets to have mass produced items.

For non mass produced items, we wait in line. Same as now.

Re:It stops being an economy

[Mal-2]

The Antebellum south (before the Civil War) would be inclined to disagree. Their economy couldn't have operated without many slaves, which is precisely why they were willing to go to war to keep those slaves.

Re:It stops being an economy

[Mal-2]

So long as 3D printers and CNC mills are "mass produced items" anyone can have, then non-mass-produced items can be manufactured on site.

Re:It stops being an economy

[evanh]

The slaves themselves were not in that economy. They were excluded to the limit of survival for labour.

When adding in the fact that no labour force is needed once the machines are making everything, it won't be acceptable to go back to excluding people. The economy served it purpose.

The alternative is revolt and massacres on the largest scale.

Re:It stops being an economy

[evanh]

I was thinking more along the lines of having an open deck meal in front of Niagara falls, or having the privileged to chose the looks or location of the next terraforming mission.

Re:It stops being an economy

[evanh]

To clarify that a little more: An economy is a human construct. And those in power make the rules of that economy. Back then, the rules permitted/enforced for some people in the society not to also be included in the economy.

Re:It stops being an economy

[jythie]

Production will probably never be free cost, there will always be raw resources, and opportunity cost, and land, and ownership rules. No labor cost does not mean no cost.

Re:It stops being an economy

[evanh]

Resources have no innate price of their own. It is the labour costs that give them any tangible price.

Supply-and-demand pricing behaviours are a side effect of putting a price on it in the first place.

Machines have no need for money to solve for availability. Long term, it's a case of recycling. Nature has this down to a fine art already. We'll do better in the future.

Re:It stops being an economy

[RespekMyAthorati]

Resources have no innate price of their own.

Of course they do.
That price is whatever the wealthiest are willing to pay.
The cost of labour is irrelevant when labour is no longer needed.

Re:It stops being an economy

[evanh]

There's nothing innate about that. That would just be a means of exclusion.

When there is zero cost, which is what automation provides, excluding people (like slavery) for no reason won't be accepted.

Training

[PPH]

people were given the training to take advantage of the new jobs that would become available

Which jobs are these?

Re:Training

[Anonymous Coward]

Good sir, these are the magical jobs that will appear just over the next hill, around that corner up ahead, and in a very short time. Jam tomorrow, sir. Jam tomorrow.

Now get back to work.

Re:Training

[Mr_Silver]

people were given the training to take advantage of the new jobs that would become available

Which jobs are these?

Many of us work in jobs today that simply didn't exist when we were born. I don't think it's too much of a stretch to think that there will be jobs 20 years from now that don't exist today.

I find all this hand-wringing really strange. History is littered with jobs that have been removed by automation (lift operators, street lamplighters, pinsetters) but also littered with jobs that have come about because of automation (the entire car and computer industry for starters).

Re:Training

[Anonymous Coward]

we'll need new roborepairmen

but we won't need 3 billion of them, so you and I will cover that repair work and, as I've been told, the rest of the human race can all play violin and write poetry for our nobles in their armored compounds

that's a lot of poetry - our betters will need to keep their dicks out for 24/7 sucking, in order to maximize the number of townspeople who have a competitive (the competition doesn't get sick or sleep) function in the new world, and consequently have an income

Re:Training

[EvilSS]

And if there is one thing that we know to be an absolute, universal truth it's this: Past performance is always indicative of future results. If it happened before, it must happen again.

Re:Training

[Anonymous Coward]

> Many of us work in jobs today that simply didn't exist when we were born.

This is simply not true. 2% of people work in information techonology area and 4% work in the area of others. Everyone else is working in areas like constructions, education, healthcare etc.

And even in the technology area, e.g. the job of a programmer existed already when I was born. And actually before I even joined the work force, the job of "coder" had already been replaced by machines.

But programmer is a good example, because it is relatively new and there is growth in that area. But what will those programmers do?
- Automate other jobs ( To be profitable, this means that one person will do a short job that will permanently replace a job done by some other or some others )
- Create games (this competes from our free time, so the markets are limited, unless more people start playing games, or unless people spend more time playing)

Re:Training

[Anonymous Coward]

History is also littered with the corpses of the poor unfortunate souls who worked in industries that shed jobs like a mangey dog sheds fur. Such wonderful ideas as forced population limits, forced relocations of populations and, in the most barbaric of nations, wholesale elimination of populations (spelled W-A-R in the better nations).

Those of us who are fortunate enough, or whose descendants will be fortunate enough, to avoid slipping into redundancy will do as those before us have done. We will look down on those unfortunate souls as ignorant, superstitious, backwards dolts who no doubt deserve what they got with the reasoning that history moves on and those who can't evolve to meet the needs of the new economy are a useless branch of the race to be shed.

TL;DR When this all shakes out and the legions of unemployed line the streets looking for spare change, the still-employed will blame the unemployed for their own predicament, shake their heads and go get a beer.

You are not so damned compassionate.

Re:Training

[fluffernutter]

There was room in the economy for corporations to grow before you were born. These days CEOs wonder where they will get the next growth from to dispense to the shareholders. You think Coca-cola has a new beverage around the corner that no one has need before? You think they have a market to grow into? Do we need a seven, eight, nine bladed razor?

Re:Training

[fluffernutter]

No one has seen* before.

Re:Training

[Calydor]

How many jobs can you name that fit your description of jobs that didn't exist when you were born, AND that can be performed by people of average skills and/or intelligence?

Re:Training

[CaffeinatedBacon]

Many of us work in jobs today that simply didn't exist when we were born. I don't think it's too much of a stretch to think that there will be jobs 20 years from now that don't exist today.

Whats to stop AI doing those jobs too?

Re:Training

[Anonymous Coward]

How many jobs can you name that fit your description of jobs that didn't exist when you were born, AND that can be performed by people of average skills and/or intelligence?

I can think of a lot:

Reality TV contestant.
Reality TV producer.
Reality TV star.
Reality TV script writer. (they have them).
Reality TV director.
Reality TV set caster.

Re:Training

[Anonymous Coward]

At least when the buggy whip manufacturers were being replaced we could still see jobs on the horizon, there was a new potential area to train and gain jobs in the horseless carriage industry. it merely would require some of those workers to retrain.

However, this time is different, What is that new industry this time? Where are those jobs this time? This time they are automating everything. Heck we are even building AI that builds AI. so tell me where is it that a worker is supposed to find new jobs? there isn't really any new emerging industry this time for them to retrain for.

Re:Training

[drinkypoo]

I find all this hand-wringing really strange. History is littered with jobs that have been removed by automation (lift operators, street lamplighters, pinsetters) but also littered with jobs that have come about because of automation (the entire car and computer industry for starters).

The difference lies in the nature of automation. Early automation was only capable of repeating gross physical motions, and even that destroyed thousands of jobs. Eventually we got robotics, and even primitive robots did the same. Now we're getting "smart" robotics that can make decisions for itself, and that's going to eliminate more of them. In the former cases there was massive upheaval that resulted in re-authoring of the so-called "social contract" to include stronger safety nets, because they did disrupt economies. Why would you think that won't happen again?

The way people have survived to date is going into the service economy. But we can't all just stand in a circle and jerk each other off. People have to eat, they have to have a place to live, they have to have clothing on their backs. And what's new is that technology is now destroying even service jobs. So what's left? Answer, only an ever-diminishing number of highly technical jobs to which not everyone is suited. That makes this time different.

Re:Training

[Anonymous Coward]

Whats to stop AI doing those jobs too?

Other meaner AI?

Re:Training

[barc0001]

> Many of us work in jobs today that simply didn't exist when we were born. I don't think it's too much of a stretch to think that there will be jobs 20 years from now that don't exist today.

That's because when jobs of old were automated, they were automated by job specific processes and machines. Today's jobs are going to get eaten by AI and quick learning systems. Which will open some more jobs, and some of those jobs will ALSO get eaten by the AI and quick learning systems before a human even has a chance to plant their ass in the chair.

This industrial revolution will not be like the others. And even if it was, people tend to gloss over the fact that the previous ones were devastating to entire generations.

Re:Training

[argStyopa]

....said the horse-whip maker in 1890 before cars. ... said the account clerk in the 1960s before desktop computers. ....said everyone in 1990 before the interwebs.

Notice that no job having to do with the internet even existed in its current form before 1990, basically.

Re:Training

[ichimunki]

Reality TV is just a twist on game shows which have existed for quite a long time, the first one being "Spelling Bee" from 1938.

Re:Training

[PPH]

Where are those jobs this time?

Bank of England Chief Economists.

Re:Training

[Mr_Silver]

How many jobs can you name that fit your description of jobs that didn't exist when you were born, AND that can be performed by people of average skills and/or intelligence

At sizeable chunk of the jobs today that involve the use of the internet would easily fall into that category.

(I was born in the 70's)

Re:Training

[Anonymous Coward]

> People have to eat, they have to have a place to live, they have to have clothing on their backs.

You're assuming that only for *living* people!

Re:Training

[RespekMyAthorati]

I don't think it's too much of a stretch to think that there will be jobs 20 years from now that don't exist today.

Yes, there will be, for people with advanced degrees in engineering, bio-science and financial analysis.
For the other 95% of the population, it will be handouts and poverty.

Like Standard

[Aryk]

So this certainly isn’t something new. New tech means fewer jobs in certain areas. Jobs need to shift to other areas, retraining. Sometimes they can shift to the arts, since that's a bit harder to AI-ize Maybe in the future, all of the ‘necessary’ jobs will be taken care of and everyone will be trying to produce the next big cat video. Then we can create a monetary system based on Likes since that will be the most sought after commodity.

Wonderful!

[gerald.edward.butler]

What a completely shitty place that will be!

Machines don't produce added value

[dremon]

First of all, it will probably be a very distant future (if possible at all) to automate every single link in the production chain. Apart from the production itself there is logistics, sales, marketing, design, retail, HR, maintenance, IT and a whole bloody industry around it. I have hard times imagining a full automation of everything.

Secondly, added value appears when the product is sold, not when it is produced and waiting in the storage. And it is sold to humans which exchange their earned money for it working for some company (yeah, no robots). And they pay taxes, so even the holy UBI is paid by the working class, not by robots.

So you can have a 100% automated factory producing one million socks per second but who's gonna buy them if people are unemployed because of robots and what kind of revenue would you have.

Re:Machines don't produce added value

[drinkypoo]

they pay taxes, so even the holy UBI is paid by the working class, not by robots.

The way to fix this problem is obvious; tax corporate income, not corporate profits. Take the tax burden off of The People, and place it on corporations. They're the ones who really have a meaningful vote, and they ought to be motivated to reduce taxation. Taxing their income is the way to achieve that.

Re:Machines don't produce added value

[Maxo-Texas]

"logistics, sales, marketing, design, retail, HR, maintenance, " and many functions of IT are all being automated *right* now. That's not even sometime in the distant future. It's been going on for a decade. My last job before I retired, we were automating sales and marketing jobs away for every customer who did under 10 million dollars a year in gross business. That was about 90% of the customers.

Labor Economist

[Anonymous Coward]

Any Labor Ecomomist will tell you the least educated are getting the stick. No High school - you will be worthless.Non-English speaking immigrant maybe aged - not good. That all the univertity clerks have a degree for simple admin is in itself an overkill.
The over educated and more youthful grab the spots of others - as any employer would.
Them dishwashers are well educated.

20% of the lowest pass university degrees will be lucky to get any job, let alone a return on their investment. Skills revolution is a code word for lower wages and conditions and greater employer exploitation and gig tasks. It wont go away as incomes have stalled while housing and other non-discresionary fixed costs have risen. Yeah, they know they need to yank the safety net and unemployment benefits. They know alright.

The cause is not AI. It is global labor arbitrage, and internationalism lowering British living standards. The trick is politicians want to paint the picture of hope, not 'going backwards'.
Time to vote in party C and the A and B incumberants are lying scum.

Re:Labor Economist

[CaffeinatedBacon]

I thought immigrants were flooding all countries and stealing all your jobs? Isn't that why you are all so afraid of them?

Re:Labor Economist

[Maxo-Texas]

Dishwashers are likely to be automated out of existence fairly soon (10-15 years).

Re:Labor Economist

[Anonymous Coward]

Little to do with immigrants. It is the speed of structural change Those with low level education are hurt the most, disabilities , age and flexibility - and for ICT that would be gobs of unpaid overtime. Not that uglies are discriminated against.

Now we must accept and support more 'unemployables' on social security let alone underemployment. 1/3 of say autoworkers will not get another job.

It boils down to jobs and inefficient manufacturing - or allowed to import cheap shit. Pick one.This explains why inflation is on hold -

Andy Haldane?

[Anonymous Coward]

Before paying any attention to this guy's predictions it's worth remembering that he and the BoE have a long history of failed predictions.

Chief economist of Bank of England admits errors in Brexit forecasting :

Andrew Haldane says his profession must adapt to regain the trust of the public, claiming narrow models ignored ‘irrational behaviour'

He predicted a massive recession that would kill 800,000 jobs in the UK in 2017-2018, which never materialised. Instead the economy grew. But as you can see from the quote, instead of blaming bad modelling, he blamed the people he was trying to model for being "irrational".

In other words, I - Anonymous Coward - have more credibility than Andy Haldane when it comes to predictions of job losses because I don't have a track record of making bogus predictions of job losses.

The first job that should be replaced by AI?

[Anonymous Coward]

The bank of England's chief economist. That useless parasite is fucking useless.

New technology always brings threats

[Targon]

With every new generation of technology has come threats to low end jobs. The problem is that we are getting to the point where even mid-range jobs may be taken by automation. Now, to be fair, we are still looking at low end jobs that are being threatened by technology, mostly in the form of those who take orders for items. Ordering food that requires no adjustment to the menu items at all can already be done via an app. It won't take long before in-store food ordering kiosks reduce the need for people in the ordering process. Even the ability to specialize an order should be easily available to customers.

Food preparation is also getting close to being something that can be automated(pizza robots for example). Now, this stuff doesn't require much in the way of AI, and even self driving cars, many people already get driving routes via GPS/apps, and being able to re-route based on traffic conditions would be a basic form of AI, so taxi services, even the driving of trucks might become automated.

In the medium-term, humans will still be needed for maintenance and to handle mechanical failures, but in the longer term, AI will handle maintenance as well. Medical technology will move to AI, simply because the cost of education plus malpractice will make it so being a doctor is more of a headache, and medical robots won't require downtime/rest the way humans do. In the end, civilization will need to change, because people with limited ability to figure out what they want to do and without the ability to contribute in a positive way will simply be a drain on the resources of the planet(or universe).

One thing we can count on is that there WILL be a war between the wealthy and those who actually work for a living(or try to). Training for jobs that in turn will be eliminated by AI makes the future a lot more of a challenge, so figuring out how to provide services that AI just can't do, to adapt to unusual circumstances, that is the future.

I will note that we can at least be happy with the knowledge that most lawyers will end up being rendered obsolete, and without the skills to figure out what to do, because most of them can't figure out solutions to problems, and only point to those who already had to figure out solutions to the same problem.

Re:New technology always brings threats

[d0rp]

One thing we can count on is that there WILL be a war between the wealthy and those who actually work for a living(or try to). Training for jobs that in turn will be eliminated by AI makes the future a lot more of a challenge, so figuring out how to provide services that AI just can't do, to adapt to unusual circumstances, that is the future.

The future could be pretty bleak if that war doesn't happen until after the wealthy have their own automated weapons systems powered by that same AI...

Maybe if you're a paper-shuffler..

[Rick Schumann]

Or maybe if you have some other pointless 'administrative' job. The people who actually create things and build things will always have work because until we have real, 'general' AI that can think like a human being, and not the shitty half-assed excuse for AI they keep trotting out these days 'robots' won't be able to produce things that are as high-quality as a skilled human being can -- and shitty so-called 'deep learning software' will never be able to really, truly create things like a human being can, let alone innovate. This 'Bank of England Chief Economist' tosser is just another Chicken Little running around waving his arms about the sky falling.

Re:Maybe if you're a paper-shuffler..

[iggymanz]

Computers can't even "shuffle paper" properly. There are jobs where people deal with the fuckups computers make. We have a call center at my employer with a dozen people who do nothing but resolve computer fuckups. They're hiring.

It's clear from the last 50 years that computers create jobs with no end in sight.

Re:Maybe if you're a paper-shuffler..

[drinkypoo]

There are jobs where people deal with the fuckups computers make. We have a call center at my employer with a dozen people who do nothing but resolve computer fuckups. They're hiring.

Your statements are true but irrelevant. If the computer makes it possible to turn 1000 hours of work into 100 hours of work, it doesn't matter if it also generates another 100 hours of work cleaning up after the system. That's still a massive reduction in hours worked, with a corresponding reduction in head count.

Re:Maybe if you're a paper-shuffler..

[iggymanz]

No reduction happened. my employer is decades old. staff is bigger than ever since they went to "Automated Data Processing" in the 1980s and all that is due to computers including jobs that didn't even exist like making web sites, IT department, data entry, etc.

Computers have created a massive amount of jobs in the economy. the curve has been going upward not down.

Re:Maybe if you're a paper-shuffler..

[drinkypoo]

staff is bigger than ever since they went to "Automated Data Processing" in the 1980s and all that is due to computers including jobs that didn't even exist like making web sites, IT department, data entry, etc. Computers have created a massive amount of jobs in the economy. the curve has been going upward not down.

Guess what? All of those jobs reduce jobs elsewhere. The IT department and data entry collectively eliminated many, many jobs in manual data management. So once again, this is not complicated, computers reduce the total number of jobs. It doesn't matter if they create jobs if they eliminate more than they create, and if they didn't do that, we wouldn't use them except to enable new technologies. But since we also use them to do things we've been doing for decades or in some cases millennia, they must offer some clear benefit.

Re:Maybe if you're a paper-shuffler..

[iggymanz]

Nope, Let's have some facts instead of your imagination.

For example, in the UK, automation eliminated 800,000 jobs, but created 3.5 million new ones.

https://venturebeat.com/2017/0...

The numbers are even huger for the USA.

There is no problem. The work will never end.

Re:Maybe if you're a paper-shuffler..

[drinkypoo]

I'd quote the fine report, but it's a protected PDF. Guess they don't want anyone quoting it, which sharply reduces its usefulness. It says that the jobs being lost are lower-end jobs, and the new jobs require additional manual dexterity and creativity. How do you imagine that people inhabiting lower-end jobs are going to become more creative and dextrous? It goes on to say that the majority of those jobs created were service jobs, just as I've said. But also as I've said, computers are now taking over the service jobs. That's why this time is different. The jobs that people would normally shift to as computers take their jobs are also being taken by computers. This time, it's going to destroy far more jobs than it creates.

At least I can still quote TFA:

Panera Bread announced in April that it would create 10,000 delivery driver and in-café jobs

Guess what? Literally all of those 10,000 jobs are at risk. There's nothing happening inside or even outside a Panera Bread that won't soon be done more cheaply by a robot. The driving jobs will go away, for example. A truck which doesn't have to accommodate a driver can hold more bread, so it will actually reduce the number of vehicles required, not just the number of humans. Humans continue to have more dexterity than a robot, mostly because they don't have to think as hard about their hand motions, so they will keep portioning and weighing things for a while, and humans will continue to expect a human at the counter for a while, but that will change as well.

The other examples in TFA are exactly the same — temporary success stories. As things become more automated, we need less workers to maintain them, and less workers to train those workers.

For more information, take a look at figure 4 in Deloitte's report. Jobs in occupations with a high probability of automation are plummeting. Guess what? The jobs likely to be automated away are increasing year-by-year. That means the chart is looking worse year-by-year, and it's already accounting for around half of the jobs in the UK.

Thanks for providing a citation which backs up my argument, even if I'm not allowed to C&P from it.

Re:Maybe if you're a paper-shuffler..

[iggymanz]

eh, robots can't cook, that the thing the wondrous burger-flipping-robot has proved.

robotic delivery? well there are those 20 in Washington D.C. being tested. wait till a whackjob puts a bomb in one and that'll be the end of that. Not a threat to jobs in the near term. Meanwhile delivery jobs are going up...

You keep making things up seeing visions in your crystal ball and quoting fear mongering articles about The Future. Meanwhile, facts and reality are against you. Employment is going up, unemployment going down if you haven't noticed....

Re:Maybe if you're a paper-shuffler..

[drinkypoo]

eh, robots can't cook, that the thing the wondrous burger-flipping-robot has proved.

The burger-flipping robot works fine, the humans have problems with it. Conclusion, get rid of the humans.

Employment is going up, unemployment going down if you haven't noticed....

I haven't noticed, because I am not stupid enough to buy the U-2 unemployment rate, which is a deliberate lie.

Re:Maybe if you're a paper-shuffler..

[Anonymous Coward]

Assuming you meant that U-3 is a lie*, what about U-4 through U-6?

https://www.macrotrends.net/1377/u6-unemployment-rate

By any of the 6 U-* rates, unemployment is falling. Is there some measure that you prefer that says otherwise?

* "lie" is a bit strong. Incomplete or misleading is how I would put it. Certainly U-4 is an improvement (include those who've been unemployed "too long").

U-6 is even better; it gives you a sense of how many people are being left behind by "the strongest economy that we've ever had".

Re:Maybe if you're a paper-shuffler..

[iggymanz]

not a lie though even I don't agree with the criteria for U-2 that is well known, but if you want to talk about "real" unemployment, which is all people not working, even that is going down.

shadowstats.com

flippy the robot was turned off for being too slow.

I've never seen a restaurant with a robotic burger maker yet. All talk and demos. You'd think the cold cut sandwhich places would have robots, it's sooo much easier for a bot...but, people still do it.

AI takes away doesn't give back

[ElitistWhiner]

A halcyon call to re-education for re-employment ignores reality that there will be no employment to re-educate displaced jobless. Its platitude. It is so last century.

Tesla ' autopilot' categorically decimated ' private car ownership' i.e. FORD halted car production in US. AI is not even fun to drive much less fun paying for the thrill to own a car that has it.

Steampunk has arrived

Re: AI takes away doesn't give back

[drinkypoo]

Tesla ' autopilot' categorically decimated ' private car ownership' i.e. FORD halted car production in US.

Totally, completely, and in all other ways false. Ford has not halted car production in the US, they've just cut way back on the models of car they offer so that they can focus on more-profitable vehicles which are only sold in the USA because no other market will accept them — which is in turn the result of the void between fuel costs and fuel prices — which is itself the result of America permitting fuel producers and consumers alike to avoid having to pay directly for externalities which are spread across the entire world, and everything in it.

Re: AI takes away doesn't give back

[fluffernutter]

Private car ownership is here to stay. My wife has all her stuff in our car, she hates readjusting the seat after I have been in it, we don't want to clean it out after every time we use it. Receipts go in the glove compartment and stay there until we need them. When she gets heavy things from Home Depot the staff load the vehicle then they need to stay there until I am free to bring them into the house. We carefully selected the vehicle we have because it has the right environment for us. The only way people will want to use someone else's car is if it costs a little more than a bus or around the same price as an Uber. We know Uber is losing money on each ride right now. A self driving fleet will need to meet the demands of rush hour and sunny weekends yet sit idle most of the time. People who use these fleets will still be paying for cars to sit idle. It's not going to work.

Re: AI takes away doesn't give back

[Hadlock]

Private car ownership is here to stay, in the same way cash is; there's too much risk to freedom to ban it ouright, but the market will slowly switch to alternatives due to convenience. E.g. I haven't carried cash in years, except when planning to go to a restaurant in downtown that I knows only takes cash. In most cases I don't even bother choosing restuaunts that are cash only due to the inconvenience of locating and using an ATM. I can see a lot of younger generations growing up with self driving cars and never bothering to save up to buy a car due to the inconvenience of paying to park, maintain and insure it.

Re: AI takes away doesn't give back

[fluffernutter]

If the younger generation can find enough well paying jobs to rent a self driving car. They won't be more efficient than taxis. They will have new car prices + tech prices + insurance + maintenance + accident coverage + corporate profits. Even with self driving they will be around as much as a taxi today if not more, and I don't see the young affording taxis every day.

Re: AI takes away doesn't give back

[ElitistWhiner]

" They will have new car prices + tech prices + insurance + maintenance + accident coverage + corporate profits. Even with self driving they will be around as much as a taxi today if not more, and I don't see the young affording taxis every day. "

Exactly - Taxis, Ubers and car sharing is the only option due to the fact Tesla's are expensively beyond the means of average American's - autopilot or no. The average car sits idle 92% of time. Accounting for all costs, from fuel to insurance to depreciation, the average car owner pays $12,544/yr for a convenience used a mere 14 hrs/wk. SUV's add $1908.14. https://bit.ly/2l0qNL9

FORD not only saw the writing on the wall...its balance sheet's irrefutable evidence proved car ownership is dead in the US. FORD emblazoned pretty blue colored electric rental bikes are its future

Re:"Jobs" are a BAD thing!

[HeckRuler]

that everyone could live a comfy life with barely having to work at all.

YES, and compared to the age when fields had to be harvested with a sickle and mines had to be dug with pickaxes and hammer, nearly anyone CAN live a "comfy" life with doing barely any hard labor at all.

BUT, the definition of "comfy" has changed. If you're ok with sleeping on a cobble-stone floor in the common room, some ways from the hearth, then GOOD NEWS! If you demand your own bedroom and wifi and air-conditioning, then you're going to have to work for it.

But if you live in a developed nation, they likely have some sort of welfare program. If you want to live on the bottom rung of society, we'll take care of you. But you have to play nice and jump through some hoops. If you want to live an easy life of luxury, go build your own robots. If you don't know how to do that, or simply don't want to, you're not exactly contributing to society and probably shouldn't be preaching about "leeches".

"AI" (which we don't actually have yet)

Sure, whatever. If your job can be replaced by "NOT REALLY AI", then it's functionally equivalent.

Proving once Again

[Anonymous Coward]

That laymen do not understand technology. They'd be better off deleting all of their Google and social media accounts. Given that 'OMG AI' is an urban legend, it's the people behind the tech, not the tech, you should be paying attention to.

Re: "Jobs" are a BAD thing!

[Anonymous Coward]

Who marked this -1, actually is a valid observation.
One thing that never gets mentioned in a work-free utopia is: how many kids can each family have?
Think it doesn't matter? It Matters tremendously and the current system does a good job of keeping people from having too many.

Ok, list some

[rsilvergun]

I've got youtuber and twitch streamer. I'll add Crypto currency miner (I don't include the traders, they had those when I was a kid; we called them "stockbrokers"). I'm 40 and there were programmers when I was a kid, so you don't get that.

Those jobs employ very, very few full time. Meanwhile automation eliminated millions of factory jobs and is about to do away with drivers, warehouse workers and cashiers. And that's just the ones I can rattle off. Hell, I used to do IT for a cabinet maker that couldn't make cabinets. They measured your kitchen and/or closet and the CNC cut everything for them. After that it was Ikea furniture with nicer wood.

Six weeks of basic

[rsilvergun]

maybe another 2 to learn how to shoot if you need snipers. Then he's off to the trenches. Hey, it worked the last time. After all, if we blow it all up we're be back to full employment in no time rebuilding it.

Re:Six weeks of basic

[jythie]

Scary thing is, pre-industrial this actually was a way to get rid of your surplus population during economic shifts...

Re:When in doubt, import more muslims!

[Anonymous Coward]

Just have everyone who loses a job convert to Islam, then give them 3 more wives, a multi-million pound council house and thousands a month in payments.

See how easy that was?

Neural networks don't have security

[Anonymous Coward]

These companies THINK that they're going to replace all these people, but they've never seen a neural-networks-based hack yet. Eventually people will learn that trusting large amounts of money to insecure, poorly-understood computer programs was a really really bad idea.

Re:??asy solution.

[fluffernutter]

OMG, they do the same thing as 'corrupt' taxi drivers??

Well, you know it's true...

[Hallux-F-Sinister]

AIs do the jobs humans don't want to do.

Seriously though... this is fear-mongering about the WRONG damned thing. AIs are not out to steal your jobs. Your BOSS is out to buy something that will do your job without requiring time off to take its little AI kids to soccer practice or whatever.

What fresh hell will this do to human society? How specifically is this the harbinger of the end-of-days?

It's not. We have lots of problems, many cited in the story, such as income inequality, etc. But AI isn't doing that any more than the advent of the motorized automobile destroyed society by putting farriers and saddlers, etc., out of work. They just ended up having to get new skills and do new jobs.

The "cotton 'gin" didn't end society despite automating the weaving of cloth (or whatever a cotton 'gin does,) making (whatever it does) probably about less than 10% as labor-intensive as it was before. The weavers found something else to do, I'm sure, by and large. The combine didn't end civilization by automating the collection of stalks of wheat, corn, and barley, hay, etc., etc., etc., it just made gathering natural inputs to other businesses more efficient, making it easier for the next step in the process to add value, (sorry about all these buzz words, folks, but they DO apply in this case,) resulting in increased gross output of our society, applying downward pressure on prices, raising the cap on the sheer volume of what we produced, which had a chain-reaction effect of making everything that depended on those products as inputs in some way to theirs to be made in greater abundance, increasing the quality of life, life-expectancy, etc., for many segments of society.

Rather, as a result, some, perhaps many of the people whose jobs were eliminated by the combine got jobs working the corn-flaking machines, giving rise to a whole new way to eat breakfast.

(While I'm sure it's true, it needs to be said, that some people benefited a lot damn more than others, that's kind of beside the point. The point was that humans are flexible, adaptable, and imaginative problem-solvers, and unless and until AI is able to solve every problem any human could possibly solve, there's still a need for us. Also, I rather doubt AI will reach the point of being any meaningful danger any time soon.)

Getting back to the topic, the digital electronic computer made human number-crunching professionals very nearly obsolete. Did they experience a mass die-off? No, they put their brain-power to different problems, too complex to be handled by the poor, stupid, dim-witted 8-bit computing devices that were able to replace them on tasks like, "add up this column of 500 numbers, then divide it by the result of step 14, and if the remainder is a non-terminating, repeating decimal..." and probably a lot of them took new jobs programming the very computers that replaced them.

SURE, it's true, some people can't or won't adapt. But to shake your fists at the bosses who replace you with a machine that can do your job better and cheaper is, looked at the situation from another perspective, like demanding that the boss, because he hired you, is obliged to pay you for EVER. That brings with it numerous problems, and it is besides unfair, and would tend to discourage people hiring folks in the FIRST place, if they know they're going to be punished for offering you a job to begin with, at some point down the road.

There is good in recognizing the virtue of an honest day's work, and in protecting the rights of laborers, but to pretend that businesses are all 100% evil, parasitic monsters, (the big ones I would more easily argue are that, more often, per capita, than the little ones,) but the way to solve this problem and many others facing us isn't to piss yourselves over AI stealing your job, and making moves to outlaw AI research, etc. That's like trying to plug a hole in a dam from the side the water's coming OUT of, rather than plugging the whole from the backside, with something that can withstand t

Tipping Point?

[formerly dead]

As automation and machine learning overtake more and more jobs, the fear is that there just won't be enough new jobs to absorb all the workers that are displaced. And don't for a minute believe that doctors, programmers, and other highly skilled jobs are forever safe.

What happens when the elites decide that the masses are too much of a liability and not enough of an asset?

Re:Tipping Point?

[Anonymous Coward]

You are forgetting that the former greatly outnumber the latter. Without the latter being mechanics, plumbers, HVAC, garbage men, and the like, the world will grind to a halt. I doubt the elites would lift a shovel to plant their crops or a knife to butcher their own meat. Should the masses wish, the elite can be brought down without firing a shot.

Very easy: Everybody only has to work 1h a week.

[Anonymous Coward]

Same pay.
Or: 1/n pay, but 1/n cost of "automated" goods too.
Same thing. (Just the imaginary $$.$$ numbers changing.)

The problem was never automation.
The problem was always leeches stealing money between the product price and the salary.
Stealing, like thieves, because they add no value, but take most of the money.

If the wealth generated by automation would not go to the leeches (and in fact we should make that punishable by 20 years of prison, IMHO), this whole thing would not be an issue /at all/.

Your inability to comprehend, is just saad.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's just insane, how much you have been trained to be a good livestock, keeping up your delusions, to defend your slave master against any attempts to save yourself.

Alright then, sad drone. You will just starve under a bridge, /still/ clinging to "OMGJOBS"/DURK-URR-DURR a "I'm only worth something, if I slave off to get a few peanuts to live a measly slave life I should be thankful for and proud of.". Can't save you. There will be new humans born. In freedom. To replace the space you are wasting.

Re:Your inability to comprehend, is just saad.

[HeckRuler]

hmmm, probably every hour worked and every paycheck. I'm not sure if that's "training" or "spotting a trend". But that whole capitalism thing has worked out pretty well for me.

But I CAN save you. At long as you're a citizen in my country. I'm paying to keep you on the dole after all. No worries, you're welcome. We've honestly got plenty.

Gah, what's the point with anonymous crackpots though?

Re:Your inability to comprehend, is just saad.

[Anonymous Coward]

You're right about the livestock... You're wrong about slaving to make ends meet. There are jobs that actually lock you into a good-paying job, jobs that take physical effort, but are instantly rewarding, like HVAC, plumbing, electrician. Some may poo-poo these jobs, but everyone I know in these fields is making almost or over 100k. Some of the men I know are former IT guys who got tired of seeing everything given away to the foreigners just so some company could save a few bucks. I'm leaving IT in January to pursue a job in HVAC and get into Johnson Controls, a fairly lucrative job for those willing to do it.

New jobs

[manu0601]

ensure that people were given the training to take advantage of the new jobs that would become available

What new jobs? AI engineer, AI salesperson, and AI journalist?

Re: "Jobs" are a BAD thing!

[q_e_t]

People have more leisure time now then 100 years ago. Birth rates are lower.

This is why I'm getting out of IT

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been in IT for over 20 years. I had a good run. I was a UNIX sysadmin for a long time. I did a fair amount of coding as well to automate backend builds. Then came Linux. I got on that bandwagon and am still there. Sadly, I have to touch Windows more than I would like.

At the beginning of 2019, I'm leaving IT to attend school for HVAC. Yes, HVAC. A set of jobs that cannot be outsourced, automated, or otherwise taken away. Here in the south, the heat alone keeps this job going strong for the better part of 9 months. With the climate getting warmer, this may well extend to 10 months. Winters are mild(er), but it does snow in places and people do run their heaters. I'd like to get into Johnson Controls or similar control software as well as the mechanical tinkering. It would be a good marriage of my existing skills as well as the ones I will learn.

I've seen my once-steady series of jobs either outsourced (my last sysadmin job was actually insources to a local IT firm that convinces smaller businesses to let go their IT staffs for about the same annual fee as one person), gone SaaS, PaaS, and now DaaS is around the corner. Most of the aforementioned acronymns are reduced to "cloud" computing and are largely set up once and maintain with a series of point and click. Exchange went to the cloud or went to Google Enterprise. Most of the software used now n my current job is either being moved to the cloud or virtualised if needing to stay private. HR is in the cloud, even. I'm done. I cannot find a decent *nix admin job anymore that doesn't also want me to be a full-fledged developer. I'm not "devops", a stupid contrivance meant to save money. Can I code? Yes, but I'm not a systems developer. I write scripts as a glue language or to move data, handle log files, push a firewall policy, etc. If I could do it all over again, I would have gone Fortran/COBOL and mainframes and be rolling in money because those systems are going nowhere.

The trades pay well and cannot be outsourced and a little physical work never hurt anyone.

God bless you guys as you figure it all out...

Scrap student loans!

[Anonymous Coward]

Allow people to retrain.

Re:Easy solution. UMM!

[eionmac]

I have just had a 50ish year old lorry (truck) driver to my tutor classes to learn how to work a computer. He had in 28 years of driving never needed to use a computer. Now his company wants to promote him to a desk job using a computer.
He will probably be Ok, but there are many folk of 50s plus who have never handled a computer or used one.
Their TV or Car management computers are just on /off buttons to them.

Not worried about that

[Anonymous Coward]

Worry not! Brexit will mean we'll be a smoking crater long before that comes to pass!

But seriously, as that sort of thing becomes more mainstream, we can just tax the crap out of it and give everyone a Basic Income. Robots don't need paying. Either that or we all become robot service engineers. Or AI counselors...

That's what I hope for anyway... One more step towards the Star Trek utopia rather than the Fallout apocalypse...