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

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]

> 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.

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

[radarskiy]

"We are a solved specie."

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

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

[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.

Training

[PPH]

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

Which jobs are these?

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

[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

[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: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.

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.

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: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.

[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.

[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.)