Slashdot Mirror
The Robot Revolution Will Be Worse For Men
Recode's Rani Molla shares the findings of a new study from the Brookings Institution, which finds that automation will impact men at a higher rate than women. Here's an excerpt from the report: Young people -- especially those in rural areas or who are underrepresented minorities -- will have a greater likelihood of having their jobs replaced by automation. Meanwhile, older, more educated white people living in big cities are more likely to maintain their coveted positions, either because their jobs are irreplaceable or because they're needed in new jobs alongside our robot overlords. The Brookings study also warns that automation will exacerbate existing social inequalities along certain geographic and demographic lines, because it will likely eliminate many lower- and middle-skill jobs considered stepping stones to more advanced careers. These jobs losses will be in concentrated in rural areas, particularly the swath of America between the coasts.
However, at least in the case of gender, it's the men, for once, who will be getting the short end of the stick. Jobs traditionally held by men have a higher "average automation potential" than those held by women, meaning that a greater share of those tasks could be automated with current technology, according to Brookings. That's because the occupations men are more likely to hold tend to be more manual and more easily replaced by machines and artificial intelligence. Of course, the real point here is that people of all stripes face employment disruption as new technologies are able to do many of our tasks faster, more efficiently, and more precisely than mere mortals. The implications of this unemployment upheaval are far-reaching and raise many questions: How will people transition to the jobs of the future? What will those jobs be? Is it possible to mitigate the polarizing effects automation will have on our already-stratified society of haves and have-nots?
However, at least in the case of gender, it's the men, for once, who will be getting the short end of the stick. Jobs traditionally held by men have a higher "average automation potential" than those held by women, meaning that a greater share of those tasks could be automated with current technology, according to Brookings. That's because the occupations men are more likely to hold tend to be more manual and more easily replaced by machines and artificial intelligence. Of course, the real point here is that people of all stripes face employment disruption as new technologies are able to do many of our tasks faster, more efficiently, and more precisely than mere mortals. The implications of this unemployment upheaval are far-reaching and raise many questions: How will people transition to the jobs of the future? What will those jobs be? Is it possible to mitigate the polarizing effects automation will have on our already-stratified society of haves and have-nots?
They could just learn to code. Or be robotics engineers.
Iâ(TM)m sure the ratio of engineers to replaced coal miners will be 1:1 and everybody will have a place at the table.
They're not counting sexbots, are they?
When women lose economic opportunities, marriage rates go up. When men lose economic opportunities, rioting rates go up.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
For once, bwcause, you know, women are banned from those jobs or something.
I'm 40 and never once in my lifetime has it been illegal for a woman to do a job in my lifetime. At 40 I'm at the age where whatever experience I've had is AVERAGE.
Stop pretending it's 1950.
I've been hearing robot talk for over fifty years. I'm numb to it.
I suggest you identify as a robot instead.
the problem is that the jobs men traditionally do are most likely to be automated. That's it. That's all there is to it. You can't really automate watching kids, for example, because kids are emotional and except a parental figure to be near. So short of perfect androids that ain't happening. People want nurses still. And yes, they want doctors, but there are a lot more nurses than doctors.
Also, to be blunt, women do better academically than men. The reason's really simple: girls calm down and start studying and an earlier age than boys so they get an extra year or two of education.
Yes, this does mean we're going to eventually need to start shifting from helping girls catch up (necessary because they were discouraged from doing anything short of having babies for hundreds of years) to helping boys catch up.
The trick is doing this rationally and without it devolving into identity politics from both sides used to distract us all from economic issues. Right wing Dems like identity politics because it lets them pretend to be progressive while supporting the same supply side/trickle down economics as the GOP does. Meanwhile the subject is so emotionally charged it's easy to rile people up and point them at the polls to vote for whoever without considering the economic factors involved.
The solution is a) more education for everyone (if nothing else it'll help absorb some of the unnecessary workforce) and b) be wary of anyone who talks identity politics without also talking sound, demand side economics.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Pretty sure women are going to be affected just as badly as men.
Imagine, hundreds of single men with bad game just stop feeding the egos of all these women on social media and instead buy a robot that looks like a straight 10 that will cook, clean, and well **** without complaining.
That will be a real crisis worth watching. /Sarcasm... Sort of
like brick layer
Moreover if you've been paying any attention there's been massive productivity boosts in all those fields. My company is throwing up a new building for a little over 1000 employees in 10 months. When I was a kid that kind of thing took years. They've had these puppies for at least 10 years now. I'm sure you can find equivalent tech in plumbing if you know where to look.
As for carpentry, I know some blue collar guys pissed because they used to get free wood at job sites when the job was over. That's all stopped. They order exactly what they need and it comes pre cut. There's your automation. It happens at a factory and a computer automatically handles the logistics of getting it there. Before long you won't even need the drivers. Just a couple of day laborers to unload it all and hammer it together...
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
The job held by most men in US - Truck driver. Google is coming out with a self driving truck
The job held by most women in the US - Retail Clerk/cashier. Amazon has already brought a cashierless retail store
The rioting is not far away
**Life is too short to be serious**
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I don't believe in this motherfucking 'robot revolution', it's all hype and nonsense, and nobody else should believe it either. Clickbait at best, fake news at worst. FUD in any event. Nothing to see here..
Your comment was barely modded into visibility, but I don't see why. I was actually looking for any reference to Player Piano and stumbled across your accidentally relevant "joke".
In 1952 one of the characters in Vonnegut's book threatens to replace a woman by creating a sexbot. Overall the book is shockingly prescient from before I was born... I'm still in the middle, but it's an remarkably plausible dystopia.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
Texas teachers are required to work six hours a day, 187 days per year. That's not terrible.
I don't know what it likes in texas but here teachers generally work 3x the hours the actually teach. Unless you think reports write them selves, assignments just appear and are magically marked, lessons come pre planned and differentiated etc etc etc. Obviously it varies with subject and level but the idea that teachers only work while they teach is a stupid as saying soldiers only work when they fight.
Wanna buy a shirt?
https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
"However, at least in the case of gender, it's the men, for once, who will be getting the short end of the stick."
Setting aside suicide, drug use, drug abuse, being a victim off violent crime, fighting in wars, at-work deaths, shorter life spans, vulnerability to disease, aids, heart disease, yes, "for once" men get the short end of the stick.
-Styopa
It looks like we have some different points of view on an underlying principle. That's awesome, I love to hear different viewpoints.
You've also pointed out something I'm doing a bit wrong in a way, maybe.
> I mean, I can make a functional website by cutting and pasting code from the web together but that doesn't make a developer and if it does, not a good one.
Based on my 20 years developing software and web sites professionally, it's been my experience that developers who make full use of well-known, mature libraries and frameworks and both more productive and produce higher quality than those who have NIH syndrome, who write their own libraries and try to make their own Javascript to simulate "liquid" layouts. Understanding how to use a well-written library or framework is a lot faster *and* more effective than writing one. (Obviously using one without understanding it is just lazy.)
My experience, *most* teachers don't consistently produce better learning materials than the best teachers do, so their students would be better served by them choosing already-prepared lessons, rather than trying to assemble something while they're eating dinner. Same with the overall curriculum. Yes, they should *choose* when it's time to move to the next lesson, the next prepared lesson that is freely available to them.
I teach a lot at work. The last series I did was a deep dive into SQL, really understanding what it is about. The next is a CISSP course I'm teaching. For SQL and for most of my lessons I made all of the learning materials. For CISSP, maybe I'd be better off presenting well-made material. Obviously I'll choose which modules to present, and how much time to spend on each.
I've looked at the work most of the teachers do and concluded that there is a reason they are not paid more. They're idiots. Glorified nannies. They took some lame classes in college and got a degree in "Education", because they didn't have the skills to get a real degree. They either refuse or are unable to educate themselves on available technologies that will eliminate six of those twelve hours of work. They show a complete lack of imagination on how to improve their own lives. If your mother, sister and wife are all working 12 hour days, they deserve it.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
Well Japan is trying their hardest to automate nursing. Seems to be more male nurses then ever, took a friend to emergency the other day and dealt with a couple of male nurses. Does seem a bit weird but I guess it cancels out the female Doctors. There's quite a few male teachers as well, though in the higher grades. Lots of places austerity is cutting back on the number of teachers with computers replacing, or rather picking up the slack.
There's also a lot of traditional women's jobs that have already been largely automated away, mostly by computers. Nowhere near the number of secretaries, typists and similar since computers became common.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism