Obsolete humans

[DanelMadr]

You guys are pretty smart, non repressed kind so I'd like your view on future:

Automation, Robots and IT and AI made almost all industry workers obsolete. And it is safe to assume that in near future all manual jobs will be done by robots....not so sure about hand jobs. Once 3rd world economies grow to certain point, robots will be the hype again.

Service industry employs cca 70% of people in the west. Most of the jobs, I found,hmmm, obsolete...not really needed, don't you think?

AI will eventually take over these jobs.

What will these people do? Besides being on welfare? Not everyone can be a programmer, engineer, running business or stylist.

I don't want to sound arrogant but even when dealing with business(state is hopeless) I encounter going through 10 people to find the right one, who will answer my questions and gets the work done. The rest , the secretaries, operators even sales person are mostly incompetent. They don't know, make no effort to know or do business.
It looks like unemployment is not an issue.

 

[Vice]

http://horizont.czechian.net/download/terminator4.jpg

^ I hate it when that happens.

The service industry will be safe for a while. When I go out to eat I prefer a pretty waitress over a machine.

The big thing is warfare.

/nerd

 

[Yazzie]

http://horizont.czechian.net/download/terminator4.jpg

^ I hate it when that happens.

The service industry will be safe for a while. When I go out to eat I prefer a pretty waitress over a machine.

The big thing is warfare.

/nerd

Holy schwoogie, robot warfare like in the star wars movies...
That would be freaking insane. Thank God I won't be alive to witness such an atrocity.

But yes, I honestly do believe that robots can takeover almost all of our industries, but labor unions and inevitable reforms will probably rebel against robots taking all of our jobs. And if they do, it will most likely be a very limited amount. Eh, my two cents.

 

[Kerpal]

With all this technology, world population should be declining, not growing. We don't need so many people.

 

[Bible_Belt]

it is safe to assume that in near future all manual jobs will be done by robots....not so sure about hand jobs.

A handjob from a robot would be scary

You could look at mining as one example. It used to be guys with pick axes. Then all of that was replaced by mining machines. But the mines still employ a lot of men, because someone has to maintain and operate the machines.

 

[Deep Dish]

DOES America really need more jobs? You’d think the answer would be an unambiguous yes. "Media theorist" Douglas Rushkoff questions whether the economy actually requires more jobs, however. He reckons we’ve reached a point where, because of technology, we simply don’t need as many people to produce the same amount of output.

New technologies are wreaking havoc on employment figures -- from EZpasses ousting toll collectors to Google-controlled self-driving automobiles rendering taxicab drivers obsolete. Every new computer program is basically doing some task that a person used to do. But the computer usually does it faster, more accurately, for less money, and without any health insurance costs. We like to believe that the appropriate response is to train humans for higher level work. Instead of collecting tolls, the trained worker will fix and program toll-collecting robots. But it never really works out that way, since not as many people are needed to make the robots as the robots replace. And so the president goes on television telling us that the big issue of our time is jobs, jobs, jobs -- as if the reason to build high-speed rails and fix bridges is to put people back to work. But it seems to me there's something backwards in that logic. I find myself wondering if we may be accepting a premise that deserves to be questioned.

But this argument is wrong. First, even if we had the will and resources to pay generous unemployment benefits indefinitely, there's a large psychic cost to both individuals and society to high levels of long-term unemployment. His argument also fails in economic terms. Throughout the industrial era someone has always claimed that technology makes human workers obsolete. Consistently, though technology initially displaced some workers, it ultimately created safer, better quality jobs and increased wealth and prosperity. Technology eventually makes workers better off by increasing the value of their work. The more people put to productive work, the more economic growth we experience. For technology to increase wages and growth, people must be in productive jobs.

http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2011/09/labour-markets

There are also fundamental reasons to be skeptical AI can ever reach the level of human intelligence, explained in this essay “A.I. Gone Awry: The Futile Quest for Artificial Intelligence.”

 

[n00bPimp]

You're not the only ones realizing that there's a need for either a new economic system or a minimization of population. Things can't continue as they are now.

 

[Alle_Gory]

You're not the only ones realizing that there's a need for either a new economic system or a minimization of population. Things can't continue as they are now.

Why not both? There's humane ways to do it also. Education for everyone, the best contraceptive.

 

[DanelMadr]

I'm not expert on AI but from what I know we are very far from inventing something as complex as human brain. AI now is simply learning machine lacking vision, big picture, mostly reacting to circumstances, not able to cut corners so to speak.

However, for specific tasks with not so many and similar variables AI is efficient. Like chess. Autopilots seem to do good too.

I believe population will go down with increasing prosperity and security as observed in free parts of world. Brasil is good example.

I personally invite low birth rates....we are too many. I hope only mature people will have kids-less damaged children. And by mature I don't mean educated, I mean mature enough to be good example and loving parents.
I would cut on bad incentives like state support for single mothers...let father pay the whole price or her family.

To "fight" unemployment we can reduce working hours. I'm not sure we are prosperous enough to afford that or what other cons that would bring...less competition - even more useless, inefficient personnel most likely.

Looking in the crystal ball I see people working 4 hours a day doing the same work others did 10.
50% or more unemployment rate with unemployed hooked on game consoles (oh wait it is present situation)...walking in a park or "working" on projects, nobody would pay them for like charity for Africa....to minimize psychological damage.

 

[DanelMadr]

The Economist:For technology to increase wages and growth, people must be in productive jobs.

So why do corporations create so many useless positions like HR and Marketing? Nothing against those two in general but it tends to employ too many clueless people. It is like state bureaus...inventing problems in order to grow itself.
'No guys, we don't sell because we have too little empathy for customer or our colleagues. We don't sell bc our engineering division has fewer people and less paid than you, ending in ****ty product.'

Technology evolves but it seems too slow and painful ....lot of pink and lot of crashes.

I don't blame emancipation here, I blame the cult of Salesman...who has no feedback to/from engineers and cult of Packaging over Substance.

It is soaring despite crisis. Not sure about US but EU is bad. You have to actually beg to buy something...they don't care. And when you are not happy with what you bought...too bad, new version will be even worse.

 

[ArcBound]

The amount of people we have is just too much to sustain real jobs that can be done efficiently in other ways.

I had a girlfriend from India. She said her family back home owns several servants, not because they are super rich, but because the state of Indian poverty is so high that many people resort to living in with other families and working their whole lives as servants.

It's kind of sad really, but what's the solution to the problem? Tell certain people they can't reproduce? That won't go down nicely.

 

[Kerpal]

Maybe not subsidizing poor people having so many kids would be a good start.

 

[DanelMadr]

Maybe not subsidizing poor people having so many kids would be a good start.

Actually not sure about this for the poorer you get the more likely you will have more kids.

Kids being a nuisance when you have or want to get money. When you have no prospects for future, having babies seems the only way to give your life a meaning. I guess.

Scandinavia is good example...where being single mother is actually lucrative to a point, marriages are almost obsolete. But Scandinavia has the lowest birth ratio in Europe. USA is not so 'giving' and there is much higher birth to death ratio.

 

[DanelMadr]

...which is why we should focus on developing labour intensive technology even if it comes at the expense of efficiency.

Hand job industry?

 

[Warrior74]

So why do corporations create so many useless positions like HR and Marketing? Nothing against those two in general but it tends to employ too many clueless people. It is like state bureaus...inventing problems in order to grow itself.
'No guys, we don't sell because we have too little empathy for customer or our colleagues. We don't sell bc our engineering division has fewer people and less paid than you, ending in ****ty product.'

Technology evolves but it seems too slow and painful ....lot of pink and lot of crashes.

I don't blame emancipation here, I blame the cult of Salesman...who has no feedback to/from engineers and cult of Packaging over Substance.

It is soaring despite crisis. Not sure about US but EU is bad. You have to actually beg to buy something...they don't care. And when you are not happy with what you bought...too bad, new version will be even worse.

LOL. Marketing? Yes because the world beats its way to your door for that better mouse trap even though they never heard of it. Look at all the stuff in your home. You only bought 90% of it because of marketing. HR? Well I can't speak for those guys.

 

[DanelMadr]

LOL. Marketing? Yes because the world beats its way to your door for that better mouse trap even though they never heard of it. Look at all the stuff in your home. You only bought 90% of it because of marketing. HR? Well I can't speak for those guys.

I don't denounce the value of marketing, I'm just sad marketing is over-rated over factual product. Btw I avoid goods and services which marketing tries to manipulate me into buying trying to use my vices.

If I don't see clear message about the factual product, I avoid it. Like 'Wearing these shoes, you will feel better about yourself.' Screw that.

 

[Alle_Gory]

...which is why we should focus on developing labour intensive technology even if it comes at the expense of efficiency.

Fvck that. A robot can create far better than people. Menial jobs in factories are maddening and more suited for a machine than a person. There's no creativity, no room for error, and a requirement to pump out as many products as fast as possible.

You can overwork a machine until it dies and the repair it, people aren't so expendable and easily fixable.

 

[AAAgent]

Robots will never be creative because they can't be and its our creativity in the human race that will differentiate human work from machine.

Robots are designed to be efficient perfectionist machines. The pluses are they don't tire, they can make things faster and more precise as well.

 

[ArcBound]

Robots will never be creative because they can't be and its our creativity in the human race that will differentiate human work from machine.

Robots are designed to be efficient perfectionist machines. The pluses are they don't tire, they can make things faster and more precise as well.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2390277,00.asp#fbid=kPW7fzW78XR

This robot is not a perfectionist machine in fact it was a robot made to learn by error and to perform new actions and tasks the robot was never made to do.

And it showed that robots can learn and adapt to new tasks and environments without human guidance.

Right now we are at the point where robots can't surpass our creativity but in the future it is very possible that yes they can.

Also neurons in our body form an intricate circuit that basically controls everything about us. Scientists are also trying to model that same circuit (or parts of it right now) onto robots.

 

[DanelMadr]

I have not bought into the myth of automation destroying jobs.

Automation cheapens labor, which adds wealth, which in turn adds more jobs.

Every technological advance has created more wealth. A good example would be the invention of computing.

How many jobs were lost, yet created at the same time with the creation of spreadsheets? How many armies of accountants and such with paper ledgers and slide rules were wiped out by one single invention?

And yet, unemployment was never an issue as a result of these creations. It just reallocates human capital to other areas, which in turn makes us all richer. This newfound capital drives down the price of humanlabor in other sectors, thus driving down the price of other services. This does not include the ever increasing kinds of professions. All sorts of IT jobs were created due to the technical boom, as more would surely be created by the production of robots.

The natural progression of an economy that creates wealth such as this is to reduce the cost of all goods and services over time. People will always be needed to do jobs of one kind or another.

I agree but can you guess what that new jobs will be?

More stylists, lawyers, gender equality HR supervises, clueless assistants, cubicle monkeys generating redundant spreadsheets, bureaucrats, indifferent salesmen?

That is my worry.