'Reskilling Revolution Needed for the Millions of Jobs at Risk Due To Technological Disruption' (weforum.org) 427
A new report, published by The World Economic Forum on Monday estimates that 1.4 million U.S. jobs will be hit by automation between now and 2026. Of those, 57 percent belong to women. Without re-education, 16 percent of affected workers will have no job prospects, the study finds. A further 25 percent would have one to three job options. The report adds The positive finding from the report is that with adequate reskilling, 95% of the most immediately at-risk workers would find good-quality, higher-wage work in growing job families. Report highlights the urgent need for a massive reskilling programme, safety nets to support workers while they reskill, and support with job-matching.
Reskilling is a horrible word (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
There was a guy who worked in the coal mine. Then the coal mine closed down.
So he got a job working on an automobile assembly line. Then his job was taken by a robot.
So he got a job driving trucks. Because those trucks aren't going to drive themselves!
(and if they do, I hear that we're going to bring back clean coal.)
Re: (Score:3)
Yes... I suspect the "reskilling" revolution will be actually looking ahead. There's no point in retraining people to do work that is just going to be in the next wave (or the one after that) of jobs that are automated.
The revolution will be telling people to go do something they like doing and not worry about whether some corp will pay you to sit in an office for eight to ten hours a day.
Re:Reskilling is a horrible word (Score:5, Insightful)
Someone I know posted a diagram of the feudal system on Facebook today. It shows food flowing down to the peasants from the aristocracy. That's exactly what the aristocracy likes the peasants to think... never mind that the only source of food is the farms that the peasants work.
I have another friend who's a lawyer. She was complaining about working long hours. I asked if her firm was in trouble and couldn't afford to hire more lawyers. Nah, we're swimming in money. Shortage of lawyers? Nah, lots of good unemployed ones. So why? The culture says that if you don't work ridiculous hours you're not a good lawyer, so everyone does it.
You're right, some people need to work so people can eat, have shelter, etc. At one time, when humanity existed on the edge, that number was equal to (sometimes exceeded) the population. It has been decreasing for a long time, and is currently surprisingly small. It looks to decrease dramatically in the future, as more automation takes over many of the few remaining critical jobs.
The vast majority of us in western nations do not work so we (or anybody else) can eat or have shelter. We work doing various things, a surprising number of which are completely unnecessary, in order to convince our lords to give us food and money.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:germany has trade schools (Score:5, Insightful)
I think what Germany does makes a lot of sense. However, remember, that students are diverted into the "trade" path at a quite young age based on academic performance. I don't think that will fly in the US because parents will scream "discrimination" when their kid does poorly in school and is shunted to the trade school path -- even when it was the parent's failure to instill the value education, homework, and discipline into their spawn.
And, almost anyone who ends up with $150K-$200K of student debt and doesn't have a degree that is in demand did something VERY stupid and probably -- or actually, a lot of things very stupid. It doesn't take long to figure out that a BA degree in Gender Studies with a minor in Ancient Greek Mythology after taking seven years to finish those degrees is going to qualify you for a job where the most important skills is asking "Would you like fries with that?".
Re:germany has trade schools (Score:5, Insightful)
It can happen even if one has a relevant major. If one graduates into a crappy economy (like those who graduated December of 2008), student loans capitalize, and that much student debt can be easily amassed just through having to kick the can due to forbearances.
The US is the only country which has this system where if one wants to better themselves, they have to mortgage their entire life. China, Russia, Chile, and most of Europe, college and/or trade programs are "free". They understand that if they want a "harvest" (i.e. skilled people), they have to plant "seeds" (as in education.) This is a fact that seems lost in the US.
They still don't fucking get it. (Score:5, Insightful)
You cannot retrain a toilet cleaner to be a robot repairman.
After this or maybe the next wave of automation, there will be many humans whose labor will NEVER be worth what it costs to keep them alive.
A wave or two after that, there will be no humans who can do anything a machine can't do better and cheaper. Not engineers. Not artists. Not politicians. Not CEOs. Not you, either.
Nobody. Period.
"Jobs" are going to be OVER soon. Concentrating on putting people in different jobs ignores the main problem.
We better fucking come up with a better way to run things and a way to make the transition, or we're fucked.
Re:They still don't fucking get it. (Score:5, Insightful)
I think this is true.
Even today, nobody seems to be willing to face up to the idea that not everybody can be high-skilled, and the economy can't necessarily absorb that much high-skilled labor even if they could.
When machines are higher-than-high-skilled, human labor becomes more and more economically irrelevant.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
Well, you lived up to your handle.
OTOH, it does appear to be true that unemployment is actually decreasing at the moment. I haven't yet seen an analysis of *which* jobs are increasing, and what percentage of the population is counted as "not part of the workforce because discouraged", so I don't know what that means.
OTOH, factories in China are being automated because it's cheaper than hiring workers. So far the Chinese government seems to be handling it, but there have been lots of predictions that their
Re: (Score:3)
There is no reason to make any projections for the future that are predicated on a technology that does not exist
There is if you want to avoid suffering and bloodshed that will be involved if you don't.
Since humans evolved, work has equated survival. From hunting and gathering to today's paychecks, you survive because you work. When work disappears, we will break that construct. Redesigning our societies around a change that large is not a small undertaking. And if we don't start laying the groundwork before there are billions of starving people, there will be massive violence.
For example, Syria is in civil war be
Re: (Score:2)
We didn't have quite the problem with youth we do today when we had a parent at home raising the kids, at least in the formative years.
I dunno about that. After all, we did end up getting you.
Re: They still don't fucking get it. (Score:2)
Um bullshit. In the 60's we had roving bands of kids, breaking and entering causing mayham, and getting into trouble.
Heck one group tried to convince me it was okay to take anything as long as you intended to return it.
No going back to roving bands of gangs isn't a good idea. Gangs are slowly being driven out not by police but by ideas and new things to keep the kids off the street and from getting bored.
Re: (Score:2)
If you want the women to work at home, you need to pay them for it in some way. Today even with two incomes most families are poorer than their parents were with one income. (And among "the lower classes" women always had to work outside the home to earn additional income.)
Re:They still don't fucking get it. (Score:5, Insightful)
And please, don't get all "Roomba!" on me, because what a Roomba can do is but a small fraction of what a passably good cleaning person can do.
Many manual yet specialized blue collar jobs are equally difficult to fully automate. That's why self driving trucks are seen as such a big deal, given the mass of people potentially impacted and because such occurrences are not that common.
Paper pushers on the other hand, are in quite more risk of being replaced by a slightly better document processor/generator.
Re: (Score:3)
Actually, everybody is at risk. I agree that the "paper pushers" will suffer horribly and that is the first time this happens. Many jobs in the "paper pusher" class can already be automatized to a large degree and it keeps getting cheaper to do so. But keep in mind that an empty (or not built in the first place) office building does not need cleaners either.
I don't know about bathroom remodeling (Score:3)
That's a really, really high skill
Re: (Score:3)
They're not suggesting to retrain toilet cleaners into robot repairmen. What they're suggesting is even dumber, because the jobs they want people to train for are also going away.
They're picking families of jobs, predicting the ebb and flow of jobs within that family, magically finding that they come out even, and saying thus reskilling is what we need.
As I noted below, they think that we're going to need less data entry people and more receptionists. Since they're both in the Office and Administrative fami
Re: (Score:2)
Good summary. Now, "receptionist" is a job that will not go away, but it will not provide many jobs. The market is just exceptionally small and it has pretty steep requirements: Helpful, educated, pleasant manner and to look at, punctual and dependable. Most people cannot actually be receptionists.
Re:They still don't fucking get it. (Score:5, Interesting)
You cannot retrain a toilet cleaner to be a robot repairman.
After this or maybe the next wave of automation, there will be many humans whose labor will NEVER be worth what it costs to keep them alive.
A wave or two after that, there will be no humans who can do anything a machine can't do better and cheaper. Not engineers. Not artists. Not politicians. Not CEOs. Not you, either.
Nobody. Period.
"Jobs" are going to be OVER soon. Concentrating on putting people in different jobs ignores the main problem.
We better fucking come up with a better way to run things and a way to make the transition, or we're fucked.
To take a real world example, you may not be able to turn a coal miner into a robotics expert but you can re-train the coal miner to be a solar panel installer or wind turbine installer. The real urgency is to bring the coal miner's kids to a level of education that allows them to become robot repairmen. However, what the US is currently doing is promising the coal miners that the 19th century will come back, that the nation will go back to coal and oil, (cue flags, xenophobic rhetoric and patriotic music) which is stupid because wind and solar have been cheaper than coal for a while now and they are becoming cheaper than oil and gas which means solar and wind are in effect better choices for pure business reasons. Meanwhile Betsy DeVos is busy tearing the guts out of the public educations system in the name of libertarianism, objectivist philosophy and the private education industry so that public education can be replaced with a private system that leaves you with a worthless business degree, the mountain of debt you piled up to pay for it and fat bottom lines for the private education providers that sold it to you. The result will be generations of young people with huge student loan debts that can be milked for money by Wall Street, no markatable knowledge or skill and who would have been better off going to a community college and getting a degree in something useful (even if it isn't a spiffy business degree from some private college or big name Ivy League institution) and that's assuming there are any such community colleges left that haven't yet been eradicated by the likes of Betsy DeVos or some variation on Sam Brownback's 'Kansas Experiment'.
Re: (Score:2)
wages will just go down. robots are certainly NOT free.
if a human does it CHEAPER than the human gets the job. the only difference is that humans now compete against robots (and they already do TODAY)
there are tasks where robot costs are LOWER than humans (chain assembly for ex) and other task where its not (janitorial task), that's mainly because one robot can assemble a million cars, but can't clean a million offices. you need a million robots for that.
not that this is great or anything
Re: (Score:2)
I don't believe this is true. There will certainly be disruption and the need to "reskill" or "retrain." And there will be some who have a hard time doing so. But the machines simply aren't going to replace certain types of work for a number of reasons.
(1) We prefer people doing some thing.
(2) Our needs and consumption desires change. We always want the next thing.
(3) By not being able to think like humans do, the machines aren't going to be able to address our needs. They can't deal with categorical d
Re: (Score:2)
After this or maybe the next wave of automation, there will be many humans whose labor will NEVER be worth what it costs to keep them alive.
That's an insightful and thought-provoking comment.
I wonder about child-rearing. I don't think automation will replace that for at least 100 years. Currently we place a very low dollar value on looking after children (in the form of stay-at-home parents, nannies, teachers, child credit, child-care tax relief). In the future you point to, I wonder if that will change?
Re:They still don't fucking get it. (Score:5, Insightful)
You cannot retrain a toilet cleaner to be a robot repairman.
It's not clear to me this is true. Sure, there may be some janitors who literally cannot be trained for better jobs, but of the millions of people doing those kinds of jobs there's bound to be many who could be trained for something more challenging.
I don't think, however, retraining toilet cleaners is in the cards, for two reasons. First, there isn't a job "toilet cleaner"; it's a task glommed onto various low status jobs. It's unlikely we'll see that task automated because it's not a big, immediate head count win. Secondly, and more importantly, I don't think politicians care about people doing low status jobs to do anything for them if they lose their jobs.
Look at rural and small town census tracts after the Great Recession -- there was no "after the recession" for them, it's still on. Sure they get lip service, but if you think anyone is going to prioritize the interests of an out-of-work coal miner over a fracking billionaire, consider that these are also the places which are ravaged by the opioid crisis. There's lots of posturing on that issue too, but no action. Drug wholesalers, over the course of two years, shipped nine million pills to a single pharmacy in West Virginia serving a community of less than four hundred people, and no politicians have proposed anything to prevent things like that happening again.
59,000 people are killed in the US by the opioid crisis annually, the equivalent of a 9/11 attack every two weeks, but we must tread carefully lest we harm drug company profits. I submit to you that demonstrates the lower value we put on the lives of those people relative to the lives of bankers.
If we can't be bothered lift a finger to save their lives, why would we save their jobs?
Re: (Score:3)
Look at rural and small town census tracts after the Great Recession -- there was no "after the recession" for them, it's still on. Sure they get lip service, but if you think anyone is going to prioritize the interests of an out-of-work coal miner over a fracking billionaire, consider that these are also the places which are ravaged by the opioid crisis. There's lots of posturing on that issue too, but no action. Drug wholesalers, over the course of two years, shipped nine million pills to a single pharmacy in West Virginia serving a community of less than four hundred people, and no politicians have proposed anything to prevent things like that happening again.
59,000 people are killed in the US by the opioid crisis annually, the equivalent of a 9/11 attack every two weeks, but we must tread carefully lest we harm drug company profits. I submit to you that demonstrates the lower value we put on the lives of those people relative to the lives of bankers.
If we can't be bothered lift a finger to save their lives, why would we save their jobs?
My own theory on this, is that rural America is the new 'inner city'. As industry gets more complicated, desires more efficient supply chains, requires a nearby large pool of skilled employees, there is very little economic reason to be located in small towns that used to be supported by manufacturing companies effectively running company towns. The only real reason will be farming and natural resource mining, which are being greatly automated. Instead of urban decay, we are experiencing rural decay. Those
Re: (Score:2)
While said "toilet cleaner" has a pretty secure job, you are mostly right. I have some insight into the area of engineering and there the higher-to-highly qualified jobs will not go away. Same for some of the technicians. The thing is that machines have a snowflakes chance in hell understanding what a capable engineer does or having the flexibility of a technician that does custom installation jobs. There is nothing in true AI coming out way, absolutely nothing. But automation (weak AI) do a lot of jobs to
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
You don't fucking get it.
Thanks to Trump, this is no longer a zero-sum game. The influx of new jobs due to economy growth and the return of factories from out-of-country (like the Chrysler plant announced last week which will be closed in Mexico and re-opened in Michigan with 2500 new Michigan jobs) is going to make this 1.4 million not-a-factor. Its way past time to relax and enjoy. So, relax and enjoy. The big-money globalists who want to ship our jobs to every other country on the planet besides
Re: (Score:2)
... except that peasants were valuable economic assets. You couldn't farm the fields and build the castle without peasants.
Peasants are still needed at the moment, but for how long? And what happens afterwards?
Re: (Score:2)
Jobs are going to disappear to robots, so we need to bring in immigrants to do the jobs that American robots won't do.
Yeah, we are pretty much fucked. The experiment in class mobility and the death of the aristocracy stands on the razor's edge. Now cheer, peasant, cheer for your Lords and Masters, that they might toss you a loaf of bread.
Lords and Masters? Uh no. With the amount of people they're looking to turn into peasants, the concept of Eat the Rich will become reality faster than you can say HFT millisecond.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
That always cracks me up. In the past, you might have a peasant rebellion. These days, a single Sarin gas canister would get rid of not just an entire rebellion, but ensure it won't happen again, due to residual poison left in the area. Or, a single A10 with some BRRT.
Sorry. Syria showed us what happens when revolutions happen. It just means a lot of dead stupid civilians, and showing that the people in charge can stay in charge. Revolution is impossible these days.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Jobs are going to disappear to robots
No, they're not. This is what fools actually believe.
Re: (Score:2)
Zero argument and an unsophisticated insult. Do you actually have something to contribute? If you have no clue about the topic at hand, at least try to be funny...
Re:They get it. (Score:5, Funny)
We have always used immigrants to do the jobs that no American will do.
That's why all of Trump's wives are immigrants.
Re:They still don't fucking get it. (Score:5, Interesting)
Whatever.. a good buddy of mine got tired of being a ditch digger, and after two years of hard work and studying (starting with the lowly A+ and busting ass up the food chain) he's now a senior storage engineer for a top ten company in the Fortune 500 making over 150k a year in the midwestern US.
You need to understand that from a mental capacity and motivation standpoint, your buddy represents 1% of the toilet-cleaning/ditch-digging/truck-driving force out there.
We're only fucked if simpletons do not evolve to accept the fact that most traditional work will be obsolete, and the idea that you must toil to earn your keep.
Toil doing what? In case you didn't notice, the only simpletons on Star Trek were dressed in red, represented about 1% of the space fleet, and were predictably made obsolete within about 45 seconds of appearing on screen.
The key, of course, will be a certain amount of population control for future generations along with finding creative mental and physical outlets.
A major city suffers a blackout for more than 24 hours, and we find hospital delivery rooms overflowing 9 months later. Good luck implementing population control when the unemployable masses have little to do all day but eat, fuck, and sleep. That creative mental and physical outlet has already been proven. At least until the Fuckitron 3000 shows it can do that better than a human too.
Not just automation (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
What distinction are you drawing between AI and automation? AI is what's driving the next wave of automation.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
AI will also be coming for our jobs too. In fact, AI is already here and is eliminating entire categories of jobs "AI" is things like Siri, playing Go and Chess and deep learning neural networks (like artificial human brains).
I had a friend with a good paying Chess job that he just lost it to an A.I!
I am thinking automation is things like kiosks at McDonalds and stuff like that. I guess that could be considered AI too though!
Only if you consider ATMs or vending machines to be A.I.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
That "Go" thing was basically a stunt and entirely unfair. Also, "deep learning" is not any smarter than traditional learning and has nothing to do with human intelligence. Deep learning is what you do when you do not have a model of the target space that you could use to design the network. Results are worse than for designed networks, but they are a lot cheaper to obtain. Deep learning has no connection to what humans do when they think. Of course, most humans think rarely and hence much of what they do c
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
AI will also be coming for our jobs too
No, it won't. You are a fool.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
It has already happened. With deep learning neural networks which think like the human brain, we already have systems that can replace a large swath of professions. Go ask a Go or Chess master how many job offers they get nowadays!
How many job offers did they get 10 years ago?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
You are missing the point. Since we can create AI programs that can play Go and Chess, we will soon have AI systems that can replace doctors, lawyers and everything in between. It is inevitable, especially with computers getting faster and faster every year.
Go and chess is a little different from doctors and lawyers. People who go to doctors and lawyers tend not to care how human the doctor or lawyer is (lawyers were questionable long before AI), they just want the job done. People who watch a go or chess tournament are interested in entertainment and watching who plays the most interesting strategy, not necessarily the most efficient.
Motorsports has started looking into AI driven race cars. This will be interesting but I'm not sure how successful it will b
Re: (Score:2)
deep learning neural networks which think like the human brain
That's not at all how they work because we don't even understand how our brains do that so how the hell can we make something artificial that does? You have no idea what you're talking about, you're living in a fantasy world.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Deep learning is still pretty stupid. It doesn't do what real intelligence does, namely achieve goals through directed action in unconstrained environments with incomplete information.
The thing is that that won't last. A few more breakthroughs along the lines of the last few years of deep learning, maybe in somewhat different areas, and you might very well have truly general AI.
You'll definitely get truly general AI sometime, because humans are just physical objects not magic. If humans are generally intell
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
It is not really AI, it is plain dumb automation. But it is a lot cheaper now and a lot faster and accurate at being dumb. That is a killer. It will not replace the 1...10% of a low-skill job that actually cannot be done with "dumb", but that still means most workers in entire classes of jobs will not find work anymore.
Re: (Score:2)
Problem (Score:2)
These people (not 100%, maybe 90%) are in these jobs for a reason = mostly an inability or unwillingness to learn more valuable skills.
What to do with them is a problem. The US is an expensive place to live.
Please stop telling people to reskill (Score:5, Insightful)
a) older folks learn slower than young folks (fact)
b) it's kinda hard to work full time supporting the family you made when you had a job and go to school full time.
c) A lot of the folks being asked to re-skill didn't make it through college the first time when they were young and still had the support of their parents and access to scholarships only available to high school seniors
d) Nobody wants to support these folks while they go back to school, since that means tax hikes and we just did a $1.5 trillion dollar tax _cut_.
This is precisely why Hilary lost the election. Just telling them to reskill isn't an answer. It's not going to work. Think of something else or get ready for some pain while they elect God only knows what kind of people in a desperate attempt to find someone who will listen to them.
Re: (Score:3)
it didn't work when the blue collar jobs went overseas and it's not going to work now. That's because: b) it's kinda hard to work full time supporting the family you made when you had a job and go to school full time.
Did you even read the summary? From TFS:
Report highlights the urgent need for a massive reskilling programme, safety nets to support workers while they reskill, and support with job-matching.
And the summary is right. At some point we are either going to have to have massive retraining efforts, instill some sort of strong, robust social safety net (UBI, strong unemployment, whatever), or face the horribly destabilizing and violence-producing effects of massive numbers of idle, frustrated, unemployed people. It's your choice.
Safety net generally means 6 months (Score:5, Interesting)
Also, what the devil are they going to retrain for? We're about to put every cashier and driver out of work. They're not all going to go off and be doctors, most folks just don't have the capacity. I guess we could think up new service jobs, but who's gonna pay them? It's not looking like folks are gonna have much money [cnbc.com].
Also, you're assuming folks need to work or they become listless and frustrated and violent. I think that's only going to be a problem if they don't have enough money for food/shelter and (maybe, big maybe) a modicum of living (e.g. have a kid or two, go get drunk occasionally, that sort of thing).
All I see is more folks trying to put the onus on people to 're-skill' without talking about how they're gonna do that, if they even _can_ do that and where are the jobs going to come from. It sounds like blame shifting so we can all look the other way while 20% of the country's lives go to shit. That's certainly the vibe I got from Hillary Clinton.
Reskill into what? (Score:5, Insightful)
I skimmed the article to find out, and came up with this gem:
According to this forecast, only one job family—Production—will experience an overall net job decline. However, both Production and Office and Administrative roles are set to experience a significant employment decline. Unlike Production, however, the Office and Administrative job family is forecast to experience sufficient new job gains as well in roles like Billing, Cost and Rate Clerks, Receptionists and Information Clerks, and Customer Service Representatives to counter-balance the shrinking of other occupational categories, such as Data Entry Keyers, File Clerks, Mail Clerks, and Administrative Assistants
So one of their super amazing findings is that data entry people will reskill into receptionists, and we'll need a lot more of those.
It seems to me that they don't have any idea what they're talking about. If you have less jobs under the Office and Administrative category from losing data based ones, you don't need more billing people and receptionists. And how is billing not going to see a similar reduction?
They seem to miss the fundamental issue here, which is that we're quickly getting to the point of being able to replace all of the jobs they think that we'll need more of that we could fill with the people already being made redundant. Some how their magic math shows that we can just retrain people for existing jobs and then we'll suddenly need lots more people in those positions. If that doesn't happen, a lot of the article falls apart. If those jobs also start going away, they're arguing for exactly the wrong approach.
I don't know about everyone else's office, but around here we're not hiring more receptionists and customer service reps. The trend is in the opposite direction, actually. Overall, just a rather fantastical article that seems detached from reality. It sounds good, and if you're selling retraining services, I bet it sounds even better.
This was foreseen (Score:2)
Lots of people have foreseen this problem for a long time, myself included. I've also foreseen that the concept of UBI (universal basic income) will be rejected because of ideology as well as the sheer number of people living in denial about the problem. The workers threatened by automation that are in unions will try (and fail) to outlaw the technologies that are going replace them. Truckers are already doing this but it's a failing strategy. It's only when a very large number of people are their most
Universal Basic Income (Score:2)
I like the idea of Universal Basic Income, but I fear that human instinct will cause it to fail. Remember, work hard! Millions on welfare depend on you! I have a difficult time letting go of th
Re: (Score:2)
I think that once things get bad enough, you're going to start seeing things like potential parents having to prove an above-average or even superior IQ to avoid being sterilized. And when that isn't enough, everyone below a certain IQ is just going to get euthanized.
Universal income will never take hold until something like this has been tried, unfortunately. The US is too wrapped up in the Protestant work ethic, pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps ethos and just plain greed. You'll never get the rich and
1.4 Way Low (Score:2)
Multiple thoughts on how this is being presented. To me 1.4 million seems WAY on the low side with things like automated driving, delivery, order fullfillment likely arriving before that. McDonald’s new order Kiosks are horrible, but likely they will have voice input on the next go round. Why the emphasis of the likely impact on women? Likely minorities by race will be affected much more.
Let’s not be Pollyannaish about this. The only way this doesn’t get dark and ugly is with universa
Re: (Score:2)
Not everyone can re-skill even if they have to (Score:2)
I think that a lot of people who are just assuming everything is going to be OK with this next transition are going to be in for a surprise. Automation is also coming for knowledge workers, at all levels. Assume doctors didn't have an ironclad professional organization that will never allow them to be replaced or marginalized. Right now, the requirements for medical school are a photographic memory, a straight-A academic record and the ability to live through a rigorous training regime. With automation, tha
Re: (Score:2)
Good luck in the US with that! (Score:2)
Ruling thought of people pulling strings there is: If you are not doing well, you are doing something wrong, you need to be penalized so you learn to do it right.
That's not a fact but a religious-like thought model to create peace of mind and justify why it is good to accumulate Millions/Billions of green stuff and using it to multiply it and game the system. Citizens United, sponsoring - ah, bribing is the right name - politicians to do the "right" thing for them with the help of "how to make friends and
It's time to create NEW jobs, not rehash old ones (Score:2)
Robot inspector, for one.
Robot attendance checker.
Robot dance instructor.
Robot speech trainer. (Must they all speak in a dull.Shatner.impression. in.that.metallic.monotone?)
Come on, I can't think of everything; I'm stuck in the *present*
As supply increases, value decreases (Score:5, Interesting)
a) Food and water
b) Housing
c) Energy
If we leave out sex as a fourth requirement (though I'm hesitant to do so as I'm practically a dog at heart), we do not need anything more than what is listed above.
Food
We will eventually have 3d printers in our houses that are supplied by cartridges of core materials to produce meals of sustenance. They may or may not be yummy, but they will provide us with the nutrients we need to survive. The supply chain can eventually over time be automated as well. I've always dreamed of using underground tunnels with high pressure sodium lighting, air filtering, etc... to produce massive amounts of food of high quality rapidly. I have considered most of the details of automation, and I can't see why humans would have to be too involved with the process if the crops are managed and harvested using overhead robotic arms. It will have many bugs (technical and creepy crawly) at first, but over time, it could prove to be able to provide extremely high quality produce reliably and with minimal toxicity. With good generic alterations of the seeds, it should be possible to have almost perfect crops at almost all times. By improving the delivery chain through automation, a house could order what they need only when they need it and therefore greatly reduce waste.
An alternative approach to 3d printing is a meal on wheels kind of solution which would have centralized kitchens producing meals to order using machines and delivering them via drones. This could be more practical.
Real meat will become a luxury and we'll either switch to eating bug meat or we'll switch to eating meat grown from stem cells. I believe stem cells makes more sense. But we'll do away with animal farms in the future as they're terrible for the planet, generally inhumane and they require far too much work for something we can do far better with stem cells. Also consider that we waste more than 30% of the meat we produce currently. Milk is actually not a requirement of life, but if we decide to keep it around, I have no answer to how to do that.
Water
Most of humanities problems with water can be resolved with better logistics. There are places on earth which are perfect for managing water and there are places which are not. For example, California is not a good place for water. If we force people to abandon California for more suitable places like Colorado or even Alaska and Canada for example, we can solve many of our water supply problems. In addition, thanks to problems in places like South Africa today, we will put a great deal more effort into solving water supply chain problems. This can be done through reclamation, filtration, etc... we will get better with water by necessity sooner than later and these systems will be highly automated over time.
Housing
As we automate waste removal which already has seen massive improvements through trucks that can lift trash cans from the side of the road using arms... we will see further automation of gathering of raw materials. The raw materials will be collected and shipped to recycling plants which automatically sort trash (see waste management in places like Sandefjord Norway) and once the materials are properly sorted, much material can be automatically reprocessed into raw materials for new construction.
China has made massive progress in flatpack housing, highrises, even almost complete cities. Trucks are loaded with click together housing components in the opposite order they should be removed from the trucks. Cranes are then operated to remove item by item to click into place and with little additional work, a house could be built in a an hour or two using nothing but self driving and self operating robots. The factories will eventually be automated to produce the components using automated systems. With a little more work, the materials delivered from trash recycling (parti
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
And note that only one in six of that less than 1% would be unable to find work without retraining.
Frankly, this sounds more like a typical year in the Real World (tm) than a "revolution"....
Re: (Score:2)
Easily said by someone who doesn't believe his will be one of the jobs lost and who feels sure he won't be left with no prospect of ever having a job again.
Thought exercize, Trump signs a law that Kjella shall never be employed again. Do you now choose to starve in the streets or take what you need and the law be damned?
Unlikely. More likely, someone else in that position notices that you have what they need...
Re: (Score:2)
According to the BLS some 154 million Americans are employed. That <1% of those jobs would disappear in 8 years, in fact less than 0.1% per year sounds like the most unrevolutionary revolution ever. We'll all run out of jobs like... year 3000.
If there's one thing we humans are pretty damn good at, it's massively underestimating the future.
Remove every waitress, barista, cashier, and other automation-targeting jobs from the employment market. Now you've just removed the very jobs that the uneductated masses use in order to become educated, removing the lowest rungs on the Ladder of Success.
After automation decimates every job out there that doesn't require a decade of experience, we'll soon find that go-get-an-education mantra we've been preach
Re: (Score:2)
If the machines are producing huge amounts of goods and services, I have trouble seeing how that's a "decimated economy".
That's a very productive economy with an output allocation problem.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Nobody wants to go to a non-automated world.
What people want is to make sure that we keep being "much better for it".
At some point, the new jobs that get created are probably going to be beyond most people. A bit further along than that, and the machines will be better than all humans at most new jobs... before those jobs get created. Humans win now because they're generally intelligent. When machines have that, there are going to be a helluva lot fewer jobs for humans, if any.
I guess things like "racecar d
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
the way this world is run, ya'll gettin' the robot ax . And you all know it.
Re: (Score:2)
For every job that a robot replaces, they must pay someone the equivalent wage of the pre robot job
How many wages for a tractor ?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Under his eye, my brother.
(ducks and runs).
Re: (Score:2)
Dayworld as a viable option. Who knew Farmer was a prophet?
Re: (Score:2)
The funny thing is, this used to be assumed common sense; that automation would eventually lead to ubiquitous lives of luxury for everyone. We were all supposed to be looking forward to being able to devote more time to art and love and health. Somewhere along the line people seem to have lost sight of the goal posts. Now they think that carrying the ball is a goal in and of itself.
But how do you deal with a post-scarcity society when a clue is the one thing left that nobody can find?
Re: (Score:3)
We're already in that situation. There are lots of jobs that aren't actually necessary.
One problem is, *some* jobs are necessary, and if some people need to work, they resent it when others don't. And *nobody* is willing to admit that their job is one of the unnecessary ones...at least not when their boss is listening.
Re: (Score:2)
Do you think hundreds of millions of starving plebes will just roll over and die peacefully?
That's what the Killbots are for...
Re: (Score:2)
Do you think hundreds of millions of starving plebes will just roll over and die peacefully?
That's what the Killbots are for...
Even jackbooted thugs are losing their jobs to automation.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Sexual reproduction is a fad.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Being too old to be employed and having planned for retired life is making me look like a genius rather than a boomer asshole.
Or just looking like someone lucky enough to have been born at a time when you were still likely to accrue a pension your entire working life. Enjoy your starting at $300k 55+ "active adult" community that it seems makes up at least 50% of new home construction, driving up prices for everyone else.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Can't argue with this...
Re: (Score:2)
Economics 102: the very measure of the importance/value of anything is other people's willingness to pay for it.
That is, if these people's labor really is valuable, they don't need my charity. But then either the report in TFA is wrong, or the report and you are talking about different people.