Predictions of massive job losses to automation miss data that show the opposite(foxbusiness.com)
foxbusiness.com
Predictions of massive job losses to automation miss data that show the opposite
http://www.foxbusiness.com/features/2017/05/10/robots-arent-destroying-enough-jobs-capital-account.html
124 comments
I think we have yet to see the worst of it for now. But make no mistake, huge sections of jobs are going to evaporate if not by 2019, then in the decade thereafter.
Not just elevator operators and dirigible pilots. A massive chunk of economic activity is going to look silly in a decade. Pretty much everything regarded as a summer job for high school teenagers is game, and that leaves a considerable number of normal, employable adults out in the cold too.
Magazines are pretty much already dead, and everything that went with them shrank. Music and movies have imploded hard enough to show signs of serious stress. Shops, department stores and big box retail are off balance, and will fall over before 2030.
It's going to be pretty rough. Think about your first job, and the summer jobs your high school classmates had. Will your kids hold the same jobs? I doubt it.
Not just elevator operators and dirigible pilots. A massive chunk of economic activity is going to look silly in a decade. Pretty much everything regarded as a summer job for high school teenagers is game, and that leaves a considerable number of normal, employable adults out in the cold too.
Magazines are pretty much already dead, and everything that went with them shrank. Music and movies have imploded hard enough to show signs of serious stress. Shops, department stores and big box retail are off balance, and will fall over before 2030.
It's going to be pretty rough. Think about your first job, and the summer jobs your high school classmates had. Will your kids hold the same jobs? I doubt it.
> Think about your first job, and the summer jobs your high school classmates had.
Walking a dog - ain't going to be automated any time soon. Filling shelves in a supermarket - I am not aware of any automation on the way for this, though it may be. Whitewater rafting guide - no chance that is getting automated.
Walking a dog - ain't going to be automated any time soon. Filling shelves in a supermarket - I am not aware of any automation on the way for this, though it may be. Whitewater rafting guide - no chance that is getting automated.
I think summer camp jobs will probably still be readily available for teenagers in a decade. Maybe not working at a movie theater or something like that (cashier-intensive jobs), but a lot of jobs with interpersonal interaction will probably stave this off for a while yet.
What is your predicted level of unemployment in the US by 2019, 2024, and 2029?
I think this question is more interesting if you talk about underemployment or people who are worse off than their parents at a given age.
Both of those numbers are already creeping up, economically coerced crap jobs aside.
Both of those numbers are already creeping up, economically coerced crap jobs aside.
I feel like that's a huge walk-back from a position of "huge sections of jobs will just evaporate." I mean, I realize that you're not the person who said "huge sections of jobs will just evaporate," but I'd like someone who does believe that, not something much milder, to put some numbers to it.
I believe huge numbers of certain kinds of jobs will evaporate, particularly whitecollar jobs -- just that the powers that be will implement modern sharecropping to nominally keep "jobs", even while the standard of living massively erodes and the middle class vanishes.
I believe we're already seeing that, with the job markets losing professional jobs but gaining service industry jobs.
I think it's a distraction to talk about employment numbers without talking about the quality of the jobs in question -- sharecroppers and CEOs both have a job, but their lives are radically different.
I believe we're already seeing that, with the job markets losing professional jobs but gaining service industry jobs.
I think it's a distraction to talk about employment numbers without talking about the quality of the jobs in question -- sharecroppers and CEOs both have a job, but their lives are radically different.
We're probably aged out of this discussion, but in case you're still reading: okay, fine. Provide some kind of quantitative prediction of what you're talking about. If unemployment numbers are the wrong measure, use Gini coefficient or something.
One can hope that the next generation of children won't have to hold a 'job' at all.
Not going to happen - unless all jobs disappear at about the same time.
The simple conclusion is that unless you have something to provide in exchange, no one will give you anything in return.
>He (Amartya Sen) presents data that there was an adequate food supply in Bengal at the time, but particular groups of people including rural landless labourers and urban service providers like haircutters did not have the means to buy food as its price rose rapidly due to factors
As long as someone owns the factory or the company, they expect to be paid. Thats not going to go away overnight.
And since robots are not going to be perfect, there will always be jobs that human beings will be employed to do. The employers will in turn expect to get their money's worth for those jobs.
Instead of jobs going away, theres going to be a concentration of wealth in the hands of a few.
The simple conclusion is that unless you have something to provide in exchange, no one will give you anything in return.
>He (Amartya Sen) presents data that there was an adequate food supply in Bengal at the time, but particular groups of people including rural landless labourers and urban service providers like haircutters did not have the means to buy food as its price rose rapidly due to factors
As long as someone owns the factory or the company, they expect to be paid. Thats not going to go away overnight.
And since robots are not going to be perfect, there will always be jobs that human beings will be employed to do. The employers will in turn expect to get their money's worth for those jobs.
Instead of jobs going away, theres going to be a concentration of wealth in the hands of a few.
my first couple of jobs would all be easy to automate but it would cost more then $3/hour
What if employment law advances such to add liabilities to human employment? Then you might get payed $3/hour, but you costs include insurance, losses due to sick-days etc.
I guess, but you must also consider the upside as well. A human cashier is not just a cashier, but an ad-hoc customer service rep, security guard, market intel gatherer, etc.
>Isn't that already the case?
Yeah, but it wasn't robots that got us here, it was rather more mundane - union busting, offshoring and outsourcing.
Robots are a rather convenient scapegoat though.
The financial crisis was simply symptomatic of that (middle class households were forced to swap rising incomes for more and more debt).
Yeah, but it wasn't robots that got us here, it was rather more mundane - union busting, offshoring and outsourcing.
Robots are a rather convenient scapegoat though.
The financial crisis was simply symptomatic of that (middle class households were forced to swap rising incomes for more and more debt).
It seems like while the developed mature economies (Europe, NAmerica, NEast Asia) will fare okay if they can "retrain" their workforces, lesser developed economies will suffer because: developed economies will not need to export labor to cheap labor locales and two the demographics of developing nations mean they won't have jobs for those people. So either they put a lid on their pop growth or they will suffer from lack of jobs for all those people since developed nations will not be vacuuming cheap labor up and instead will automate those jobs in their economies.
We still have all the laid off manufacturing workers from the last 20-30 years that we couldn't retrain
here's hoping that this leads to less labour arbitrage and exploitation, and more developing nations investing in their own locally-beneficial industries.
By definition of global trade, the locally beneficial industries won't survive if the firms in the west take off - those firms will undercut even developing world prices and sell to those markets.
The question is what do those markets offer in return?
The question is what do those markets offer in return?
not necessarily, with logistical costs to transport goods. The alternative is that those firms start up local factories, but then that's helping the local economy. With digital goods, many Western products aren't translated or localised. Even with translation, there are a lot of cultural artefacts built into software products that may translate to a poor user experience in other cultures.
The Economist remarked the same thing in their report on automation a little while back. The automation fears espoused by Bill Gates and Elon Musk are purportedly premature. Automation isn't spreading fast enough.
One other note, while I do believe that automation will cause massive job losses eventually, there exists an alternative narrative. Centered around the knowledge that: 'you don't know you don't know,' we just have no idea which jobs will emerge as a result of new industries powered by automation.
What does seem evident is that concentrated education at the beginning of an adult's life is unlikely to be enough in the future. Investment in education reform and adult education seems critical, whether or not automation causes large scale unemployment.
One other note, while I do believe that automation will cause massive job losses eventually, there exists an alternative narrative. Centered around the knowledge that: 'you don't know you don't know,' we just have no idea which jobs will emerge as a result of new industries powered by automation.
What does seem evident is that concentrated education at the beginning of an adult's life is unlikely to be enough in the future. Investment in education reform and adult education seems critical, whether or not automation causes large scale unemployment.
> we just have no idea which jobs will emerge as a result of new industries powered by automation
The question is, if you believe AI will eventually catch up with all jobs that exist today, what skill could a significant portion of the population possibly have at that point, that the AIs would not also match?
Perhaps we'll have social constructs to provide jobs, similar to how people are willing to overpay for designer goods instead of copies (e.g. maybe 'hand-crafted' will take on a whole new meaning). But from a solely economic perspective, it seems like a matter of when, not if, an AI could more efficiently do most jobs.
The question is, if you believe AI will eventually catch up with all jobs that exist today, what skill could a significant portion of the population possibly have at that point, that the AIs would not also match?
Perhaps we'll have social constructs to provide jobs, similar to how people are willing to overpay for designer goods instead of copies (e.g. maybe 'hand-crafted' will take on a whole new meaning). But from a solely economic perspective, it seems like a matter of when, not if, an AI could more efficiently do most jobs.
If AI and robotics can do everything cheaper than humans, how is that not the greatest thing ever?
It would be great. However, it would also obligate us to solve the problem of resource distribution that is currently being solved by the system of working a job for money, then exchanging that money for goods and services.
If the United States of America - the wealthiest society the world has ever known - can't even provide healthcare for its citizens, what hope is there that, in a world where all profits accure to the owners of robots (capital), anyone other than these people get any of the benefit? History is not exactly rich with examples of such.
The US obvuisky does provide healthcare for its citizens, we are just in a messy argument over who should pay for it. Reagan mandated over 40 years that hospitals had to offer care to everyone.
Being able to visit the emergency room and having to pay whatever they want isn't remotely the same as "provide healthcare for its citizens".
Hospitals may provide emergency care, but it's a poor substiture for proper long-term care with a primary care physician. It's also a horrible system for dealing with homeless and mentally ill patients, not to mention the chance of going bankrupt, and the overall effectiveness/ cost of the system vs. the benefits.
Saying it's only about who pays is not really doing justice to the problems of the American medical system.
Saying it's only about who pays is not really doing justice to the problems of the American medical system.
It's great for society and long term, but right now we tie people's ability to participate in society pretty tightly with their economic output. If your output isn't needed, you will have to retrain, and society will have to support that.
Whats coming out is that retraining doesn't happen often enough.
How do you control the AI? If it can do everything we can do, then it doesn't need us...
I it, or at least should be. The problem is with our current socioeconomic structures it would mean that the majority of the population would have no purchasing power whatsoever, since their only valuable resource, their ability to work, would disappear. Mass starvation, rioting, etc. doesn't sound too nice. If we somehow make our way out of that into a Star Trek-esque post-scarcity utopia, then yes, it'd be amazing.
That is the issue that needs to be looked at more closely. And in a fantasy world the consumer is a separate entity from the worker. But a weak workforce means weak consumers.
Companies can talk about cost reducing by cutting their workforce all they want, but I wonder how many stop and think how that would negatively impact the purchasing power of their former employees.
Companies can talk about cost reducing by cutting their workforce all they want, but I wonder how many stop and think how that would negatively impact the purchasing power of their former employees.
If it's so cheap to build robots/AI that it's cheaper than working, then anyone will be able to afford robots. That's the essential logical test the fear of robots can't pass.
Automation is spreading at an unprecedented rate. Factory jobs are all but gone. More automation has been installed in the last 10 years than in all the years previously.
If somebody cherry-picks data to show 'some job growth' somewhere, and claims that disproves that automation is hurting jobs, then they haven't tried to get a job in manufacturing in the last decade; and forget any chance at promotion because there's no path from 'menial floor box-mover' to anything like engineering or management.
If somebody cherry-picks data to show 'some job growth' somewhere, and claims that disproves that automation is hurting jobs, then they haven't tried to get a job in manufacturing in the last decade; and forget any chance at promotion because there's no path from 'menial floor box-mover' to anything like engineering or management.
> Centered around the knowledge that: 'you don't know you don't know,' we just have no idea which jobs will emerge as a result of new industries powered by automation.
everyone will become a youtuber and other "personality" based jobs.
everyone will become a youtuber and other "personality" based jobs.
Robot technicians. We'll need a lot of them. It will be too complicated to be worth building robot mechanics or even robot repairable robots, so we'll need women and men to do this job.
> The alternative is a tightening labor market that forces companies to pay ever higher wages that must be passed on as inflation, which usually ends with recession.
Higher wages, god beware!
More generally, the article seems to follow a pattern I've seen in a number of "there is no problem" articles: They concentrate stoically on the present. Maybe we don't have massive job loss due to automation just yet (and even that is disputed), but we also don't yet have self-driving cars in widespread use (not to mention trucks), the retailers haven't yet gotten rid of their cashiers and Amazon's warehouses are still mostly run by people - yet all those things are predicted to happen in a the next decades.
So think a discussion about future developments is more useful than stating that everything is fine right now. (Though even that seems questionable to me. If we're in such a job miracle as the article states, why did so many people vote trump? Mass delusion?)
Higher wages, god beware!
More generally, the article seems to follow a pattern I've seen in a number of "there is no problem" articles: They concentrate stoically on the present. Maybe we don't have massive job loss due to automation just yet (and even that is disputed), but we also don't yet have self-driving cars in widespread use (not to mention trucks), the retailers haven't yet gotten rid of their cashiers and Amazon's warehouses are still mostly run by people - yet all those things are predicted to happen in a the next decades.
So think a discussion about future developments is more useful than stating that everything is fine right now. (Though even that seems questionable to me. If we're in such a job miracle as the article states, why did so many people vote trump? Mass delusion?)
Industrial automation is very expensive, and human labour, with semi-automated processes, is very productive and flexible. So fully automation is far for happening, except for massive production.
That's why general purpose robots will change everything. With recent progress in AI, we will soon have robots that can be trained to do a job just like humans.
Anecdotally I can only state that this can also be seen by searching for "robotics engineer" or related job openings. I was doing just that a year ago and the findings are slim. There just aren't many jobs out there, which to me indicates that there is little demand and consequently little development in that regard.
Ever since, I've stopped believing that we'll have massive job losses due to automation (self driving cars are the only big counter example).
Ever since, I've stopped believing that we'll have massive job losses due to automation (self driving cars are the only big counter example).
From the article:
>“Robot” is shorthand for any device or algorithm that does what humans once did, from mechanical combines and thermostats to dishwashers and airfare search sites.
"Software engineer" counts in some ways too, and that's sure growing.
>“Robot” is shorthand for any device or algorithm that does what humans once did, from mechanical combines and thermostats to dishwashers and airfare search sites.
"Software engineer" counts in some ways too, and that's sure growing.
Software engineers are distinctly different from robotics engineers. To build robots, you need to be at the intersection of software, electronics and mechanical engineering. A robotics engineer would typically intersect at the software and electronics part.
From personal experience, I can tell you that transitioning from software to robotics is not trivial. It's also very frustrating. Software is typically much faster and cheaper to debug and fix than anything hardware related...
From personal experience, I can tell you that transitioning from software to robotics is not trivial. It's also very frustrating. Software is typically much faster and cheaper to debug and fix than anything hardware related...
But the GP's point was that a lot of automation doesn't need robotics at all. It just needs software, running on commodity hardware. How many jobs there are open for robotics engineers is not a good proxy for how many jobs are being automated.
I'd be cautious with that too. As Agile methodology gains more acceptance, the act of creating software becomes more and more methodology-centric. Breaking down the problem into smaller and smaller stories with TDD approaches, and suddenly, it could become feasible for an AI to start delivering the stories. It's perfectly logical to think that AIs could replace programmers in a not too distant future.
It's kind of reassuring how often those methods fail then :->
Would a lot of robotics jobs go to where the factories are, according to the popular narrative during the campaign, in China? I don't know how to check this.
Also, it's not just robotics but machinery - the coal mining jobs in Appalachia disappeared to lessened demand but the number of jobs would have gone down severely in any case due to mechanization made possible by mountain top removal. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/10/coal-co...
Also, it's not just robotics but machinery - the coal mining jobs in Appalachia disappeared to lessened demand but the number of jobs would have gone down severely in any case due to mechanization made possible by mountain top removal. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/10/coal-co...
Coal demand rose for most of the last 100 years, only recently peaking, jobs declined over most of that.
Automation and moving to surface mining (probably because it was more automatible so basically "automation") account for most of that change.
Automation and moving to surface mining (probably because it was more automatible so basically "automation") account for most of that change.
Automation has been a significant factor in the soft labor markets in developed countries over recent decades.
The thing that can still happen is an inflection point, where the up front capital investment needed for automation becomes low enough that hiring any labor stops making sense.
The thing that can still happen is an inflection point, where the up front capital investment needed for automation becomes low enough that hiring any labor stops making sense.
You are talking about nirvana, where robots are so cheap anyone can own them. The cost of food and shelter would decline to nearly zero in such a world.
Not really. Food is already highly mechanized, but it's far from free. It still requires land and capital to produce it. The cost of housing hasn't been correlated with the cost of construction for a long time. Look at how houses keep getting more and more expensive, especially in cities. Even though we have tons more construction technology then we did 150 years ago.
But food and shelter aren't the only costs. Healthcare keeps getting more and more expensive, and that can't be automated. If for no other reason than liability concerns. Any industry that can't' be automated will become disproportionately more expensive relative to everything else.
But food and shelter aren't the only costs. Healthcare keeps getting more and more expensive, and that can't be automated. If for no other reason than liability concerns. Any industry that can't' be automated will become disproportionately more expensive relative to everything else.
If anything can be automated it's healthcare.
Houses don't get more expensive, not in proportion to wages. And the costs of urban housing is land costs, which are dictated by government policies driven by NIMBYS. Cheap robots can build cheap apartments a thousand feet high to save on land costs, or cheap houses on cheap desert land.
The coming robot apocalypse is actual nirvana.
Houses don't get more expensive, not in proportion to wages. And the costs of urban housing is land costs, which are dictated by government policies driven by NIMBYS. Cheap robots can build cheap apartments a thousand feet high to save on land costs, or cheap houses on cheap desert land.
The coming robot apocalypse is actual nirvana.
We are culturally unprepared to live in it.
I don't believe future tech will replace all jobs any more than past tech has. I'm confident that people who say "this time, its different" are naive.
But... will there ever be 'robotics' jobs? I would think most jobs would be really specific like a type of machine learning or computer vision etc.
But... will there ever be 'robotics' jobs? I would think most jobs would be really specific like a type of machine learning or computer vision etc.
> I would think most jobs would be really specific like a type of machine learning or computer vision etc.
Isn't that putting the cart before the horse? A "robotics engineer" in my mind is someone who evaluates the problem needing to be automated and then finds a solution to automate it. That solution may include machine learning or computer vision, but not necessarily. There are lots of problems that can be solved more effectively in different ways.
Isn't that putting the cart before the horse? A "robotics engineer" in my mind is someone who evaluates the problem needing to be automated and then finds a solution to automate it. That solution may include machine learning or computer vision, but not necessarily. There are lots of problems that can be solved more effectively in different ways.
I doubt it. That is more of a founder role you are describing. People hiring for robotics work will likely already be working on a problem.
That sounds like a different market segment. If McDonalds wants to invest in removing their line cooks, they aren't going to wait until someone starts a startup providing that. They are going to hire an automation firm staffed with "robotics engineers". They, the engineers, then have to figure out how to make it work, be that through machine learning and computer vision, or some other method.
Although the fact that you point to founders here, and echoing that there is little viability in a career as a "robotics" engineer, emphasizes the earlier comments.
Although the fact that you point to founders here, and echoing that there is little viability in a career as a "robotics" engineer, emphasizes the earlier comments.
I think we are both agreeing with each other, you are just misreading my comment.
The OP said something to the effect of: I don't see jobs for Robotics engineers. (as evidence that robotics is not an expanding field).
I said something like: You won't see jobs for 'robotics engineers' you will see jobs for specific purposes.
> They are going to hire an automation firm staffed with "robotics engineers".
Exactly. If a company doesn't know how to solve their problem and all they want to do is automate stuff, they will hire a consultancy to tell them who to hire. The consultancy will hire specialists (i.e. not 'robotics engineers') and the large company will hire specialists and project managers. There will never be job postings for robotics engineers, all while the number of people working on robotics increases dramatically.
The OP said something to the effect of: I don't see jobs for Robotics engineers. (as evidence that robotics is not an expanding field).
I said something like: You won't see jobs for 'robotics engineers' you will see jobs for specific purposes.
> They are going to hire an automation firm staffed with "robotics engineers".
Exactly. If a company doesn't know how to solve their problem and all they want to do is automate stuff, they will hire a consultancy to tell them who to hire. The consultancy will hire specialists (i.e. not 'robotics engineers') and the large company will hire specialists and project managers. There will never be job postings for robotics engineers, all while the number of people working on robotics increases dramatically.
In 1850, 70% of American jobs were farming. Eighty years later, it was 25%. Half of America's jobs vanished in one lifetime.
This trend has been hard on farmers; I happen to know several. But I don't think we want to return to that time.
Nor do I think basic income/farm subsidies is a good answer.
This trend has been hard on farmers; I happen to know several. But I don't think we want to return to that time.
Nor do I think basic income/farm subsidies is a good answer.
You know what, we've not really walked away unscathed after the transition to modern agricultural approaches just yet.
The environmental cost of modern agricultural approaches is very high and is having knock on effects, food quality isn't always of the highest nutritional quality and crops will suffer as dead humus from petro-chemical based fertiliser retains no water, more water means higher food costs as it grows more scarce due to climate change and over population.
Maybe it wouldn't hurt society if a few more "skilled farmers" worked with/closer to the land.
The environmental cost of modern agricultural approaches is very high and is having knock on effects, food quality isn't always of the highest nutritional quality and crops will suffer as dead humus from petro-chemical based fertiliser retains no water, more water means higher food costs as it grows more scarce due to climate change and over population.
Maybe it wouldn't hurt society if a few more "skilled farmers" worked with/closer to the land.
Yea, no. Food quality and quantity is higher than ever. Our world is also awash in water, the fact that California gifted control of its water supplies to opportunists a hundred years ago not withstanding. There is no water supply problem that cannot be solved by finally applying free markets.
>There is no water supply problem that cannot be solved by finally applying free markets.
Do civil wars[1] count as "free markets"?
[1] - http://www.pnas.org/content/112/11/3241
Do civil wars[1] count as "free markets"?
[1] - http://www.pnas.org/content/112/11/3241
Especially when you consider irrigation water.
In my ruralish community, irrigation water is less than 1/10 the price of potable water, because it is so much easier to produce.
In my ruralish community, irrigation water is less than 1/10 the price of potable water, because it is so much easier to produce.
Many people left viable farms for better opportunities in industrial jobs though, rather than getting laid off from their farms.
My great-grandparents were homesteading in the 1900s.
My grandfather was still using some horse drawn equipment in the 1940s-1950s, to farm on maybe 110 acres.
So the barriers to farming for survival didn't go up very fast.
My great-grandparents were homesteading in the 1900s.
My grandfather was still using some horse drawn equipment in the 1940s-1950s, to farm on maybe 110 acres.
So the barriers to farming for survival didn't go up very fast.
Can you expand on why you don't see basic income as a solution?
You know farmers who worked on farms in the 1920s?
No, I know farmers who worked on farms since the 70s.
The trend didn't stop in 1920. It's necessarily slowed in absolute workforce percentages of course, but even now agriculture is becoming increasingly mechanized (requiring massive capital investment).
The trend didn't stop in 1920. It's necessarily slowed in absolute workforce percentages of course, but even now agriculture is becoming increasingly mechanized (requiring massive capital investment).
Shouldn't it be: Half of the US's _farming_ jobs vanished in one lifetime?
That's not how I read it. 70% of total jobs were farming jobs. Then it was 25% of total jobs. Meaning, 45% of total jobs disappeared.
Of course, they were mostly replaced by other jobs. But the jobs still disappeared.
[Assuming the number of jobs is constant]
[edit] Apparently the population grew massively over this period. From about 23 million to about 123 million. So there was actually an overall doubling of the total number of farming jobs. Just not proportionate to the population increase. http://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h980.html
Of course, they were mostly replaced by other jobs. But the jobs still disappeared.
[Assuming the number of jobs is constant]
[edit] Apparently the population grew massively over this period. From about 23 million to about 123 million. So there was actually an overall doubling of the total number of farming jobs. Just not proportionate to the population increase. http://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h980.html
You'd expect the amount of work done on farms to increase in line with the population, simply because the population has to be fed. Any comparison should take that into account. The number of farming jobs per capita has declined drastically as a result of mechanization.
Right. More people => more food.
But some combination of "keep farming like I always have" or "grow up keeping farming like Dad" wasn't supported by economic realities.
(FYI, farming automation was much of the reason the population was able to grow by that much.)
But some combination of "keep farming like I always have" or "grow up keeping farming like Dad" wasn't supported by economic realities.
(FYI, farming automation was much of the reason the population was able to grow by that much.)
The US's population grew from approximately 25mil to 110mil in that window. Was that taken into account?
Yes. That's why it's percentages.
Bigger populations always require more food, child care, accountants, etc.
From 1840 to 1920 farmers per-capita shrunk immensely.
Bigger populations always require more food, child care, accountants, etc.
From 1840 to 1920 farmers per-capita shrunk immensely.
The "robots are taking our jobs!" folks seem to miss one very important point: commerce is not about the production and trade of things to keep people alive. In fact, that's an extremely small part of it. Most all commerce is because humans are social and like trading for social reasons. That's not going anywhere.
So activities that provide needed social capital aren't going anywhere. In fact, some may become quite more valuable. Things like white water rafting or fashion consultant. Things that involve the rote production of life-sustaining products? Sure. If your job can be replaced by a robot, it will be. There are many, many jobs that can't -- and my money says there are a lot more of those kinds of jobs coming down the pike.
If that doesn't persuade you, imagine a world with strong AI where robots can produce anything you like. Would humans suddenly stop trading for things or collecting things? Of course not, in fact, it would become highly more nuanced. We're going to see industries emerge that seem incredibly stupid by modern standards, but which will be immensely influential as time goes on. The fact that we can't predict the future is a feature, not a bug of our existence.
Having said all of that, it's certainly possible that we'll see a lot of economic stress in the coming few decades. Just like in the previous few decades. Perhaps even as much stress as we had during the Great Depression. But it's always been like that.
So activities that provide needed social capital aren't going anywhere. In fact, some may become quite more valuable. Things like white water rafting or fashion consultant. Things that involve the rote production of life-sustaining products? Sure. If your job can be replaced by a robot, it will be. There are many, many jobs that can't -- and my money says there are a lot more of those kinds of jobs coming down the pike.
If that doesn't persuade you, imagine a world with strong AI where robots can produce anything you like. Would humans suddenly stop trading for things or collecting things? Of course not, in fact, it would become highly more nuanced. We're going to see industries emerge that seem incredibly stupid by modern standards, but which will be immensely influential as time goes on. The fact that we can't predict the future is a feature, not a bug of our existence.
Having said all of that, it's certainly possible that we'll see a lot of economic stress in the coming few decades. Just like in the previous few decades. Perhaps even as much stress as we had during the Great Depression. But it's always been like that.
This debate was hot too like ehen print come to Ottoman Empire. They feared same thing, destroying jobs of hand writers. So the nation lost several years due to "print ban".
As a software engineer, I often reflect on how much my own job prevents or cuts existing jobs for humans. At least in my case, it seems that cutting out human work creates more jobs.
Let's imagine I build a feature that makes it twice as fast for us to close a sale in our pipeline. Do we cut half our sales force? Of course not--we would rather keep all the people and make double the sales. This brings us even more revenue, which we use to hire more sales people and more software developers, growing the company and providing more jobs.
Perhaps this simple logic can't apply to all cases, but I've certainly seen it apply a lot!
Let's imagine I build a feature that makes it twice as fast for us to close a sale in our pipeline. Do we cut half our sales force? Of course not--we would rather keep all the people and make double the sales. This brings us even more revenue, which we use to hire more sales people and more software developers, growing the company and providing more jobs.
Perhaps this simple logic can't apply to all cases, but I've certainly seen it apply a lot!
Jevons paradox applied to employment.
There are two things here (1) A lot of people involuntarily dropped out of the workforce which not captured by simple unemployment rate (2) What's important is quality of jobs which is what you can buy with your income. We may have an abundance of food and LCD TVs at the moment -- goods that may have faced inflation before their production was less mechanized/automated but these efficiency gains have been more than eaten up by inflation in housing, education and healthcare which all are associated with competition for a scarce, less elastic, resource.
The other implication of this study is that technology doesn't contribute nearly as much to economic growth as many people think. Which also means that the 'normal' baseline for economic growth remains stable over long periods of time, and the recessions that followed unusual spurts of higher growth in the 80s and 90s may have been inevitable.
Of course they aren't, there is a huge capital cliff to make it happen.
Automation is not something that happens slowly in this context. Self driving car research has no impact on the auto industry until the moment tremendous savings can be had in this financial quarter at which point we see the destruction of millions of jobs.
Cell phones were not a slow burn advance. The Internet did not slowly take off. These things exploded in (economically speaking) blinks of the eye, and the same happens in every other industrial capacity for automation.
The barrier is the up front opportunity cost to bring down the wall and take the costs to that short term economic projection - as long as it costs $150k to replace a $50k truck driver, no publicly traded company is going to do that en masse. It hurts this quarters results too much to accept.
The fervor is not about slow burn automation. That has been happening since the industrial revolution, but it is important to not conflict role optimization with role obsolescence. We don't have elevator operators anymore. We still have farmers. The foresight is to see that we will have innovations that eliminate labor classes overnight, that they won't have an impact until they are deleting industries, and that the opportunity cost to get there is a pill few are willing to swallow so the outcomes get delayed. But we can see they are inevitable, in the same way climate change is an inevitable catastrophe that to many seems not to matter until New York City is under water and we have a billion humans dying of famine in a desertified equatorial region.
We are very good at creating bullshit jobs[1] to fill the gradual innovative automation. The job optimization that creeps through every domain constantly pounds us so we create more bullshit jobs to keep the economic system afloat. Instead of looking at statistics relating to peak employment, look at worker satisfaction and confidence that what they do actually means something. Those numbers are telling on how many people actually feel like they are making a real economic contribution[2].
[1] http://evonomics.com/why-capitalism-creates-pointless-jobs-d...
[2] https://yougov.co.uk/news/2015/08/12/british-jobs-meaningles...
I just want to postfix this with anyone can make up numbers or just use the numbers out there to rewrite history into their favor. You can make a legitimate argument that automation is fake, that worker satisfaction is high, and that this is all fearmongering. If so, I would ask why there is so much civil unrest surrounding it globally. The statistics and numbers might all be bullshit commissioned by biased interests, but the macroscopic behavior of people can reflect the reality. The entire global movement towards isolationist nationalism and totalitarianism is centralized on the obsolescence of people and the rise of bullshit work. People feel abandoned, unfulfilled, or forgotten. It is a growing trend. It is valuable not to ignore why that might be.
Automation is not something that happens slowly in this context. Self driving car research has no impact on the auto industry until the moment tremendous savings can be had in this financial quarter at which point we see the destruction of millions of jobs.
Cell phones were not a slow burn advance. The Internet did not slowly take off. These things exploded in (economically speaking) blinks of the eye, and the same happens in every other industrial capacity for automation.
The barrier is the up front opportunity cost to bring down the wall and take the costs to that short term economic projection - as long as it costs $150k to replace a $50k truck driver, no publicly traded company is going to do that en masse. It hurts this quarters results too much to accept.
The fervor is not about slow burn automation. That has been happening since the industrial revolution, but it is important to not conflict role optimization with role obsolescence. We don't have elevator operators anymore. We still have farmers. The foresight is to see that we will have innovations that eliminate labor classes overnight, that they won't have an impact until they are deleting industries, and that the opportunity cost to get there is a pill few are willing to swallow so the outcomes get delayed. But we can see they are inevitable, in the same way climate change is an inevitable catastrophe that to many seems not to matter until New York City is under water and we have a billion humans dying of famine in a desertified equatorial region.
We are very good at creating bullshit jobs[1] to fill the gradual innovative automation. The job optimization that creeps through every domain constantly pounds us so we create more bullshit jobs to keep the economic system afloat. Instead of looking at statistics relating to peak employment, look at worker satisfaction and confidence that what they do actually means something. Those numbers are telling on how many people actually feel like they are making a real economic contribution[2].
[1] http://evonomics.com/why-capitalism-creates-pointless-jobs-d...
[2] https://yougov.co.uk/news/2015/08/12/british-jobs-meaningles...
I just want to postfix this with anyone can make up numbers or just use the numbers out there to rewrite history into their favor. You can make a legitimate argument that automation is fake, that worker satisfaction is high, and that this is all fearmongering. If so, I would ask why there is so much civil unrest surrounding it globally. The statistics and numbers might all be bullshit commissioned by biased interests, but the macroscopic behavior of people can reflect the reality. The entire global movement towards isolationist nationalism and totalitarianism is centralized on the obsolescence of people and the rise of bullshit work. People feel abandoned, unfulfilled, or forgotten. It is a growing trend. It is valuable not to ignore why that might be.
If it cost $150K to replace a $50K/year truck driver then VCs would fund it. They'll then sell the solution to the publicly traded companies.
> We are very good at creating bullshit jobs[1] to fill the gradual innovative automation.
Midnight pizza deliverymen and administrators who decide how to spend resources are not bullshit jobs. They are both helpful and useful.
> The entire global movement towards isolationist nationalism and totalitarianism is centralized on the obsolescence of people and the rise of bullshit work. People feel abandoned, unfulfilled, or forgotten.
Your post doesn't make sense. The people doing the "bullshit work" aren't the ones feeling abandoned and unfulfilled. The ones promoting isolationism and nationalism are the ones lamenting the loss of their coal mining and steel production jobs, for example, which employ workers who are confident that what they do means something. Perhaps you mean that they lament the loss of these jobs? That would make sense but it doesn't seem to be very highly connected to the "bullshit jobs" argument- only the loss of satisfying jobs.
> We are very good at creating bullshit jobs[1] to fill the gradual innovative automation.
Midnight pizza deliverymen and administrators who decide how to spend resources are not bullshit jobs. They are both helpful and useful.
> The entire global movement towards isolationist nationalism and totalitarianism is centralized on the obsolescence of people and the rise of bullshit work. People feel abandoned, unfulfilled, or forgotten.
Your post doesn't make sense. The people doing the "bullshit work" aren't the ones feeling abandoned and unfulfilled. The ones promoting isolationism and nationalism are the ones lamenting the loss of their coal mining and steel production jobs, for example, which employ workers who are confident that what they do means something. Perhaps you mean that they lament the loss of these jobs? That would make sense but it doesn't seem to be very highly connected to the "bullshit jobs" argument- only the loss of satisfying jobs.
> Midnight pizza deliverymen and administrators who decide how to spend resources are not bullshit jobs. They are both helpful and useful.
I appreciate the recognition as a pizza deliveryman. It's actually my dream job. It took me a decade of searching for work that made me happy to find it, and I was as surprised with were I found it as you (and my friends and family) are.
Every day its like I'm food Santa Claus bringing joy and happiness to the whole city. Every day is food Christmas. Everyone is always so pumped to see me when I show up, and that pumps me up. It gives me a warm fuzzy feeling inside.
Every other job I had I had this sense of dread going to work. Hating being there, hating a large portion of my life and wishing for my life to go faster.
Granted I'm still a corporate wage slave, don't have health insurance/care, and prison is my retirement plan (healthcare/housing/food all free, and its not like the old folks home lets you leave whenever you want when you're old and senile anyways). But at least I can be a happy pizza wage slave.
I appreciate the recognition as a pizza deliveryman. It's actually my dream job. It took me a decade of searching for work that made me happy to find it, and I was as surprised with were I found it as you (and my friends and family) are.
Every day its like I'm food Santa Claus bringing joy and happiness to the whole city. Every day is food Christmas. Everyone is always so pumped to see me when I show up, and that pumps me up. It gives me a warm fuzzy feeling inside.
Every other job I had I had this sense of dread going to work. Hating being there, hating a large portion of my life and wishing for my life to go faster.
Granted I'm still a corporate wage slave, don't have health insurance/care, and prison is my retirement plan (healthcare/housing/food all free, and its not like the old folks home lets you leave whenever you want when you're old and senile anyways). But at least I can be a happy pizza wage slave.
Interesting having this come just after the "Guaranteed Minimum What" (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14326505) article was posted and commented on.
Debating whether the number of jobs will actually go down or not is irrelevant.
The fact is on the human lifetime timescale, jobs go away (farming from 1900-1940; various factory jobs in the late 1980s, coal mining 1970s-2000s etc). People with decades in these jobs may not be able to move into equivalent (in renumeration & status) replacement jobs as their skills are likely not transferable.
Thus to the tractor manufacturer in her 50s it is irrelevant whether there is high demand for experienced web designers or not. Perhaps her kid can go into the job, but she very likely can't. This is part of the reason for the demand for low-skill (and low paying) jobs.
So either way we have to plan for rolling mass unemployment. The only question is the shape of the derivative.
The fact is on the human lifetime timescale, jobs go away (farming from 1900-1940; various factory jobs in the late 1980s, coal mining 1970s-2000s etc). People with decades in these jobs may not be able to move into equivalent (in renumeration & status) replacement jobs as their skills are likely not transferable.
Thus to the tractor manufacturer in her 50s it is irrelevant whether there is high demand for experienced web designers or not. Perhaps her kid can go into the job, but she very likely can't. This is part of the reason for the demand for low-skill (and low paying) jobs.
So either way we have to plan for rolling mass unemployment. The only question is the shape of the derivative.
> So either way we have to plan for rolling mass unemployment.
Interestingly, each time we have lost jobs, we have diversified into many more types of jobs that cannot be swept away with a single automation breakthrough. ~90% of workforce were once farmers and almost every single one of them lost their job when mechanization came. Now, with self-driving cars, we are worried about the ~2% of the workforce who drive for a living. That is already a big change from the past, and each iteration how shown that a smaller and smaller portion of the workforce will be affected by automation at any given point in time. That is not to say that everyone will go unscathed, but mass unemployment becomes less and less likely.
Interestingly, each time we have lost jobs, we have diversified into many more types of jobs that cannot be swept away with a single automation breakthrough. ~90% of workforce were once farmers and almost every single one of them lost their job when mechanization came. Now, with self-driving cars, we are worried about the ~2% of the workforce who drive for a living. That is already a big change from the past, and each iteration how shown that a smaller and smaller portion of the workforce will be affected by automation at any given point in time. That is not to say that everyone will go unscathed, but mass unemployment becomes less and less likely.
> ~90% of workforce were once farmers and almost every single one of them lost their job when mechanization came
It was very easy to go from one job to the other. weather it needs to be required or not, many jobs today effectively require 20 years of education (12+ school, 4 undergrad, 2 masters, 2 years experience).
we talk about coal mining jobs going away as if they should have seen it coming, but tech can also be vulnerable. people forget what it was like to search for a tech job even years after the 2001 bubble burst.
also, the reason why people are worried about automation isn't the number of people effected by each iteration. it was widely accepted automation would destroy jobs and more than what was destroyed would come.
the 2001 and 2008 recession seems to indicate that is becoming less true. i would categorize those recessions as mass unemployment, thus mass unemployment is not becoming less and less likely.
It was very easy to go from one job to the other. weather it needs to be required or not, many jobs today effectively require 20 years of education (12+ school, 4 undergrad, 2 masters, 2 years experience).
we talk about coal mining jobs going away as if they should have seen it coming, but tech can also be vulnerable. people forget what it was like to search for a tech job even years after the 2001 bubble burst.
also, the reason why people are worried about automation isn't the number of people effected by each iteration. it was widely accepted automation would destroy jobs and more than what was destroyed would come.
the 2001 and 2008 recession seems to indicate that is becoming less true. i would categorize those recessions as mass unemployment, thus mass unemployment is not becoming less and less likely.
We're also pushing the pension date by 5 year every 5, so there's that. Zero mobility upward, load pressure from newcomers and if you happen to leave the job after your peak at 50 - real or percieved peak - you've mostly unemployment left as a life prospect
Virtually zero jobs require 20 years of education or degrees, 99% of jobs can be learned with a boot camp.
I recently composed an email for someone with a degree in mathematics but little experience with computers, outlining what they'd need to do to bridge the gab between their current position and someone with a degree or strong self-taught skills in CS.
When I started I thought it'd be fairly short. It wasn't, and much of the difference wasn't theoretical CS stuff—it was "stupid computer shit". Tools, the command line, daemons, implementation details for a dozen key technologies, debuggers, and on and on and on.
I think I'd underestimated how much all that time I'd spent futzing with DOS to make my games work, or playing with operating systems, or running a message board for my friends, and so on, had provided the foundation for my success as a developer. The hours weren't spent optimally, but they were spent in great quantity, and most people didn't grow up with that kind of running head-start into the industry. It's a giant hurdle to overcome.
When I started I thought it'd be fairly short. It wasn't, and much of the difference wasn't theoretical CS stuff—it was "stupid computer shit". Tools, the command line, daemons, implementation details for a dozen key technologies, debuggers, and on and on and on.
I think I'd underestimated how much all that time I'd spent futzing with DOS to make my games work, or playing with operating systems, or running a message board for my friends, and so on, had provided the foundation for my success as a developer. The hours weren't spent optimally, but they were spent in great quantity, and most people didn't grow up with that kind of running head-start into the industry. It's a giant hurdle to overcome.
that's exactly what i meant =)
I sure don't want any of that 99% being a doctor or lawyer just finishing a boot camp.
Boot camp is hyperbole for medicine, but the medical field itself is beginning to recognize (at least in the US) that the path to becoming a physician is much longer than need be, especially given the shortage we have especially for GPs.
My impression is that the medical field is mostly increasing the number of new MDs but not the number of residency slots. This means that soon medical school will end up like law school where you can get a law degree but not a job. You need at least a year of residency to be able to practice medicine in any state, to get a real job you need to finish.
http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/healthcare/266610-sho...
http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/healthcare/266610-sho...
It would be easy to fix. Current spending on residency programs is something like 10 or 15 billion dollars. With more than 3 trillion dollars in healthcare spending, a 10 billion dollar experiment aimed at lowering costs is cheap.
(and of course it isn't necessary to immediately double the number of slots in order to soak up the extra MDs)
(and of course it isn't necessary to immediately double the number of slots in order to soak up the extra MDs)
Maybe we have a shortage of GPs because specialists, such as plastic surgeons, earn lots more money.
I do. There are all kinds of things wrong with requiring 20 years of study just to be able to have a chance to do a job properly. If done properly, we can reduce that time significantly.
I'm inclined to agree about lawyers, but for medicine I'm pretty sure there just is that much to learn.
I imagine most doctors would be just fine as doctors if they graduated from high school at age 16 and also skipped 1 year (maybe 2) of undergrad.
A great way to spend more money on education would be to target lowering high school graduation age to 17, with at least a year of training oriented education for students that weren't interested in an academic track and a faster academic track for students that did want it. The idea that everybody gets value out of Algebra II is pretty confused and at my Big 10 university, I often knew more history on days I hadn't done the reading than most of the people in my discussion class (that is, our "well prepared" high school students aren't coming out of high school well rounded anyway, lets drop the pretense).
A great way to spend more money on education would be to target lowering high school graduation age to 17, with at least a year of training oriented education for students that weren't interested in an academic track and a faster academic track for students that did want it. The idea that everybody gets value out of Algebra II is pretty confused and at my Big 10 university, I often knew more history on days I hadn't done the reading than most of the people in my discussion class (that is, our "well prepared" high school students aren't coming out of high school well rounded anyway, lets drop the pretense).
If all I need is an ingrown toenail removed, or a prescription for an anti-fungal cream or something, I'd be totally fine with a doctor who went to a boot camp. Why would I want to pay for somebody who is dramatically overqualified - and correspondingly more expensive - to take care of a minor problem?
You want someone "overqualified" who can tell the difference between a fungal infection that just needs a prescription anti-fungal cream, and one that is affecting more than just your foot and/or requires something beyond a cream.
So, what, you think every medical issue demands the same level of expertise? Do we really need somebody with 8 years of schooling, residencies, etc. to deal with every little issue? Personally, I think the answer is "no".
That in no way suggests that there isn't a role for the hyper-educated / trained doctor, or for even more highly trained specialists. The point is just that not every situation requires them.
That in no way suggests that there isn't a role for the hyper-educated / trained doctor, or for even more highly trained specialists. The point is just that not every situation requires them.
Did you read the article? The argument is not "some jobs are disappearing but other jobs are being created," the argument is "stop arguing from anecdote, productivity growth is practically non-existent, the fact that you saw a restaurant with no waiters does not dent the fact that we have below-full-employment levels of unemployment."
Sure unemployment is low now. The automation wave hasn't come yet. It takes years for new technologies to get out of labs and into the real world. But self driving cars and learning robots are definitely coming soon. AI has made tremendous progress in just the last few years. There are very few jobs that can't be automated with technology that already exists.
> AI has made tremendous progress in just the last few years. There are very few jobs that can't be automated with technology that already exists.
I'm tired of hearing this argument again and again. It amounts to saying this...
> I did a thought experiment and in that experiment is was theoretically possible to replace humans with AI in any job. Therefore we're all fired!
This is not far from saying in a Universe containing 100 billion galaxies there are probably aliens out there willing to work for less than the minimum wage, just dying to make us all redundant! It's also theoretically possible.
But just because something is theoretically possible, doesn't mean it will actually happen. Most jobs won't get replaced with AI because humans will remain the better economic option.
The automotive industry is an exception for economic not technology reasons. There are a small number of car makers making enormous revenue selling cars that are vastly under utilised. Grabbing a share of the revenue by disrupting that industry with self-driving cars makes economic sense; the massive investment required to develop (and maintain!) self driving cars.
I'm tired of hearing this argument again and again. It amounts to saying this...
> I did a thought experiment and in that experiment is was theoretically possible to replace humans with AI in any job. Therefore we're all fired!
This is not far from saying in a Universe containing 100 billion galaxies there are probably aliens out there willing to work for less than the minimum wage, just dying to make us all redundant! It's also theoretically possible.
But just because something is theoretically possible, doesn't mean it will actually happen. Most jobs won't get replaced with AI because humans will remain the better economic option.
The automotive industry is an exception for economic not technology reasons. There are a small number of car makers making enormous revenue selling cars that are vastly under utilised. Grabbing a share of the revenue by disrupting that industry with self-driving cars makes economic sense; the massive investment required to develop (and maintain!) self driving cars.
Grabbing a share of the revenue by disrupting that industry with self-driving cars makes economic sense; the massive investment required to develop (and maintain!) self driving cars.
Even more, there's no definite proof (yet) that self-driving cars will even "catch on" and replace traditional human driven cars at all. OK, for shipping / transport and what-not, the economic drivers are pretty clear. But considering that at least some personal driving is actually recreational and that there's no super-strong economic incentive to favor self-driving cars, it's hardly out of the realm of possibility that the self-driving cars will just be a passing fad, or will never amount to anything but a niche market.
Note that I'm not saying that things will necessarily play out this way. Just pointing out that it is a realistic alternative to the prevailing "self driving cars are the future" narrative.
Even more, there's no definite proof (yet) that self-driving cars will even "catch on" and replace traditional human driven cars at all. OK, for shipping / transport and what-not, the economic drivers are pretty clear. But considering that at least some personal driving is actually recreational and that there's no super-strong economic incentive to favor self-driving cars, it's hardly out of the realm of possibility that the self-driving cars will just be a passing fad, or will never amount to anything but a niche market.
Note that I'm not saying that things will necessarily play out this way. Just pointing out that it is a realistic alternative to the prevailing "self driving cars are the future" narrative.
I'm not saying it's theoretically possible. I'm saying it's absolutely possible. I'd bet money on it. The technology exists right now. It just takes time to deploy it.
Right now researchers are demonstrating AIs that can learn to play video games vastly better than humans. There's not a huge leap between that and learning to control a robot. Hell I'm watching a video series right now where a random programmer builds a self driving car in GTA.
Right now researchers are demonstrating AIs that can learn to play video games vastly better than humans. There's not a huge leap between that and learning to control a robot. Hell I'm watching a video series right now where a random programmer builds a self driving car in GTA.
I get your point but I still disagree. Take a job like a plumber for example. Could you replace it with AI and robots? In theory yes. Will it ever happen? No. Why not? Because it makes no economic sense to do so. Developing, testing and maintaining robots and AI capable of handling every kitchen and bathroom alone would be massively expensive and for what return? There isn't enough money in the plumbing market to justify disrupting it.
The plumber example is a good one. All the AI breakthroughs you read about seem to have simple "IO" so to speak. Even a self driving car while a challenging task, is reasonably well constrained, an effective solution might be possible with just cameras, throttle, brake and steer angle.
A robot I can call about a plumbing problem, that can realize it needs to dig up a pipe in the front lawn, successfully dig up the pipe in the front lawn and fix a leak. Not to mention the rest of the things a plumber does. Now that is hard task and I can't see it being solved any time soon.
Any job that has difficult "IO" is a long way from automation in my mind.
A robot I can call about a plumbing problem, that can realize it needs to dig up a pipe in the front lawn, successfully dig up the pipe in the front lawn and fix a leak. Not to mention the rest of the things a plumber does. Now that is hard task and I can't see it being solved any time soon.
Any job that has difficult "IO" is a long way from automation in my mind.
Massive coal mining employment was gone by 1962. Read "Night Comes to the Cumberlands". Most US coal comes from strip mining in Wyoming.
Unreadable
[deleted]
Non-paywall link: https://facebook.com/l.php?u=https://www.wsj.com/articles/ro...
Non-paywall, non-Facebook link:
https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/robots-arent-destroying-eno...
as in
https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/robots-arent-destroying-eno...
as in
fetch -4o 0.htm https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/robots-arent-destroying-enough-jobs-1494434982Here's a non-paywalled link:
http://www.foxbusiness.com/features/2017/05/10/robots-arent-...
http://www.foxbusiness.com/features/2017/05/10/robots-arent-...
Thank you. We switched to that from https://www.wsj.com/articles/robots-arent-destroying-enough-....
We also changed the title to the subtitle, which is less baity. The text itself is pretty substantive.
We also changed the title to the subtitle, which is less baity. The text itself is pretty substantive.
Downvote. This is a political and ideologically motivated article and it has little to say about technology and lacks any insightful speculation into the future. It is backlash against all the liberal hand wringing about the impending robot apocalypse.
Such as...Obama's reports... Artificial Intelligence, Automation, and the Economy https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/blog/2016/12/20/artific...
Or bill gate's ridiculous suggestion to tax robots.
Such as...Obama's reports... Artificial Intelligence, Automation, and the Economy https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/blog/2016/12/20/artific...
Or bill gate's ridiculous suggestion to tax robots.
Isn't that already the case? I read that most of the jobs created since 2009 are in the low-paying service sector.
The problem is the financial crisis permanently gutted a lot of middle-class professional jobs.
This has less to do with automation and more to do with structural changes in the labor force and economy.