SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Automation could wipe out 375-800 million jobs globally in the next 13 years, including 16-54 million in the U.S. But don't worry, there's a new job waiting for you:
The McKinsey Global Institute cautions that as many as 375 million workers will need to switch occupational categories by 2030 due to automation.
[...] "The model where people go to school for the first 20 years of life and work for the next 40 or 50 years is broken," Susan Lund, a partner for the McKinsey Global Institute and co-author of the report, told CNN Tech. "We're going to have to think about learning and training throughout the course of your career."
[...] "The dire predictions that robots are taking our jobs are overblown," Lund said. "Yes, work will be automated, [but] there will be enough jobs for everyone in most areas." The authors don't expect automation will displace jobs involving managing people, social interactions or applying expertise. Gardeners, plumbers, child and elder-care workers are among those facing less risk from automation.
Also at Bloomberg.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Thursday November 30 2017, @04:05PM (31 children)
The authors don't expect automation will displace jobs involving managing people, social interactions or applying expertise. Gardeners, plumbers, child and elder-care workers are among those facing less risk from automation.
So people who don't like spending all day talking to people and interacting socially are just screwed and should just off themselves?
It seems like introverts are going to have a very hard time in the future unless they can become programmers (until that becomes automated...).
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday November 30 2017, @04:16PM (9 children)
Here's how much interaction a plumber needs. Arrive at customer's residence. Hear their (possibly bullshit) explanation. Examine the broken toilet, sink, washing machine, etc. Do the 5-30 minute fix, recommend replacement, etc. Give them the bill and leave. With some basic human interaction mixed in there. Probably similar for gardeners, although it might be harder for some of the gardener hustlers to find work compared to plumbers who will always have work.
Become a plumber, and you can become a millionaire. Create a plumber robot, and you can become a billionaire.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Informative) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday November 30 2017, @04:28PM (8 children)
Dude, I've been a plumber and you're on the crack. Nothing about plumbing is ever routine. Well, okay, maybe a tenth of the jobs don't have some fucked up aspect to them but they're very much the exception. Until you can convince humanity that it shouldn't have the house it wants but should instead have some cookie cutter piece of shit built from materials more homogenized in quality than NASA grade parts, robots will not be able to do plumbing with any reliability whatsoever.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday November 30 2017, @04:50PM (7 children)
I didn't say that robot plumbers were viable. My point is that great social interaction isn't needed. The customer just wants the stuff fixed.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday November 30 2017, @05:18PM (4 children)
I agree that very little interaction is needed for this transaction.
Think in the long term. Humanoid robots, sufficiently developed, could step into just about any role that humans currently occupy. Today's humanoid robots are absolutely amazing to anyone in the 80's. Tomorrow's humanoids will be just as amazing to us. We already are at the dawn of self driving cars. How long until self driving plumber robots?
Plumbers might be unnecessary without humans. A lot of parasite jobs such as politician, lawyer, banker, CEO, manager etc could be unnecessary without humans. Those jobs don't help keep the datacenters running. Other jobs like metal miners, metal foundries, silicon chip fabs, etc are necessary. A realization might occur that humans are a huge burden upon society. The only jobs that need to exist are to service the machines. And robots will have all those jobs.
When trying to solve a problem don't ask who suffers from the problem, ask who profits from the problem.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Thursday November 30 2017, @06:13PM (1 child)
I might have seen that movie plot a few times. Two easy ones. Terminator and The Matrix. Anyone else?
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday November 30 2017, @07:39PM
Long before we actually went to the moon, there were movies about it. Movies with plots are not necessarily wrong. There are other sci fi things that became reality. Terminator, Matrix or the VIKI of the 2004 movie I Robot are not necessarily wrong just be we don't like the outcome. Not to mention many books with themes of AI challenges humanity.
When trying to solve a problem don't ask who suffers from the problem, ask who profits from the problem.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Grishnakh on Thursday November 30 2017, @06:57PM
I, for one, welcome our new robot overlords.
(Score: 2) by Adamsjas on Thursday November 30 2017, @07:18PM
>>> Humanoid robots, sufficiently developed,
Your friend Arthur would tend to agree: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
But we will always be chasing "sufficiently". You can't just assume that into existence.
Long after we develop something that can crawl down a pipe inside a wall, and patch a leak that the human couldn't even reach without tearing out the wall, we will still find it insufficient.
(Score: 4, Funny) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday November 30 2017, @06:37PM (1 child)
You guys are thinking nothing but repair jobs. And only the very simple ones at that. Quite a good bit of a plumber's work is social. On new homes, remodels, additions, and the like you have to be ready to find out precisely what the customer wants, explain why they can't or shouldn't have it, give them the benefit of your experience in suggesting what's pretty close but would work much better, explaining costs, dealing with their spouse who wants something entirely different or will not take "it's both physically impossible and illegal to do it that way" as an answer, and a gerzillion other little things. Passable people skills are absolutely required if repeat business is something you're going for.
My favorite social bit was explaining that their maybe five year old kid had tried to flush someone's rubber cock down the toilet. How I managed that with a straight face I have no idea.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 30 2017, @10:14PM
There's a large (single-owner, it seems) plumbing operation in SoCal.
Their trucks (full-on rolling advertisements) are fully outfitted and ready to do most jobs.
He calls his operation The Smell Good Plumber. [google.com]
He doesn't seem to have a problem keeping all of his trucks manned.
In his commercials, he mentions his competition, Bubba (the buttcrack plumber who shows up with a pocket donut and can't give you an estimate).
"No Bubbas here".
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday November 30 2017, @04:20PM (9 children)
Nope. You entirely missed the point. Interpersonal activity won't be automated away because it requires human thought. Ditto plumbing for both social and non-social reasons. If you want job security, learn to do something that requires you use your brain. No, I don't mean white-collar work; I mean anything that needs a human around to make a judgment call when shit goes sideways.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday November 30 2017, @05:00PM (8 children)
You mean the one person who can flip the switch to shut down ALL robots if things go badly.
Yes, that person will have a job. Lucky him.
Everyone else will starve. He will be the last surviving human. But I suppose the V'GER planet had to get started somehow.
When trying to solve a problem don't ask who suffers from the problem, ask who profits from the problem.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday November 30 2017, @06:48PM
Shutting it down? Yeah... fantastic option when water's filling up someone's basement.
No, I mean the guy who doesn't do anything but grumble a few colorful words under his breath and adapt to the new circumstances when shit gets atypical. As both a programmer and a plumber, I know there is no way in hell a machine could ever deal with what even this one specific variety of shit a tradesman has to deal with regularly. The most complex program ever designed is elementary bullshit compared to the variety of input life can throw at you.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Adamsjas on Thursday November 30 2017, @07:22PM (6 children)
We can't even automate after-meal cleanup in the kitchen, let alone the plumber in the crawl space.
The closest we've come is the dishwasher. But we serve it, rather than it serving US.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by DannyB on Thursday November 30 2017, @07:43PM (4 children)
You're not thinking long term enough. You're thinking like today's technology is the endpoint of the evolution of technology and it will never improve to things we don't have today.
At one point someone getting a job as a truck driver might say: those trucks aren't going to drive themselves.
We are at the dawn of a point where we can see that one day they probably will drive themselves.
Honda demonstrated a scripted demo of Asimo taking drink orders and then delivering the drinks back to the table.
Why, oh why is it too difficult to conceive of automated after meal cleanup and plumbers?
When trying to solve a problem don't ask who suffers from the problem, ask who profits from the problem.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 30 2017, @10:40PM (1 child)
why is it too difficult to conceive of automated [...] plumbers?
As Buzzard already noted, the installed base was put in by humans and no 2 of those are alike.
Similar deal for homeowners.
a scripted demo of Asimo
You'll need a script for every plumbing permutation in existence.
Good luck with that.
I still see a need for an on-site Master plumber|device programmer.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Pav on Friday December 01 2017, @05:49AM
My uncles and brother are in the building industry. In my country (Australia) houses are already beginning to be 3d printed that are "custom" but created from pre-specified wall sections, and there are already eg. automatic pipe joiners that require no qualified plumber (other than to sign off on the work). Sooner than you think it will be easier/cheaper to demolish and rebuild rather than refurbish, and in a standardised enough way as to not require much time at all from qualified tradesmen.
(Score: 2) by Adamsjas on Saturday December 02 2017, @09:01PM (1 child)
> You're thinking like today's technology is the endpoint of the evolution of technology and it will never improve to things we don't have today.
Not really. I'm just thinking if it was a simple problem to solve it would be already solved.
Turns out dish washing and putting away etc is really really hard.
See
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/11/21/google-billionaire-eric-schmidt-people-want-dish-washing-robots.html [cnbc.com]
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday December 04 2017, @02:37PM
Okay. Sure. If it were simple, it would already be solved. Therefore it is a hard problem. That does not mean it won't be solved. Lots of previously unsolved hard problems are now solved at a practical feasible level. Computer vision. Speech recognition. Excellent speech synthesis. (Not: theees izzz thuuuu teee arrrr essss atey speeeech synnnnthezzizzizzrrrrrrr.) Even self driving cars.
I'm not suggesting plumber bots are on the immediate horizon. It is a hard problem. I merely suggest that it is a problem that WILL be solved. And there are no guarantees. I could be wrong.
When trying to solve a problem don't ask who suffers from the problem, ask who profits from the problem.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Thursday November 30 2017, @10:46PM
The dishwasher saves you from having to manually scrub and rinse every individual dish. It doesn't save on moving the dishes between the eating table and the kitchen, or putting the clean ones back in the cupboard.
Eventually we'll have robots (humanoid ones) that can do those simple tasks, but it'll be a while probably. But as the other poster noted, Asimo is doing some interesting stuff.
Repair jobs like plumbing probably will take a lot longer because they require some intelligence, as well as every job being a little different.
However, there's only so many plumbers we need as a society. How many hours have you hired a plumber for in the past year? I haven't used one at all, even though my house is from 1940. Stuff just doesn't break that much, so you don't need that many plumbers to service a population. Same for many other trades jobs (e.g., auto mechanics are needed less and less as cars become more reliable and have longer service intervals).
I contend that at some point, there's going to be a lot more introverts than suitable jobs for them, while the extroverts will have an easier time with automation because they can happily do all the human-contact jobs that can't be automated (or where people prefer having a human, like with fine dining waiters), as well as the highly-social jobs like management. Of course, the introverts could just take the social jobs and deal with it, but what if they start having personality tests to discriminate against them, after they find that introverts make for unpleasant customer service people after a while?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Thursday November 30 2017, @05:03PM (10 children)
It seems like introverts are going to have a very hard time in the future
You don't know what an introvert is. An introvert isn't someone who's antisocial. It's someone who can't deal with social relationships more than a set number of hours per day, and needs time to disconnect and be on their own the rest of the time.
I'm an introvert. I do - and indeed enjoy - socializing with others. But after 10 to 12 hours of socializing, I'm fed up with humanity and I want to be left alone until the next day. Yet my employers, colleagues and friends think I'm a great guy to be around, and I'm the life of the party. It's just that when the party lasts too long, I typically find an excuse to disappear and go home. I can do longer, but I don't enjoy it.
So no, in a hypothetical people-focused job market, introverts won't fare any worse than their extrovert counterparts.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Thursday November 30 2017, @05:10PM (5 children)
You don't know what an introvert is. An introvert isn't someone who's antisocial. It's someone who can't deal with social relationships more than a set number of hours per day, and needs time to disconnect and be on their own the rest of the time.
I know full well what an introvert is, and you're absolutely correct in your definition. I don't see how that contradicts my prior assertion: introverts don't want jobs where they have to be social all day long. Some introverts can handle more hours of socializing than others; if you can happily handle 10-12 hours, that's really quite a lot. Others don't feel comfortable spending even 8 hours chatting with people, so a full-time job full of constant socializing is not going to make them very happy. I certainly never meant to imply that introverts want to be hermits with zero social interaction ever. Personally, I'd be miserable. I like some social interaction here and there like any normal person, but a full and constant 8 hours of it, day in and day out? No thanks.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 30 2017, @06:00PM (4 children)
And, most jobs don't require "socializing" (ie. interacting with others) anywhere near 8 hours a day.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 30 2017, @06:31PM (2 children)
2 hours and I'm out :/
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 30 2017, @07:18PM (1 child)
The 5 second rule is my limit.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday December 01 2017, @01:15AM
Looks like you just exhausted your daily dose of socialisation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Thursday November 30 2017, @09:30PM
Managerial jobs usually do, and those were specifically mentioned.
Most customer-service jobs do too, depending on how busy the establishment is.
Honestly, all the jobs that are most likely to be automated away that I can think of are the ones that are best-suited to introverts, or don't require that much human interaction: factory workers, taxi drivers, truck drivers, etc. Programming jobs are all turning social now with the rise of the Brogrammers and the open-plan office and Agile/Scrum.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday November 30 2017, @06:55PM (2 children)
You have a waaaaay higher threshold than I do. I can tolerate the human race for maybe 4 hours a day before I start thinking of frighteningly detailed scenarios involving Chixculub-sized asteroid impacts. Less if I didn't sleep enough.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 30 2017, @10:55PM (1 child)
"Human" is NOT a race.
The races are Negroid, Caucasoid, Mongoloid, and Australoid.
Human is a species.
On top of this, race is a pseudoscientific thing.
Though Abel and Baker may appear to be of the same race, Abel's genome could easily be closer to Charlie's--even though Charlie appears to be of a different race than Abel and Baker.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday December 01 2017, @05:39AM
Ye ken well wha' I mean, laddie...
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 30 2017, @10:49PM
Definitions:
Social: You are invited and you go to the party
Asocial (like asynchronous or asymmetrical): You are invited to the party but you don't go
Anti-social: You are NOT invited to the party but you crash it anyway and spoil everyone's fun
Really Anti-social: You go to the party and try to kill everyone there
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Informative) by DannyB on Thursday November 30 2017, @04:58PM (13 children)
There was a coal miner. The coal mine closed.1
So he got a job as an assembly line worker at an automobile maker.
Then his job was replaced by a robot.
So he became a truck driver, because those trucks aren't going to drive themselves. No weigh ever.
I saw a YouTube video yesterday evening. A diesel truck mechanic describing his belief that he and fellow mechanics will be out of a job in ten to fifteen years if the Tesla truck becomes predominant. No transmission. No oil changes. Nuclear explosion proof windshield. No engine work. No broken cooling hoses. Maybe tire replacements. Possibly greaseless wheels not requiring lube. He also expressed the idea that EVs might similarly imperil auto mechanics jobs. He was excited about the tech, but realistic about the future.
Probably pr0n star jobs are safe from automation, for now. At least in places such as uncanny valley.
And of course, software developers perpetually believe they cannot be replaced. No weigh ever.
1but I hear coal mines are coming back, like disco! we'll clean the coal and then burn it
When trying to solve a problem don't ask who suffers from the problem, ask who profits from the problem.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 30 2017, @05:29PM (3 children)
But then, with ever more energy hungry machines on the planet, and the trend for renewable energy, maybe he will get a job at an electricity production treadmill. Solves three problems at once: Fights obesity as people do physical work again, gets people employed, and generates green energy as people don't consume fossil fuel (well, sort of depends on what they eat, of course). Yes, it's utterly boring. But give them a smartphone, and they will entertain themselves during work. ;-)
(Score: 2) by curunir_wolf on Thursday November 30 2017, @07:13PM
Pretty much the entire plot of Glenn Beck's Agenda 21 [amazon.com]. A few lucky folks got jobs tending the children (not the same ones with jobs gestating them).
I am a crackpot
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday November 30 2017, @07:32PM (1 child)
The energy produced by humans on treadmills is less than or equal to the energy they consume from food. Effectively the human becomes a biochemical machine to convert plant (or animal) matter to energy. Even if humans are permitted Big Macs to have some animal food matter, those beefs must be bred, raised and processed into burgers.
Perhaps the machines can engineer a similarly efficient biochemical machine without the need for puny, whiny, complaining, ungrateful, annoying, stupid humans -- and the problems that come with maintaining humans and their supporting infrastructure.
Even if you cut out humans as the middleman from converting plant matter into energy you still are losing efficiency. Ultimately that plant matter gets its energy from the sun. Cut out all the middlemen and go straight to the source. Solar panels to collect direct energy from nuclear fusion.
That solves more than three problems at once. No humans means nobody gets bored. No smartphones needed. BTW, the treadmill you describe sounds like an episode of Black Mirror, I think it was called Fifteen Million or something like that.
When trying to solve a problem don't ask who suffers from the problem, ask who profits from the problem.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 30 2017, @11:26PM
I recently read a thing on how to do a cruelty-free/meatless Thanksgiving. [alternet.org]
It was mentioned that bacon is really hard to fake.
This was the suggestion: (Bacon Stretcher)
We've had multiple stories on the development of meat-flavored soybean patties with texture and it appears that that isn't far from commercial reality.
So, even livestock production seems to be about to wane.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Thursday November 30 2017, @05:30PM (7 children)
A diesel truck mechanic describing his belief that he and fellow mechanics will be out of a job in ten to fifteen years if the Tesla truck becomes predominant. No transmission. No oil changes. Nuclear explosion proof windshield. No engine work. No broken cooling hoses. Maybe tire replacements. Possibly greaseless wheels not requiring lube. He also expressed the idea that EVs might similarly imperil auto mechanics jobs. He was excited about the tech, but realistic about the future.
He's wrong.
First off, broken cooling hoses are absolutely a possibility, at least with Teslas, and probably other EVs too. Teslas have liquid-cooled motors and (liquid-heated) battery packs. It's not as convoluted as a gas engine's cooling system with its myriad hoses, but there's still some hoses there which will fail after enough time.
Tires on EVs are no different than tires on other vehicles, so the tire technicians' jobs aren't going anywhere soon.
"Greaseless wheels"? Nothing about the wheels, or even the axles, is different with EVs. We've had "sealed bearings" in cars for ages. I don't know about big diesel trucks though; perhaps those retained grease fittings to get better service life in exchange for more maintenance. Regardless, there's nothing about electric motors than makes this different.
There's no multi-speed transmission on a typical EV, but there usually is a single-speed gearbox, with oil, which means oil changes.
Basically, this guy is an idiot who hasn't bothered to learn anything about EVs. Electric cars and trucks will indeed mean less work for mechanics, but that doesn't mean *no* work. A lot of things aren't any different (esp. tires), some are almost the same (e.g. brakes, but on EVs the friction brakes aren't used as much because of regen braking), and other things will still need some service, even though it's less than for current vehicles.
And of course, software developers perpetually believe they cannot be replaced. No weigh ever.
A lot of software jobs are already done by people in other fields (i.e., they don't have CS degrees), who use software to do their work. There's tons of scientists who've taught themselves Python to do data analysis for instance. Eventually, almost all software will be auto-coded somehow or written in a very high-level language by people to do their work, just like how any engineer who writes a technical paper uses English, even though he doesn't have a degree in English composition or writing, and hasn't gotten any special training in using a word processor.
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Thursday November 30 2017, @07:41PM (6 children)
The Tesla trucks have a motor per wheel, no gearbox. Ceramic bearings need no lube, don't know if Tesla is using them though.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Thursday November 30 2017, @08:55PM (4 children)
Interesting; I'm only familiar with the mechanicals of their cars, not the trucks that are still in the prototype stage. Wheel motors have been proposed for a long time for electric cars, but real-world cars don't use them because they're a terrible idea: they're really heavy, and the last thing you want in a car is heavy wheels, as it gives you crappy handling and ride quality. If they ever figure out how to make them lightweight, this could change, but for now electric cars have motors mounted on the body, with axles going to the drive wheels, just like any gas engine car.
The truck could be different because ride quality isn't so important on semi-trucks, and those things are extremely stiffly sprung on the drive wheels anyway.
As for ceramic bearings, that again is something where it doesn't matter if your motive source is electric or fossil fuel. Are they used in mainstream cars or commercial trucks? Not that I've ever heard of.
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Friday December 01 2017, @02:17AM (3 children)
Not only that but think about what a shock absorber is and which end you want to be on. Yup, the end that isn't being shocked. Do you want that part to contain motors? Think about a motor and then think about it slamming down into a big city pothole smashing the wheel end and possibly destroying the motor.
Honestly, I was expecting to see a motor driving a standard single drive axle while a lifting/steering tag axle follows. That's pretty standard in Europe with 44t limits and some NA carriers.
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Friday December 01 2017, @06:14AM (2 children)
I must have misinterpreted something I read somewhere. While the Tesla truck is using a motor per wheel, it does have gearboxes and driven axles:
https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-semi-four-motor-drivetrain-gearbox/ [teslarati.com]
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Friday December 01 2017, @04:15PM
Aha! That does make a lot more sense.
They do tout the benefits of 4 independent motors here, but I really wonder if it makes that much sense, and wouldn't do better with 2 larger motors (is jackknifing really that much of a problem?). However, there's a good engineering reason to use 4: they're just reusing the existing Model S motors, instead of having to make special motors just for the truck, and taking advantage of production efficiencies and the lack of need to do development for a new motor.
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Friday December 01 2017, @09:13PM
Now that's wonky. I see these motor-axles being a weak link in the truck. This is a standard 6x4 axle setup where the drive axles are custom made with a super wide differential housing where they mount two opposing model s motors and associated gearing. The axle is on the wheel side of the suspension and shock absorbers so it's going to take a lot of punishment.
*BUT* I can see why they did this: path of least resistance. They saved a ton of money, time, and effort building the truck's drive-line and chassis by going this route. The axle design is the same as a standard heavy truck axle save for the wider diff housing. That way they can use standard wheel end hardware, brake, and most important of all: suspension components. They also get to use a standard chassis and avoid building custom motors or other crazy axle setups.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday December 01 2017, @03:09PM
My understanding is that Tesla cars have a fixed gearbox between the motor and the wheels. It is not an adjustable transmission. But a permanently fixed gear ratio.
When trying to solve a problem don't ask who suffers from the problem, ask who profits from the problem.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Grishnakh on Thursday November 30 2017, @05:35PM
Probably pr0n star jobs are safe from automation, for now.
Not necessarily. Total amateurs are buying software packages and models now that are scarily life-like (iRay is one name I hear about). Pretty soon, you'll be able to use software to generate your own movies with virtual actors that look little different from real humans, except that they look a lot better (certainly a lot better than anyone you can hire on a meager budget to do that kind of work).
Maybe it won't be quite as popular in other countries, but here in America with the way young women look (fat and covered in tattoos), virtual pr0n should be a huge hit when the technology is a little more mature.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 30 2017, @06:02PM (1 child)
Predictions about the future are quite often wrong. If this one is accurate, we cannot know up front.
(Score: 2) by arslan on Thursday November 30 2017, @11:35PM
True, but enough "experts" say it and enough people with money/power believe it and throw money at it, it has a higher chance of happening.
My view is technically it can happen and the scenario being describe is not too unattainable. However there the socia-economic barriers behind whether such a state is desirable. If one subscribe to the tin-foil theory of the special 1% behind the curtain using ultra-consumerism to keep the sheeple busy to feed their consumer addiction and hence docile and subservient to their rights being eroded then this particular future is pretty dangerous unless there's some changes in the socio-economic structure where the jobless sheeple can feed their addiction.
(Score: 3, Informative) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Thursday November 30 2017, @07:24PM (9 children)
Then Mr. Lund and the study authors aren't applying enough imagination, and they're relying on past results and how automation has worked before to describe how the future will be. That usually doesn't work well as a predictor. The best analogy I read was look at how the Star Trek series over the past fifty years has portrayed how computers will be in the future. They get some things semi-accurate (Tablets instead of PADDs.) But for the most part they're actually wrong. I wish I had the citation where I first read that, but I don't.
My prediction, FWIW, is that automation will continue apace to require a smaller workforce overall and eventually there won't be enough innovation or development to support the starving masses. Then we'll get civil unrest and wars like the world has never known before. And I hope I'm wrong.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Grishnakh on Thursday November 30 2017, @09:26PM (4 children)
The best analogy I read was look at how the Star Trek series over the past fifty years has portrayed how computers will be in the future. They get some things semi-accurate (Tablets instead of PADDs.) But for the most part they're actually wrong. I wish I had the citation where I first read that, but I don't.
I disagree; they didn't do too badly IMO. In TOS, they had "tapes" that looked just like cartridges, and the computers had voice interfaces mainly. This was a pretty common view of computing in the future at the time, and the cartridges thing really wasn't too far off from how microcomputers in the 80s were used. What they really didn't seem to understand was networking, even though they depicted the ship as having a central computer with remote terminals located throughout, which is just how mainframes of the 60s worked. Why they thought that stuff needed to be stored on "tapes" plugged into the terminals, instead of just stored in the "library computer" (a term they used now and then in the show), I'm not really sure. Honestly, if you overlook the cartridges bit, and then give them some leeway because of the low budget and poor visual effects achievable at the time (there's no way they could have made futuristic-looking computer displays on a TV show in 1966; they struggled with it even in high-budget 80s movies), they didn't do too badly. Also notice that they had tablets in TOS: Kirk has to sign a report about fuel consumption every now and then. But nothing else is done with them unfortunately.
In TNG, the PADDs were definitely a prediction of today's tablets, but even here they screwed up: they didn't seem to get that the tablets could be remote wireless terminals to the central computer, so there's one scene where a whole bunch of them are piled up on Picard's desk, waiting for him to get to them, which really makes no sense. Here again, the computer frequently is accessed with voice commands, which really isn't implausible; we just haven't gotten that good at it yet. We have to take a lot of time writing Python programs or SQL queries to do things like what Riker can do by just asking a simple question in English. And then this show adds in some pretty spiffy-looking computer displays (best when Data is driving). And lots of people use non-voice terminals to do their work.
One thing that shows, however, that ST:TNG is in a different universe from ours, is the way those displays worked. Notice that the displays update almost instantly, and when Data is operating them, they can go through hundreds of pages of data at a ridiculous rate. Obviously, that's impossible in our universe unless we adopt computer technology from some aliens or something, because our computers are all getting slower, thanks to shitty UIs and shitty programming (and the dumb idea that all applications need to run through a web browser--see Electron). Even when processing is constantly getting better, the user interface part is constantly getting slower and less usable and functional, not to mention much uglier. UIs hit a peak in the mid-200s, and have been going downhill since 2010.
Overall, I'd say given these are TV shows set hundreds of years in the future where FTL travel is possible, the computer tech portrayed really isn't *that* wrong. Like all sci-fi I know of, they failed to predict the Internet, however on a exploratory starship this isn't really that important because of communications problems (we're not going to be playing online games between Earth and Mars, for instance, until we invent FTL data communication due to massive latency), the way it would be in sci-fi set in the future on Earth. They also came up with "tricorders", as well as "communicators", which together kinda predict our modern smartphones: there's scenes showing them using the tricorders to look up data for instance, the way we'd use a phone to look something up on Wikipedia.
One thing about ST I'll never understand, however, is why the bridge consoles are constantly exploding and hurting or even killing crewmembers during battles. There's no reason to route that much power through a bridge station. Also, the handheld phaser design in TNG didn't make much sense either.
I'd also like to point out that tablet computers were also predicted in 1969 in "2001: A Space Odyssey". The guys on the Discovery ship were using one to read the news.
As for your prediction, at some point we're not going to have enough good-paying work for a large chunk of the population to do, and we're going to have to resort to UBI. If we don't, civil unrest and wars are going to be the result.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 30 2017, @11:00PM (1 child)
We're going to end up with neural links. The basics of that tech already works in labs and you can DIY a crude hack to both control and sense things you normally can't. No one will need paper, tablets, or computers (I'm sure many people will want to keep them around for a few generations). Everything will be able to be performed virtually. What happens after that we don't know. There's too many possible branches. Borg? Couch potatoes? Overlord, memory controlling government? Species ending war? Tech de-evolution? Genetic engineering advanced enough to engineer anything you want thus no need for electrical machines? Unending virtual life? I think Peter F. Hamilton's books show a far more likely future for us than Star Trek.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Friday December 01 2017, @04:24PM
Yep, there's a lot of places where ST missed the boat, which are outside of the computing mostly: genetic engieneering is one. They touched on it a few times, once in a 2nd season TNG episode where a research colony engineered some kids to have super immune systems which ended up making them deadly to other humans, and Dr. Pulaski has to save the day and herself. Then in DS9, somehow genetic engineering has been illegal for a long time in the Federation (which contradicts that TNG episode), but Dr. Bashir turns out to be a product of it. But really, with advanced enough technology, GE is pretty impossible to stop. How are you going to tell that someone had the Sickle Cell Anemia defect fixed in their genes? And why would you not want them to do this anyway? Plus, now we're figuring out how to modify genes in already-living creatures with CRISPR; back in the 90s, we though it'd only be possible at the embryo stage, so theoretically, if you could jump through time a couple centuries, you could have your genes altered to be taller, smarter, a different skin color, have some superhuman abilities, etc.
With neural links, that sounds like The Matrix, and in a world with that technology, it becomes questionable why anyone would want to live outside the simulation. We could engineer ourselves into a future where we just don't want to live real life any more. Why bother having kids, for instance, if you can live in a simulation and have simulated kids that are just the way you want them, instead of having real kids which have a good chance of turning out to be little assholes?
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Friday December 01 2017, @04:28PM (1 child)
You're right that they got things right. But a lot of what they got right reflected the ways computers of the day were used. TOS: They had cartridges, but they were of cassette tape size. Very long lasting technology, but existed in the day. TNG: They had "isolinear chips", mimicing USB sticks of the day. Sure I still use USB sticks today, but it's more common to have cloud resources. In Voyager they were all but gone. Voyager used "gel pack" biopower cells - gel cell batteries were common then with just a little treknobabble that they were bio based. In TOS you had to be at the console where the computer terminal was (and it was a terminal link to the big ship's mainframe.) (You also had the revolution of M-5's Engrams not completely dissimilar from notions of Neural Nets - they get some things right.) But the time of TNG you get Picard's ready room 'laptop' style display (common then) and PADDs (just around the corner). We also got voice control (a future harbinger of Siri), where in TOS it was all button-pressing.
Mobile, you're right they had communicators and tricorders. But communicators in TOS and even TNG were refined versions of walkie-talkies; how many people use their smartphones in speakerphone mode when unnecessary? (Sure, some, but they use them more like phones than two-way radio.) Tricorders were general-purpose gadgets to some degree, but the TOS tricorder clearly used a tiny little CRT - because nobody predicted color LCD display. The TNG tricorder buttons were very clearly for predefined functions (BIO - GEO - MET), not the touchscreen customize-for-button. In fact, both had buttons - nobody predicted touchscreen on that scale. So they had the things, just used like you'd expect in the days of production.
The book or article I read made a compelling case that whatever the technology was, it was expressed in terms familiar to the day. (Because you have the paradox of presenting the future, yet the viewer/reader must be able to relate to it all somehow.) So you get the future you mention, but used in terms of how we utilize tech today. Also because if you know what the future will be like..... then you make it and get rich. :)
This sig for rent.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Friday December 01 2017, @04:34PM
We also got voice control (a future harbinger of Siri), where in TOS it was all button-pressing.
TOS had some voice control and feedback too.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday December 01 2017, @02:22AM (2 children)
Past results which have worked over centuries in the face of a huge amount of technology improvement and expansion of global trade, and are still working as of the present day. In other words, if they're wrong, shouldn't we start to see that at some point? Another thing that hasn't changed are all the Chicken Littles forecasting doom and gloom. Maybe some century down the road they'll be right instead of glaringly wrong?
My view is that economics still works even in the situations that you are worried about. And we still have three economics effects ignored here. First, comparative advantage. Even in the situation where automation can do everything better than you, it doesn't mean that it is more economical to do so. The opportunity cost of diverting such resources can outweigh the cost of using existing human labor for the task.
Second is Jevons paradox. When one increases the productivity of human labor via automation and robotics, one will make it more valuable and hence, more in demand. Third, it's not that hard to create new markets and economies when the existing ones don't serve a group very well. Black markets are a classic example of this in action.
The thing is we're better off [soylentnews.org] than we've ever been before. Technology advances, including automation, are a large part of why that happened.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Friday December 01 2017, @03:04PM (1 child)
That only holds as long as human agency is involved. Once AI comes into the picture, humanity falls off the economic cliff. That's if the AI decides it wants to continue to do things that serve humans. If it decides humans are competition for limited resources, then we're really in the soup.
So, yes, up until the last human is removed from the chain of production, the handful of guys with 7 PhD's and neural implants and VIs to expand their productivity will have limitless wealth and power, but how long do you really think that would be tolerated by the other 7 billion humans on the planet who are starving and desperate? Bullets are not infinite and gun barrels overheat and cartridges jam and guidance systems fail. The ultra-geniuses might easily command their kill-bots to obliterate the masses, but after they break down after killing the 1 billionth person there are a further 6 billion to tear them limb-from-limb with their bare hands, if need be.
Maybe the best path for humanity is not that one. Maybe de-humanizing for the purposes of control is not a sustainable progression. Maybe it would be better for everybody to comport ourselves in a way as a global society that brings out the best in everyone. That might be a lofty goal and in all likelihood impossible to fully realize, but isn't it a better star to navigate by than the one we have been?
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday December 01 2017, @04:02PM
Human agency never went away.
I guess you missed my bit about humans setting up their alternate economies when that happens.
But there are already vastly more bullets in the world than would be needed to kill all seven billion people. Such a conflict will depend on a lot of things, but in theory, killbots would lose in the short term and win in the long term due to greater human numbers at first, and a faster production and training cycle for killbots later.
No, because people who don't play by those rules can win big. It's a lot easy to discourage killbot army creation, if there are huge negative consequences to doing so, like your factory becomes a smoking hole in the ground. But that means not being nice on occasion.
(Score: 1) by tftp on Friday December 01 2017, @02:44AM
There will be no revolution. First, any number of starving people are not capable of attacking anything that is protected even with today's weapons, let alone Robocops and Terminators. Second, the starving people can be geographically isolated from objects of their anger. Third, it might be more convenient for a society that maintains millions of robots to just feed the unwanted masses (see basic income.)
But in any case only in Middle ages one baron could be richer than another because he had more peasants. Today head count means liabilities. Only smart heads are assets. Without some transition from the current economic model we will end up with a handful of rich men living in palaces on tropical islands and with a continent full of "everyone else," not customers and not makers, living on scraps that robots once a week drop from helicopters. The difficulty in this transition lies in the fact that the power belongs to industrial giants, and not to the government. Why would the owners of robot factories give up their positions? What can be offered to them? The throne of God-Emperor? Might be not enough, as they will be already at that level.
If anyone thinks that it's impossible to create such a ghetto - it's easy. Robots will build cities on a designated territory, where no natural resources exist, and offer them for free, along with the basic income. All jobless will fly there, propelled by a mighty kick of suddenly elevated rent. And then, one day, they will get an offer of the true VR...
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 30 2017, @08:36PM (2 children)
Damn that Cotton gin! It put so many slaves out of work!
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday December 01 2017, @01:28AM (1 child)
They needed a war to solve the slave problem.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 01 2017, @03:33PM
They didn't solve it at all. The side that won assumed the slaves wanted to go back home to Africa once freed, they were wrong. The side that lost, co-opted and turned the freed slaves into "voters" and thus re-enslaved them.
(Score: 1) by pdfernhout on Friday December 01 2017, @04:00AM (3 children)
From 2010: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p14bAe6AzhA [youtube.com]
"The Richest Man in the World: A parable about robotics, abundance, technological change, unemployment, happiness, and a basic income."
The biggest challenge of the 21st century: the irony of technologies of abundance used by scarcity-minded people.
(Score: 2) by dak664 on Friday December 01 2017, @03:06PM (2 children)
Interesting article by Hagens and White distinguishes between "work" necessary for survival and "jobs" useful for social cohesion. Work can be automated (as long as surplus energy is available) but our ape brains would still want to endure 40 hours per week of a "job" to show others we have earned our banana pellets.
http://www.resilience.org/stories/2017-11-30/gdp-jobs-and-fossil-largesse/ [resilience.org]
(Score: 3, Informative) by Grishnakh on Friday December 01 2017, @04:30PM (1 child)
I don't know where people get this crazy idea.
There's plenty of people who are perfectly happy to not do any work at all and live shallow, meaningless lives: just look at trophy wives of rich men. There's also lots of people (this includes me) who'd love to not have to work, but instead be free to work on their own personal projects to satisfy their own whims, rather than to prove anything to others. There's a bunch of people who like to travel endlessly, and only work just enough to afford to do this. Now you'll probably counter with something about personal projects still being "work", but it's really not, it's a way of keeping busy and satisfying your own drive to do something, whether it's entertainment or productive. Is an artist who somehow doesn't need to support himself, and just likes to lock himself in a studio and paint pictures "working"? No, he's satisfying his urge to be creative. Also, the 40 hour thing is bogus, and is a pretty modern invention. Multiple studies have found that workers are happier with fewer hours and just about as productive usually.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Grishnakh on Friday December 01 2017, @04:31PM
(This site needs to allow editing...)
I'll tell you where some of this crazy idea comes from actually: Protestantism. It's a religious idea that work (esp. meaningless toiling) is somehow good for you.