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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 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.
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(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?
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(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.
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(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.
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(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?