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posted by mrpg on Thursday December 14 2017, @11:20PM   Printer-friendly
from the robot-scare-fad dept.

Weep for the future?

Today's 6th graders will hit their prime working years in 2030.

By that time, the "robot apocalypse" could be fully upon us. Automation and artificial intelligence could have eliminated half the jobs in the United States economy.

Or, plenty of jobs could still exist, but today's students could be locked in a fierce competition for a few richly rewarded positions requiring advanced technical and interpersonal skills. Robots and algorithms would take care of what used to be solid working- and middle-class jobs. And the kids who didn't get that cutting-edge computer science course or life-changing middle school project? They'd be relegated to a series of dead-end positions, serving the elites who did.

Alternatively, maybe Bill Gates and Elon Musk and the other big names ringing the alarm are wrong. A decade from now, perhaps companies will still complain they can't find employees who can read an instruction manual and pass a drug test. Maybe workers will still be able to hold on to the American Dream, so long as they can adjust to incremental technological shifts in the workplace.

Which vision will prove correct?

30 years into the Information Revolution and schools are only just now realizing they should teach kids how to code...


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  • (Score: 4, Informative) by theluggage on Friday December 15 2017, @11:37AM (6 children)

    by theluggage (1797) on Friday December 15 2017, @11:37AM (#610245)

    30 years into the Information Revolution and schools are only just now realizing they should teach kids how to code...

    ...and 60 years after Grace Hopper and co. invented COBOL, drastically reducing the time and level of technical skill required to create computer software, you still think that AI doesn't threaten the job prospects of human coders in the same way as every other skilled profession?

    Main argument for teaching coding is that its fun and doesn't atrophy the brain like watching reality TV.

    What schools should be teaching more of is probably guitar playing, crochet, handmade pottery, creative writing, acting, ballroom dancing, ans so on - plus the increasingly rare skill of being able to find one's arse with both hands (which can come from actually doing and making things rather than just learning to answer test questions).

    Oh, yes, and stamping down on the fucking puritan work ethic mentality that stops us having sensible conversations about ideas like basic income without agonising over the possibility that people might get something for nothing.

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  • (Score: 1) by MindEscapes on Friday December 15 2017, @03:44PM (2 children)

    by MindEscapes (6751) on Friday December 15 2017, @03:44PM (#610318) Homepage

    sensible conversations about ideas like basic income without agonising over the possibility that people might get something for nothing.

    Why do you think the 'Haves' would give anything to the 'Have Nots' just to keep them around when they are no longer needed? In feudal times they were still needed to actually work the land to produce, now that can be automated. No, there will be massive massacres or plagues and the 'Haves' will be keeping it for themselves. Too much risk of being overthrown otherwise.

    --
    Need a break? mindescapes.net may be for you!
    • (Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Friday December 15 2017, @08:53PM (1 child)

      by maxwell demon (1608) on Friday December 15 2017, @08:53PM (#610455) Journal

      Because there's still one thing the haves want to have that they need the have-nots for: Power. You cannot have power without people over whom you can exert that power.

      --
      The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
      • (Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Friday December 15 2017, @09:04PM

        by Phoenix666 (552) on Friday December 15 2017, @09:04PM (#610464) Journal

        Also, it's not half as much fun to eat your cake unless there are hordes of starving peasants watching you do it.

        --
        Washington DC delenda est.
  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday December 16 2017, @07:38AM (2 children)

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Saturday December 16 2017, @07:38AM (#610648) Journal

    What schools should be teaching more of is probably guitar playing, crochet, handmade pottery, creative writing, acting, ballroom dancing, ans so on - plus the increasingly rare skill of being able to find one's arse with both hands (which can come from actually doing and making things rather than just learning to answer test questions).

    Ugh.

    Oh, yes, and stamping down on the fucking puritan work ethic mentality that stops us having sensible conversations about ideas like basic income without agonising over the possibility that people might get something for nothing.

    The thing is, people with that work ethic mentality will be the ones who can find their ass using both hands. Competence doesn't come from education, it comes from doing. And work is the number one way to do things.

    I'd be more on board with this basic income thing, if the recipients didn't sound like they'd be good only for organ harvesting or as future victims of some genocide. When you have a huge population that does nothing but suck checks, you're creating an unstable power dynamic. How will they learn to protect themselves when they don't do anything anymore? The key problem here is expression (as in "genetic expression"), where the person has some influence on reality. Work is our primary way of impacting reality today. You're replacing that with vague promises that people will do useful things with all that free time. Sure they will.

    My view is that someone, whose chief impact on reality is that they cash a monthly basic income check, is ripe for removal from the world. Sure, I'd love to have basic income. Part of the reason I work is so that I can build up enough investment to do that without the need for a government to get involved. And I do some interesting things when I have downtime from work. But I'm also aware that the key reason I can be productive for my interests is because I learned to do tough things in the various jobs I've had over the years.

    Sure, work is not the only way to learn a variety of relatively mundane life skills such as dealing with problem people, communication skills, managing people, time management, etc. But work pushes you to do things rather than merely do them when you feel like it. Sure, it sucks somewhat to have the obligation to work when you'd rather be lazing around. But you're getting pushed out of your comfort zone and doing things that you wouldn't have done otherwise. Sorry, I don't buy that most people will be challenging themselves in that way in a basic income era.

    Ultimately, the problem here is that the basic income people aren't offering enough in exchange for its price. If you're able-bodied, you can provide for yourself and learn to be a better person in the process. Why should the rest of us get in the way of that? It just doesn't make sense.

    • (Score: 2) by theluggage on Saturday December 16 2017, @01:48PM (1 child)

      by theluggage (1797) on Saturday December 16 2017, @01:48PM (#610690)

      The thing is, people with that work ethic mentality will be the ones who can find their ass using both hands.

      No, the problem with the "work ethic" mentality is when it regards "hard work" as an end rather than a means. You don't learn much by spending hours memorising context-free facts for an exam - you've forgotten them all a few months after the exam, but the result stays with you for life. We're spending years teaching kids to do the sort of maths that can be done on a $5 calculator mainly because conservative folk think its somehow character-building - and, no, in the process they're not learning how the $5 calculator does it. If you find yourself doing a lot of math you'll soon remember your basic arithmetic because its quicker than using a calculator. We have an education system that tries - and of course fails - to turn every kid into some sort of polymath renaissance person because it will somehow "do them good" rather than trying to find what they have aptitude for or are interested in... and its getting worse, with average grades in subject like math becoming the sole benchmark of schools' performance and hence ever-increasing pressure on students to get the best grades in the "priority" subjects. If kids are spending homework time, extra tutoring time, summer schools etc. memorising facts they'll never use and procedures that they don't really understand then they're not learning how to do and make things.

      Being able to solve a quadratic equation, do long division or add two fractions does not qualify you to do anything - maybe it did 70 years ago when clerks were paid to do sums, and spreadsheets were large sheets of paper, today we have calculators.

      Science? Take part in discussions in which you're encouraged to support your comments with evidence... and no, that doesn't mean "learn the definitions of 'hypothesis', 'theory', 'law' etc. for the test".

      I'm not suggesting that we delete all "real" subjects from education and completely forget about teaching factual knowledge - but we need a re-balancing, an acceptance that not every student is going to be a mathematician or a novelist. If technology is inevitably going to mean that only 10% of students will be able to find jobs, we need to start thinking how the other 90% are going to fill their time, rather than setting them up for future failure by (e.g.) pretending we're going to need vast numbers of coders in the future.

      I'd be more on board with this basic income thing, if the recipients didn't sound like they'd be good only for organ harvesting or as future victims of some genocide.

      Except those people aren't going to be magically summoned into existence by basic income - they already exist. Maybe they're working hard at the best low-paid jobs they can get - but if automation takes their jobs away you're going to have to deal with them one way or another. Since organ harvesting and genocide are widely frowned upon, your choices are (a) basic income or (b) creating fake jobs.

      Trouble is, we've already gone a long way down road (b) by allowing employers to pay workers less than the cost of living and/or without sickness/health cover, and then letting the taxpayer sort out the resulting problems though expensively administered welfare payments. A large part of the current welfare/social security program (or whatever you call it where you live) is, ultimately, a way of the taxpayer subsidising businesses by enabling them to employ labour at below cost.

      So, really, the choice is between implementing some sort of basic income for individuals or continuing with the current practice of stealthily providing indirect basic income for businesses (which is going to become much more expensive when the businesses don't actually need workers and just want paying for the bother of creating the jobs).

      Nobody ever created anything or learnt anything by scrubbing floors or flipping burgers 12 hours a day: if technology means that nobody has to do that any more just to justify their existence, then that is a good thing. Who knows what they'll achieve if they're not knackered from scrubbing floors and were exposed to some interesting ideas when they were at school.

         

      • (Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday December 16 2017, @04:43PM

        by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Saturday December 16 2017, @04:43PM (#610727) Journal

        No, the problem with the "work ethic" mentality is when it regards "hard work" as an end rather than a means.

        Not much of a problem, but whatever. I notice the rest of this rant is about education foibles rather than actual labor work. If you're not learning while going through a huge variety of education opportunities and tough mental exercises, then maybe you ought to change that.

        Being able to solve a quadratic equation, do long division or add two fractions does not qualify you to do anything - maybe it did 70 years ago when clerks were paid to do sums, and spreadsheets were large sheets of paper, today we have calculators.

        Funny how this boiled down to a complaint about math. The obvious rebuttal is that calculators aren't always available, don't always do the math you need (such as solving quadratic equations), and you still need to understand the answers they give you.

        Nobody ever created anything or learnt anything by scrubbing floors or flipping burgers 12 hours a day

        You already described what they created and learned. Clean floors and filling hungry customers' bellies aren't trivial things. Learning how to do that efficiently (as well as merely learning how to show up to work consistently on time and in uniform) is a bundle of skills that can be applied to other tasks quite handily.

        Except those people aren't going to be magically summoned into existence by basic income - they already exist. Maybe they're working hard at the best low-paid jobs they can get - but if automation takes their jobs away you're going to have to deal with them one way or another. Since organ harvesting and genocide are widely frowned upon, your choices are (a) basic income or (b) creating fake jobs.

        Or giving them good jobs while getting rid of the artificial barriers that raise cost of living. As I've noted many times before, the rest of the world isn't having this problem. Maybe we ought to figure out what they're doing right rather that continue to cause problems for ourselves?