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posted by janrinok on Monday June 11 2018, @01:45PM   Printer-friendly
from the cheery-start-to-the-week dept.

Good news! Automation capable of erasing white collar jobs is coming, but not for a decade or more. And that’s also the bad news because interest in automation accelerates during economic downturns, so once tech that can take your job arrives you’ll already have lived through another period of economic turmoil that may already have cost you your job.

That lovely scenario was advanced yesterday by professor Mirko Draca of The London School of Economics, who yesterday told Huawei’s 2018 Asia-Pacific Innovation Day 2018 that the world is currently in “an era of investment and experimentation” with technology. The effects of such eras, he said, generally emerge ten to fifteen years in the future.

Innovation in the 1980s therefore sparked the PC and internet booms of the mid-to-late 1990s, and we’re still surfing [SIC - suffering?] the changes they unleashed. “Our current era of mobile tech doesn’t measure up to the radical 1990s,” he said, as shown by the fact that productivity gains appear to have stalled for a decade or more.

[...] “We predict that AI and robotics will lead to some sort of productivity surge in ten to fifteen years,” he said, adding that there is “no clear evidence” that a new wave of technologies that threaten jobs has started.

But he also said that it will once businesses see the need to control costs.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 12 2018, @03:08PM (6 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 12 2018, @03:08PM (#691935)

    Ha, nice to see you finally lose your cool. You try so hard to maintain the calm rational appearance but you obviously mistook my statement. My prediction is your bullshit apologetics would very much piss off people who get desperate enough to revolt.

    I'm so sorry you felt personally attacked, maybe read up on the French and Chinese revolutions and you'll better understand what I mean. Revolutionaries won't care to discuss the nuances behind your personal responsibility and series of contracts beliefs, they'll just see that part of your belief system rationalizes the actions that have oppressed them.

    Just like you don't care about my message and focus on the supposed personal attack calling for your blood. The future of humanity? Ha! Yeah, you're a real saint.

  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday June 12 2018, @05:02PM (5 children)

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday June 12 2018, @05:02PM (#692001) Journal

    Ha, nice to see you finally lose your cool. You try so hard to maintain the calm rational appearance but you obviously mistook my statement. My prediction is your bullshit apologetics would very much piss off people who get desperate enough to revolt.

    I didn't mistake your statement. Open fantasies about executions are a common endgame for people who have nothing to say, but have to say it anyway. If your statement had any merit, you wouldn't have to hide behind a gang of imaginary thugs to say it.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 12 2018, @07:05PM (4 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 12 2018, @07:05PM (#692056)

      You can't say you didn't mistake my statement when I clearly explained it to you. I see your emotional reactions are now overpowering your rational faculties.

      My point is stop siding with the exploiters, stop pushing ideology that worships pyramid schemes, and start understanding the problems of a massive % of our fellow citizens. If a revolution does come then history shows such apologists as yourself will be treated poorly. You can go back to bed and take your nap now secure in the knowledge that at least THIS anonymous coward is not plotting your demise.

      • (Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday June 13 2018, @05:11AM (3 children)

        by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday June 13 2018, @05:11AM (#692231) Journal

        You can't say you didn't mistake my statement when I clearly explained it to you.

        Fine, I'll accept that.

        My point is stop siding with the exploiters, stop pushing ideology that worships pyramid schemes, and start understanding the problems of a massive % of our fellow citizens.

        I side with truth as I understand it. The problem is that this narrative is all screwed up. For example, the primary value of ourselves to our society is that our labor can be exploited. It makes no sense to criticize someone for exploiting our labor when that is what we need them to do. Your power to do anything in this world is severely crippled, if your labor can't be exploited.

        Along those same lines, labor having a relatively hard time is directly a result of not enough demand for labor. You're not going to get any better by making labor even less in demand. That leads to the result that employers are the important part of the economy, not the employees, because they're the scarce part. I'm not talking about making big businesses bigger - that seems to be the natural conclusion taken, but rather greatly increasing the small and mid-level businesses. You don't do that however, by increasing the hurdles to employing people - that has the perverse effect of empowering the large businesses who have the economies of scale to deal with that crap and to bribe government to swing regulation their way.

        As to "ideology that worships pyramid schemes", that's patently false. The primary ideologies I've supported are capitalism and democracy. They can readily support pyramid schemes, both of the shabby, illegal sort and of the sanctioned, institutionalized sort (such as public pensions), but neither are inherently pyramid schemes in themselves. Further, one merely needs to glance at the most successful parts of the world to see that the combination of the two has been very successful.

        Now we get to the problems of the "massive %". We immediately run into difficulties. A large portion [soylentnews.org] of that group doesn't understand key parts of their own problems (for example, only 57% of US adults are financially literate). It's not my lack of understanding that threatens to upend this apple cart. I certainly can't help by remaining silent on their tribulations.

        Huge portions of the world don't have the trouble that the US has. The US isn't even particularly bad for a developed world country, there aren't many doing better.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 13 2018, @08:06PM (2 children)

          by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 13 2018, @08:06PM (#692506)

          See I barely even skimmed your response before remembering NOT TO ARGUE WITH A BRAINWASHED FOOL!

          You are stuck in a system of thought and can't imagine beyond your self-imposed boundaries.

          • (Score: 1) by khallow on Friday June 15 2018, @04:08AM

            by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Friday June 15 2018, @04:08AM (#693326) Journal
            You could have pasted that to any post ever made and be just as relevant.
          • (Score: 1) by khallow on Friday June 15 2018, @11:54AM

            by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Friday June 15 2018, @11:54AM (#693446) Journal

            See I barely even skimmed your response

            In other words, you didn't even both to read it.