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Should we believe headlines claiming nearly half of all jobs will be lost to robots and artificial intelligence? We think not, and in a newly released study we explain why.
Headlines trumpeting massive job losses have been in abundance for five or so years. Even The Conversation has had its had its share.
Most come from a common source. It is a single study, conducted in 2013 by Oxford University's Carl Benedict Frey and Michael Osborne. This study lies behind the claim that 47% of jobs in the United States were at "high risk" of automation over the next ten or so years. Google Scholar says it has been cited more than 4,300 times, a figure that doesn't count newspaper headlines.
The major predictions of job losses due to automation in Australia are based directly on its findings. Commentaries about the future of work in Australia have also drawn extensively on the study.
In Australia and elsewhere the study's predictions have led to calls for a Universal Basic Income and for a "work guarantee" that would allocate the smaller number of jobs fairly.
Our new research paper concludes the former study's predictions are not well-founded.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by DannyB on Friday November 01 2019, @09:46PM (16 children)
Unlike industrialization, the problem here could be that the jobs that WON'T be automated may be jobs that most people cannot learn the skills to do.
It may not be a simple matter of retraining.
Stop being a truck driver and become a rocket scientist, brain surgeon, mathematician, or AI expert.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 01 2019, @11:35PM (1 child)
It's ok. With the current bend of fascism in the world, we'll just have some more wars instead. Maybe wars after the next wars will be fought with sticks and stones. Then we never will have to worry about losing our "jubs"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 02 2019, @12:08AM
Still waiting for DT's War to End All Wars?
Oh, well. Now you have more time to buy camping gear.
(Score: 1) by anubi on Friday November 01 2019, @11:42PM (6 children)
My neighbor had a tree damage his sewer.
A couple of guys came out, replaced the damaged part quickly, and left.
The machines did most all the dirty work.
That was one job I was sure pleased to see a machine doing. However, the new job the machine created was "machine operator", a much more pleasant job. The "ditch digger" job was gone.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Saturday November 02 2019, @05:38AM (5 children)
Emphasis added.
This is the important part. It might have taken a couple of ditch diggers all day to dig a hole the machine can do in a few minutes. Those two guys could be replacing dozens of ditch-diggers.
I am totally NOT arguing for work for the sake of work, but the argument that those ditch-diggers can go learn to run machines neglects that each one that does will put another bunch of people out of work, who all have to go off and learn to run machines, that will each put another bunch of people out of work. I'm sure you can see where this is going.
The khallowian argument is that we have been heading towards this cliff for two hundred years and haven't fallen over it yet, therefore we won't.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday November 02 2019, @06:02AM (4 children)
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Saturday November 02 2019, @07:19AM (3 children)
How?
I am not opposed to fixing things quickly, but I don't see how that leads to further employment.
Those two won't be making more money, because competition from all the other out-of-work-ditch-diggeres-now-turned-machine-operators will push their income back down to the same level per hour. The guy paying for the sewer will still have more money in his pocket, but the ditch-diggers collectively will have less by the same amount.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by anubi on Saturday November 02 2019, @10:55PM (1 child)
I consider inefficiently done work a variant of the "broken window fallacy".
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Sunday November 03 2019, @07:47AM
There are arguments that the broken window fallacy does not always hold true, relating mostly to full utilization of resources and velocity of money.
https://www.debate.org/debates/The-broken-window-fallacy-always-hold-true/1/ [debate.org]
Regardless of that though, productivity has been steadily climbing since the industrial age began. It's about to take another big leap. The only reason we haven't had to deal with the 'problem' of under-employment before is that consumption has been rising at the same rate, and in the past working hours have decreased. Things are changing. Employers have dropped hours as far as they are going to, and are pushing for more hours per employee. (The only reason there are so many part-time jobs in America is the distorting effect of the health-care threshold.)
I think that the balance between productivity and consumption is about to change. You can only eat so much food, watch so many big-screen TVs, and drive so many cars. Robots will saturate the goods market. You can see an effect of this already in housing prices. Shelter (rent or buy) is taking an increasing proportion of peoples income, as it is still a scarce good.
A UBI* won't solve all the problems, but it will reduce the employee pool, raise wages, and keep the 0.1%'s heads on their shoulders for a bit longer.
*If UBI is too communist for you, call it a citizenship dividend.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday November 03 2019, @12:18AM
Working sewers have considerable value. Workers can do other things now that their labor isn't tied up in repairing sewers have considerable value. Both these shifts in economic activity create more jobs. Finally, the same technology that eliminates so many jobs, creates new job opportunities.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by khallow on Saturday November 02 2019, @12:31AM (6 children)
And how are you going to automate low skill jobs when you can't afford the equipment to automate them? There are many implicit assumptions about economics that ignore that humans can be efficient enough even in a highly automated world just because the automaters aren't interested in putting the effort into automation every single job that humans are doing.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 02 2019, @03:30AM (5 children)
You can use a universal robot - maybe a humanoid, maybe a spider, maybe something else. After all, a human only has hands to work with, legs to move around, sensors and a processor in his head. Robots already exist with all of this except the sufficient processor. For now they are remotely controlled, but once computers get more powerful or better architected, this job will be replaced by the AI. This robot will replace humans in many odd jobs that are menial enough - and later maybe not menial at all.
Cost? At that point the cost will be insignificant, as robot makers and robot users will be controlling 90+% of the manufacturing and services on this planet. It will be even cheaper to send a robot than to hire a worker, train him, insure him, care for him, risk his injury, and once the job is done get rid of him. Maybe there will be no qualified workers to, say, work in a mine. Here is yet another advantage of a robot: he can be programmed to do anything, and every robot in existence can download this program. Humans need years of training, and each human has to be trained individually.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday November 02 2019, @05:16AM (4 children)
We already have a universal robot, the human - without the licensing fees.
So it is asserted. But not by the parties who would be paying those costs.
(Score: 4, Informative) by maxwell demon on Saturday November 02 2019, @03:20PM (3 children)
The times of slavery are gone.
The "licensing fees" paid for humans are called wages. And I see no reason why robot companies wouldn't undercut those as soon as possible.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday November 02 2019, @07:28PM (2 children)
Those robot companies would still be in the business of making money. ASAP need never happen.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Sunday November 03 2019, @07:04AM (1 child)
And they make more money if more companies use their robots, so lowering the price can increase their income, even if they make less per robot.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday November 03 2019, @10:16AM
"Can".