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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: 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".