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Behind Those Headlines: Don't Believe Claims Robots Threaten Half Our Jobs

posted by takyon on Friday November 01 2019, @07:00PM   Printer-friendly
from the robot-funded-studies dept.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story (original):

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.

Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday November 02 2019, @05:16AM (4 children)

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Saturday November 02 2019, @05:16AM (#914956) Journal

    You can use a universal robot - maybe a humanoid, maybe a spider, maybe something else.

    We already have a universal robot, the human - without the licensing fees.

    Cost? At that point the cost will be insignificant

    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)

    by maxwell demon (1608) on Saturday November 02 2019, @03:20PM (#915048) Journal

    We already have a universal robot, the human - without the licensing fees.

    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)

      by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Saturday November 02 2019, @07:28PM (#915093) Journal

      And I see no reason why robot companies wouldn't undercut those as soon as possible.

      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)

        by maxwell demon (1608) on Sunday November 03 2019, @07:04AM (#915250) Journal

        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

          by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Sunday November 03 2019, @10:16AM (#915276) Journal

          so lowering the price can increase their income

          "Can".