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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: 1) by khallow on Tuesday June 12 2018, @02:27PM (8 children)

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday June 12 2018, @02:27PM (#691912) Journal

    Reflect badly in whose eyes? Anybody who thinks GHI is bullshit already thinks poorly of those who use it, regardless of what it says.

    Any citizen of Bhutan would be the natural target of that propaganda.

    If it wasn't working for them, they wouldn't still be using it.

    Did I ever write otherwise?

    But it does keep people from getting jobs, even the shittiest jobs in the county, and now you've got people with no other resources than handouts and crime. That's a problem that's much cheaper to fix than to live with.

    And what does that have to do with happiness metrics again? As soon as I get my civ up to industrial age, I'll fix your New Jersey racism thing. I don't remember why the switch got left on "racism on", but I'm sure it was a good reason.

  • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday June 12 2018, @04:14PM (7 children)

    by JoeMerchant (3937) on Tuesday June 12 2018, @04:14PM (#691978)

    As soon as I get my civ up to industrial age, I'll fix your New Jersey racism thing. I don't remember why the switch got left on "racism on", but I'm sure it was a good reason.

    Like so many things, making it illegal drove it underground - and like a fungus it continues to thrive there.

    --
    🌻🌻 [google.com]
    • (Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday June 12 2018, @04:55PM (6 children)

      by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday June 12 2018, @04:55PM (#691993) Journal
      Earlier you wrote:

      That's a problem that's much cheaper to fix than to live with.

      Now you write:

      Like so many things, making it illegal drove it underground - and like a fungus it continues to thrive there.

      Doesn't sound so easy now, does it?

      • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday June 12 2018, @06:02PM (5 children)

        by JoeMerchant (3937) on Tuesday June 12 2018, @06:02PM (#692033)

        It is still a problem that is much cheaper to fix than to live with.

        Simply making things illegal does not fix them, never has and never will.

        --
        🌻🌻 [google.com]
        • (Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday June 12 2018, @06:21PM (4 children)

          by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday June 12 2018, @06:21PM (#692040) Journal

          It is still a problem that is much cheaper to fix than to live with.

          Except we have yet to see this fix.

          Simply making things illegal does not fix them, never has and never will.

          Then why mention it?

          • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday June 12 2018, @07:45PM (3 children)

            by JoeMerchant (3937) on Tuesday June 12 2018, @07:45PM (#692079)

            Except we have yet to see this fix.

            Fixed? No. Progress? Absolutely. The "non-discrimination" laws in and of themselves do very little, except "empower the powerless" to sue in court when they can prove that someone was stupid enough to say that the reason they made some protected decision against the person was because of their protected distinguishing trait (race, sex, etc.) Too bad that the courts are highly biased in favor of the wealthy.

            Things that have made real progress at reducing racism include: busing for school integration, certain structural city planning (more prominent in the 1970s than recently) that placed high and low income neighborhoods in close proximity, and, let's be honest, the dying off of people who used to live with open racism and never interacted with people of other races until later in life.

            As long as people are segregated along racial, or any other lines, there will be prominent differences - perpetuating the basis of the prejudices.

            Simply making things illegal does not fix them, never has and never will.

            Then why mention it?

            I believe this one started with a quip along the lines of "Anybody can earn $10 with very little effort" - which: A) missed the point that working 2 hours at any kind of a job is a lot more than a wealthy person would ever consider doing for $10, and B) not everybody can get a job to earn an extra $10 over and above their essential living expenses.

            --
            🌻🌻 [google.com]
            • (Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday June 13 2018, @05:10AM (2 children)

              by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday June 13 2018, @05:10AM (#692230) Journal

              Things that have made real progress at reducing racism include: busing for school integration, certain structural city planning (more prominent in the 1970s than recently) that placed high and low income neighborhoods in close proximity, and, let's be honest, the dying off of people who used to live with open racism and never interacted with people of other races until later in life.

              Bottom line is that your "fix" is to just live with it and wait for the bad actors to die.

              As long as people are segregated along racial, or any other lines, there will be prominent differences - perpetuating the basis of the prejudices.

              Assuming they don't kill each other first. And let us note here that this has nothing to do with the thread. It's a non sequitur.

              I believe this one started with a quip along the lines of "Anybody can earn $10 with very little effort" - which: A) missed the point that working 2 hours at any kind of a job is a lot more than a wealthy person would ever consider doing for $10, and B) not everybody can get a job to earn an extra $10 over and above their essential living expenses.

              In other words, another non sequitur fallacy. Part of a pattern, it is.

              • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday June 13 2018, @12:19PM (1 child)

                by JoeMerchant (3937) on Wednesday June 13 2018, @12:19PM (#692309)

                Bottom line is that your "fix" is to just live with it and wait for the bad actors to die.

                No, that's your bottom line. For me it's the slowest part of the solution, but still a major part of what has been implemented so far. Integration is my preferred solution, but I'm not a political activist so I'm not out actively campaigning for change beyond making sure that my family is "out in the world" as integrated with the normies as possible (two kids with autism - not "oh dear, johnny is being self absorbed again" autism - hard core and harder core.)

                It's a non sequitur.

                Only when you declare it so - it was a normal evolution of a conversational tangent, if you want Roberts Rules of Order to apply, don't reply to me.

                Part of a pattern, it is.

                When lived as long as I have, see how focused your conversational threads are, hm?

                --
                🌻🌻 [google.com]
                • (Score: 1) by khallow on Friday June 15 2018, @04:07AM

                  by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Friday June 15 2018, @04:07AM (#693325) Journal

                  it was a normal evolution of a conversational tangent

                  Which is most most non sequiturs are. Normal, irrelevant tangents that distract from the subject.