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posted by girlwhowaspluggedout on Tuesday March 04 2014, @03:30PM   Printer-friendly
from the ya-tvoy-sluga-ya-tvoy-rabotnik dept.

regift_of_the_gods writes:

"A study that was published last year by two Oxford researchers predicted that 47 percent of US jobs could be computerized within the next 20 years, including both manual labor and high cognition office work. The Oxford report presented three axes to show what types of jobs were relatively safe from being routed by robots and software; those requiring high levels of social intelligence (public relations), creativity (scientist, fashion designer), or perception and manipulation (surgeon) were less likely to be displaced.

This further obsolescence of jobs due to automation may have already begun. The Financial Times describes an emerging wave of products and services from algorithmic-intensive, data-rich tech startups that will threaten increasing numbers of jobs including both knowledge and blue collar workers. The lead example is Kensho, a startup founded by ex-Google and Apple engineers that is building an engine to estimate the impact of real or hypothetical news items on security prices, with questions posed in a natural language. Specialist knowledge workers in many other fields, including law and medicine, could also be at risk. At lower income levels, the dangerous are posed by increasingly agile and autonomous robots, such as those Amazon uses to staff some of its fulfillment warehouses.

 
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  • (Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday March 04 2014, @05:02PM

    by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday March 04 2014, @05:02PM (#10754)

    "merely serves to devalue it."

    Part of the purpose might be to produce conversations like:

    "Your anti-corporate protest sounds like fun and I'd love to attend, but I have a 4 hour working shift right in the middle, after the drumming circle but before the food riot on the schedule, so I'll take a raincheck. And the Packers are playing on Sunday as that's out too."

    At least part of the Civilian Conservation Corps unofficial mission was hundreds of thousands of young men in the middle of nowhere building national park features means theres hundreds of thousands of young men not marching and or rioting downtown...

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  • (Score: 1) by Geezer on Tuesday March 04 2014, @05:11PM

    by Geezer (511) on Tuesday March 04 2014, @05:11PM (#10768)

    I'd venture to say that Selective Service turned out to be a more effective means of distracting (and eventually reducing)the surplus young male population than the CCC.

    • (Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday March 04 2014, @05:39PM

      by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday March 04 2014, @05:39PM (#10801)

      You are correct but soldiers are so expensive now, and the latest headlines are along the lines of shrinking the .mil to smaller than pre-WWII era (probably about six decades late, but whatever). One minor problem is that's being done by shifting lots of work to contractors. Non .mil people assume contractors means some dude from IBM with a masters degree troubleshooting the targetting computer, but it really means the Army can't feed itself or run its warehouses or ship stuff around without significant civilian assistance during peacetime much less wartime. I had KP duty three time in my career and those were special occasions in the field.

      • (Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Tuesday March 04 2014, @07:44PM

        by Grishnakh (2831) on Tuesday March 04 2014, @07:44PM (#10904)

        They're not shrinking the military, that's a complete lie from Obama as usual. They're shrinking the number of soldiers. BFD. The budget will still be as big as ever, just instead of going to foot soldiers, VA benefits, etc., it'll go to defense contractors for overpriced POSes like the F-35, $15B aircraft carriers, etc.