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I recently went to a tech conference where they talked about all the advances AI have made and how it’s likely that most human jobs will have disappeared within the next few decades due to automation.

How would that work? If nobody can work then nobody has any money. If they have no money then they can’t buy things. If they can’t but things then, it doesn’t matter how productive or cheap the goods get as a result of automation. Companies will have nobody to sell to and would go bankrupt. How would say, Amazon, or McDonalds function if 60 plus percent of its consumer base became destitute? There wouldn’t be all the exchanges of money and capital to make it work. It’s not just going to be one industry but a vast swath of humanity rendered unnecessary and without worth. But wouldn’t it probably hurt a lot of companies that are aimed at selling to a mass market?

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2019/01/11 22:50:34



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There is only like 2 paths i could see.
1) Robot uprising
2) union uprising

Id assume if robot tech became so advance that the majority of people had no jobs then id assume it would mean everything would be dirt cheap enough to make a legitimate welfare country work. i which people whom still worked (such as doctors, lawyers, and the robot maintenance slaves) would be taxed an appropriate amount to allow everyone to have a livable allowance. optimistically allow those that dont work to explore non robot work like the arts.

but id assume that would fail miserably


 Unit1126PLL wrote:
 Scott-S6 wrote:
And yet another thread is hijacked for Unit to ask for the same advice, receive the same answers and make the same excuses.

Oh my god I'm becoming martel.
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 Desubot wrote:
There is only like 2 paths i could see.
1) Robot uprising
2) union uprising

Id assume if robot tech became so advance that the majority of people had no jobs then id assume it would mean everything would be dirt cheap enough to make a legitimate welfare country work. i which people whom still worked (such as doctors, lawyers, and the robot maintenance slaves) would be taxed an appropriate amount to allow everyone to have a livable allowance. optimistically allow those that dont work to explore non robot work like the arts.

but id assume that would fail miserably



Well we can’t all make money as Twitch video gamers?

I mean Iam an accountant and I ve started joking that Iam gonna end up writing that fantasy novel. I mean they showed a picture at the tech event of an accountancy practice next to a Blockbusters....

Yeah I think the state would be put under massive pressure to intervene and companies would lose the ability to argue that they are spreading wealth around the economy because, they won’t. I mean if it’s going to be bad in the West it will probably be even worse in countries like China or India.






This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2019/01/11 23:19:32



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Oh yeah what i said was mostly to apply to the USA and maybe EU

but god help them in the east if the robot uprising comes.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
 Scott-S6 wrote:
And yet another thread is hijacked for Unit to ask for the same advice, receive the same answers and make the same excuses.

Oh my god I'm becoming martel.
Send help!

 
   
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 Desubot wrote:
There is only like 2 paths i could see.
1) Robot uprising
2) union uprising

Id assume if robot tech became so advance that the majority of people had no jobs then id assume it would mean everything would be dirt cheap enough to make a legitimate welfare country work. i which people whom still worked (such as doctors, lawyers, and the robot maintenance slaves) would be taxed an appropriate amount to allow everyone to have a livable allowance. optimistically allow those that dont work to explore non robot work like the arts.

but id assume that would fail miserably


Aye, the first problem is economies of scale doesn't work in this situation. There is no incentive to produce goods cheaply because nobody can afford to buy anything because nobody works. Because nobody buys anything, the economy ceases to exist. Because there is no economy, there is no tax revenue. Because there is no tax revenue, there is no way the government can give people a basic income. And because there is no need to produce goods cheaply, there is no need for a robot workforce. So hyper efficient robots defeat the purpose of their own existence.

Doctors and Lawers aren't good examples of jobs that would still be around if there was no need to work. The people who have that experience, well they still have no personal incentive to continue to work because they don't need to to survive. And there would be no incentive for people in the future to become Lawyers and Doctors. Why do 10-15 years of additional schooling when there is no benefit in it for you? Same thing for the people who maintain the robots. What incentive do they have to do that work?

Now, if you solve the problem of necessary jobs not being filled by giving special privileges to anybody who does do them you create additional problems. Now you most likely have a massive pool of applicants who want these special privileges, but only a tiny amount who can actually be given them. This creates a disgruntled class of people who have/want to have the technical skills and privileges afforded to those who have them, but are denied them by the governing authority. This would most certainly lead to a revolution tearing down this Dystopia in short order.

Universal Basic Income also completely destroys the Middle class, and mostly destroys the Upper Class. Middle Class individuals will most likely not qualify for the UBI, meaning they'd still have to work. However, the work they do doesn't get them the full value of what their income says they get. They're only earning what they get above and beyond the UBI. So if the UBI for a country is set at $20,000/year. And a middle class person is earning $30,000/year. He is effectively only working for $10,000/year. All that effort he is putting into providing a better life for himself and his family is only worth $10,000. However, he could choose to simply not work at all and just receive $20,000 for free. So the real question is is it worth working a job for a paltry $10,000/year above what you could get for free? Probably not. Everybody would have to ask themselves this question, and most people would probably choose to simply not work and receive the free money.

Eventually, we'd have an economy where the only jobs that existed were ones which paid significantly above the UBI. However, these same jobs would also be taxed at insane rates to pay for that UBI, while still leaving enough take-home $ to keep the job attractive. Afterall, if nobody will work for less than $1,000,000 a year, but the tax rate on anybody bringing in $1 million is 70%, then nobody will work jobs that pay less than $3.3 million. But the tax rate on $3.3 million is probably more than 70% soooo...

It literally only works if the Government abolishes money entirely, but also forces people to do the few jobs the system needs to continue. Slaves in all but name. "You citizen! You have been selected to become a medical professional. You have no choice but to endure 20 years of schooling so you may become a Doctor. After this, you will not have the 24/7 leisure time that all of your other fellow citizens enjoy, but rather will have to report for duty at a medical facility for 30 hours a week. As everybody in this society is equal, you will receive no additional privileges for this in compensation so as not to create unrest"

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Yes, capitalism will continue to function.

Essentially the same thing will happen that's happened every other time there's been an advance that's rendered jobs redundant, the economy will alter, there'll be growing pains, new jobs will arise either directly from the advance (robot maintainence and repair) or the changes in people's lives will bring about a revision in the value of commodities meaning careers that aren't viable now become so, and others become much broader as the demand increases.

Basically board game designers become the new rock stars.


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 Azreal13 wrote:
Yes, capitalism will continue to function.

Essentially the same thing will happen that's happened every other time there's been an advance that's rendered jobs redundant, the economy will alter, there'll be growing pains, new jobs will arise either directly from the advance (robot maintainence and repair) or the changes in people's lives will bring about a revision in the value of commodities meaning careers that aren't viable now become so, and others become much broader as the demand increases.

Basically board game designers become the new rock stars.



If robots become intelligent enough they would be able to maintain themselves and perform all of the service functions that humans perform. That would literally just leave entertainment, the arts and basically anything where we want to see people. I mean they just did a documentary on an Amazon warehouse and it’s basically Jane who rubber stamps what the machine does and cleaning up when it goes past the orange line. How long will those be jobs?

I can certainly believe that because growing up in the 90s, something like an Alexa would have been unthinkable, science fiction, not for another 100 years and now Iam being told in all seriousness that there’ll be sentient AI in my lifetime. They will very likely be able to perform any job and would displace all labour.

The previous industrial revolutions never displaced that many people and new jobs weren’t immediately filled by automated units. It bears no comparison. The ludites complained about a drop in their role from craftsmen to low wage labororers slaving in factories. But at least they had jobs and could benefit from the drop in the cost of living from everything getting cheaper.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2019/01/12 00:09:20



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Yes, it will continue to function. Just like it did when we created any new technology that streamlined work.

"Muh robots" has been something the Socialists have leaned on for like 2 years now, and it's a tired old argument, IMHO.


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 Adeptus Doritos wrote:
Yes, it will continue to function. Just like it did when we created any new technology that streamlined work.

"Muh robots" has been something the Socialists have leaned on for like 2 years now, and it's a tired old argument, IMHO.



Firms developing the technology to market are not socialists. They were very honest that the role of accountants would change to being essentially an overseer who rubber stamps what the AI do as they work and having all the admin replaced by chatbots. All you need is a robot to figure out how to open the mail and put them into a scanner and that’s about it.

It’s streamlining work atm because they’re still experimental and rudimentary. You need all the IT people and watchers on hand because the systems keep failing, breaking or people just don’t know how they work. But the direction is going one way and that’s the displacement of human labour.

I’ve seen one debate where several technologists advocated the position that this would be a good change and it almost entirely relies on a naive assumption that once people are free from the menial tasks of life, much like when people stopped subsistence agriculture, you’ll see a flourishing of productivity in culture, art and this will somehow keep 60 percent of the population employed....

We can’t all make money making cat videos and writing novels....









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In society where working stops being the norm, a productivist economy isn't possible anymore. If let's say 30% of the jobs available to people can be replaced or simply abolished thanks to better tools, automation and new technologies, the system can't really support itself. The "dangerous" part is when the work, even the hard work, of some people remains or becomes even more essential to maintain a society's living standard and a large portion of the population simply doesn't have the aptitudes take upon those jobs. If nearly nobody needs to work since almost everything is automated and rest can be compensated by small mandatory, weakly rewarded, periods of work, a stable form of economy can exist. The hard part is the transition from a society where everybody works like crazy and to a society where work is this occasional thing you do half for fun. In my opinion, a form of basic universal income provided by the "taxation" of automation productivity and that of the remaining working class is going to be necessary. The working class itself will make more money then the idle (or near idle) one despite having to pay taxes. Requirements for the idle class to invest some of their time in community work (like organising cultural events, help children in school, occasional support to the working class in some limited capacity) and maybe even in politics and governance (a more direct form of democracy and governance would be possible and even necessary at that point to maintain a free society). So basically you would have working machines, a rich class of administrator, enginneers, scientists and service providers and a idle, but politicaly more involved but poorer class. That's the best I can envision so far. Capitalism, socialism, representative democracy, productivism are all dependant on a number of factors and conditions to remain operational and efficient. The political and economical system of the next two centuries are probably going to be different to ou current ones and unseen in previous human history. You can expect the transition to take at least a few decades and be punctuated by episodic violence, reactionnary politics and even outright war, but changes will occur.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2019/01/12 00:34:55


 
   
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This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2019/01/12 00:29:01


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Something is gonna have to give, somewhere.


Either A. we keep progressing technologically, and replace all labor with robots/programs, making 80% of the population reliant on government assistance.


Or B. we realize that things cannot continue and keep automation strictly for recreational purpose's and factory work.

Or C. we keep progressing, and replace labor with automation, and have a civil uprising from the 80% of the population who have become slaves to the system.

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 Desubot wrote:
There is only like 2 paths i could see.
1) Robot uprising
2) union uprising


3) High taxation socialist government.

Increased automation doesnt kill employment it shifts it. Unions are not a problem, unemployment is. high unemployment leads to socialist governance. This might not be able to create many jobs as automation will be globalised and foreign robots will be cheaper than local humans, it can however lead to a dilettante society relying on service industry and what is left heads to the hard left (or right).

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All I can say is I'm VERY glad I chose not to have children. I just don't see a good future for upcoming generations anymore.

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 Eihnlazer wrote:
Something is gonna have to give, somewhere.


Either A. we keep progressing technologically, and replace all labor with robots/programs, making 80% of the population reliant on government assistance.


Or B. we realize that things cannot continue and keep automation strictly for recreational purpose's and factory work.

Or C. we keep progressing, and replace labor with automation, and have a civil uprising from the 80% of the population who have become slaves to the system.


D. Those in power employ a small military to beat downe the masses, possibly use them for organ transplants or entertainment and as a way of terrorizing the necessary workers into acceptance a life a little less gakky than theirs. Basically a hunger games future.

This is essentially what would have to happen in Ayn Rhand's (SPIT!) "Atlas shrugged" world. The masses aren't going to just quietly starve, they're going after the "elite" and will either crush them or be crushed by them. In fact the hunger games would almost be a sequel to atlas shrugged.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2019/01/12 04:31:49


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No, it can't. A massive unemployable population means that the state either accepts socialism voluntarily, or the new state formed after the unemployable masses rise up and execute the capitalists accepts socialism.

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Not without universal basic income support.

Or universal health care ... or you get the picture.

About as likely to happen in the western world as an Australian cricket team win without cheating ...

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Azreal13 wrote:Yes, capitalism will continue to function.

Essentially the same thing will happen that's happened every other time there's been an advance that's rendered jobs redundant


Adeptus Doritos wrote:Yes, it will continue to function. Just like it did when we created any new technology that streamlined work.


It's not a comparable scale of change. Arguably, it's the most substantial shift since metalworking. It's not just a change that can streamline work, it's one that means that labour is no longer the basis for economics. The result might be the same, but it's not 'just another minor shift'.
   
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I agree, it's not comparable to earlier advances in the workplace at all.

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We'll find out soon enough eh.

 queen_annes_revenge wrote:
I agree, it's not comparable to earlier advances in the workplace at all.


I was watching a talk about this specifically in regards to the games industry/3D design work the other day, and it was genuinely bizarre. Like, the guy doing the talk was striking a very "Oh no it'll be fine, it's just like transitioning from 2D animation to 3D animation, it's still animation yeah", and then at the end he cheerily presents a slide with the predicted fallout of AI & machine learning on the field with a "So yeah, it's cool, only the boring menial repetitive work will be done by AI, extremely skilled people or people who do small-scale niche work that it's not worthwhile to automate will be fine", and people started clapping. And I'm like; why the feth is nobody standing up and shouting that the jobs supported by those "boring, menial, repetitive" tasks are like 80% of the fething industry?! But no apparently those people will just magically find higher level jobs at thousands of new micro-companies or something...

The real problems with the looming decimation of employment are unfortunately ones that're not easy to solve - ego, and inability to grasp scope. Everyone with a good job now thinks their work is just too vital and difficult and creative for a mere machine to do, or firmly believes that even if their job does get automated they can easily just retrain into something new. Hah, aye, if you want to see how the latter of those works in practice, have a wander through the socioeconomic wasteland of Britain's post-industrial regions sometime. Further, even the people capable of grasping how automation is going to impact their own industry seem to be utterly incapable of grasping that this shift is not going to occur to only their industry. Losing 80% of the workload in the games industry can be made to sound brilliant, because in the context of our economic system as it presently exists, that's just freeing all those wage-slaves to go off and use this wonderful new technology to make their dream games as small indie studios, right?

But the point is that context won't exist any more, because the shift would be happening in almost every industry.

Frankly it's getting to the level of climate denialism - predictions are made, and one by one they come true, and with every new validation the defenders of the status quo just shift their goalposts. "Socialism!" they cry, even as giant uber-capitalists like Musk and Bezos admit steps will have to be taken to prevent a collapse. "Alarmism!" they bleat, despite most people who're highlighting the issue merely insisting we acknowledge the problem and try to put together a workable solution rather than burying our heads in the sand and trusting Daddy Markets to figure everything out. Sadly we can't actually discuss any of the potential solutions here because that would be "political", so the Ostriches can continue to paint their opposition as unreasonable and we can't argue the point.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2019/01/12 13:53:14


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 Yodhrin wrote:
 queen_annes_revenge wrote:
I agree, it's not comparable to earlier advances in the workplace at all.


I was watching a talk about this specifically in regards to the games industry/3D design work the other day, and it was genuinely bizarre. Like, the guy doing the talk was striking a very "Oh no it'll be fine, it's just like transitioning from 2D animation to 3D animation, it's still animation yeah", and then at the end he cheerily presents a slide with the predicted fallout of AI & machine learning on the field with a "So yeah, it's cool, only the boring menial repetitive work will be done by AI, extremely skilled people or people who do small-scale niche work that it's not worthwhile to automate will be fine", and people started clapping. And I'm like; why the feth is nobody standing up and shouting that the jobs supported by those "boring, menial, repetitive" tasks are like 80% of the fething industry?! But no apparently those people will just magically find higher level jobs at thousands of new micro-companies or something...

The real problems with the looming decimation of employment are unfortunately ones that're not easy to solve - ego, and inability to grasp scope. Everyone with a good job now thinks their work is just too vital and difficult and creative for a mere machine to do, or firmly believes that even if their job does get automated they can easily just retrain into something new. Hah, aye, if you want to see how the latter of those works in practice, have a wander through the socioeconomic wasteland of Britain's post-industrial regions sometime. Further, even the people capable of grasping how automation is going to impact their own industry seem to be utterly incapable of grasping that this shift is not going to occur to only their industry. Losing 80% of the workload in the games industry can be made to sound brilliant, because in the context of our economic system as it presently exists, that's just freeing all those wage-slaves to go off and use this wonderful new technology to make their dream games as small indie studios, right?

But the point is that context won't exist any more, because the shift would be happening in almost every industry.

Frankly it's getting to the level of climate denialism - predictions are made, and one by one they come true, and with every new validation the defenders of the status quo just shift their goalposts. "Socialism!" they cry, even as giant uber-capitalists like Musk and Bezos admit steps will have to be taken to prevent a collapse. "Alarmism!" they bleat, despite most people who're highlighting the issue merely insisting we acknowledge the problem and try to put together a workable solution rather than burying our heads in the sand and trusting Daddy Markets to figure everything out. Sadly we can't actually discuss any of the potential solutions here because that would be "political", so the Ostriches can continue to paint their opposition as unreasonable and we can't argue the point.


Since you mentioned an industry close to mine and misrepresented the impact of increased automation let me tell you what automation really changes in creative fields: 30 years ago, design tasks were completed basically by pen and paper and there was an upper limit to level of detail that could be achieved in a given amount of time. Then computers came and the level of detail that could be achieved in the same time shifted, but it did not made designers obsolete or dwindle in numbers, it upped the required level of detail per hour of work. Then things like content aware tools and other automatic workflow improvements happened and instead of spending an hour to free form select a motif I spend 10 minutes on it ant spend the rest of the hour on producing the image further - e.g blending it in with the background to a much better level than before - a standard level now would be a master level a decade ago. To keep it relevant to tabletop gaming forum - just compare how tokens looked like in Dark Millenium and how they look in Urban Conquest - the amount of time both took to prepare for print is pretty much the same. In reality, I can now make a lot more money per hour of work than I could do a decade ago.

There is also this totally unbacked idea, that any job can and inevitably will be cost efficiently automated and that we will achieve the ceiling in desired quality of products/services in all areas and rest there - in other words, that the automation fills in some kind of preexisting and enclosed space of available and necessary jobs. The opening question of this topic is flawed by this - yes, we don't know how a fully automated economy would look like, but we don't really have to ask this question, as we do not know how and if such level of automation can be achieved in the first place. And nothing really seems to back up inevitability of such conclusion.

One other example from a completely different craftsman field. My friend is a tailor, a quite "common seamstress" kind of tailor. 30 years ago her "career" would be in large clothing factory. But since then globalisation of markets moved this whole industry to the east and technological improvement made competing with large companies in making T-shirts totally unviable (and this area in itself is very resistant to full automation). But at the same time, this same globalisation caused reduction of cost of basic clothing and enabled people from even lower middle class to seek tailor made clothing, so now she can make a living making custom corsets and historical gowns, and because such tasks won't ever be automated or even upscaled, there is a whole lot of room for her fellow tailors to go down the same route - she is hardly alone in it.

Another example: increased availability and cost efficiency of power tools between steam powered workshops era and modern times is so huge, that entry level into carpentry dropped nearly to the floor level - you can start this line of work as soon as you have a garage and money for your first "single use and throwaway" level of tools. IKEA furniture is of course cheaper and mass produced in vast amounts, but I know of no one, who prefers laminated cardboard table over a sturdy wooden one once he can easily afford it. You can now make art noveau level of complexity furniture using hand held tools in fraction of time that was needed those 100 years ago, or use affordable CNC machining to start small scale serial production of those with relatively small investment.

If anything, the recent globalization made a come back of craftsman trades possible, and craftsman trades are not high level jobs, they were a mainstay of human economy for centuries.

From the top of my head, just looking around my apartment I can see a lot of fairly low skill level jobs that won't ever be automated - finishing works, plumbing, electrical works, central heating stove service and maintenance, making and installing built in furniture etc... Robotics is so far from being able to even remotely compete with human labor in those areas that it isn't even funny to contemplate automated services in those areas.

   
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nou wrote:

There is also this totally unbacked idea, that any job can and inevitably will be cost efficiently automated and that we will achieve the ceiling in desired quality of products/services in all areas and rest there - in other words, that the automation fills in some kind of preexisting and enclosed space of available and necessary jobs. The opening question of this topic is flawed by this - yes, we don't know how a fully automated economy would look like, but we don't really have to ask this question, as we do not know how and if such level of automation can be achieved in the first place. And nothing really seems to back up inevitability of such conclusion.

One other example from a completely different craftsman field. My friend is a tailor, a quite "common seamstress" kind of tailor. 30 years ago her "career" would be in large clothing factory. But since then globalisation of markets moved this whole industry to the east and technological improvement made competing with large companies in making T-shirts totally unviable (and this area in itself is very resistant to full automation). But at the same time, this same globalisation caused reduction of cost of basic clothing and enabled people from even lower middle class to seek tailor made clothing, so now she can make a living making custom corsets and historical gowns, and because such tasks won't ever be automated or even upscaled, there is a whole lot of room for her fellow tailors to go down the same route - she is hardly alone in it.

Another example: increased availability and cost efficiency of power tools between steam powered workshops era and modern times is so huge, that entry level into carpentry dropped nearly to the floor level - you can start this line of work as soon as you have a garage and money for your first "single use and throwaway" level of tools. IKEA furniture is of course cheaper and mass produced in vast amounts, but I know of no one, who prefers laminated cardboard table over a sturdy wooden one once he can easily afford it. You can now make art noveau level of complexity furniture using hand held tools in fraction of time that was needed those 100 years ago, or use affordable CNC machining to start small scale serial production of those with relatively small investment.

If anything, the recent globalization made a come back of craftsman trades possible, and craftsman trades are not high level jobs, they were a mainstay of human economy for centuries.

From the top of my head, just looking around my apartment I can see a lot of fairly low skill level jobs that won't ever be automated - finishing works, plumbing, electrical works, central heating stove service and maintenance, making and installing built in furniture etc... Robotics is so far from being able to even remotely compete with human labor in those areas that it isn't even funny to contemplate automated services in those areas.



Your doing a fine job of critiquing an assertion that creative and craft industries are going to be wrecked by automation, but that's an assertion that nobody really makes and they're a relatively small market. The big things - bulk manufacturing, data entry, call centres, service industry etc - they're where the jobs are going to vanish.

Similarly, you're convincing when you say that robotics isn't about to become more effective than human labour at things like plumbing, internal wiring, boiler repairs, or building furniture in situ. Again, however, people don't really suggest that robots are about to replace people in performing dexterous tasks like in The Jetsons. It's software, production line robotics, and simple customer-operated machines that are argued to be about to annihilate work as we know it.

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2019/01/12 16:08:32


 
   
Made in pl
Wicked Warp Spider





nfe wrote:
nou wrote:

There is also this totally unbacked idea, that any job can and inevitably will be cost efficiently automated and that we will achieve the ceiling in desired quality of products/services in all areas and rest there - in other words, that the automation fills in some kind of preexisting and enclosed space of available and necessary jobs. The opening question of this topic is flawed by this - yes, we don't know how a fully automated economy would look like, but we don't really have to ask this question, as we do not know how and if such level of automation can be achieved in the first place. And nothing really seems to back up inevitability of such conclusion.

One other example from a completely different craftsman field. My friend is a tailor, a quite "common seamstress" kind of tailor. 30 years ago her "career" would be in large clothing factory. But since then globalisation of markets moved this whole industry to the east and technological improvement made competing with large companies in making T-shirts totally unviable (and this area in itself is very resistant to full automation). But at the same time, this same globalisation caused reduction of cost of basic clothing and enabled people from even lower middle class to seek tailor made clothing, so now she can make a living making custom corsets and historical gowns, and because such tasks won't ever be automated or even upscaled, there is a whole lot of room for her fellow tailors to go down the same route - she is hardly alone in it.

Another example: increased availability and cost efficiency of power tools between steam powered workshops era and modern times is so huge, that entry level into carpentry dropped nearly to the floor level - you can start this line of work as soon as you have a garage and money for your first "single use and throwaway" level of tools. IKEA furniture is of course cheaper and mass produced in vast amounts, but I know of no one, who prefers laminated cardboard table over a sturdy wooden one once he can easily afford it. You can now make art noveau level of complexity furniture using hand held tools in fraction of time that was needed those 100 years ago, or use affordable CNC machining to start small scale serial production of those with relatively small investment.

If anything, the recent globalization made a come back of craftsman trades possible, and craftsman trades are not high level jobs, they were a mainstay of human economy for centuries.

From the top of my head, just looking around my apartment I can see a lot of fairly low skill level jobs that won't ever be automated - finishing works, plumbing, electrical works, central heating stove service and maintenance, making and installing built in furniture etc... Robotics is so far from being able to even remotely compete with human labor in those areas that it isn't even funny to contemplate automated services in those areas.



Your doing a fine job of critiquing an assertion that creative and craft industries are going to be wrecked by automation, but that's an assertion that nobody really makes and they're a relatively small market. The big things - bulk manufacturing, data entry, call centres, service industry etc - they're where the jobs are going to vanish.

Similarly, you're convincing when you say that robotics isn't about to become more effective than human labour at things like plumbing, internal wiring, boiler repairs, or building furniture in situ. Again, however, people don't really suggest that robots are about to replace people in performing dexterous tasks like in The Jetsons. It's software, production line robotics, and simple customer-operated machines that are argued to be about to annihilate work as we know it.


Not exactly - cloth manufacturing and furniture manufacturing examples were specifically presented as huge areas of industry, that largely resist full automation. Even car production, an often invoked example of mass, automated production lines, still require a lot of production line workers for assembly stage. Ones of the biggest production lines that exist nowadays, that of final assembly of mobile phones, are still 100% human labor. Automated call centers may be valid for relatively simple languages like english, but even with such languages a task very intuitive for humans - that of asserting positive/negative tone of sentence - is still evading grasp of any AI, and a lot of modern data sources rely on gathering and mining common language.

And to be clear - I'm not debating, that job market won't evolve or that number of total job openings will remain at the same level forever. What I argue is that discussing an extreme scenario of all but the most specialist jobs being wiped out by automation is futile, as this very likely won't ever happen and that exact extreme scenario is the topic of the thread.

However, what is IMHO worth discussing are those particular areas, that are at the brink of full or large enough scale automation. And the biggest one of those is transport and logistics field, especially because they are dominated by male workforce and with "gender wars" climate in the west we are in for a very bumpy social change just around the corner. Far before any serious talks about universal basic income and collective ownership of fully automated global production are even remotely necessary.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
One more thing to add here - this is something that western countries haven't really experienced on the comparable scale, so the fear of unknown may be substantially higher there than it is here. After transformation of '89 not one, not a couple, but pretty much every large scale production plant here collapsed, because they were all technologically obsolete and relied on over employment - that is a situation comparable to mass automation of certain areas we are discussing here. There was a huge problem of both total and structural unemployment during a decade that followed, but 30 years forward we actually have to import workforce because despite all that modern optimization of production we don't have enough hands to work and we are now at historical lows of unemployment (basically we are at the level of natural unemployment nowadays, even accounting for mass migration of our skilled and unskilled workers to the UK or Germany we have already exceeded those numbers in immigration). Are some of that jobs "trash tier" or without perspectives? Hell yes. Is there a problem with demand for higly skilled but low wage jobs and no adaptation of the market to correct wage expectations? Hell yes, But we do not have any hint of automation making people obsolete, far from it.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2019/01/12 16:55:41


 
   
Made in gb
Longtime Dakkanaut



Glasgow

nou wrote:

Not exactly - cloth manufacturing and furniture manufacturing examples were specifically presented as huge areas of industry, that largely resist full automation.


Yes, but your examples to demonstrate the opposite are of specialist, niche, and expensive variants which categorically are not things people say are going to be automated. The big, low-mid range mass producers are.

Even car production, an often invoked example of mass, automated production lines, still require a lot of production line workers for assembly stage. Ones of the biggest production lines that exist nowadays, that of final assembly of mobile phones, are still 100% human labor.


I'm a little confused here. No one is saying these places have already been taken over by automation, but that they are at risk of (or present potential for, depending on your point of view) automation. The fact that one of the biggest areas of employment on the planet is a production line operation is the problem, not a refutation of the problem.

Automated call centers may be valid for relatively simple languages like english, but even with such languages a task very intuitive for humans - that of asserting positive/negative tone of sentence - is still evading grasp of any AI, and a lot of modern data sources rely on gathering and mining common language.


Sorry either I've been unclear or you've misunderstood me. I'm not saying that we're going to have conversations with AIs, I'm saying we wont be ringing at all because we'll do the entire operation online without speaking to anyone.

One more thing to add here - this is something that western countries haven't really experienced on the comparable scale, so the fear of unknown may be substantially higher there than it is here. After transformation of '89 not one, not a couple, but pretty much every large scale production plant here collapsed, because they were all technologically obsolete and relied on over employment - that is a situation comparable to mass automation of certain areas we are discussing here.


It really isn't the same. Mass collapse of large employers has happened everywhere at some point. This is of an order of magnitude that is not comparable. Literally billions of people are at risk of being replaced. If your job is based on repeated, simple actions or processing data according to consistent rules, you are at risk.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2019/01/12 17:46:09


 
   
Made in pl
Wicked Warp Spider





nfe wrote:
nou wrote:

Not exactly - cloth manufacturing and furniture manufacturing examples were specifically presented as huge areas of industry, that largely resist full automation.


Yes, but your examples to demonstrate the opposite are of specialist, niche, and expensive variants which categorically are not things people say are going to be automated. The big, low-mid range mass producers are.

Even car production, an often invoked example of mass, automated production lines, still require a lot of production line workers for assembly stage. Ones of the biggest production lines that exist nowadays, that of final assembly of mobile phones, are still 100% human labor.


I'm a little confused here. No one is saying these places have already been taken over by automation, but that they are at risk of (or present potential for, depending on your point of view) automation. The fact that one of the biggest areas of employment on the planet is a production line operation is the problem, not a refutation of the problem.

Automated call centers may be valid for relatively simple languages like english, but even with such languages a task very intuitive for humans - that of asserting positive/negative tone of sentence - is still evading grasp of any AI, and a lot of modern data sources rely on gathering and mining common language.


Sorry either I've been unclear or you've misunderstood me. I'm not saying that we're going to have conversations with AIs, I'm saying we wont be ringing at all because we'll do the entire operation online without speaking to anyone.

One more thing to add here - this is something that western countries haven't really experienced on the comparable scale, so the fear of unknown may be substantially higher there than it is here. After transformation of '89 not one, not a couple, but pretty much every large scale production plant here collapsed, because they were all technologically obsolete and relied on over employment - that is a situation comparable to mass automation of certain areas we are discussing here.


It really isn't the same. Mass collapse of large employers has happened everywhere at some point. This is of an order of magnitude that is not comparable. Literally billions of people are at risk of being replaced. If your job is based on repeated, simple actions or processing data according to consistent rules, you are at risk.


The topic is vast and language linear, so there are many confusions here. Some of modern industries (examples given - furniture making, assembly lines, clothes production) are still human labor based because they are too hard to fully automate at any reasonable cost despite all existing advances in automation that indeed affect other areas of production to smaller or larger extent. Not everything can be turned into fully automated soda bottles production lines. And none of those industries mentioned are at the imminent risk of being fully automated and those are not only examples available.

After '89 polish transformation total unemployment rates rocketed by about 15 percent points in just three years. That is comparable to succesfull and full automatization of a single large undustry. And as to "biggest area of employment being production line operation" - I don't have global data, but in Poland all production (that encompasses all kinds of production, be it low scale craftsman or high scale line assembly) comprises about 30% of all jobs (with just a little more than half of entire workforce in that area working in companies larger than 250 people), with services being the at nearly 60% and agriculture is the last 10%. Of those in services, most jobs in Poland are in education and health care. In light of all the hard data I really think I can sleep soundly and not be afraid of waking up in a fully automated world anytime soon.

And regarding call centers - it doesn't matter if you write or speak via phone, there must be a human being on the other side in most cases due to our failure at high enough level of automated natural language interpretation, which was my point earlier.

A side example - we are discussing this at a forum about a hobby that hinges on assembly of finely detailed plastic miniatures. This relatively simple but fully 3D process still exceeds the limits of even the most articulate industrial robots. And before you counterargue that this is a niche hobby - this kind of task is very representative to all sorts of human labor at assembly lines of all sorts of products. Basically, the dexterity and sensitivity of our hands and an opposing thumb, the very features that gave us our evolutionary advantage, are still prooving to be the most energy and cost efficient object manipulators available to humanity. And we have billions of them readily available for work in industry.
   
Made in us
The Conquerer






Waiting for my shill money from Spiral Arm Studios

 Peregrine wrote:
No, it can't. A massive unemployable population means that the state either accepts socialism voluntarily, or the new state formed after the unemployable masses rise up and execute the capitalists accepts socialism.


Or the more likely 3rd option. The people rise up and execute the socialists, destroy the robots, and pass laws heavily regulating/banning mass automation.

Self-proclaimed evil Cat-person. Dues Ex Felines

Cato Sicarius, after force feeding Captain Ventris a copy of the Codex Astartes for having the audacity to play Deathwatch, chokes to death on his own D-baggery after finding Calgar assembling his new Eldar army.

MURICA!!! IN SPESS!!! 
   
Made in us
Aspirant Tech-Adept






This socialist says "Bring it. "

"I learned the hard way that if you take a stand on any issue, no matter how insignificant, people will line up around the block to kick your ass over it." Jesse "the mind" Ventura. 
   
Made in jp
[MOD]
Anti-piracy Officer






Somewhere in south-central England.

Something worth thinking about is that most great animators start out by doing the in-betweening.

This is the job of drawing the 24 or so frames that fall "in between" the key frames which denote the important changes in an animation sequence.

If all the in-betweening ends up being done by robots, where are the lead animators of the future going to learn their trade?

The Japanese anime industry is already in trouble from this simply because so much of their in-betweening has been farmed out to cheap animation companies in Korea, and they aren't raising up their next generation.

I'm writing a load of fiction. My latest story starts here... This is the index of all the stories...

We're not very big on official rules. Rules lead to people looking for loopholes. What's here is about it. 
   
Made in de
Longtime Dakkanaut





I don´t know what will happen around the globe but I am sure what the response of the German public would be concerning to mass automation: Nothing. People who lose their jobs will simply lapse into depression and poverty. Once caught in this descending spiral there is very little hope to get back on your feet. Applying for other jobs with the same income you have just lost? Keep dreaming. Or summed up in Bill Paxton´s words:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dsx2vdn7gpY
   
Made in gb
Longtime Dakkanaut



Glasgow

nou wrote:

The topic is vast and language linear, so there are many confusions here. Some of modern industries (examples given - furniture making, assembly lines, clothes production) are still human labor based because they are too hard to fully automate at any reasonable cost despite all existing advances in automation that indeed affect other areas of production to smaller or larger extent.

Not everything can be turned into fully automated soda bottles production lines. And none of those industries mentioned are at the imminent risk of being fully automated and those are not only examples available.

No, not everything can be, but, as you noted yourself, in the lower to mid-range considerable portions of this production is already automated.

After '89 polish transformation total unemployment rates rocketed by about 15 percent points in just three years. That is comparable to succesfull and full automatization of a single large undustry.

But not comparable to the near-simultaneous automation of significant percentages of most industries.

And as to "biggest area of employment being production line operation" - I don't have global data, but in Poland all production (that encompasses all kinds of production, be it low scale craftsman or high scale line assembly) comprises about 30% of all jobs (with just a little more than half of entire workforce in that area working in companies larger than 250 people), with services being the at nearly 60% and agriculture is the last 10%.

I said one of the biggest employers. Globally, it is presumably second to agriculture. In the west I imagine it sits behind services and retail (specially if you count them as the same thing). Services are going to take a hammering too. Already are. All those people doing data input in banks, insurance underwriters, legal PAs, cashiers in supermarkets etc are already being reduced as software and technology is allowing fewer of them to do more work.

Of those in services, most jobs in Poland are in education and health care. In light of all the hard data I really think I can sleep soundly and not be afraid of waking up in a fully automated world anytime soon.

Worryingly (for me especially!), technology is already harming higher education jobs. Things as simple as video lectures. I don't think we're about to see robot teachers, but then, as I've said, it's not robots in the style of the Jetsons that are the threat to employment, it's software and machines carrying out simple, repeated actions.

And regarding call centers - it doesn't matter if you write or speak via phone, there must be a human being on the other side in most cases due to our failure at high enough level of automated natural language interpretation, which was my point earlier.

I'm still not being clear enough, it seems. I'm not saying you will converse with a machine via text instead of speech. I'm saying there will be no conversation via any medium. We're already close to dealing with all such matters via questions and drop down menus of answers. Which people prefer (in the anglophone world, largely due to the movement of centres to India and racism). It's going further that way and will continue to do so until all complaints and changes you used to speak to humans about are dealt with without a human on the other end doing anything at all. Customers directly dealing with their own problems. You know how you used to have to talk to someone in a mobile phone shop for an hour to change contract but now you log into the website and set it up yourself? More of that.

A side example - we are discussing this at a forum about a hobby that hinges on assembly of finely detailed plastic miniatures. This relatively simple but fully 3D process still exceeds the limits of even the most articulate industrial robots. And before you counterargue that this is a niche hobby - this kind of task is very representative to all sorts of human labor at assembly lines of all sorts of products. Basically, the dexterity and sensitivity of our hands and an opposing thumb, the very features that gave us our evolutionary advantage, are still prooving to be the most energy and cost efficient object manipulators available to humanity. And we have billions of them readily available for work in industry.

Again, you are talking about a creative process which no one thinks automation is anywhere close to replacing. I did explicitly reference simple but dexterous processes as being safe above in response to your examples of plumbers and electricians etc. Of course, in the case of GW, after the creation process, the production is completely automated.

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2019/01/12 20:00:45


 
   
 
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