Remember that discussion a while back as to whether increasing automation will be good for us and the economy.

http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2015/02/17/the-robots-are-coming-for-your-paycheck/

Messrs. Benzell, Kotlikoff, LaGarda and Sachs look specifically at the creation of software code that powers machines used to produce goods–that is, robots. Their worry is that the stock of good code will grow during a boom to the point that the demand for new code will decline, leading to lower wages in the high-tech field. That, in turn, means less savings and investment, and the accumulation of fewer assets.

“The long run in such a case is no techno-utopia,” the authors say. “Yes, code is abundant. But capital is dear. And yes, everyone is fully employed. But no one is earning very much.”

During the ensuing bust, consumption falls and not enough capital accumulates for the next round of investment.

Global warming, ongoing risk of thermonuclear war and now this. What a terrific century this is going to be.

Don’t worry about it, in 20 years or so, we’ll have invented human intelligence level AI, and in a few hours after that when it exceeds the power of all accumulated knowledge that’s ever existed, it’ll realise that we’re all a bit pointless, and re-arrange our atoms into something more useful.

Or they’ll just rule as a benevolent dictator. There are some good books about exactly that actually.

Or they will learn from us and spend most of their time arguing about tyre choices and gear ratios on the internet.

I wonder of working for robots will be sigificantly different to the current system.

Someone needs to send this to Nigel Farage. Immigrants are no kind of threat to our jobs compared to AI and machines. It’s not the future either, it’s already here.
Look at your local Tesco and Sainsbury local and see how many manned tills they have vs automated – back in the day they’d have employed twice as many people
Doctors and lawyers are seeing the number of jobs reduced from automation and use of machines.
Taxi drivers will be screwed once self-driving cars are with us, white van man will be screwed when the regulations around drones are removed…

It’s not that machines can do our jobs necessarily, it’s that a machine allows me to be twice as efficient, which means I have a job and you don’t (or vice versa!)

21st century’s going to be interesting. I doubt this level of disruption will go smoothly

Automation isn’t a threat to our jobs, it’s a threat to our way of life. Which is usually supposed to sound scary, but in this case only if you think working 5 days a week for 50 years is the best way of life we can possibly come up with. Ultimately it doesn’t lead to millions of people out of work while robots do everything; it leads to millions of people not needing to work because robots do everything.

it leads to millions of people not needing to work because robots do everything.

That model’s effectively what the Saudis have been doing for decades. The oil just comes out of the ground following investment in previous years. Hardly anyone’s needed to do the work necessary to do this.

The population at large would go mental if they weren;t kept occupied and there’d be constant social unrest so the government creates meaningless state jobs to prevent it. With an added bit of autocracy to keep a lid on things.

Be careful what you wish for. Personally I prefer what I have now to a country like Saudi Arabia

Automation isn’t a threat to our jobs, it’s a threat to our way of life. Which is usually supposed to sound scary, but in this case only if you think working 5 days a week for 50 years is the best way of life we can possibly come up with. Ultimately it doesn’t lead to millions of people out of work while robots do everything; it leads to millions of people not needing to work because robots do everything.

As long as wealth is redistributed properly Northwind, which, considering the amount governments such as the US and the UK are spending on being able to control their own populations…probably won’t be very much.

ALL HAIL OUR ROBOT MASTERS……too soon????

ALL HAIL OUR ROBOT MASTERS……too soon????

Sycophancy will not be tolerated. Exterminate!

Or they’ll learn from us and spend ages worrying about their sexuality and banging each other stupid.

Or will the automation of some roles lead to new ones becoming open to us ? Look at all the time we spend on the internet (for work, not play) – jobs that didn’t exist a few years ago.

There are loads of people in my office employed because of the automation of the internet.

Lots of jobs will go, but only because they are inefficient. That’s no different to the history of employment.

Evolution of employment, only the fittest will survive and this pushes progress. This progress props up the remainder who are less efficient.

Also some will pay for the human version of what a machine will do. Like supermarket tills, I flipping hate the auto scanners so happily queue extra for the human operated till.

Two links showing the possible extremes:
Bad
Good

Trimix, that is what the paper attempts to answer. Basically the economists who wrote it don’t think that new jobs will replace those lost or those that do, will be very poorly paid.

Look at your local Tesco and Sainsbury local and see how many manned tills they have vs automated – back in the day they’d have employed twice as many people

Well I try to do my bit for full employment by refusing to use automated tills.

The big question: will our robot overlords merge in turn or form a long queue?

There is no way the rothchilds or rockefellas are going to allow a 3 day working week and share the benefits of robots doing the labour

I dare say that around the same time the mega-rich realise they don’t need the middle class a mysterious virus will eradicate most of the worlds working poor.

So no need to worry, or you could just become a morlock now

Baah I thought this was gonna be about them global dynamics dog like robot things….

They’re well cool…

Robot painters killed the car sprayers job…and cnc changed the engineering work….and I don’t think anyones soldering the chips on boards…so we’ve probably already been taken over imho.

With the speeding cameras 20mph limits etc might as well have a full auto car now – its not like drivings fun anymore 🙁

You people are funny.

Most jobs that have ever existed have already been automated. Just because there isn’t a physical robot putting things together doesn’t mean it’s not automated. In your daily lives you’ve already dealt with dozens or hundreds of automated tasks today.

Think about how much is done by computers compared to say the 70s.

Weird?……… just listening to such an argument/discussion on R4 at the moment regarding robots stealing our jobs.

Analysis -When robots steal our jobs

You people are funny.

Most jobs that have ever existed have already been automated. Just because there isn’t a physical robot putting things together doesn’t mean it’s not automated. In your daily lives you’ve already dealt with dozens or hundreds of automated tasks today.

I think the difference is, is that some well regarded economists are now starting to worry Molgrips.

I think there needs to be some decent debate around the issue, instead of blindly wandering into technological change like we usually do.

Starting? Haven’t there always been cheerleaders and doomsayers in this respect?

Starting? Haven’t there always been cheerleaders and doomsayers in this respect?

Yeah, I would love to see a counter argument to the paper. I need to question my missus on that study first as economics goes way over my biologists head. 😀

Def worth listening to that programme Somafunk posted above, it’s a very considered piece on the potential outcomes…

Thing is, just because technology may create new jobs, they may not be the ones we’re able to do and have trained for – I suspect some sectors of society will gain and some will lose. Right now no-one knows who will be the winners and losers…

I’m looking at what I do (marketing) and keeping an eye out for how technology may make my skills useless or less in demand (some may argue that’s a win for society at large!) and thinking about what my alternatives might be. Maybe I’ll move into marketing robots 🙂

I suspect a lot of people in good, white-collar jobs are going to get caught out in the next 10 years if they don’t keep an eye out and get ready to retrain to something entirely different…

Like computers and various items of machinery that took away the manual way of work, robots are slowly doing the same thing, doing repetitive tasks day in and out.

Problem is as most of get paid by the hour worked, if hours we need to work to do a task is reduced, due to more automation, or robotics taking over, hours of work are reduced but will pay go up, and what happens to all those spare hours we are not working, whats going to take their place,most activities require some funding shoes, bikes, fuel food etc.

From my own experiences of work, when i started my apprenticeship, we didnt have electric screwdrivers, electric routers, biscuit jointers etc ,etc, we had no direct dial phones,no internet to research work info, wages where done by hand on paper,

all now replaced by power tools and computers etc.With the resultant loss of jobs.

http://qz.com/202312/is-your-job-at-risk-from-robot-labor-check-this-handy-interactive/

😯

The trouble with economics as a “science” is that it is basically no more than describing a plausible sounding sequence of consequences. Robots making us all poor, or all rich, sounds equally plausible.

There was panic when the wheelbarrow was invented, it was feared that it would make half the labour force redundant. What it actually did was make the labour force twice as productive.

There are (at least) two kinds of economic growth, one where you just consume more (China and Russia tend to do this one) and one where you invent cool stuff that makes you more efficient (the West tends to do this one). Wheelbarrows and robots are of the second kind.

I’m not convinced Klumpy, there’s a big difference between a wheelbarrow and robots that can put one third of the workforce out of a job.

I think brooess is right. Stuff like supply chain or logistics, that could be subject to ever more automation. Probably already is. Marketing however is probably a soft enough skill to still need humans. Analytics is having a big impact, but the idea is to make the same people better, rather than replace them afaik.

We will probably drive our own demise in this. The constant race towards the lowest price will ensure more automation. There will be some innovation, but that will require a tiny workforce to come up with new stuff that gets made automatically.

Or in the third world where wages and life is cheap.

Also a problem will be education – its already not keeping pace with the requirements of the workplace.

There won’t be legions of unemployed people, as once there are over a certain number it will drive labour costs down to the point automation becomes less cost effective again. The inability of people to find new jobs is what will put the brakes on automatically. The bottom line then becomes the skill of the workforce and ultimately education.

That’s all in theory of course. Human cost is not a factor in this model.

There a few different aspect to look at when we talk about robots taking over.
Jobs will be lost but new ones will talk there place. No where as a typing pool anymore but they have IT department.
So there going to jobs one day that are not needed yet.

At some point a human will have fix, repair or update the robots, more robots need more people to fix them.

Look at the car industry where reports have for the most part taken over. This as given us better built and more reliable cars. But some the jobs have to do by a human even when building the cars as they can’t be done by a robot.

Also design can’t be done by even the best AI so that still would be humans doing that.

Still with cars some car companies don’t use rebots and hand build there cars and many people will pay a premium for them.

And the big one is they will never fully take over as if no one work, no one would have any money, so don’t won’t be able to buy anything. No one buying anything no robits needed

At some point a human will have fix, repair or update the robots, more robots need more people to fix them.

Also design can’t be done by even the best AI so that still would be humans doing that.

At the moment… Do you doubt that will change?

[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU[/video]

This video’s relevant to this discussion…

design can’t be done by even the best AI

Some design can only be done by AI, humans can’t compete. E.g. GAs to optimise jet engine design or antenna design, where the most efficient designs aren’t made by humans. AI can generate jokes, puns etc. – “simple” stuff, for now…

Is that really design though – that’s iterative usually rather than conceptual at least – humans specify what the goal of the process is – eg lighter/stronger blades, more efficent gas flow, etc).

I’d agree that iterative design is already much better done by computers (CFD, stress analysis for example) but the fundamental concepts still very much come from us. Once that changes though…

antenna design, where the most efficient designs aren’t made by humans.

They’re not “designed” by computers either, the computers are just FEA tools used by humans.

Well the antenna design example was a GA randomly* specifying the shape of the antenna, simulating it and keeping or rejecting components of the design to inform subsequent iterations, subject to random mutation. Which is quite different to approximate numerical solutions made possible by the application of computers (like FEA). If you like it approximates human trial and error design informed by heuristics.

But yes, in this instance humans specify the goal. There are AI reasoning systems specified on a higher level however, intentions rather than specific goals. E.g. you could intend to improve an aeroplane, and engine improvement as a goal is consistent with this intention.

Of course then you argue the humans told the computer to build a better plane. Where do you draw the line? When you can get sufficiently general to have the intention of “make things better?” (and then how do you define better etc…).

In terms of automated proofs there’s work where you could argue that AI is capable of creativity of intention in proof formulation etc…

FWIW I think this is an interesting debate, technically, ethically and philosophically. I’ll admit straight up to a bias though – making smarter robots/systems has been my job for the past 12+ years…. though because of this I do think I’m more informed than most.**

*not really, but for the purposes of this explanation it’ll do.

**of course I’m right, I’m arguing online and the internet is WRONG ;-)***

***http://xkcd.com/386/