https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jan/05/japanese-company-replaces-office-workers-artificial-intelligence-ai-fukoku-mutual-life-insurance

50 percent of jobs automated by 2035? Wow. So much for productivity gains producing more growth and more jobs!

A “problem” noted some time ago: production becomes so efficient that there aren’t enough people earning money to buy the products that the efficient factories produce!

Depends on what your job is though……..

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-34066941

I won’t be getting replaced by a robot any time soon, it seems.

Buckminster Fuller & Jaques Fresco types were right all along?
Who knew

Well when I were a lad we were promised more automation and more leisure time. It hasn’t happened in the last 40 years or so. I’m guessing the “more leisure time” now equates to more unemployment. Though quite what happens to your market when everyone is out of work I’m not sure.

production becomes so efficient that there aren’t enough people earning money to buy the products that the efficient factories produce!

It’ll balance out. History shows us that the people who are no longer employed doing the menial work will eventually get other jobs facilitating other stuff.

The money that this company saves will get spent on more services for people to consume. That will enable more other business, but also the peopel implementing those new services will have more work. So eventually (possibly) we’ll end up with more enablers and more tech, which will result in many more services, and more people engaged in providing them and consuming them.

We produce more food than we did 150 years ago with far fewer people. Are those unemployed farmers sitting around on the dole? No, they’re writing apps, making TV shows, delivering online purchases, starting up tech companies, inventing weird bikes, analysing data warehouses etc etc etc. None of which happened 150 years ago.

It seems to me that the freeing of people from the more mundane work has enabled far more other work to be done. So we get to do more than sit around doing needlework, hand-washing clothes or playing the piano in the evenings.

I’m guessing the “more leisure time” now equates to more unemployment

Nope. They found other stuff for us to do:

I dont buy it, by the time the labour market adjusts to the first tound of major redundancies we’ll be approaching the timeline for the predicted general AI.

I think the upper classes will use it as a way to build even more capital and lock it up – and the world will end up looking like District 9 or Elysium.

Your pessimism does not surprise me Tom 🙂

Thing is, people will always want to make more money. So, the bosses of the companies who can lay off all their staff and pocket the money won’t do that – they’ll think ‘given all these staff who are now free and I can afford to employ, I will come up with even more ideas to expand my business’.

Of course, that didn’t happen in this specific example…

Maybe the AIs will make us gearbox bikes that work and stuff.

Like the Culture Minds.

Can’t we just have a war if it’s ever a problem?

Can’t we just have a war if it’s ever a problem?

Be careful what you wish for…

By about 2050 AI will become self-improving, and robots self-repairing such that human life as we know it will be unknown. Universal basic income?

The AI Revolution: The Road to Superintelligence

slowoldman – Member
Well when I were a lad we were promised more automation and more leisure time. It hasn’t happened in the last 40 years or so

Sorry, but I’m calling “bollocks” on that latter bit. We have much more leisure time than our grandparents did. Shorter working weeks, more holidays etc.

read The Peripheral by William Gibson.

Not for the alternate timeline stuff but the very plausible near future bit regarding population reduction by drug resistant diseases and famine together with a super rich class that just surfs the wave of automation and AI’s.

This is what I find amusing/futile/annoying about ***** like Trump, who says he’ll force Apple to relocate iPhone manufacturing to the US to boost jobs.

But those manufacturing jobs left the US for China etc to save money.
And now in China they are saving further money by replacing those low-paid workers with robots:

Foxconn replaces ‘60,000 factory workers with robots (BBC)
iPhone manufacturer Foxconn plans to replace almost every human worker with robots (The Verge)

Unless customers can be persuaded to pay more for goods that are handmade by real people or businesses can be persuaded to make less profit and slower production by doing everything by human hand – both of which seem pretty unlikely – then those jobs are simply gone.

 

* (Note: A metaphor, not an attempt to evade the swear filter).

Nope. They found other stuff for us to do:

So far yes. Can it continue?

Sorry, but I’m calling “bollocks” on that latter bit. We have much more leisure time than our grandparents did. Shorter working weeks, more holidays etc.

I’m not doubting that, but referring to my experience not my parents or grandparents, in 40 years of employment, other than the usual increases applied for long service, my working week and holiday entitlement haven’t changed, despite those predictions. I’m also still waiting for my silver jump suit, rocket car and hover board.

So far yes. Can it continue?

It’s been going on for 200 years already. I’d say it depends on how fast it happens, and how fast education can keep up.

Given that our government at least doens’t seem to care and is happy whatever shit happens, I’m slighly aprehensive. But then, I don’t thnk it’ll happen all that quickly.

I’m also still waiting for my silver jump suit

Tenner off eBay

Sorry, but I’m calling “bollocks” on that latter bit. We have much more leisure time than our grandparents did. Shorter working weeks, more holidays etc.

Your grandfather would have worked a 40 hour week, maybe with the odd bit of overtime, your grandmother probably didn’t work.

Think comparisons to history are probably incorrect. We are at a point where technology can do far more of the basic jobs and can be adapted to take others roles at a very fast pace. The last time I think things changed this quickly for the general workforce would have been the industrial revolution.

Trouble is that companies need people to have money to consume their products. Humans also need to work to avoid becoming slobs. My vision of the future is with the same level of employment but full time is only 3 days a week with wages topped up from government to equivalent 5 day a week levels. The money would be from new automation taxes on business. Business would still automate and not be put off by the additional tax due to side benefits of consistent output, 24 hour production, no union trouble etc.

Did you ever read Judge Dredd?

Your grandfather would have worked a 40 hour week

Yeah but doing what? Often mindless repetitive tasks

your grandmother probably didn’t work.

and you probably don’t remember a time before washing machines and fridges-freezers 😉

The last time I think things changed this quickly for the general workforce would have been the industrial revolution

Yes, but even that was different. The change then was millions of NEW jobs – mining, steel refining, fabrication etc etc. It was obvious what needed doing. But that demand was driven by all the new ideas people came up with – railways, steel framed skyscrapers etc etc. Those new technologies fuelled demand.

I think that will happen again – as long as we have time to adjust. It was easy to train someone to put axles in Model Ts, but now the level of education required to do the jobs is much much higher so it requires much more forward planning. If we screw up, that’s where it’ll be.

I do find it hard to not think we are on the dawn of it becoming an awful lot more difficult to make a living for anyone other than the brightest.

Oh well, at least we have a welfare state and don’t have to rely on some kind of national belief in a dream.

Well no-one can afford for millions to be on the dole – so something will have to happen. And as said – if no-one but the brightest have any money, there’ll be no market for the services and goods. So it’ll even out in the end.

I do find it hard to not think we are on the dawn of it becoming an awful lot more difficult to make a living for anyone other than the brightest.

Pretty much. Automation will effectively flood the labour force with employees that don’t care what they’re paid. Unless it’s managed with the interests of the general populace we’ll see a long period of stagnating wages. The opposite of what happened after the Black Death. And with less robots.

Trouble is that companies need people to have money to consume their products

Well likely end up with most people working in face to face roles where human interaction is preferred. I’m so grumpy I don’t really understand what that would be. But I’d guess at care work, restaurants, 3rd sector etc.

Interesting project here http://www.harper-adams.ac.uk/news/202923/field-to-be-farmed-exclusively-by-robots–a-worldfirst#.WG6NR7TfWhA

Agriculture strikes me as an obvious choice for automation as it’s a fairly predicament environment. We already have automated milking parlors for example.

Automation and technology are slowly sucking the soul out of everything, including us.
Virtually impossible to strike a balance though. 😥

Speak for yourself.

I’m of the opinion works a load of bllx 😉

When the agricultural revolution and industrial revolutions happened in the U.K. There was huge upheaval, unemployment, exploitation, illness, famine death through the adjustment. Marx and Engels were directly influenced by the shithole that Manchester was. It’s better now yes but bloody tough for those living through it. Even then living standards improved in a select few western countries at the expense of the rest of the world. In the long run of history this is actually an anomaly as Western Europe has been a violent backwater and central and east Asia was where it’s at.

We are going through another big change and will it be life be better on the otherwise of it? Probably. But there’s no reason to assume that it won’t be as hard and unpleasant as previous adjustments for our or the next generation or that the west will emerge the ‘winners’.

or that the west will emerge the ‘winners’.

One of the impacts could be that production costs get levelled out as it’ll be the most cost effective machine and not person. And machines can be bought and shipped.

Which moves the focus onto resources and where is best to produce to access a market. Maybe.

@piemonster – agriculture is anything but predictable.There are some parts that are relatively easy to automate but others still need (for the moment and probably for a good while yet) the human touch/eye.

@molgrips – the change in agricultural work practices is astounding but it’s taken seventy years to go from 35% of the population working in agriculture to 4%. A lot of that has come about through the incoming generation not wanting to farm (long hours not a lot of pay) so once the old bloke decides to retire he sells the farm to fund his pension. When my father was a lad just about everything on a farm was horse driven with a few things like threshing machines being driven by steam traction engines. By the time he died twenty years ago things like milk production were, if not completely automated then at least computer controlled.

whitestone – Member

@piemonster – agriculture is anything but predictable.There are some parts that are relatively easy to automate but others still need (for the moment and probably for a good while yet) the human touch/eye.

Tell that to your Robot Overlords human https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/feb/01/japanese-firm-to-open-worlds-first-robot-run-farm

But your right, that was far too broad a brush. Some farming is definately well suited to it, larger arable units dealing in wheat for example. And you might be surprised as some of the capabilities machines now have with the ‘eye’ bit. There are working examples out there that can differentiate between crop and weed.

I was thinking more of animal husbandry than arable when I spoke about ‘eye’, a stocksman knowing and understanding his animals will take more advances. I’ve little doubt that it will happen but I don’t think it’s there just yet.

Your grandfather would have worked a 40 hour week, maybe with the odd bit of overtime, your grandmother probably didn’t work.

He worked more than that. Grandma took in a bit of washing and had lodgers, as was usual in those days, but then my post was referring to the past 40 years, my working life, not my grandad’s.

Yeah but doing what? Often mindless repetitive tasks

Down the pit. As was dad. I escaped that one.

But I repeat, during my working life there have been promises of reduced working hours and more leisure time for all. There has been no significant change. Indeed people younger than me are going to find themselves working much longer before retirement.

It’s been going on for 200 years already. I’d say it depends on how fast it happens, and how fast education can keep up.

Does education need to keep up? we already have thousands of over-qualified call centre workers.

Nope. They found other stuff for us to do:

In the same period as the above graph sickness benefit claimants went up from just over 400,000 to over 2.5 million.

According to the BBC link

Engineering professionals
Likelihood of automation?
It’s quite unlikely (3%)

But the salary was £10,000 below mine?

Hopefully Estate Agents will get screwed.