Technological unemployment is (almost) here

[Zangelbert Bingledack]

When the doctors who have spent 10-15 years on education/training expected to be replaced by Watson and even programmers (!) could be affected by advanced IDEs and frameworks...

Good! The rest of us are all now wayyyy better off (living instead of dead, for example!), since healthcare is automated. Sucks for them - in that unlikely scenario where they just get replaced all at once* - that they wasted 10-15 years learning something that wonderfully, thankfully, miraculously no longer needs doing. But it doesn't really suck for them, because the same thing is happening in almost every industry. Doctors also have to eat, have housing, clothes, massages, cars, leisure, etc. They may be out of a job (or more likely doing something much more efficient with their expertise), but the case where they are totally unable to use their expertise assumes radical advancement. You cannot posit so radical an advancement that many or all doctors face instant, total unemployment, and then turn around and claim that the other industries would just have stagnated.

No, if medical technology advances to Star Trek levels, then likely so do most other things. That means everything will be radically cheaper or even free, making it basically unnecessary for anyone to work, or to work very much. Doctors now make a lot of money, but they also have to spend a lot of money on the things they want. Automation fixes the latter, while not necessarily causing any problem for the former since they can often just switch jobs within the same field. They are freed up to do more important things that do need doing. Not always will they stay working, but very often; yet automation always brings down prices, and does so far more dramatically than the wage loss of any typical employment "downgrade."

You cannot on the one hand posit a situation where machines do everything for us to such an extent that hardly anyone (or no one) is even needed to oversee things, and on the other hand claim that people would be starving to death and not have good, incredibly cheap or free healthcare. If you had a bunch of machines that did EVERYTHING for you, including maintaining the machines, you wouldn't have a job, but you'd be living like a king, or a god. Not having to work is an unmitigated blessing, not a curse.

*Much more like they'd simply switch to more efficient work, like double-checking Watson and helping develop better ones. The fallacy here is that there is some limited number of things to achieve in healthcare that we are somewhere near finishing. No, there can always be better healthcare, and as the world grows more efficient - through automation! - we will be looking for more and more better things, like life extension, then radical life extension, etc. Doctors being totally replaced because medical expertise counts for nothing at all would take quite a long time, there would be early warning, and as mentioned above the rest of society would have advanced incredibly by this time so being out of a job by then would be no problem at all.

This is an age-old economic fallacy, and I'm really surprised to see it on a Bitcoin forum. Here's a more complete treatment if anyone has any illusions that this isn't a fallacy:

http://www.fee.org/the_freeman/detail/the-curse-of-machinery#axzz2jPA98VQc

[giantdragon]

Eventually automation will make it so that working 1 hour a week at a really easy job will be enough to live well. And this is supposed to be a bad thing?

If you had a bunch of machines that did EVERYTHING for you, including maintaining the machines, you wouldn't have a job, but you'd be living like a king, or a god. Not having to work is an unmitigated blessing, not a curse.

Both things you have described are undoubtedly good for the humanity! But as I wrote earlier, in current economical system all benefits from the automation will go to capital owners (most of them are simply greedy banksters who even don't know what their business are doing, they just hire CEO to rule the corporation and demand profit-profit-profit from him) - so why they voluntary will decide to reduce your working day to 1 hour or give away fully-automated factory which can let you live "like a king, or a god"!?

P.S. With this thread I wanted to show the coming conflict labor-vs-capital caused by automation and discuss possible solutions, not to oppose the progress.

[Timo Y]

Just because a worker is less productive than a machine doesn't mean he is out of work.   All it means is that his wage is lower than the machine's "wage".  

But if automation happens across the board, falling wages will happen in conjunction with falling prices, and most workers will not notice a drop in real wages, except in comparison to things that are naturally scarce such as land, energy, and bitcoin.

Either that, or prices will not fall, since the "Tech Elite" will keep all the fruits of increased productivity to themselves, but in that case ordinary workers will still be able to compete in a parallel society and again not notice much of a difference.

And by the way, forget about the "Tech Elite". They will be the first to suffer from falling wages, since pure knowledge jobs are the easiest to replace with software.  I think we are heading back towards a Medieval-style society where technological innovation is mainly driven by enthusiasts tinkering on open-source projects and a few geniuses sponsored by old money and rich land owners.  

If I were to give career advice to a child born today, I would tell them to forget about science and engineering and become a stand up comedian, since this is the most difficult-to-automate job that I can possibly think of.  

[giantdragon]

And by the way, forget about the "Tech Elite". They will be the first to suffer from falling wages, since pure knowledge jobs are the easiest to replace with software.

If I were to give career advice to a child born today, I would tell them to forget about science and engineering and become a stand up comedian, since this is the most difficult-to-automate job that I can possibly think of.  

Programming and 3D modeling are the only professions which will be automated last time. When/if it will happen, it would mean beginning of the technological singularity (i.e. creating a machine with super-human intelligence capable self-improving).

[go1111111]

If you had a bunch of machines that did EVERYTHING for you, including maintaining the machines, you wouldn't have a job, but you'd be living like a king, or a god. Not having to work is an unmitigated blessing, not a curse.

This would only be true if you owned these machines, or enough shares in them to get income from them. If not, things could be very bad for you.

Just because a worker is less productive than a machine doesn't mean he is out of work.   All it means is that his wage is lower than the machine's "wage".  

And if a machine can operate on the equivalent of $10 per day but be 10x more productive than you, then your wage would be driven down to $1 per day. Just because you could make some small wage doesn't mean you'd be able to live off it.

And by the way, forget about the "Tech Elite". They will be the first to suffer from falling wages, since pure knowledge jobs are the easiest to replace with software.

Software development jobs will be some of the last to be automated, since they are very mentally difficult. I agree that software replacing skilled programmers will likely happen before software can replace Louis C.K, but both of those jobs are still be among the very last to be automated. Think about all the other office jobs out there: people working in payroll, handling purchase orders, etc. All these jobs are much easier to automate than software development.

[Shallow]

Interesting thread. I've always wondered what will happen when robots do most things.

[Timo Y]

Software development jobs will be some of the last to be automated, since they are very mentally difficult.

So is chess!

And chess was one on the first mental "jobs" to be successfully automated.  Just because something is mentally difficult doesn't mean it's immune to automation.

Why is programming so difficult and time consuming to learn? Because it requires memorizing a huge amount of very dry information, and very exact reasoning skills with a low rate of error. Those are exactly the kind of tasks that computers excel at and humans are terrible at. It is almost a miracle that the human mind can hammered into learning these tasks at all; exactness is not in our nature, we evolved to compute the world intuitively and in terms of rough estimates, not in black and white terms.   That is why good programmers, just like good chess players, are a rare commodity.  For now.

But imagine that 10-20 years from now the "exact" aspect of programming can be outsourced to a machine. Imagine if you could simply tell your computer "Write me a bug free function that does X" and it spits out the code in a matter of seconds.  Of course, programming doesn't just require "left brain" skills, it also requires intuition and creativity, especially for higher level stuff like design and requirements engineering. But anyone reasonably intelligent can now become an expert programmer in a matter of months instead of years.  

I agree that software replacing skilled programmers will likely happen before software can replace Louis C.K, but both of those jobs are still be among the very last to be automated.

I am willing to bet that 90% of the work done by skilled programmers today, will be done by machines before 90% of work of janitors is done by machines.

[go1111111]

Software development jobs will be some of the last to be automated, since they are very mentally difficult.

So is chess!

And chess was one on the first mental "jobs" to be successfully automated.  Just because something is mentally difficult doesn't mean it's immune to automation.

Right, there are things that computers can do well that humans find very difficult, like adding billions of numbers together without making a mistake. Chess is difficult, but it's also very narrow in that can be described in a way that turns it into a calculation problem for computers.

Imagine if you could simply tell your computer "Write me a bug free function that does X" and it spits out the code in a matter of seconds.  Of course, programming doesn't just require "left brain" skills, it also requires intuition and creativity, especially for higher level stuff like design and requirements engineering. But anyone reasonably intelligent can now become an expert programmer in a matter of months instead of years.  

Yes, a lot of what programmers do now is drudgery, and programming languages will continue to get higher and higher level to remove a lot of that, but it will be a while before a person can have the idea of AirBnB and say "Computer, create a service that allows people to rent out space in other people's homes for short amounts of time. Also make sure it's super well architected and scaleable and looks good. Then do a bunch of marketing and get lots of customers. Thanks!"

What you don't seem to be taking into account is that this will simply make the tech elite more elite, and concentrate wealth into smaller group of these tech elite. Sure, when programming is easier more people will be able to accomplish something reasonable, but when I want to visit another city I don't want to use the 54th best version of AirBnB that my cousin created, even if it's way better than what he could accomplish with today's technology. I'll want to use the best version. So now the guy who created AirBnB needs no low level programmers, and he can profit much more himself from his creation, and he can create 20 companies instead of a couple. All the mediocre programmers see their wages fall, and a small elite of visionary product people see their wages rise (until AI displaces them eventually).

[giantdragon]

People from The Zeitgeist Movement / Venus project just released documentary movie "Will Work For Free" about technological unemployment issue:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0SuGRgdJA_c

[marcus_of_augustus]

People from The Zeitgeist Movement / Venus project just released documentary movie "Will Work For Free" about technological unemployment issue:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0SuGRgdJA_c

Typical communist claptrap ...

[giantdragon]

Typical communist claptrap ...

Typical right-leaning answer to the issue discussed in this thread

Interesting quote from the book "Lights in the tunnel":

Again, conservative economic thinkers may reflexively object to this view. Conservatives tend to emphasize the importance  of  production  (or  the  “supply  side”)  in  the natural  cycle  that  occurs  between  production  and  consumption. Conservatives  generally  favor  low  taxes  and minimum  regulation of producers  in  the expectation  that this will result in increased economic activity and job creation, which  will  then lead  to  strong  consumer  demand. The problem with that way of thinking, of course, is that, in  an  increasingly  automated  economy,  the  job  creation will not  occur. Consumers will have  little  opportunity  to participate  in  the production process as workers and will lose access to the wages that sustain them. In the absence of an alternate income mechanism, a collapse in consumer spending must be the inevitable result.

[marcus_of_augustus]

You're not only stuck in the antiquated left/right paradigm but seemingly clueless on many other aspects of basic economics ... try doing some independent research or pushing this buzzword "technological unemployment " barrow and others like it might be the only thing you ever do in your life, and it is entirely worthless (I'll just about guarantee you were/are a AGW fanatic also?). You are the serving the 'useful idiot' role quite handsomely for some venal thinkers who wish only to control others, including yourself.

[DeathAndTaxes]

Both things you have described are undoubtedly good for the humanity! But as I wrote earlier, in current economical system all benefits from the automation will go to capital owners (most of them are simply greedy banksters who even don't know what their business are doing, they just hire CEO to rule the corporation and demand profit-profit-profit from him) - so why they voluntary will decide to reduce your working day to 1 hour or give away fully-automated factory which can let you live "like a king, or a god"!?

Why don't cellphones still cost $2,000 and cellphone plans cost $0.35 per minute?

[giantdragon]

Why don't cellphones still cost $2,000 and cellphone plans cost $0.35 per minute?

So why a college degree doesn't costs $1000 or health insurance $100 per year?!

[marcus_of_augustus]

Why don't cellphones still cost $2,000 and cellphone plans cost $0.35 per minute?

So why a college degree doesn't costs $1000 or health insurance $100 per year?!

Because the State is heavily involved in both education and healthcare ... regulating, interfering in private transactions in these areas and in the worst cases  totally monopolising the provision of them.

[Rassah]

Interesting quote from the book "Lights in the tunnel":

Again, conservative economic thinkers may reflexively object to this view. Conservatives tend to emphasize the importance  of  production  (or  the  “supply  side”)  in  the natural  cycle  that  occurs  between  production  and  consumption. Conservatives  generally  favor  low  taxes  and minimum  regulation of producers  in  the expectation  that this will result in increased economic activity and job creation, which  will  then lead  to  strong  consumer  demand. The problem with that way of thinking, of course, is that, in  an  increasingly  automated  economy,  the  job  creation will not  occur. Consumers will have  little  opportunity  to participate  in  the production process as workers and will lose access to the wages that sustain them. In the absence of an alternate income mechanism, a collapse in consumer spending must be the inevitable result.

This quote is wrong, in that coonservative ecoonomic thinkers do not emphasize the importance of production, they emphasize the importance of trade. It just seems like production. When you pass regulations, restricting a conservative producer, and the producer objects, a left-leaning person may view this as the producer emphasizing the importance of production, and objecting to being restricted from producing. In fact, what the producer is objecting is the fact that this regulation effectively makes some consumers impose trade restrictions on other consumers. It's basically some people telling others, "no, you can't trade for that, even if you want to." It's a subtle, but important difference, in which the thing that is important that is being emphasized, and interfered with, is actually the consumer's ability to trade, not the producer's ability to produce.

This also means that the rest of the quite may not be applicable, since consumers wish to trade and consume, and the thinking that goes against that of the producers (like regulations and left-leaning policies) actually interferes with the consumer's ability to trade, obtain the things they want, and consume. So, in an increasingly automated society, placing restrictions on trade and consumptions will not actually solve any problems, since producers are still free to make their production more efficient by increasing automation.

[cryptocoinmkt.com]

I agree with your write up.

I work at a high-tech company, and some of our products of Business Intelligence we sell to other companies to automate process, have resulted in those companies letting go lots of workers.  I don't feel particularly good about it.

Today, automation of everything from manufacturing to business processes have created a new challenge, and that is what else can people do now that a whole categories of jobs are going obsolete in all sectors of the economy.

Pretty much, the only category that is not much affected is "services", like auto mechanic, starbucks and restaurant.
But even those are under threat... just Google  "burger making machine",  "noodle making machine" for restaurant.

It is quite scary, so many people are unemployed, the question is "where do we go from here?"

Anyways, just my thoughts.

[jubalix]

the money just isn't in the manufacturing economy that people fera for blue collar automation jobs.

See the glut of cars we can produce versus need?

also the actuators of the robots is no where near what we need to do many tasks.

as to

"IBM Watson will definitely shrink number of doctors"

no that profession will get laws passed that the human is the one has the license to practice, and they are free to use the computer, so they will remain highly paid and employed just have much easier jobs.

as to wealth generally, it is in the land and house/infrastructure.

[giantdragon]

the actuators of the robots is no where near what we need to do many tasks.

But they just don't need. Moreover - most jobs today don't require hardware mechanisms entirely, only software.

"IBM Watson will definitely shrink number of doctors"

no that profession will get laws passed that the human is the one has the license to practice, and they are free to use the computer, so they will remain highly paid and employed just have much easier jobs.

As Watson could do all the job, even if the law will be passed requiring approval of the diagnosis from the human, this doctor will just sign the result paper produced by software thus replacing 1000s of the doctors working manually now.

[jubalix]

the actuators of the robots is no where near what we need to do many tasks.

But they just don't need. Moreover - most jobs today don't require hardware mechanisms entirely, only software.

"IBM Watson will definitely shrink number of doctors"

no that profession will get laws passed that the human is the one has the license to practice, and they are free to use the computer, so they will remain highly paid and employed just have much easier jobs.

As Watson could do all the job, even if the law will be passed requiring approval of the diagnosis from the human, this doctor will just sign the result paper produced by software thus replacing 1000s of the doctors working manually now.

and no, see what would the insensitive for the doctor to work faster, and it still takes about 15 minutes for a person to describe symptoms, basic checks and order tests, then come back again for results.

The data extraction human patient can not made faster, what your going to talk 1000 times faster. Sure a biometric chip/band think may help a bit but its still going to take that time