Technological unemployment is (almost) here

[giantdragon]

You don't know what the next sector will be, so there is no way you can definitively say that there is no 4th sector to move into.

It is clear that only one candidate for the 4th sector is fundamental science (nuclear fusion, planet colonization, relativistic-speed travel etc). But these mega-projects could take centuries to be completed and have uncertain ±ROI at all, therefore unlikely they will appear in countries with free-market capitalism.

[Rassah]

You don't know what the next sector will be, so there is no way you can definitively say that there is no 4th sector to move into.

It is clear that only one candidate for the 4th sector is fundamental science (nuclear fusion, planet colonization, relativistic-speed travel etc). But these mega-projects could take centuries to be completed and have uncertain ±ROI at all, therefore unlikely they will appear in countries with free-market capitalism.

I would guess the 4th sector is designing stuff in 3D cad software for people to 3D print, such as tinkering with mechanics of some printable machines, our customizing existing designs to each individual's preferences.

[giantdragon]

I would guess the 4th sector is designing stuff in 3D cad software for people to 3D print, such as tinkering with mechanics of some printable machines, our customizing existing designs to each individual's preferences.

Not many people can easily learn 3D modeling (think realistically, its rather hard for average man). Moreover, cost of the 3D-printed models will be higher than production cost of non-customized bulk items on fully automated plants.

[jdbtracker]

This could all be changing, General Electric has put it's weight behind several 3D metal printing companies. They are already starting production on jet fuel nozzles. It'll only be a matter of time before this technology matures and is easily available.

Computer Aided Design is already transforming the way things are created, it always just takes one spark to start a revolution, remember the 3d printed gun? it'll just take a strong community to bring new comers up to speed on how to do things, and people are always coming up with better ways to do things, could make things simple for the average joe, just point and click the design and colour of your new sneakers... someday of course.

[Murwa]

We had computers since the 30's (before even), and software since the 60's.

Which very pretty much statistically insignificant.

We also had factory automation since at least the middle of the last century,

You are mistaking mechanization with automation.

We also had factory automation since at least the middle of the last century,

Just because process was mechanized it doesn't mean it was autonomous.

Learn to read and read first post again.

It is when technology becomes autonomous value added by worker drop

You are basically claiming that a tractor or a machine replacing 25 farmers or factory workers with 1 is not a problem, but a computer replacing 25 tractor drivers with 1 computer operator is. I don't buy it.

It is really that difficult to comprehend that this time those 24 have absolutely nowhere to go.
As i said your approach is faith based that magically new jobs will come out of the woodwork in enough quantity.

I dont care if there will be jobs for 10 people. Free market can't operate like that sorry.

Beside if you actually study history machine replacing 25 farmers or factory workers with 1 was actually a problem for those being replaced. Luckily for the system change was done slowly within decades people had time to adapt. Today drastic changes are within a years

Today you may go for 5 year education + few years of practice only to find out your occupation is done by robots/software

[cczarek123]

Why do people like you exist.

I highly reccomend taking a kindergarden level economics course (If it would exist). Would dramatically boost your knowledge of how an economy functions.

[giantdragon]

I highly reccomend taking a kindergarden level economics course (If it would exist). Would dramatically boost your knowledge of how an economy functions.

May be you should look broader that current official ideology pushed by elite which still believe in "Luddite fallacy" myth and supremacy of free market!?

[Rassah]

I would guess the 4th sector is designing stuff in 3D cad software for people to 3D print, such as tinkering with mechanics of some printable machines, our customizing existing designs to each individual's preferences.

Not many people can easily learn 3D modeling (think realistically, its rather hard for average man). Moreover, cost of the 3D-printed models will be higher than production cost of non-customized bulk items on fully automated plants.

It's actually not that difficult any more. When I first got into it, 3D modeling was done with code, such as

   Sphere (2, 2, 1.5, 4, "yellow")
   Cube(6, 2, 1.5, 2, "blue")


(XYZ coordinates, diametes, and defined color or texture parameter)
which would then have to be rendered, slowly, one frame at a time, and once you see where the error is, go back and adjust the code, and then render again to see if it fixed it. Now you can use a mouse to move things around on your screen in real time. We're also getting to the point where 3D manipulation tools are becoming cheap, allowing you to reach toward your screen, "grab" something, and move it back and forth, instead of just up/down/left/right, like a mouse lets you. As 3D printing and 3D design becomes more prevalent, this will be much more common place, and instead of workers standing in front of work tables, physically modifying things, you'll have workers standing in front of computer terminals, building and modifying things on computer. There is already a pretty good first-look example of this type of work in SecondLife, where people earn a living by designing objects using 3D tools (clothing, furniture, random junk, and even houses), and sell them in virtual stores. Dspite materials not costing anything, creativity still pays there.
As for bulk mass production, those same 3D tools can be used to 3D print molds for mass production, too.

[Rassah]

We had computers since the 30's (before even), and software since the 60's.

Which very pretty much statistically insignificant.

Not really. If your business designs bridges or planes, a single computer in the 60's would replace an entire army of mathematicians, physicists, architects, and accountants. We used to have large rooms, filled with large plotting tables, with tons of people using sketching tools and slide rules to sketch out design mechanical drafts by hand, calculate forces on each part, track to make sure parts fit, double-check the math involved by hand, etc, and now in the 60's all that could be replaced with just a few people writing programs for the computer to run hundreds of simulations a second. Where did all those people with math skills go to? There is no need for them, now that computers can do all the math automatically.

We also had factory automation since at least the middle of the last century,

You are mistaking mechanization with automation.

I am not, actually. We could replace people picking up bottles and corking them by hand, with a machine that would automatically grab a bottle cap and stick it on top of a bottle as it went by. Fully automated, no computers needed, and tons of corkers out of jobs.
Unless by "automation" you mean "artificial inteligence," to which I would say stop moving the goal posts.

You are basically claiming that a tractor or a machine replacing 25 farmers or factory workers with 1 is not a problem, but a computer replacing 25 tractor drivers with 1 computer operator is. I don't buy it.

It is really that difficult to comprehend that this time those 24 have absolutely nowhere to go.

Yes, it is. Is it really that difficult to comprehend that we didn't even know about internal combustion engines in the 1800's, or about computers in the early 1900's, or the internet in the early 1990's? Because a lot of incredibly brilliant people could not predict such technologies arising and creating tons of new specialized jobs, I am not going to trust some unknown guy on the internet making predictions that no such new technologies will come to exist in the future.

As i said your approach is faith based that magically new jobs will come out of the woodwork in enough quantity.

I dont care if there will be jobs for 10 people. Free market can't operate like that sorry.

We still have jobs that pay people to remove staples and paper clips from documents before scanning them. There will always be jobs, no matter how high tech we get.

Beside if you actually study history machine replacing 25 farmers or factory workers with 1 was actually a problem for those being replaced. Luckily for the system change was done slowly within decades people had time to adapt. Today drastic changes are within a years

You can't replace creativity (not yet). So, sure, it was a problem for the farmers, but they found something else. Sure, computer design was a problem for mathematicians and plotters, but they also found something else. New computer languages that keep changing and improving every few years, but computer programmers just keep learning new syntax and keep up with the change. I imagine in the future, you won't be able to have a job where you leark a skill, and spend the rest of your life doing what you learned (like you could when working at factory assembly lines), and everyone will have to continuously learn on the job.

Take the 3D printed gun example someone brought up. You could collaborate on a project like that, with someone being an expert in handle grips, having spent time studying them, and continuing to learn more about them by printing prototypes and checking how they feel. You could have an expert in structural design tweaking and improving the strength of the barel. You could have a mechanics expert, tweaking and improving the firing mechanism by making it put out more force with less trigger pressure. And then all of them can continue to use and improve those skills as they design newer, better, more efficient and high tech guns. So, instead of people working on a project for one or two years, and us buying products, like a new version of an iPhone, every one or two years, you would have new and improved products coming out every month, then every day, then pretty much continuously, whenever you have time to hit "Update."

[giantdragon]

As for bulk mass production, those same 3D tools can be used to 3D print molds for mass production, too.

For mass production there will be only few engineers who design molds.

We could replace people picking up bottles and corking them by hand, with a machine that would automatically grab a bottle cap and stick it on top of a bottle as it went by.

I think this is already done, may be not on all factories (cost of the machine may be higher than wages for workers in case of small-scale manufacturing).

Unless by "automation" you mean "artificial inteligence,"

We don't need super-human AI to automate most jobs. Even advancements in existing areas like image processing and recognition, neural networks, genetic algorithms/programming, cheap sensors and mechanical manipulators will be enough to create robots and software systems which could free 80-90% of the workers.

Yes, it is. Is it really that difficult to comprehend that we didn't even know about internal combustion engines in the 1800's, or about computers in the early 1900's, or the internet in the early 1990's? Because a lot of incredibly brilliant people could not predict such technologies arising and creating tons of new specialized jobs, I am not going to trust some unknown guy on the internet making predictions that no such new technologies will come to exist in the future.

This new technological wave could be robotics and AI, who knows...

We still have jobs that pay people to remove staples and paper clips from documents before scanning them.

Most likely we won't have paper documents in the future at all! BTW, I don't even remember when I used the paper last time.

There will always be jobs, no matter how high tech we get.

Only if your govt or corporation have enough money and willingness to keep the inefficiency. This can be true for some parts of Asia, but never for Europe and US!

So, instead of people working on a project for one or two years, and us buying products, like a new version of an iPhone, every one or two years, you would have new and improved products coming out every month, then every day, then pretty much continuously, whenever you have time to hit "Update."

Advertising budgets are skyrocketing even for 1-2 years cycled products, so I cannot just imagine how much funds you have to spend on ads to force customers buying new iPhone at least once per month!

[Murwa]

You can't replace creativity (not yet).

And also you can't will it unlike manual , algorithmic labor. So if you depend on creativity as your source of life necessities , you are pretty much at the mercy of outside circumstances. ( it is called being f****d )

Thats the whole point. Free market can't operate like that. Period.

[Schleicher]

We still have jobs that pay people to remove staples and paper clips from documents before scanning them.

Most likely we won't have paper documents in the future at all!

LOL 
Since at least 30 years ago you can hear this sentence all the time.
Hasn't happened yet.
We will have the paperless office probably about the same time we have fusion reactors 

[giantdragon]

Since at least 30 years ago you can hear this sentence all the time.
Hasn't happened yet.
We will have the paperless office probably about the same time we have fusion reactors 

Nevertheless, number of paper being used continuously falling in all areas!

[Rassah]

You can't replace creativity (not yet).

And also you can't will it unlike manual , algorithmic labor. So if you depend on creativity as your source of life necessities , you are pretty much at the mercy of outside circumstances. ( it is called being f****d )

Uh.. yes you can. Creativity is a skill you get better at with practice. And I don't mean graphic design, I mean inventing and improving the way things work. Manual, algorithmic labor has been replaced with robots a long time ago. Now it's all about doing custom inventive stuff that robots can't handle (even simple stuff like grabbing weirdly shaped lettuce leaves to place on a round bun)

[giantdragon]

Uh.. yes you can. Creativity is a skill you get better at with practice. And I don't mean graphic design, I mean inventing and improving the way things work. Manual, algorithmic labor has been replaced with robots a long time ago. Now it's all about doing custom inventive stuff that robots can't handle (even simple stuff like grabbing weirdly shaped lettuce leaves to place on a round bun)

Think realistically - most people who are capable on creativity already do this work. From billions of workers replaced by robots only few percents (or even fraction of percent) will be successfull enough to earn on living with creativity!

[Realpra]

In my mind the core function of humans is to be intelligent.

To survive AI we must invest in biotech and bioengineering to improve ourselves. DNA computing is supposed to be a possible future in computing and we have it in our bodies already aswell as a brain that has not reached its full potential yet.

Robots may be coming for the cashiers job, but how far are robots from Einstein level humans? More CPU does not necessarily mean smarter, the algorithms used matter and ours have 4 billion years of evolution behind them.

[Rassah]

Uh.. yes you can. Creativity is a skill you get better at with practice. And I don't mean graphic design, I mean inventing and improving the way things work. Manual, algorithmic labor has been replaced with robots a long time ago. Now it's all about doing custom inventive stuff that robots can't handle (even simple stuff like grabbing weirdly shaped lettuce leaves to place on a round bun)

Think realistically - most people who are capable on creativity already do this work. From billions of workers replaced by robots only few percents (or even fraction of percent) will be successfull enough to earn on living with creativity!

Yes, and they will starve and die. Or become desperate enough to survive to figure out how to survive. So what?

[giantdragon]

Yes, and they will starve and die. Or become desperate enough to survive to figure out how to survive. So what?

Nope! They will prefer to die from the bullet with AK-47 in hands rather than from hunger!

[Murwa]

Yes, and they will starve and die. Or become desperate enough to survive to figure out how to survive. So what?

And you believe those mases of people will just stand and watch how invisible hand of the free market dictate who lives and who dies ?? Talking about religion and fanaticism ....

Well you are only asking for another communist revolution because genetic reincarnation of Lenin will be just a matter of time .... mark my words.

[Murwa]

Nope! They will prefer to die from the bullet with AK-47 in hands rather than from hunger!

It is funny delusion within free-marketers.

People that will be opposing invisible hand.

* Are mindless zombies th iat will just run into the bullet
* Can't organize
* Does not have access to weapons themselves.
* Good ( as in person defending invisible hand ) always wins.
* Absolutely nothing can go wrong in an age of weapons of mass destruction. Invisible hand will protects the believers.