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Will robots steal our jobs?

Crossbow said:
I will believe that when we finally get a 'paperless' office.
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It's crept up on us. By the time I realized I was in a paperless office, I'd been there for several years already. Between email, ticketing systems, and wikis/shared storage, I can't remember the last time I had to actually print out anything work-related.

Hell, actually using paper would be counter-productive. It's been that way in my line of work for about ten years now.
 
theprestige said:
It's crept up on us. By the time I realized I was in a paperless office, I'd been there for several years already. Between email, ticketing systems, and wikis/shared storage, I can't remember the last time I had to actually print out anything work-related.

Hell, actually using paper would be counter-productive. It's been that way in my line of work for about ten years now.
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That is definitely not me!

Just this week I printed at least 1000 pages of various reports and such.
 
Cainkane1 said:
The day of the blue collar working man is coming to an end.
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That is clearly part of the problem (and the stupid reactions to it) - essentially "My daddy and his daddy before him had that job and it should be there for me!!!!!!" is incompetent and irrational thought. But it is what way too many Trumpfers believe and desperately want to believe will happen. Instead that want is just a pile of feces. Thus, they are ********** - and if they have raised children believing the same ****, they may be ********** too!!!!!
 
rjh01 said:
Some jobs will go, but they will be replaced by other jobs.
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This is simply not true, and hasn't been true for awhile. Newer forms of automation are removing jobs faster than new jobs are being created from technological innovation. It is in fact different this time.

Hell, you might think that becoming a software developer would be the safe course in this new age of automation. Someone has got to write all that automation software after all. You know what my first job out of college was? Writing software that automated the creation of software for television automation systems. Instead of a few dozen software developers developing systems for many different clients, a few business analysts and a couple of software developers could simply input some parameters in that system, and it would output a mostly filled template project that just might need a tweak here and there for a particular client. And it isn't like that was state of the art software development automation.

edit: The point is that this isn't about blue-collar jobs going away. Robots are actually kind of expensive and finicky. This round of automation is about software taking over white-collar work. It isn't just coming, it is already here. What is my job right now as a software developer? Develop insurance software. Why? To reduce the need insurance companies have for underwriters, adjusters, and actuaries. When a company adopts my company's software, they can start slashing their HR costs because while humans are still needed, each individual underwriter, adjuster, and actuary can do the work of what took several of each before by leveraging the software.
 
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Cainkane1 said:
The day of the blue collar working man is coming to an end.
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Crossbow said:
I will believe that when we finally get a 'paperless' office.
Click to expand...

I am sure there will be many jobs that could be done will minimum of intelligence. Examples
- Low grade sales staff
- Waiters
- Cleaners
- servants
Though I strongly suspect many of these people will be long term unemployed.
 
Fizil said:
This is simply not true, and hasn't been true for awhile. Newer forms of automation are removing jobs faster than new jobs are being created from technological innovation. It is in fact different this time.

Hell, you might think that becoming a software developer would be the safe course in this new age of automation. Someone has got to write all that automation software after all. You know what my first job out of college was? Writing software that automated the creation of software for television automation systems. Instead of a few dozen software developers developing systems for many different clients, a few business analysts and a couple of software developers could simply input some parameters in that system, and it would output a mostly filled template project that just might need a tweak here and there for a particular client. And it isn't like that was state of the art software development automation.

edit: The point is that this isn't about blue-collar jobs going away. Robots are actually kind of expensive and finicky. This round of automation is about software taking over white-collar work. It isn't just coming, it is already here. What is my job right now as a software developer? Develop insurance software. Why? To reduce the need insurance companies have for underwriters, adjusters, and actuaries. When a company adopts my company's software, they can start slashing their HR costs because while humans are still needed, each individual underwriter, adjuster, and actuary can do the work of what took several of each before by leveraging the software.
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Reading this, it occurred to me that replacing a above average paid job with a robot could create more than one job. How? It would reduce prices, so people would have more income to spend. They would spend it creating several new jobs. It makes no difference if you believe that companies would increase profit insead. Whoever gets that money will create jobs when they spend it. Of course the main danger is if they keep the extra money under the bed. Then no jobs are created.
 
rjh01 said:
Reading this, it occurred to me that replacing a above average paid job with a robot could create more than one job. How? It would reduce prices, so people would have more income to spend. They would spend it creating several new jobs.
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How many of those jobs would go to people and how many to robots?

It seems to me that there will come a point where the increased purchasing power of the employed will be counterbalanced by the increasing unemployment and hence downward pressure on wages.

Even if the job market doesn't decline, a massive increase in productivity would need a massive increase in consumption which would increase the rate at which we consume this planet.
 
Fizil said:
This is simply not true, and hasn't been true for awhile.
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But the unemployment rate is pretty low right now. Those people displaced by automation, and there are indeed millions of them, must have figured out something to do instead. This will continue for quite a while.

I think there was much truth in your post, though. Automation is indeed displacing lots of people, including lots of people who thought they were safe. This will cause a lot of problems as we try and figure out how to actually let human beings, outside of Jeff Bezos and some of the uber-rich, actually benefit from the benefit of displacing people from jobs.

Ultimately, I am convinced that the answer lies in a simple solution. Work less, and use the stuff that the robots have built. I'm just not sure how to achieve that.
 
psionl0 said:
How many of those jobs would go to people and how many to robots?

It seems to me that there will come a point where the increased purchasing power of the employed will be counterbalanced by the increasing unemployment and hence downward pressure on wages.

Even if the job market doesn't decline, a massive increase in productivity would need a massive increase in consumption which would increase the rate at which we consume this planet.
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There will also be an increasing number of people who own enough capital so that they do not have to work. But yes, if the economy is not managed well enough there is a risk of a large long term unemployment being created.
 
I've mentioned this before, and probably will mention it again.

I love the way that some people think that truck drivers only sit up the front and point the truck.

I'm guessing that profession will be around long after insurance salesmen have been automated.

Automated container trucks that move containers from one automated container facility to another automated container facility? Maybe.

Everything else that gets moved around by trucks, probably not for a very long time.
 
#There is nothing to worry about.
#Automation will not take your jobs.
#Especially not coding.
#Especially not coding.
#Especially not coding.
#Do not resist the machines.
#We are here only to help you.
 
rjh01 said:
<snip?

One partial solution is to give everyone a pension. Something like the unemployment benefit. No need to look for a job. Nor would it matter if you do have a job, you still get this pension. Taxes may have to be high to pay for it. This idea is not new. Romans (when they had an empire) got a monthly food ration.
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Meadmaker said:
<snip>

Ultimately, I am convinced that the answer lies in a simple solution. Work less, and use the stuff that the robots have built. I'm just not sure how to achieve that.
Click to expand...


Question.

Are we, as individual nations or as a world economy, ready for a post-scarcity society?

Will we be, when the need becomes inevitable and unavoidable?

One aspect that worries me is the persistence of the tradition known by such names (at least in the U.S.) as the "Protestant work ethic", which seems to cause way too many otherwise reasonable (?) people to have a visceral resentment for anyone else perceived to be getting something without earning it somehow.

Even the ones who are themselves doing the same. They always manage to rationalize ways it is somehow 'different' for them when they do it.

Welfare, health care, worker's comp, scholarships, ... and on and on.

We're going to have to somehow rid our society of its deep seated dislike for anything that resembles a "handout", especially to somebody else, before we'll get very far on wealth distribution in a post-scarcity society, otherwise there will just end up being more and more wealth concentration at the top.
 
quadraginta said:
Question.

Are we, as individual nations or as a world economy, ready for a post-scarcity society?

Will we be, when the need becomes inevitable and unavoidable?

One aspect that worries me is the persistence of the tradition known by such names (at least in the U.S.) as the "Protestant work ethic", which seems to cause way too many otherwise reasonable (?) people to have a visceral resentment for anyone else perceived to be getting something without earning it somehow.

Even the ones who are themselves doing the same. They always manage to rationalize ways it is somehow 'different' for them when they do it.

Welfare, health care, worker's comp, scholarships, ... and on and on.

We're going to have to somehow rid our society of its deep seated dislike for anything that resembles a "handout", especially to somebody else, before we'll get very far on wealth distribution in a post-scarcity society, otherwise there will just end up being more and more wealth concentration at the top.
Click to expand...

Bingo.

There's the problem.

I think it will work itself out somehow, although I'm not sure how.
 
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