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Old 07-06-2016, 12:07 PM
 
7,898 posts, read 7,072,304 times
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Yup too much science fiction!! People watch it on TV or the movies and start to believe. Hey half the population believes in zombies and werewolves and UFOs and Bigfoot.


Reality is way different. Look at the Tesla autodriver fatality. First they claimed that the autodriver did not see a full sized 18 wheeler. Then they claim the autodriver thought it was an overhead sign. At a minimum we know that autodriver capability is currently extremely primitive. Running into a truck is a long, long, long way from the sophistication needed to safely operate a vehicle.


Also I was an "office" worker for most of my life and never worked in an environment that was simple and repetitive. We have had sophisticated computers and other technological tools for many decades. The rate of technological advance continues to increase but it seems few are being displaced from jobs. Even in a sluggish economy we have nearly no unemployment.


Factory built houses have been around for a great many years. There is little or no trending towards universal use of these techniques and skilled carpenters, electricians, and plumbers remain in very, very high demand at least in my area.


Online and non-human teaching techniques have been around for decades and it is clear that they supplement but do not replace teachers. My first experience was in the early 80s when I watched automated teaching attempts phase down and return to more traditional human based approaches.


The oil or energy sector is not about to collapse due to electric cars. Generation of electricity still requires fuels such as oil, natural gas or coal. A small portion is wind and solar and those will also employ a great many people.


Anyone expecting to sit on the couch, drink beer and watch TV is likely to be very disappointed. Don't count on anyone paying you a living wage.
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Old 07-06-2016, 03:13 PM
 
Location: Oregon, formerly Texas
10,003 posts, read 7,140,523 times
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When it comes to teaching, the failure of the MOOC fad should put to rest the notion that even online teaching can be automated at current level of technology. We need something more advanced than Youtube to replace teachers. Online ed works but you need a human behind the keyboard on the instructor side.

https://techcrunch.com/2014/09/11/th...on-that-wasnt/

The Tesla autodrive death definitely showed the flaws in that technology. Self-driving cars can work if we build special lanes for them around the country. Good luck getting congress to appropriate the few TRILLION needed for that. Google is working on it combining sonar, radar, gps, and their map technology. Still, they have to have a driver within 10 or 20 seconds of taking control at all times and from what I've read seems less like an autonomous driving system and more like advanced cruise control.
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Old 07-06-2016, 06:45 PM
 
31,588 posts, read 26,430,119 times
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Since the dawn of time modern "advances" have rendered this or that occupation either less in demand or simply redundant and it became extinct. Post industrial revolution that pace sped up and now in the tech boom years it is in over drive.


In all situations you have to look at what is best for the economy as a hole versus those displaced. This and or what is to be done for or with those who find themselves out of work.


Think about it; automation and advances in technology decimated the once great "domestic service" industry. Homes no longer required small armies of various servants to operate. Even the largest estates/palaces today can be managed with only a handful of staff, far less than in years past. This however isn't that bad because large numbers of those who were or would have entered domestic service instead went into factory/industry work.


Automation of factory and office work over the years has again displaced many workers. Henry Ford would likely not recognize an automobile assembly line of today. While some basic elements are the same, much as changed. Ditto for the whole process of R&D and so forth in how a automobile makes it to market.


When the United States shipping, rail and other industries moved from coal to oil post WWII it caused much pain. Stokers, firemen, those charged with delivering and managing coal supplies (to say nothing of the miners) along with boilers all had to find new work. This because the new technology/fuel source meant many jobs were simply redundant and or not enough new to go around.


Watch the 1980's film "9 to 5"; you'd be hard pressed to find a Fortune 500 or any other company of size still organized along those lines. Entire ranks of middle and lower management are gone. This is in response to scores if not hundreds of workers/employees. One or two persons with a computer can do the work that once took an entire accounting department staffed with ten or more persons. Secretaries, typists, stenographers, etc... all largely replaced and or have vastly different job descriptions than thirty or forty years ago.


Basically any task/employment that can be digitized is subject to be taken over in whole or part by technology. This is why we are seeing not only in the USA but other places as well a growing divide among employees. At the top you have those whom are highly educated performing jobs that not only require high skill sets but cannot be entirely done by machines. OTOH there is the vast and growing service sector made up of low skilled workers.
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Old 07-06-2016, 11:18 PM
 
Location: TN
594 posts, read 268,224 times
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Re: driverless cars, it's just another problem you solve by breaking it into components. Links between system and vehicle controls, rules of the road, etc. The components have dependencies, and probably the biggest dependency is on artificial vision. Consider: when a high-schooler gets a license, they may have had months of learning rules of the road, but they've had 16 years learning what different objects look like, and how those objects can be expected to move.

So I think the only question is - is artificial vision unsolvable, or does it just take time? Because once that problem is solved, there isn't any reason to think they couldn't operate as well or better than humans, as long as they - like us - receive updates on new things to watch out for.

And once artificial vision becomes competitive, that opens up the door to many applications besides driverless cars.
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Old 07-09-2016, 03:19 AM
 
Location: Vallejo
21,602 posts, read 24,746,556 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ElectronicOverlord View Post
Re: driverless cars, it's just another problem you solve by breaking it into components. Links between system and vehicle controls, rules of the road, etc. The components have dependencies, and probably the biggest dependency is on artificial vision. Consider: when a high-schooler gets a license, they may have had months of learning rules of the road, but they've had 16 years learning what different objects look like, and how those objects can be expected to move.

So I think the only question is - is artificial vision unsolvable, or does it just take time? Because once that problem is solved, there isn't any reason to think they couldn't operate as well or better than humans, as long as they - like us - receive updates on new things to watch out for.

And once artificial vision becomes competitive, that opens up the door to many applications besides driverless cars.
Neither really. It just requires hardware that is not on a Tesla. You need LIDAR. Teslas do not have Lidar. It's just a glorified version of adaptive cruise control and lane keep assist that's about a generation more advanced than you find in most cars. If you're relying on that to have the car drive itself while you completely check out and watch Sponge Bob videos, well, at least nobody except the Darwin Award's recipient got killed. LIDAR really isn't commercially viable yet but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist. It's just not commercially viable.
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Old 07-09-2016, 11:33 AM
 
Location: Ruidoso, NM
5,667 posts, read 6,545,514 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ZestyCharles View Post
5-10 years is a more accurate timeline, especially considering that large numbers of workers are already being replaced by robotics and software. More and more are being replaced every day, and the pace is increasing every day.
You way underestimate how long it will take to implement. The technical capability may exist, but a hefty investment in research, manufacturing, and infrastructure development is still necessary, and that won't happen overnight. It will take decades.
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Old 07-10-2016, 09:39 AM
 
Location: TN
594 posts, read 268,224 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Malloric View Post
Neither really. It just requires hardware that is not on a Tesla. You need LIDAR. Teslas do not have Lidar. It's just a glorified version of adaptive cruise control and lane keep assist that's about a generation more advanced than you find in most cars. If you're relying on that to have the car drive itself while you completely check out and watch Sponge Bob videos, well, at least nobody except the Darwin Award's recipient got killed. LIDAR really isn't commercially viable yet but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist. It's just not commercially viable.
Good point, though I'm not sure LIDAR gets all the way there. Vision is needed to recognize kids or deer on the side of the road, so we can use a more defensive driving policy, and then resume cruising once we get past them. While LIDAR could recognize the deer as a hazard at the instant the deer makes a move, that could be too late if it was on the highway at 60 mph. Alternatively, autonomous cars could be capped at a low speed like 30 or 40mph, but one wonders if people will really find that acceptable.

If the system could recognize deer, and as a bonus had a little knowledge about how deer move, it could slow down in such a way that when a deer does jump into the road, there would be enough time to stop safely. And then it can get back up to 60mph once past the deer so that it can get from A to B in a time that's competitive with a human.

(lol, that feeling when one realizes he's from the upper midwest and knows too much about avoiding deer)
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Old 07-10-2016, 09:52 AM
 
10,075 posts, read 7,468,507 times
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Originally Posted by ElectronicOverlord View Post
(lol, that feeling when one realizes he's from the upper midwest and knows too much about avoiding deer)
nah, just put an auto target ("smart") rifle on the hood, gets rid of deer and illegal protestors in the street

I don't know why you guys think that robots will make jobs obsolete... it gets rid of some jobs sure, but it makes more

Hell, loo at how many "professional" gamers there are, they sit around and play video games all day and get paid. Look at the travel writers, they roam the world and write on their experiences and get paid. Look at the youtubers making videos of their lives, what shampoo they use and they get paid.
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Old 07-10-2016, 09:54 AM
 
4,369 posts, read 3,695,276 times
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Originally Posted by ZestyCharles View Post
5-10 years is a more accurate timeline, especially considering that large numbers of workers are already being replaced by robotics and software. More and more are being replaced every day, and the pace is increasing every day.

Fast food and retail workers can already be easily replaced by robotics and software operated kiosks, it's just that the price point isn't quite there yet for it to be mainstream.

Professional drivers will start to be phased out in the next 5 years as self driving car technology and drone usage become more mainstream. There are millions of people and thousands of towns that survive by providing food and lodging services that support these drivers. Insurance companies will see huge dips in profits, as will cities relying on income from ticketing drivers when self driving cars become more mainstream.

Most middle class white collar work is repetitive, and anything repetitive can be largely automated, which is what we are already seeing as software becomes more sophisticated and capable of making the sort of judgement calls humans have traditionally been required to make.

There will be less need for military and law enforcement personnel as drones and robotics can do a far better job of air, ground, and sea combat. There was just a news story of an AI controlled fighter jet completely crushing an expert fighter pilot with decades of experience. AI combat drones can make decisions 1000x faster than humans, have perfect aim, require zero training, and are largely expendable. A large part of the US economy currently relies on the massive military spending and the large numbers of soldiers we have.

The few factory workers that are left will be replaced by robotic systems within the next 5-10 years easily.

Skilled blue collar work will see less and less demand as traditional construction methods get phased out, and new construction methods utilizing modules with built in plumbing and electricity are used. This might not be for another 20 years, however, so electricians and plumbers are probably safe jobs for the immediate future.

Virtual Reality will increasingly eliminate the need to even leave the home, and in 10 years most of us who still have jobs will probably work out of the home. Why go to a fancy restaurant when you can plug into the VR system and have a simulated dining experience, and a drone can fly in five star restaurant food expertly prepared by a robotic chef that makes a perfect meal every time, in 1/10 of the time as the human chef did? This sort of thing will be commonplace in 10 years.

The entire oil industry may likely collapse (or severely contract) as the need to drive places vanishes, and electric vehicles become more common.

The need for teachers will decline as online learning experiences become more common. In fact, with information being so freely available, schools and universities as we know them may undergo huge transitions.

Engineers and software developers will thrive, because they will be the ones doing all this automating.

Basically, 90% of the professions we have today will be obsolete in the next 5-10 years and the world will be a completely different place. New kinds of jobs will be created, but not nearly fast enough. Universal basic income will be a necessity - it's either that, or civil unrest and rampant war and poverty.

The next 10 years are going to be a wild ride, so get strapped in. If universal basic income becomes reality, then expect the entertainment industries to dramatically expand, as nobody will have anything to do other than watch television, read books, or play video games.

In 50 years, artificial intelligence will likely have long since surpassed our own intelligence. At this point, humans will be rendered completely obsolete as there would be nothing a human could do that an AI could not. Science and technology will advance faster through AIs in a single day than what human scientists and engineers could accomplish in 10,000 years.

At this point, you will have the handful of the elites of humanity who are controlling everything, and everyone else who now have zero value to the economy. The elites could just kill them off, but a more humane and likely scenario would be to have them wile away the rest of their lives in virtual reality run by AI's, and the neural connections will make the virtual reality indistinguishable from reality. The AIs might even wipe our memory and make us unaware that we ever had a live outside of the simulated virtual reality world. Humans need to work to feel dignity and self worth, and so the scenarios the AIs place us in might have us working fields all day in 12th century Europe or doing paperwork in a 1960s Manhattan office. For that matter, what if we are already in a virtual reality system? We would have no way of knowing. This is precisely why visionaries like Neil deGrasse Tyson and Elon Musk suggest that the universe as we know it is already simulated. And if it's not already, it soon will be.
Someone is a wee bit optimistic
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Old 07-10-2016, 10:45 AM
 
Location: Ruidoso, NM
5,667 posts, read 6,545,514 times
Reputation: 4817
Quote:
Originally Posted by ElectronicOverlord View Post
If the system could recognize deer, and as a bonus had a little knowledge about how deer move, it could slow down in such a way that when a deer does jump into the road, there would be enough time to stop safely.
It isn't the deer at the side of the road that are a danger, but rather the ones bolting full speed out of the woods. Usually you don't see them until it's way too late. Where I live if you slowed down for deer at the side of the road, you'd never get anywhere.

And a decent vision system should be able to detect objects that are on a potential collision course much better than humans.

It think it is funny all the people who think this won't happen. When the tech gets a little more sophisticated, it will far exceed human ability. The same goes for a lot of jobs and potential jobs. Humans will increasingly have a narrow niche where they have a competitive advantage over machines; at least one that is worth a decent wage. The only rational discussion should be how far it will go and how fast it will happen.
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