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I think this is a pretty scary topic and not just for low end jobs. I have no illusion that my job is not likely to be automated and I am a highly skilled individual who attended a top university. I would like to think that it isn’t, but I am a realist. I know that once a computer is able to learn, that might be all she wrote. But that’s not just about my job. I have been reading a ton about it over the past two years and I think that anyone who thinks their job is safe is not understanding the potential disruption. But as they say "this is an out of context problem".
Personally, I am trying to save as much as I can while I am still relevant. In 10 years, who knows. I also don't think there is much we can do about this. Computers can drive/fly/code/offer financial advice/build/manufacture/put down fires. Maybe even provide life care. Regardless of how up to date your skills are, an autonomous computer which can learn will crush a human 100 out of 100 times.
The thing I don't follow is that given that consumption is a the #1 contributor to GDP globally, who will consume the stuff that robots make if there is 50% unemployment. Another issue is that if robots take over, there will be massive deflation so the overall GDP will drop by definition. So even if your production costs are literally 1% above your material costs, how does that matter if nobody is able to buy it.
Companies are in a classic prisoner dilemma scenario. If only some use robots, they will reap the benefits and the profits of the rest will compare very unfavorably. If they all do, they will crush their potential consumer base. The ideal solution would be for them to find an equilibrium, but there will always be an incentive for one company to cheat and use automation over the other.
There have been some ideas floated about a Universal Basic Income, but I think that idea will fall apart, because if there is 50% unemployment and no consumption, governments will not be able to raise enough in taxes
I have no idea how it plays out. Could be that robots usher an era of leisure where nobody has to work. But on the way there, I think there will be a lot of unrest (the biggest losers of this will be 18-50 males) and overall living standards are likely to drop.
The buzz word where I work is "Client Self Service". Basically, our clients (large corporations) can enter compliance data into our network without having to use a customer representative.
Jobs aren't being eliminated. But they are not being filled when someone leaves.
It's also not just automation. But bad trade deals. How can an American worker compete against a Mexican worker who earns just $19 per day?
the bigger question is how can an american consumer afford to buy products made by labor costing 10x that 19 bucks a day . many americans make way above minimum wage and would be hurt financially trying to pay those higher labor costs . in fact they wouldn't buy those products if cheaper alternatives were avalable .
since money loves a vacuum that slot would be likely filled with alternative products .
The thing I don't follow is that given that consumption is a the #1 contributor to GDP globally, who will consume the stuff that robots make if there is 50% unemployment....
There have been some ideas floated about a Universal Basic Income, but I think that idea will fall apart, because if there is 50% unemployment and no consumption, governments will not be able to raise enough in taxes...
Could be that robots usher an era of leisure where nobody has to work. But on the way there, I think there will be a lot of unrest (the biggest losers of this will be 18-50 males) and overall living standards are likely to drop.
Consumption depends on a means to pay for it. Not employment, or even taxation. Granted without taxation there we would need a major shift in how our society functions, but that is coming anyway. Consumer capitalism will be defunct. Consumers will no longer be needed. If we let "nature" take its course, the effect will be the marginalization and eventual elimination of consumers.
The public can either use a handful of their brain cells and get behind a plan to bring about a prosperous egalitarian future where little work is need, or they can let nature take its course.
Based on the events of last 40 years, the trends don't look encouraging. The oligarchs would naturally favor a future where there is a *much* smaller human population, so they can use the earth's resources for whatever they desire. They've used unsustainable globalization + debt escalation to make themselves massively wealthy. The US public has been screwed, but the propaganda has kept everyone so confused and divided that few know what happened. Divide and conquer. More surveillance, more draconian terrorist laws, just in case anybody gets funny ideas.
the bigger question is how can an american consumer afford to buy products made by labor costing 10x that 19 bucks a day . many americans make way above minimum wage and would be hurt financially trying to pay those higher labor costs . in fact they wouldn't buy those products if cheaper alternatives were avalable .
since money loves a vacuum that slot would be likely filled with alternative products .
Not really. It depends on the productivity / unit labor cost for the item. With automation, you get huge output per hour of labor. You can easily produce 100x more goods with $190/day labor running automated manufacturing equipment than $19/day labor doing it manually.
If you move "Walmart goods" production back to the US, it will be automated and not cost particularly more than the Chinese stuff. Cal Poly Pomona has an experimental fully automated garment factory. It can custom tailor pretty much anything. 20 years from now, Amazon will have them distributed all over the country.
It still begs the question about what we do with everybody as their jobs get displaced by automation. The wealthy with the capital are going to see enormous leverage for their investments in automation. The rich get richer, the poor get poorer. It's going to be an enormous public policy problem.
I don't doubt an Elysium outcome. But that's 150 years away fully fledged. I'd say in the next 50 though, we probably just become Western Europe. Nanny state, high levels of social net, since nobody will have the political capital to throttle back the oligrach crony capitalists from globalizing us back into feudalism. Since Americans are TERRIBLE at living/purchasing standards downgrade, western european democratic socioeconomic baselines will offer the least upsetting means of boiling the frog that is the idled and economically marginalized, which by then will also include the cohort who today sits on C-D and self-describes as high earning white collar. Optimism bias is rampant in that crowd.
Alternatively, another peer-to-peer full fledged war for resources (think China v US) would expend human capital and upset global markets in ways that would reset world power (a la WWII) and provide a time frame of forbearance from the global automation dystopia previously discussed. But that's of course not a free answer either, as the human toll would be similarly painful as it was in WWII.
Will there ever be a world where the oligarchy-prone intellectuals with sociopathic behavior don't attain positions of mass control within civilization? I don't think so, but frankly that's a question for the philosophy forum.
I think a lot of this "data" is highly suspect. Commercial pilots already use autopilot controls. I see no near term danger that a pilot will be replaced. There is also a matter of costs. Air travel and transport is expensive while the cost of the pilot is minimal. We will see automated cars and trucks, decades before pilots are eliminated. In spite of all the publicity even automated drivers seems a long way off.
This is so very wrong
Labor costs are huge for airlines. Pilots are expensive and they make mistakes that can cause accidents.
Did you ever hear about the flight engineers ?
The advances in automation and avionics allowed to reduce the number of required trained staff in the cockpit to what we see now (just 2 ). Flight engineers lost their job since the planes now can monitor their systems by themselves.
Pilots no longer "fly" the plane. Their job is to manage the multiple systems that fly the plane. It's all computers now. Modern planes can takeoff, route and land themselves already. Eventually these system management jobs will be done remotely from the airlines headquarters and the pilot position will be just of a "backup" human for troubleshooting any problem in the plane systems.
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Based on recent trends, how do you think it will play out?
