
Many CEOs believe technology will make people 'largely irrelevant' - troopkevin
http://betanews.com/2016/12/03/ceos-think-people-will-be-irrelevant/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed+-+bn+-+Betanews+Full+Content+Feed+-+BN
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anexprogrammer
Hmm. If CEOs do make people largely irrelevant in the workplace, who do they
believe will be buying their products?

Former staff may struggle to buy Nike and Apple toys, if they're now surviving
in the gig economy, at some fraction of their former wage.

~~~
theseatoms
The consumers will probably be the rising global middle class.

~~~
jerf
Rising after the jobs they are rising on are filled by robots? The "rising
middle class" is not some abstract guarantee upon which we can rely regardless
of what happens, it is a result of many complicated forces interacting, and
we're talking about specifically nuking what is arguably the most important
element of those forces.

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coldcode
I think the article is about employees not people in general. But they live in
a dream world. As a programmer the likelihood of my livelihood vanishing any
time soon is nil. Good luck building a robot to put up with the terrible
decision making here and figuring out how to simultaneously build competing
plans from battling VPs.

~~~
dingaling
Perhaps AI will also automate-away the C-level execs and choose the plan which
best ensures its own prolonged survival and prosperity.

I can only imagine what sort of products this will create, perhaps ones which
actively destroy those of competitors which they find on your network.

------
GFischer
My own dystopian prediction (and extrapolating from trends) is that more and
more of the population will enter the services economy:

\- in zero-sum activities like advertising

\- providing services for the mega-rich (there will always be demand for
humans as servants, at the very least as a status signal and luxury indicator)

\- a lot of work in social and medical services (there's an expected shortage
of nurses and elderly caregivers)

\- and cutthroat competitive non-productive activities like entertainment
(which, if you want to be optimistic, would mean more finer arts and stuff,
but it probably means more youtuber-style stuff).

\- Edit: and other labor-intensive "luxury" products, as shown by the rise of
Etsy, craft breweries, organics, etc. [http://www.vox.com/a/new-economy-
future/manual-labor-luxury-...](http://www.vox.com/a/new-economy-
future/manual-labor-luxury-good)

There will be a lot of unemployment or on-demand employment or freelancing,
unless governments start regulating (I hope not, I'd rather have something
like basic income than make-work).

Social services is one area where there can be growth, and create self worth,
see this HN discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13037810](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13037810)
, and particularly this post:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13039672](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13039672)

Edit: One thing I'm NOT worried about is general AI taking over ALL human
activities - as _Alan Perlis once quipped "A year spent in Artificial
Intelligence is enough to make one believe in God."_

[https://cs.calvin.edu/documents/intelligent_machines](https://cs.calvin.edu/documents/intelligent_machines)

------
mark_l_watson
People really are responsible for developing and nourishing their own careers.
Just yesterday I recommended Tyler Pearson's "The End of Jobs...." to one of
my nieces and a FREI d who is struggling to be his own boss. I have mostly
worked in the gig economy as an independent consultant, and having your own
business really does make you less fragile economically.

------
tapirl
AI and robots will help people concentrate on more important tasks, instead of
doing repetitive work. What about if most of us are still peasants, just like
hundreds of years ago?

~~~
mark_l_watson
A little known fact you might find interesting: in the dark ages, 'peasants'
had much more wealth in the bartering system. That is they kept more of what
they produced. Except for some outbreaks of decease, it was a great time to
live. Peasants were screwed over at the end of the dark ages with centralized
monetary systems that sucked up the rewards from local production. Bartering
often was made to be illegal, and the coin of the realm was mandated by law.

~~~
GFischer
The way I was taught, it sucked to be a peasant in the medieval ages. They had
to work for their masters AND the church, before working for themselves.
Whatever little they kept could be bartered, I guess. But I definitely
wouldn't call it "a great time to live".

[http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/medieval-england/the-
li...](http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/medieval-england/the-lifestyle-of-
medieval-peasants/)

~~~
JoeAltmaier
They paid a tithe (tenth?) to the king and a quarter to their lord? I pay much
more than that in taxes today.

But of course my standard of living is orders of magnitude more settled and
safe. Infrastructure, law and order, soap, the germ theory of disease all work
to make me likely to live to my allotted lifespan.

------
holydude
I really fear the future. Imagine an average person will get some sort of
"basic income" or worse goods/services "for free" from the government. And the
average joe will have no way of getting richer (acquiring more resources to
buy better stuff).

Maybe most of the stuff he is going to get will be good enough
anyway...but...he will be unable to make choices for himself. Sounds like a
socialist nightmare.

But I bet we will solve this with taxation and duties anyway.

~~~
Retric
Another long term trend is reducing risk adjusted ROI. If a rich person get's
say 0.1% above inflation before taxes wealth will simply become vastly less
useful over time. Because it's really compound interest not wealth that
controls our society.

Honestly, if food, energy, medicine, housing, transportation, and non branded
stuff all becomes cheaper due to automation we may see a more friendly
society. People will still compete in games if nothing else, but seeing the
cycle of good grades to good school to good job to better job to retire and
make art with you spare time is pointless if you can just 'retire' and make
art out of the gate.

PS: Remember modern capitalism is still a very young system, it's unlikely to
be stable long term.

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creaghpatr
Then wouldn't anyone with access to capital become CEO of a one-man company?
And who buys the product?

------
thecopy
Replacing jobs with robots will benefit the economy and society. This has been
shown again and again throughout history. I is _not_ different this thime, you
dear reader are not unique.

~~~
holydude
People want to work because they want to feel useful. Many people try to farm
on their own knowing that it's probably cheaper and faster to buy from your
local supermarket. 90% of us are not capable of doing a meaningful
research.Are we redundant ? Even programmers are solving a non-existent
problems.The society is already getting sick of globalization and corps more
powerful than nations. This will either get worse or collapse.

