
Wall Street Has Hit Peak Human and an Algorithm Wants Your Job - bootload
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-06-08/wall-street-has-hit-peak-human-and-an-algorithm-wants-your-job
======
avz
This mantra is being repeated over and over: algorithms and automation are
taking away the jobs.

I'm still skeptical.

Ultimately, work is about solving problems which is a complex and multi-stage
process: someone must identify the problem first, someone must formalize the
problem into a domain in which algorithms can be applied, someone must code or
train an automated solver, someone must deploy and maintain the code...

I expect that a lot of future work will be what we would call today
"managerial" type of work. People will identify problems and manage available
resources to achieve the desired outcomes. In the past, a significant amount
of those resources were other people. In future, more and more of the
resources under management will consist of computing power, datasets, robots
and only very few other people.

And so I doubt we will run out of work to do. This would mean that somehow we
ran out of problems to solve. On the contrary, we appear to be flooded with
them: cancer, infectious diseases, global warming, clean energy, access to
space...

Maybe in some very far away future we will have a god-like super-AI that will
seek and solve problems completely autonomously with no need for our
involvement. This is very far off though.

~~~
adrianN
> cancer, infectious diseases, global warming, clean energy, access to
> space...

The problems left to solve can be tackled by an increasingly smaller
percentage of the population. The guys that currently work as taxi drivers or
paper pushers can't be reeducated to do cutting edge research.

~~~
Ma8ee
We will never run out of problems to solve. When we have cured cancer and made
fully autonomous sex dolls there are still stars to explores and deep problems
about nature to solve.

The problem is that a huge part of the population won't have neither the
skills or the inclination to work on hard problems.

~~~
cousin_it
Tell that to 10 postdocs fighting for 1 tenured position.

~~~
Ma8ee
That is not a lack of problems, that is a lack of funding.

~~~
cousin_it
My point was that it's not a lack of skills and inclination.

~~~
antisthenes
For every postdoc out of those 10, there's a 100 graduates fighting for a
position and 1000 undergrads fighting for an internship.

At any given time slice, skills in a given field are a pyramid. If we assume
that the unsolved problems require the highest level of skill to be approached
and solved, then there will _always_ be a shortage of problem-solvers (as the
problems left become increasingly more difficult and complex)

So yes, it is a lack of skills.

~~~
cousin_it
There's tons of very simple problems in the world, and tons of people who
would be willing to solve them, if only they could get paid for that. That's
the limiting factor, not skills.

------
lujim
We've hit Peak Hunter/Gatherer and a Farmer Wants Your Job. Now What?

This has been going on ever since humans started thinking up better or
different ways of doing things. Maybe we don't need as many money managers and
brokers doing work that is done cheaper and better with technology. We will
still need some, but not as many. There will be new areas where smart, driven
people can make a great living.

~~~
sevenless
And for the rest of us, will there be suicide booths, or should we just starve
to death?

~~~
TruthAndDare
Can't we still be hunters/gatherers?

~~~
CelestialTeapot
> Can't we still be hunters/gatherers?

Sure! Now then, whose land will you be hunting/gathering on? You'll most
likely have to pay for access to someone's land, and they probably won't
barter access for chickens/goats.

------
Rexxar
I hope we have hit peak click-bait titles too.

~~~
coldcode
I bet we can automate these and eliminate click-bait-headline writers.

~~~
xyzzy123
Bots clicking on ML optimised headlines collecting money from ad networks
optimised by machine learning, which serve ads a/b tested to perfection by
algorithms, economy 2.0 right there. As long as they're for products made by
robot, paid for by investment capital allocated by algorithms...

It's basically the ice cream cone that licks itself.

------
sevenless
But if few humans are earning enough to generate demand for goods and
services, how long will this algorithm have my job?

~~~
EGreg
Demand for human labor is already steadily going down. It was just masked by
consumer credit boom, and now by the rise of temp jobs and contractor gigs in
economies that will soon be disrupted (eg Uber drivers by self driving cars).

To keep them from starvation, you would need to redistribute money to the ones
who don't earn it themselves. Either via Unconditional Basic Income or
Negative Tax. Because means tested welfare has the result of punishing people
for earning money, so they aren't as willing to reinvent themselves and take
productive jobs. Same with minimum wage laws. Eventually our society will be
so rich that we'll be able to afford it, but how do we transition there
gradually?

Computers will attract a larger share of the revenue every few years. They'll
become "money sinks". So you tax the profits from laing off people, not enough
to disincentivize R&D but enough so we don't have a severe demand shock for
human labor and contraction of the money supply as we did in the Great
Depression.

------
hga
In this domain, yeah, "bankers" are in trouble.

In general, though, it strikes me that we're only scratching the surface of
what computer augmented humans can do, what we might call depth, while the
major thing today's "algorithms" bring to the table is breath, such as what
Google is (in)famous for.

~~~
gaius
Right, if everyone has access to basically the same technology, then the
competition is between people for who can best leverage the technology (and
who can develop the tools to help them do so).

------
sakri
I'm so bored of "OH NOES Robots and AI are stealing our jobs", when it should
be "Robots and AI are finally liberating us from our jobs".

~~~
sevenless
This would be true only if having a job wasn't a social norm enforced by
threat of starvation, homelessness, bad quality of life, and loss of
healthcare (in the US). Being unemployed makes you lose social status.

~~~
TruthAndDare
Whoa, there! You must be deliberately conflating different things. Social
norms isn't important here. The reason we work, if you didn't know that, is
that it is a way to provide for oneself, i.e. earning money to buy food, a
house, clothes, treatments for illness etc.

It's up to you to get those things, or whatever things you crave. It's not
like anything you originally owned has been taken away from you if you don't
manage to do that.

~~~
sevenless
> Social norms isn't important here.

That is a huge generalization, which seems intuitively wrong: why have norms
towards conforming if they aren't effective?

I'm talking about the fact that the unemployed will face drastically lower
qualities of life, or even life threatening situations. That this is
acceptable comes from government policies, which in turn come from social
norms. It's seen as okay to harm the unemployed, deny them healthcare, or let
them starve. They're lazy, and they should be punished.

I won't speak for others, like you're doing, but conforming socially is the
_primary_ reason I work. I've been unemployed before, and I lost social status
from it. It was embarrassing to admit to it. It was like losing a central part
of my identity.

Social norms are important, but often you won't notice till you deviate from
them.

~~~
TruthAndDare
What I'm saying is that lack of food, lack of health care etc aren't means to
get you to conform to a social norm. They are simply a consequence of that
you're not providing for yourself.

~~~
Chris2048
The social norm is not to trade with anyone not following those norms. Try
buying farm equipment without a bank account or credit rating. Try trading
goods without a business etcetcetc

How exactly do you "provide for yourself". You can't just go out and stake a
claim to land anymore. The mechanisms for "providing for yourself" are
purposefully limited to those sectioned and allowed by social norms. If you
want to split hairs other "providing for yourself" please tell me of ways to
do this outside the system.

------
imtringued
If a robot can replace your job then just buy a robot (or indirectly through
investments).

~~~
dforrestwilson
A perfect solution for those who will have jobs and money after most do not.

~~~
imtringued
Well in a world with no human jobs, Universal Basic Income boils down to the
fact the wealth of those who own robots will be redistributed to those who
don't have them. So why not make it so that everyone has some share of robots?

~~~
collyw
Communist!

~~~
Ma8ee
Yes, maybe Marx was right all along, just 150 years too early.

~~~
CelestialTeapot
His critique of capitalism seems pretty spot on, but I'm not so sure about his
solutions to the problem.

Here's a (mercifully short) article on the subject by Chris Hedges:
[http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/karl_marx_was_right_2015...](http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/karl_marx_was_right_20150531)

------
hiou
I'm surprised no one around here talks about AI replacing software programming
jobs.

~~~
ArkyBeagle
Here is my (repeated) experience with AI.

\- Wow that looks cool. \- Heh. Look! It sorta works. \- Oh. It only sort of
works. \- Um, we can ship this but... \- Next!

------
Aardwolf
If money becomes some kind of automatically traded around thing with
artificial value changes based on interacting algorithms, will it still be a
useful for humans to trade physical goods and services?

~~~
sevenless
"If"?!

------
ourmandave
Build a firewall and make the server room pay for it.

~~~
mrdrozdov
What's a server room?

~~~
Ao7bei3s
Where the cloud is.

------
kingkawn
More wage depressing propaganda

