
Bill Gates: People Don't Realize How Many Jobs Will Soon Be Replaced by Software - rblion
http://www.businessinsider.com/bill-gates-bots-are-taking-away-jobs-2014-3
======
paulmd
He's absolutely right, and people don't understand the level of "skilled work"
that will be replaced by computers.

I write clinical decision support tools, and I interview users (doctors).
Nowdays, doctors really just want algorithms to follow. They want to know what
the fastest/cheapest way to diagnose problems is.

Frankly, they aren't particularly GOOD at diagnosing problems outside of these
kinds of algorithms - for example, a likely cause of many Morgellons' disease
cases is actually tropical rat mite (see Nick Mann
[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/8626767/Morgellons-
Disease...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/8626767/Morgellons-Disease-
continues-to-defeat-scientists.html)). Doctors tend to diagnose delusional
parasitosis just because it doesn't fit the algorithms.

If doctors are just going to follow a basic set of diagnostic procedures, we
can easily automate that using the data that are put into modern electronic
health record (EHR) systems. We have your vitals, we know the tests that have
been done and the outcomes, and so on. As one (very blunt) doctor expressed to
me, doctors just want to follow the diagnosis algorithm, he paid $100k to be a
data entry technician, and I think that was pretty much on the money. That's
not the only time I've heard that, either.

If doctors are going to be replaced, there's not much that CAN'T. It's just a
question of designing a program/robot for the particular task, which is
becoming increasingly cheap.

~~~
hxrts
I have a hard time believing doctors will be replaced in large numbers. The
nature of their jobs may shift away from hypothesis generation but ultimately
a human will be making the final diagnosis, choosing from several options that
have been vetted algorithmically. Legally & practically a human needs to
arbitrate that process, people would feel uncomfortable otherwise.

~~~
waterlesscloud
Even if human doctors become demonstrably worse at it than the machines?

~~~
spc476
If? It's already happened:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mycin#Results](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mycin#Results)
(and this was in the 70s).

~~~
olalonde
Then why isn't there a website to get medical diagnosis on a self-serve basis?
(I'm not asking rhetorically, genuinely curious)

~~~
ende
The FDA, mostly. They have a multi billion dollar industry to keep in
business.

------
alexqgb
Most people may not realize what's coming now but they will soon enough. When
they do, expect Universal Basic Income (UBI) to become a very popular topic.

Here's a quick take: [http://io9.com/how-universal-basic-income-will-save-us-
from-...](http://io9.com/how-universal-basic-income-will-save-us-from-the-
robot-1653303459)

The Wikipedia article goes much further in-depth:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income)

And of course, there's an ongoing conversation on Reddit:
[http://www.reddit.com/r/BasicIncome/](http://www.reddit.com/r/BasicIncome/)

~~~
nashashmi
That is to assume there will never be another problem to solve.

There will always be problems to solve for as long we are people of needs:
shelter, clothing, food, social life.

------
olalonde
> Gates believes that the tax codes are going to need to change to encourage
> companies to hire employees, including, perhaps, eliminating income and
> payroll taxes altogether.

If we want to go down that road, basic income is the future in my opinion.

~~~
zackmorris
Ya it's weird to me how Bill Gates nailed the problem so soundly but came to
the typical uninsightful solutions that we've had in the US since 1980.
Trickle down economics (where benefits are distributed by the private sector
rather than government via taxes) is just not going to work in a world where
income is decoupled from labor. In other words, as the value of human capital
decreases, people without resources will have fewer means to raise themselves
out of poverty. Paying no taxes won’t matter in a world where the unemployment
rate is 10, 20, 50%. It will just exacerbate the concentration of wealth.

An alternative to all of this is to tax all financial transactions: whether to
family members, religious organizations, political campaigns or between large
institutions or countries. The idea being that in the end there is no real way
to distinguish donation from income. Everyone would pay a tax on the
difference in their net worth between the beginning and end of the year. The
end result would be that people who accumulate large amounts of wealth would
pay higher taxes than the majority of the country which is basically living a
steady state existence. This also takes care of inheritance tax because
children born to wealthy families would pay their income tax the year of their
inheritance.

We’ve made a mistake in this country thinking that “the government” is small
group of powerful individuals. That’s not how things started. Originally the
government was the people, so things like tariffs were paid mostly by
businesses as a way to fund public schools and infrastructure for everyone.
People voted for tariffs so that they didn’t have to pay for government
expenses out of pocket. Starting with the Civil War and then at the turn of
the 20th century, that system got replaced by the income tax system we have
today, and people have been swindled into paying for government excess (mostly
in the form of military spending and tax breaks for industry) out of pocket
again.

The gist of this is that framing “taxes” as an expense rather than an income
is an effective way to get people to vote against their own self interest.
People earning less than roughly $100,000 per year ($16 trillion GDP minus $2
trillion for government, divided by 140 million working Americans) don’t
realize that they are short the thousands of dollars that they would receive
if people making more than the average paid their fair share.

Consider if the tax rate was a flat 50%, with the excess above $2 trillion for
government going to everyone as a basic income. Someone earning $30,000 pays
about $5,000 today. But under the new system, there would be $7 trillion going
to 300 million people, or about $23,000 per capita. So that person would pay
$15,000, receive $23,000, so they would actually receive a credit of $8,000,
for a total annual income of $38,000. That $13,000 difference between what
we’re paying now and what we could be receiving is a major motivator for the
Occupy movement, the Other 98% and similar groups. I find this way of looking
at things to be much more inspiring than the usual “you pay us” knee jerk
stuff coming from people who have profited from the current income tax system.

------
bambax
> _" When people say we should raise the minimum wage. I worry about what that
> does to job creation ... potentially damping demand in the part of the labor
> spectrum that I’m most worried about."_

Bill Gates has been saying this many times and I really, really don't get it.

Of course when the price of a commodity goes up, demand goes down; but if
there's a perfect substitute that's free, demand for the non-free alternative
should be zero anyway, so its "price" is irrelevant (as long as it's non-
free).

Why would anyone hire a human at any cost to do a repetitive and low-added-
value job that a robot can do perfectly, without error, without ever arguing
or getting tired, etc. AND AT NO MARGINAL COST??

How does "minimum wage" matter in this scenario?

\- - -

Humanity has been wanting to not work since the dawn agriculture, 10 000 years
ago at the latest. It's finally happening and we're freaking out about it.

What we need to think about is not how to get people employed, it's how to
redistribute wealth so that what you earn is not somehow morally related to
the job you're holding.

The solution is universal basic income, not "minimum wage".

~~~
clarky07
>What we need to think about is not how to get people employed, it's how to
redistribute wealth so that what you earn is not somehow morally related to
the job you're holding.

Tell me again why you deserve to profit from my hard work? Or why I deserve to
profit from your hard work? Shouldn't we both just profit from our own work?

This isn't to say I don't think we shouldn't help those less fortunate than
ourselves. I try to give a decent amount to charity, but I don't think for a
minute that everyone should get paid the same. If you don't provide any
benefit to society you shouldn't be as well off as people who provide enormous
benefit to society.

~~~
rbobby
> I don't think for a minute that everyone should get paid the same

Conflating your concept of "everyone should get paid the same" and basic
income is a logical fallacy (false equivalence?). Nothing about basic income
requires that everyone's total income be identical.

Further your "you don't provide any benefit to society you shouldn't be as
well off" again has nothing to do with basic income. Nothing about basic
income requires everyone to be as "well off" as everyone else.

What will society look like when there are only highly skilled jobs available?
How would unskilled parents improve the lot of their children? I find it
difficult to imagine that a permanent underclass is likely to lead to a
society that is stable over the long term.

~~~
paulhauggis
"Nothing about basic income requires that everyone's total income be
identical."

Basic income will need to come from somewhere. As these costs increase, the
people actually earning above and beyond the basic income will be have their
income redistributed in the form of high taxes and depending on how high these
costs increase over time, will reach a point where the reward != effort. I
predict that with a system like this, the costs (and taxes associated) will
most definitely reach this point.

Human nature is a bitch. Why would I even bother putting the effort into
working when I can get almost the same amount of money back from the
government, for free? If enough people think the same way, there won't be
enough to fund the system anymore. The government will then need to assign
jobs to people to keep the system going.

A Utopia where nobody needs to work sounds great, until you need to figure out
how to divide all of the resources.

Most of the great technologies and innovations we see today are a result of a
great risk->reward structure. Any system that doesn't foster this doesn't see
this sort of innovation.

~~~
rbobby
Your prediction that basic income would eventually mean a total leveling of
all incomes and your assumption that everyone would eventually do nothing are
also fallacies (fallacy of the single cause? nirvana fallacy?).

Basic income is not about utopia, it is about creating a long term stable
society where member's basic needs are meet (food, clothing, shelter, medical
care, education, security, etc).

~~~
paulhauggis
"Your prediction that basic income would eventually mean a total leveling of
all incomes and your assumption that everyone would eventually do nothing are
also fallacies (fallacy of the single cause? nirvana fallacy?)."

It's based on history and human nature. My point still stands and it's not a
"fallacy"..which it seems you just made up on the spot because you don't agree
with my reasoning.

I also didn't say that "everyone would eventually do nothing". I said that we
would cross a threshold where the amount of people just getting a basic income
would eventually outweigh the people working and putting money into the
system, and the system would need to be changed by the government or it would
collapse.

"it is about creating a long term stable society where member's basic needs
are meet (food, clothing, shelter, medical care, education, security, etc)."

The best way to help someone is to teach them to go out and help
themselves...not just pay for all of their needs and tech them to depend on
the government.

------
barefoot
It's an interesting discussion and I find many non-developers unaware of the
potential for technology to displace jobs over the next 20 years.

If you're interested in related material I recommend a book by Martin Ford
that's freely available online, The Lights In The Tunnel:

[http://www.thelightsinthetunnel.com](http://www.thelightsinthetunnel.com)

------
tambourine_man
Humans need not apply

[https://youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU](https://youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU)

~~~
rndn
The wonderful and terrifying implications of computers that can learn

[https://www.ted.com/talks/jeremy_howard_the_wonderful_and_te...](https://www.ted.com/talks/jeremy_howard_the_wonderful_and_terrifying_implications_of_computers_that_can_learn)

------
davidgerard
I wonder when being a sysadmin will be automated away. My job is, pretty much,
to replace every single thing I do with a script. For some reason there
continues to be work to do. I strongly suspect I could work until I'm 100 if I
want to. Because EVEN IN THE FUTURE, NOTHING WORKS.

------
DenisM
I've been toying with the idea of creating a non-profit "social-
responsibility" fund. A startup at inception would donate some fixed
percentage of their stock to the fund, and the fund will later use dividends
or sales proceeds to pay for retraining or retirement of those displaced by
the startup.

The trouble is, the idea being so novel, I don't think I could convince any
investors to get on board with it. It requires broad awareness and years of
propaganda to make it a commonly accepted practice.

Alternatively, I imagine the disrupted themselves should have a pension fund
or a trade union seeking out disruptive innovations and investing in them
ahead of time. But in practice they don't, so that where it ends.

~~~
k_kelly
Disruption typically happens where it's not only more efficient but cheaper
too. The number of people you displace is going to be a fraction of what you
make.

If you do end up making as much as the original industry it's because you are
doing MORE than the original industry in which case you now have to question
if the original industry didn't deserve to be destroyed.

Everything that can be software, will be software, what needs to happen is
that the number of things that are software needs to outnumber the things that
exist now. Software will create work for people to do as long as it keeps
pushing what we can do as people. People need to adapt to a world with
software at the heart, everything else is very dangerous.

~~~
DenisM
Retraining is one-time event, it doesn't require equal cash flow, just that
there is some cash set aside for it. I don't advocate permanent welfare,
except maybe for those who are past retirement age.

------
lifeisstillgood
I think the big one that no one mentions is management. A company with 100,000
employees, and a reporting span of 10 people then you have 11,111 managers -
and as they tend to get paid more upwards of 25-30% of the salary.

And what do they do? Administration and process? Easily automatable. Hiring
and firing (teams do this better), "magically know what to do in uncertain
times" (guess my views). A lot of this can be replaced with high trust, open
environments and "team empowerment"

But when do turkeys vote for Xmas?

This comes from (iirr) Gary Hamel ([https://hbr.org/2011/11/fire-all-the-
managers](https://hbr.org/2011/11/fire-all-the-managers))

------
misev
A recent book looking in depth at what this actually means for us: " The Glass
Cage: Automation and Us"

------
ratsimihah
What I do not get is how many jobs have yet to be replaced by computers that'd
do the job better.

------
xux
There's a popular notion that we will experience mass unemployment resulting
from people whose jobs are replaced with software.

This is false. With any revolutionary change in technology, jobs lost in one
field will be jobs gained in another.

The agricultural revolution didn't drive mass unemployment when farmers were
replaced. The industrial revolution didn't drive mass unemployment when small
merchants were replaced. The software revolution won't either.

~~~
Retric
There has been a steady decline in the % of 30-40 year old males working in
the US which suggests your probably wrong.

It's not that there is to little work out there, the issue is are economy
keeps changing so rapidly that people are unprepared for new occupations.
Worse while low skilled jobs that are often easiest to automate, productivity
increases also kill off some high skilled jobs. And people are both reluctant
to higher workers for less than they where making especially if they have been
out of work for a while.

~~~
nashashmi
That is a friction that needs to be solved. For as long as that friction
exists, Disruptions will be called disruptions instead of innovations.

