
AI, Robotics, and the Future of Jobs [pdf] - eplanit
http://www.pewinternet.org/files/2014/08/Future-of-AI-Robotics-and-Jobs.pdf
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e0m
CGP Grey recently put out a video along very similar lines. Worth 15 mins:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU&list=UU2C_jShtL7...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU&list=UU2C_jShtL725hvbm1arSV9w)

~~~
zokier
I found it surprisingly shallow in that it didn't really delve into post-
scarcity economics. With stuff like basic income or negative taxing the loss
of jobs will not look as severe societally.

~~~
JoachimS
The big question is being able to finance basic income when a large and
growing part of the population is unemployed. Where is the tax base?

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zokier
> Where is the tax base?

In corporations?

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justincormack
Or on robots?

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JoachimS
More plausible since it directly connects to the problem at hand. But when you
replace humans with algorithms how do you determine what to tax and how much?

~~~
justincormack
Value added taxes/sales are plausible if they are selling stuff.

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JeremyReimer
If a panel of experts are evenly split on their opinions about the future of
jobs, it seems to me that nobody really knows what is going to happen. It's
one thing to point to how historically new technology created new jobs to
replace those it displaced, but I get the feeling that this time it might be
very different. All the rules go out the window when technological
acceleration reaches a certain point. I'm not saying that we'll hit the
Singularity and upload our brains into computers, but we might hit a sort of
"economic singularity" where it no longer becomes economically viable to
create new jobs. What happens then is very much up to our society to decide.

~~~
hvs
Peoples' wants and desires are infinite. As long as there are things to
desire, there will be jobs to do.

~~~
clusterfoo
So long as machines are not far more effective at building (and possibly some
day even engineering) those things we desire...

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seanflyon
If machines can make everything we want for so cheap that we can't possibly
compete that mean that everything we want is incredibly cheap.

~~~
clusterfoo
But under our current economic system, what you can afford is tied to the
value of the goods/services you produce. If we find ourselves in a future
where 90% of the population produces nothing, then 90% of the population can
afford nothing, no matter how cheap.

Obviously there is a utopian solution, where most goods and services are so
cheap to produce, that most people have essentially free access to them.

What is worrying is the dystopian alternative (and probably inevitable
adjustment period), where only a tiny fraction of the population is
"valuable", and therefore has access to all the benefits of cheap automation,
while the other 90% have no value (economically speaking).

We also tend to forget that we live in a sort of intellectual bubble. Just by
being able to hold a highly technical job, you are probably already in the
upper 90% percent of the intelligence spectrum. 80% of the world's population
has an IQ of under 115; and half the world's population is under 100 and can
barely grasp any form of abstract logical thinking.

If the vast majority of jobs in the future require high technical or
intellectual aptitude, then the vast majority of the earth's population will
be left with nothing to do.

~~~
seanflyon
I was pointing out what I think is often ignored in these conversations: that
robots taking all the jobs means we have reached post scarcity. Between that
potential future and where we are now there could be some serious problems as
you suggest. I agree that the economy is shifting away from low skilled jobs
towards high skill jobs and that does seem like a big problem for low skill
people. I am slightly more optimistic than you because I think that the
primary difference between low skilled people and high skilled people is not
innate intelligence, but education and training.

------
nabla9
There was only two economists discussing the future of jobs :(

Robotics and automation are changing business from labor intensive to capital
intensive. Wage share (share of wages from the GDP) has been going down since
early 70's in all OECD countries. Automation will continue to increase that
trend together with more competition from third world.

The job loss should be considered as one issue in downward pressure for wages
caused by automation. Workers can compete with with automation by earning
less. People from developing world will be able to compete against automation
longer.

Removing cashiers and logistic workers with automation and more sophisticated
vending machines might generate bigger dent to the jobs than self driving cars
(They have vending machine in Italy that makes fresh pizza starting from the
flour).

~~~
electromagnetic
My local grocery store has a fresh food department, that basically sells the
cooked version of the stores prepared foods (so the pizza they sell is their
pizza dough, their marinara sauce, their carton of cheese and their packs of
pepperoni, all of which you can grab and make the same pizza right at home)
and the store brand foods.

The thing I find amazing is that they have a couple of kids working barely
above minimum wage essentially doing the task of a vending machine. Their most
labour intensive task is rolling out the ball of pizza dough.

I won't be surprised to see grocery stores rapidly change to near full
automation. We already have automated shipping warehouses, stocking store
shelves is essentially the reverse process and with proper inventory
monitoring a shelf would never be empty. Checkouts are already becoming self-
serve in many places as it allows more "cashiers" to be open thus reducing
lines.

Every job in a grocery store is shockingly automatable, from assembling the
loads at the distribution warehouses, we're already talking automated tractor
trailers for freight, automated fork lifts to load and unload, automated shelf
stackers and self-serve cashes. Whose going to be working? Security, at least
until we automate that.

I work construction, and its honestly a matter of time before I'm automated
out of a job. I'm blessed by the fact that rough terrain is the main limiting
factor, that I might actually stay employed longer than most.

The reason I see automation taking over is because we're approaching onsite
manufacture of a lot of materials. It used to be just eavestrough, but now
every form of steel roofing can be made on site. It's only a matter of time
before someone starts mounting them on boom lifts and running them out in
place for workers to just screw down. From there its only going to be a short
time until the machine makes and screws the piece.

We're starting to see vinyl products that can be bent to make fascia, which
means a machine can easily produce vinyl siding and accessories on site. So
how long until they get mounted on a scissor lift and parked at one end of the
wall and you can have a 50ft wall of seamless siding.

------
dqdo
As a society, we need to ask ourselves two questions: (1) what is the purpose
of work? and (2) what do people find valuable?

The premise of question 1 is that we should not work just for the sake of
saying that we are working. Rather we should work because we are creating
something of value for others and ourselves. I think that automation will have
a profound impact on the economy by making certain types of work economically
infeasible. But this is not necessarily a problem as long as people realize it
and move on to work on more highly value areas. I believe that as individuals
our desires are limitless and there will always be a demand for something. We
just need to figure out what that demand is and work in that domain.

Overall automation will free us from many manual labor jobs and allow us to
produce more art, poetry, mathematics, and science.

~~~
ewzimm
I think we also have to consider conservatives who believe that there is
inherent value in certain lifestyles that is independent of the products of
those lifestyles. Automated labor will also free us to compete in whatever
inefficient way we want. Just as garment technology has not stopped people
from knitting, automated labor will still allow people to choose to be Amish.

Personally, I think we can find better things to do than work most jobs that
exist today. We need to be open to the idea of perpetual changes in what we
can and should do with our time.

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QuantumChaos
From the point of view of classical economics, AI increases the productiveness
of capital, and certain specialized kinds of labor (e.g. creating and
improving AI).

While this increases the total output of society, it also increases
inequality.

We already have in place mechanisms to deal with inequality, namely income tax
and welfare. As the total output of society grows, we will be able to afford
more generous kinds of welfare, until eventually we probably settle on a
negative income tax scheme.

Note that a correctly designed welfare system wouldn't result in lots of
people living on welfare, but rather everyone working fewer hours.

So I imagine that the future could be quite good, as long as our methods for
redistributing wealth are able to keep pace with technological change (and
there are some great examples to follow in the Western world, e.g.
Scandinavia, Australia and NZ)

~~~
ztko
Why do you say that AI will automatically increase inequality? Not necessarily
disagreeing but interested to hear your thoughts. I'm also wary of the impact
that AI and robotics may have but am cautiously optimistic. While I do think
that many jobs will be displaced by automation, I wonder if we'll also see a
labor revolution or rather emergence of a new sector/type of jobs. E.F.
Schumacher talked a lot about the dehumanizing nature of many jobs, and I
think in a perfect world automation and robotics could take over the
repetitive or dangerous jobs, freeing those workers to take on more fulfilling
and important jobs.

~~~
altcognito
I hope as you do but.... Small scale tools for small groups and individuals
_might_ be more flexible but will absoltuely be less prodigious/efficient than
large scale factories and therefore margins and pricing will always put the
little guys on the edges of the economy, thereby exacerbating inequality.

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digitalengineer
"Race against the Machine" is actually a good book about the topic: "In Race
Against the Machine, MIT's Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee present a very
different explanation. Drawing on research by their team at the Center for
Digital Business, they show that there's been no stagnation in technology --
in fact, the digital revolution is accelerating.

"...digital technologies are rapidly encroaching on skills that used to belong
to humans alone. This phenomenon is both broad and deep, and has profound
economic implications. Many of these implications are positive; digital
innovation increases productivity, reduces prices (sometimes to zero), and
grows the overall economic pie."

[http://www.amazon.com/Race-Against-The-Machine-
Accelerating-...](http://www.amazon.com/Race-Against-The-Machine-Accelerating-
ebook/dp/B005WTR4ZI)

------
atemerev
Of course, there will be less and less "jobs" in the future. But that's OK.
The population growth is already stopping. Productivity will rise to the new
heights. Society will adapt — first, by introducing, say, 4-hour work days,
then by totally eliminating the concept of a "job" — everyone will be either a
temp staffer, or a business founder (or an artisan — arts and crafts will be
more valuable than ever).

We are moving to post-scarcity, and the future is bright. No more office jobs,
though.

~~~
Homunculiheaded
"post-scarcity" is an illusion presented to people living at the very top of
the economic pyramid. I'm sure most HNers are in the top 90th percentile of US
household income on their own, living in a world mostly surrounded by other
affluent individuals working in a similar field, all in jobs with increasingly
flexible work hours, better benefits and nearly unlimited job prospects.

The world only looks like it's moving towards post-scarcity because the
resources consumed and waste produced have been nearly completely outsourced
away, and the pangs of the labor issues created by automation are happening
somewhere else.

Post-scarcity is not an issue of 'productivity' but of resource use. As Jevons
paradox [0] points out the more efficiently we use resources the more of them
we tend to use. Looking merely at productivity and efficiency without looking
at resource use and waste production gives a wildly incomplete picture of
"post-scarcity". What I see is that the world is increasingly separating into
a small sub-population that is presented the illusion of post-scarcity and a
another, growing, subset that is feeling the effects of scarcity required to
maintain that illusion.

When I see data to support the argument that resource use and waste production
are plummeting, then I'll believe in narratives about post-scarcity.

0\.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox)

~~~
seanflyon
If labor is effectively free (because robots don't get paid) then I don't
think that the products of that labor would be particularly scarce. Even
material costs are primarily the labor cost to extract or recycle a material.

~~~
slurry
That's like saying if housing is effectively free (because buildings don't get
paid).

~~~
seanflyon
Housing is expensive because:

1) Lots of people want to live in the same relatively small area. 2) Houses
take a lot of labor to make. 3) The material houses are made from take a lot
of labor to extract.

If labor were cheap 2 and 3 would be cheap as well and if people did not need
to live near job centers I think 1 would not be as big of a deal either.

This discussion of the problems we will have once robots take our jobs by
making labor free ignores the benefits of free labor. I am skeptical of the
ability of robots to take our jobs by providing free labor, but we only have
to worry about the downsides of free robot labor, if we actually have free
robot labor.

------
elleferrer
There will be a bright future for our growing aging population.

~~~
pacala
There will be a bright future for our capital owning population.

There is a weak correlation between old people and capital ownership and easy
to mistake the two if inferring from the age axis, e.g. person X owns more
capital at 50 than at 25. However, this doesn't generalize well when doing a
cross section at a given age, see for example the average savings for a 50
year old, which is a meager $43,797 [http://www.statisticbrain.com/retirement-
statistics](http://www.statisticbrain.com/retirement-statistics).

~~~
TeMPOraL
That's why we need to move away capitalism before it's too late, if we want to
have part in that bright future.

~~~
grondilu
This part in that future is actually made of shares in the stock market. If
you want some, you have to buy it. Fortunately anyone can : it's a free market
and you can enter with as little as a few hundreds bucks.

~~~
josephagoss
But isn't it easier to do away with capitalism altogether so that we can all
be equal, no matter the effort we put in?

This future of no capitalism people want scares the heck out of me, almost
makes everything I've worked for pointless.

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _This future of no capitalism people want scares the heck out of me, almost
> makes everything I 've worked for pointless._

The future of continued capitalism scares the heck out of me, because it's the
future of more and more people living on subsistence level, slaving away all
their lives for increasingly smaller group of wealthy people, until the whole
thing either collapses or the economic machine optimizes all humanity away for
more profit and the Earth will be left with no people.

~~~
grondilu
> slaving away all their lives

Well, the good news is that this won't be possible since they will soon be
made useless by automation. You can't enslave someone who has no use for you.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Well, if even quality sex services get automated away in the end, then I guess
we'll have no other choice than to say "so long and thanks to all the fish",
followed by starving and dying.

~~~
grondilu
Unfortunately people usually riot instead. Hopefully they will get their ass
kicked.

