
Robots will not take your job - mdpopescu
https://www.wired.com/2017/08/robots-will-not-take-your-job/
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smt88
This article is straight-up nonsense. I'm shocked that an intelligent,
educated person wrote it.

Its main argument is that technology has had a net-positive effect on jobs in
the past, therefore it will in the future. Here's a key excerpt:

> _A rigorous study [...] found that robots did reduce the hours of lower-
> skilled workers—but they didn’t decrease the total hours worked by humans,
> and they actually boosted wages._

Many years ago, robots replaced the lowest skilled jobs. That's not a huge
problem because, with enough education, those workers could move somewhere
else in the economy.

But technology gets better at an exponential pace. We're already seeing robots
that can perform surgery better than the best surgeons. Some of these things
aren't happening in 25 years, like L5 autonomous cars -- they're happening in
5-10 years.

We're also going to see workers replaced in quantities that will absolutely
dwarf those of the past. What happens when sewing is automated in the US?
There are small countries which will spiral into economic collapse, and they
won't have "time to prepare" because time isn't what they need to prepare.
They need resources and infrastructure that they just don't have.

The dire warnings are true. There's a good reason Zuckerberg, Gates, and Musk
(among many others) have all warned about this being an impending crisis.

------
FuNe
"that industrial automation has been responsible for the loss of up to 670,000
jobs since 1990. But just in the period between 1999 and 2011, trade with
China was responsible for the loss of 2.4 million jobs: almost four times as
many. “If you want to know what happened to manufacturing after 2000, the
answer is very clearly not automation, it’s China,”"

I think globalization in general would be more accurate than "China".

Yet I also think that automation is also a factor which even though might not
be the major one yet it can very well be in the near future. I'm in IT
industry and I've witnessed at least one line of job going out of the window -
namely manual testers- due to automation. I bet everyone has similar stories
from his own walk of life. Yet most of the jobs lost in my locality was due to
them being shipped to low cost countries. So - all in all- these two factors
work in parallel and probably globalization is holding up automation up to a
point (where automation cost > low wage worker).

------
chewz
Sure they won't.

I remember coming to my mothers office when I was a kid. There was entire big
hall full of desks with typewriters and typists - like 50 of them. If some
documents needed new version it had been passed there. Xerox machines had a
special crew. Almost every mid level manager had a personal assistant.

Nowadays you have to do it yourself with email, printer and a smartphone with
calendar reminders I guess.

Soon it's going to be the same with security guards watching all day CCTV's in
shopping malls, doctors (sometimes in 3rd world outsourcing center) who check
your USG and CT scan, low level lawyers going through tons of legal documents.
And your visit to the doctor will take 5 instead of 15 minutes cause you would
be pre-screened by robot assistant first.

