
Technology Will Kill White-Collar Jobs - entangld
http://www.forbes.com/sites/chasewithorn/2015/12/07/billionaire-jeff-greene-says-technology-will-kill-white-collar-jobs-hosts-conference-on-inequality
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sytelus
Eventually technology should kill pretty much all of the jobs. Human time and
energy should be spent on what they find interesting, not on mundane stuff
such as farming, housing, construction, database plumbing - all of which could
be easily automated. No human should have to work to pay bills because there
should be no bills. That should be the promise of technology. Only jobs left
for humans should be things that require creativity, higher level reasoning
and new ideas. Of course, there may be AI one day that does better than us on
these areas as well and that's just part of evolution. It doesn't necessarily
have to mean humans will go extinct. Universe has plenty of space for all of
us and next generation of intellectual species.

~~~
jackcosgrove
If it were still up and running, I'd link you to regretsy.com for a primer on
most people's level of creativity. But it's gone so now all I can say is that
it showed the worst "user-generated stuff" people posted to Etsy.

Not buying it - we have specialization and professionalization in part to
maintain quality of work. Everyone cannot be, and should not be, an artist.

Anyways, if no one had to work, most people would just do drugs.

~~~
forgottenpass
_Anyways, if no one had to work, most people would just do drugs._

And when people do have to work, they just alternate between drugs that make
them better workers, and drugs that let them forget work.

~~~
Florin_Andrei
It seems like the basic blueprint of the human being, at every level, requires
a certain amount of constant stress to function properly, an external
challenge to the capabilities or even integrity of the system. _At every
level_. Purely physical (motion), immunity, emotional level, intellectual
level, etc.

Unless we change the blueprint in a massive way, we won't do well in a life of
complete leisure.

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
What humans consider leisure is simply enjoyable work. If there is no "work"
work and just leisure, we're fine.

But not if there's nothing to do at all.

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mtberatwork
> Technology will kill white-collar jobs.

Yes, we all agree. No one disputes that. This article is more about Jeff
Greene's conference and biography than it is about automation. Reads like an
advertorial.

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ErikAugust
White-collar job: Writing Advertorials

Wait, I can write a script to do that...

~~~
rbinv
Soon: "Google is proud to introduce Markov chain advertorials."

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votr
The second-order effect is to kill the businesses and jobs which depend on
white collar patronage.

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CM30
I do wonder whether a certain amount of jobs will stay simply because of
certain people's preferences for human made products. I mean, look at the
markets for different types of food. We can genetically engineer stuff and use
factory farming and all that stuff, but a significant audience just doesn't
trust the technology or buy into the ethics of it.

Wonder if human made could become the next organic, at least among certain
hipster types...

I also wonder whether a certain amount of this 'technology will kill jobs'
stuff overlooks a small business issue that a certain few people don't seem to
get. Namely, that the businesses that do well aren't always the fastest
producing ones or the ones that make the 'best' products in some statistical
sense. After all, about 90% of sites online are simply made obsolete by other,
usually more popular ones. But many of them still gain an audience, even
without being the 'best' at something or posting about it the quickest. All
these talks and articles seem to assume the equivalents to Walmart and
McDonalds will win in all markets because 'robots do things better/cheaper'
and completely overlook such things as customer loyalty, branding, location or
anything else.

AI is going to be an issue, but I think it's a tad premature to say all
businesses will turn to it, or that businesses that aim for a more niche
audience and care about the service more than the price will somehow stop
being able to do well.

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Isamu
Humans can always do the jobs that robots feel too overqualified to do.

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vonnik
Why are we even talking about this guy? While this prediction may be true in
the long run, it's not really news, and we're a long, long ways away from
autonomous conversation agents that will replace expert professionals. These
dramatic long-run predictions that fail to take into account other trends --
free solar energy, climatic collapse, all-you-can-edit genes -- are
essentially worthless.

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Animats
If your connection to the world is via a phone and computer, you will be
replaced.

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Spooks
Not sure that statement is true (I actually think it's almost the opposite).
For example if programmers are replaced, who will create the programs for the
machines? I imagine even after the first wave of robot overloads, they will
want a version 2.0.

If you are a web designer, your connection is through a computer. Not sure
robots can be creative (not yet anyways)

If you are a sales person, your connection will be through a phone (I don't
think we are anywhere close to where a computer can make a judgement call
based on speaking cues)

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jackcosgrove
Yes, programmer will be the last job.

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hackinthebochs
Programmer will be the last job, but most programming jobs will be a part of
the first wave to go. I can't tell you how many days I've felt like my job
(wire up this API by googling then massaging a code sample) was such an
obviously mechanical process than the AI needed to do it was not significantly
more advanced than where we are now. I do not expect most of these jobs to
last another two decades (at least by then ageism will have pushed me out
anyways).

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undersuit
I wonder how many programmers shouted doom and gloom when the first assembly
language was created, when the first compilers came to take their jobs, or
when the first framework stole their work?

Don't complain about boring, tedious boilerplate being removed, the removal
just frees up our time for more interesting work.

~~~
hackinthebochs
The difference is that the market for different kinds of software products
grew massively in the timeframe you're referencing, as did the complexity of
software we were capable of creating. I don't expect these trends to continue.
There will always be new technology to program for, but if automation takes
over the gruntwork of development, which is the vast majority of it, market or
complexity growth will not save it.

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ThomPete
Digitalization is to White-Collars what automation is to Blue-Collars.

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aswanson
There was a sci fi book by (Niven?) mentioned to me by a friend about a future
society where the songmakers where the most important. Anyone know the book
title?

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acd
There will have to be a shift to more creative work which can not be done by
computers.

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muraiki
Is there enough demand for that much creative work? Who will consume it, if
this trend widens the income inequality gap?

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dclowd9901
> Is there enough demand for that much creative work?

Are you serious? All we _do_ outside of work is consume others' creativity.

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muraiki
Let's consider just music for now. Go to Soundcloud, Bandcamp, etc. and see
how much music is already freely available. What percentage of those artists
are able to make a living as full-time musicians? (especially when the trend
is now to pay $X/mo to consume all you want)

And if income inequality increase, there will be less consumers able to
consume that increased supply, further lowering the value of the supply of
music. The "winners" of the situation who end up with more income do not have
additional time to consume ever more greater quantities of music, while the
losers have less money and potentially also less time (if they need to work
more to make ends meet).

Edit: Also, given your wording of the question it seems like you aren't a
producer of creative content yourself, so perhaps you aren't as directly aware
of the trend I'm describing above, which has already had a serious effect upon
an already difficult-to-pursue profession.

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dclowd9901
I guess I'm not as aware of the trend. My guess is that as the focus of
commodities shifts from exporting intellect to exporting creativity, so, too,
will the value of those contributions and the way we're exposed to them. At
some point there will be a shift from the content distributors to the content
creators directly, especially as artificial intelligence around curation of
content gets better and better.

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draw_down
Of course it will. Those labor costs are much higher than for fast food
workers!

