
Why the tech sector may not solve America’s looming automation crisis - tekacs
https://pudding.cool/2018/08/retraining/
======
Chathamization
"Automation crisis" reminds me of "peak oil." Take a current problem (high
unemployment, high oil prices), ignore the reasons for them (the global
financial crisis, disruption oil supply along with increased oil demand), and
instead construct a strange eschatological reason for the problem (machines
are taking all of our jobs, we're almost out of oil).

Let's look at actual measures of automation - productivity growth. It's been
very low over the past decade[1] when compared to decades past. Prime age
employment has been returning to pre-crisis highs[2] - despite people claiming
that the old jobs were gone and new jobs wouldn't replace them (the machines
were supposedly going to take them all).

[1]
[https://www.bls.gov/lpc/prodybar.htm](https://www.bls.gov/lpc/prodybar.htm)
[2]
[https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS12300060](https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS12300060)

~~~
mdorazio
I think you're oversimplifying and ignoring a few key factors here.

1) As has been shown time and time again, the rewards of productivity gains
accrue to the owners of capital far more than to the workers who are more
productive. The result is widening inequality on many levels, which
extrapolated a few decades into the future ends up looking... not great. I
hope we can agree that de facto serfdom is a bad thing.

2) You can't just look at the number of new jobs when making employment
generalizations - you have to look at the quality and type of jobs that were
created to replace the ones lost. It's like if you took away someone's house
and then gave them a tiny apartment a year later, then claimed "Look, they got
housing back! Everything's great again!". In the case of employment, the vast
majority of jobs created in the last decade have been contract positions and
low-end temp work [1]. If you look at the sectors where employment has grown
when new jobs data comes out, low-end service jobs continuously top the list
(ex. [2]). We can debate whether or not people actually want these types of
new jobs as opposed to traditional real estate/financial services/salaried
construction/etc. jobs that were lost in 2009-2010.

3) We haven't hit the automation crisis yet in any meaningful way. When
autonomous trucks and warehouse robots become prevalent, _then_ we will be in
an actual crisis.

The automation crisis right now is not that everyone is going to lose their
jobs overnight, but that automation is exacerbating big problems in the jobs
market that lead to massive inequality, the prevalence of underemployment, and
the trend towards bad jobs with few or no benefits and workers needing to work
gigs on the side to make ends meet or afford the things that their normal job
would have provided in decades past. When large swathes of workers lose their
jobs to automation in the future, these problems are going to continue to
compound unless we start making big policy changes. Yes, people will likely
find new jobs to replace the ones lost, but will they actually be better or
worse off than before?

[1]
[https://krueger.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/akrueger/f...](https://krueger.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/akrueger/files/katz_krueger_cws_-
_march_29_20165.pdf)

[2]
[https://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/05/business/economy/services...](https://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/05/business/economy/services-
still-the-backbone-of-job-growth-data-shows.html)

~~~
rohit2412
1) and 2) seem to be largely effects of a globalized eceonomy, with
outsourcing and resulting inequality. Automation seems to be truly a boogie
monster you can put blame on.

Trains also took away long distance horse buggie jobs. They were largely
automated too. And finally, if you think driverless cars are nearby, then so
are completely humanoid robots who can do all the work a human can do.

~~~
TAForObvReasons
Funny you mention horses, as it is a common analogy in these discourses. The
horse population actually declined as they became less necessary thanks to
transportation innovations. CGP Grey explained this well:
[https://youtu.be/7Pq-S557XQU?t=212](https://youtu.be/7Pq-S557XQU?t=212)

~~~
rohit2412
Everyone in the world used to be a farmer. Now, only 1% of the population in
developed countries farm. This time it's different?

Actually, I can agree that there had been reduction in global jobs as world
gets slowly automated. But there won't be a sudden takeover of all jobs by
some super sentient AI leading to mass unemployment. And neither are the
current problems of inequality, debt, low wages a result of an increasing
productivity, but rather increasing globalization.

------
stephengillie
Interesting to see the automation of truck driving used again as an example in
this discussion.

From what my dad tells me, the trucking industry is hurting for long-haul
drivers. Few men want to spend days on the road, far from their families and
homes. It's such an unsatisfying job that women largely refuse to consider it.
Even fewer want the nomadic lifestyle idolized by many on HN.

How will the trucking industry deal with both this threat to their jobs, and
also a lack of human interest in doing the job?

~~~
bigpicture
I can corroborate, but the central issue once again is pay/working conditions.
The pricing assumes that long-haul truckers don't get paid much and it assumes
that they will drive up against the legal limits and it assumes that they will
more or less live in their truck and never see their home.

Fixing the pricing to make the working conditions reasonable will simply make
long-haul truck uncompetitive with freight railroads. And that is really the
solution. If you want to send cargo across the country, put it on a train.

~~~
snarfy
Not all shipping is equal. When I worked for a produce company we shipped via
trucks and trains. By far there were many more incidence of produce going bad
and having to be thrown out when shipped via train than by truck.

Put it on a train, unless it will spoil?

~~~
bigpicture
> Put it on a train, unless it will spoil?

Oh yes, there will always be exceptions. But it will have to cost more. There
is no escaping that.

------
gumby
That looked like it might be an interesting article but implementing it as
tiny fragments of boxed text that fly by as you scroll (and obscure the
graphs) pretty much destroys the point of publishing an article.

Can anyone point at the original data of which this is presumably a summary?

 _grump_.

~~~
KineticLensman
This is the pudding [0] house style. Luckily for us, if its not our Jam, we
can preach. I kid you not.

[0] [https://pudding.cool/](https://pudding.cool/)

~~~
gumby
Wow, that's insane.

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rayiner
Does anyone really think this site design is a good idea? The images are all
dynamic anyway. It adds literally nothing to a traditional static page with
captions below diagrams and images.

~~~
wtracy
Some of the diagrams don't fit on the screen on my phone. Since the diagrams
are fixed in place and don't scroll, there are parts that I literally can't
read.

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TheBobinator
If you look at IQ and the kinds of jobs people sub-100 IQ can retain, you
begin to realize very quickly that about half of the population is going to
need to be retrained in some kind of intellectual job going forward.

That forces public schooling to train children for intellectual persuits, and
children who are gifted need to have programs tailored for them.

It also means you are going to have post-scarcity politics. The scarcity of
resources forces social interaction and gives value to life, relationships and
property. Universal income is horrific in the fact it dissolves those
relationships, and politicans can decide to revoke people's food or shelter on
a whim and also the public can decide to support it. You also realize that
things like firearms ownership become very important as that becomes one of
the few things that forces people to have value for each other at a very basic
level.

~~~
megaman22
> If you look at IQ and the kinds of jobs people sub-100 IQ can retain, you
> begin to realize very quickly that about half of the population is going to
> need to be retrained in some kind of intellectual job going forward.

This is a troubling thing to think about. What I can see happening is that
increasingly, the utility of the labor of people in that subpar, but still
adequate, IQ band is steadily decreasing as automation tears out the bottom of
semi-skilled labor. You can take somebody with an 85 IQ and put them on an
assembly line, and they'll make a good living in 1970, but you can't
realistically send that person to a dev bootcamp and make them into a web
developer in 2018. So what do they do? Low skilled service industry work sure
isn't the answer. My suspicion would be that the trades are most likely to
combine reasonable return and resistance to automation, along with a probable
shortage once the boomers retire, but it's a thorny question.

I think it's become obvious that the "Everybody needs to go to college"
narrative has been borderline disastrous, given the mountains of student loan
debt and stunted development that my generation has experienced.

~~~
madenine
Its not the bottom we should be worried about, its the middle.

AI is going to outright replace a whole bunch of what are currently decently
paying, stable, office jobs: accountants, clerks, schedulers.... and AI-
augmentation is going to allow 1 person to do the same work that currently
requires 2+ in so many fields.

Law and Medicine, two fields that have historically been good pathways to the
middle class, are likely going to see AI hit them first in the middle, with
the need for non-senior/non-specialized doctors/lawyers dramatically reduced
as AI-assisted tools become standard.

As the middle gets cut out, more people are pushed towards lower-skill jobs
that require physical interaction, likely pushing down wages in a buyer's
market and decreasing the incentives for robotic automation.

That's going to be a massive blow to the US and global economy, all without
having to build a single robot.

~~~
petra
It's false to assume AI(and just plain software) won't replace a lot of high-
IQ people.

But it's understandable why people on this forum always talk about low/middle
skill jobs being automated , when it's just as likely that cognitive jobs will
be automated while emotional jobs will still be valuable.

------
JDiculous
The underlying assumption of course is that everybody needs to be working in
some kind of drudgery to justify their own existence.

We really need a mental paradigm shift here. If a robot can now do a job that
used to require 2 million workers, why should that not result in 2 million
people being freed to enjoy this increased leisure rather than having to
desperately find new "jobs" or otherwise face destitution. What are we working
towards again, GDP growth?

Regarding the article, to be completely blunt: no sh*t. Software engineering
in the U.S. is already very saturated, just less so than every other field
(eg. marketing, finance, law) so nobody frames it as such. One of my ex-
coworkers just went through 6 technical interviews and a coding project only
to have his offer rescinded by an HR lady at the parent company due to a minor
mistake on his original resume (against the will of everyone who actually
interviewed him). Coding bootcamp placement rates right now are awful.

Do people really think the 2 million truck drivers can just become software
engineers (without some kind of massive government-sponsored jobs program akin
to a "New Deal")? Taking a step back, why is that even something we should
socially desire? Do society really need more Javascript monkeys?

------
oliv__
Kind of meta but this website looks like an unreadable version of a nice
NYTimes article.

------
KineticLensman
TL;DR: it's hard to retrain people into jobs that require different skill sets
(e.g. from trucker to s/w engineer), and there may be not as many jobs
offering equivalent salaries.

Interesting supporting info graphics, as well.

~~~
nine_k
The graphics are very nice. I wish it was possible to link to them directly
(with an #-anchor in URL). The article is formatted more as a video clip,
though.

------
HillaryBriss
> _...truckers and developers have relatively few similarities in terms of the
> competencies necessary for their respective jobs._

also, given the age, culture, geographical location of applicants and their
families, what percentage of former truck drivers turned software developers
will be hired by a tech startup or a FANG company?

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imron
The funky scrolling makes this site is unreadable to me.

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jaxn
There is no where for CEOs to go.

~~~
brixon
Maybe part of the reason for Golden parachutes.

~~~
jaxn
I think this is true for startup founders too. It's either win or reinvent.

------
jackcosgrove
Tech sector as the solution to the looming automation crisis? It's the cause
of the looming automation crisis.

~~~
mkirklions
Seeing how much free content exists on youtube, I imagine the future is going
to be creative/hobby based.

It wont pay as much as programmers who eliminate jobs, but given how
starvation is over, people live alone, and I watch my friends with tons of
college debt spend money on bars and activities, the future will be
entertainment/human based.

------
usermac
Do yourself a favor and visit this link. The transitions are so good.

~~~
amelius
If we keep pouring software development resources into such silly things, I
can totally understand why we're in an automation crisis.

~~~
douglaswlance
Did you do a split test on this design and find that the page without these
transitions provides more value? No?

~~~
maxxxxx
Do you really believe this stuff improves reading?

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ckoglmeier
Great visualization and topic.

If you are interested in helping to understand and be part of solving this
issue, come join us at Guild Education in Denver. We're a venture backed
B-corporation working to connect the future of work with (company funded)
education opportunities - from the skilled trades + nursing to data
scientists.

Email me at ck @ guildeducation.com for more info.

~~~
6cd6beb
>Email me at ID @ DOMAIN.TLD for more info.

Generally, if you have to obfuscate the thing you want to post because you
need to avoid a filter, it's unlikely that what you're posting is welcome in
the place you're trying to post it.

~~~
ndiscussion
What about avoiding email scrapers?

~~~
ateesdalejr
Any marginally smart email scraper wouldn't fall for that trick.

