
AI are taking jobs - bmahmood
http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2011/11/artificial-intelligence?fsrc=scn/tw/te/bl/ludditelegacy
======
DanielBMarkham
A lot of the argument on this topic seems to be "but this time it is really
different!"

Perhaps. And perhaps not. Most likely it _is_ different, just like all those
other times were different.

I hate to be skeptical, but when this same pattern of people saying "it's
different!" repeats over and over again without it being different, I think
the onus is on those making the claim to support their argument better. If
anything, I think the _metrics_ are different, and that leads to a lot of
erroneous conclusions. I see a lot of economic activity that doesn't fit into
the neat little categories we have constructed.

As an example, my wife is middle-aged, middle-income, and college educated. I
helped her create a site about her hamburger casserole recipes. People liked
the site, so she made the site into an ebook. Every day, hundreds of people
either use the free site to cook dinner, or decide to buy the ebook (shameless
plug: <http://hamburger-casserole-recipes.com>)

And it's not just her. She has a friend (also middle-aged, college educated,
and out of the official workforce) who collect semi-rare books and resells
them. Another friend sells household goods by leveraging her social networks.

The list goes on. We probably know 5 or 6 people who have some sort of unique
arrangement that technology has facilitated. These are folks who do not have
"jobs", yet they have income. They provide value to people.

So if I had to bet, I'd say the odds are 90% that the economy is _evolving_ ,
not drastically changing. I might be wrong, but I'll need to see a lot more
data than this before I'm willing to change my mind.

~~~
noonespecial
Spot on. Nearly all of the articles I've seen of late that tackle this theme
reduce to "but how can all of the X's that are now unemployed find work if the
economy will never again need X's".

Its a simple failure of imagination. When 50% of the people were farmers, not
many of them could imagine being airline pilots. A combine harvester must have
seemed like a fearsome thing indeed.

~~~
potatolicious
The problem isn't that there aren't new jobs being created, it's that almost
none of them can be done by the people who were displaced.

You lay off 10,000 factory workers. Do you think they can ever be airline
pilots? Or programmers? Or financial analysts? Or what-have-yous?

Sure, a small (very small) percentage of these folk will successfully retrain
into another field, but the vast majority of them will be left behind. They do
not have the educational background to pursue the knowledge-based jobs that
are the only ones hiring.

And even if they _did_ have the necessary educational background for
retraining, who would pay for it? Education in the USA is already absurdly
expensive, and the employer sure as hell won't be picking up the tab.

~~~
politician
Hear, hear.

This is the reason that we need a wage for displaced workers. People who will
probably never work again, due to lack of education or ambition. It's
socialism, yes, but are we going to be responsible for allowing millions of
people to become beggars while we enjoy the fruits of our labors?

I started my career right out of uni by developing software which eliminated
hundreds of low skill jobs. Hundreds... really, what can you say about that?
That I should pat myself on the back for boosting productivity by 3000% for a
junior programmer's wages? That someone else would have done it if I hadn't?
That these people have been freed up from tedious, repetitive jobs to become
the creative people they always wanted to be? Honestly, the excuses ring a bit
hollow.

It's my belief that as a result of our efforts, our drive to untangle
complexity, that there will likely be 50% unemployment in the US by the end of
the next decade. Let's design for that. I wish that our mentally absent
congressmen would give a damn about what is happening to our economy under
their watch.

~~~
mseebach
> This is the reason that we need a wage for displaced workers. People who
> will probably never work again, due to lack of education or ambition.

Are you sure it's a good idea to systematically reward a lack of ambition?

> It's my belief that as a result of our efforts, our drive to untangle
> complexity, that there will likely be 50% unemployment in the US by the end
> of the next decade. Let's design for that.

You proposed design will become a self-fulfilling prophesy. Putting people on
a permanent wage because they will "probably never work again" will signal to
those people that society considers them worthless. _You will never produce
anything of sufficient value for anyone to consider it worthwhile to feed you
for the effort_.

~~~
DuncanIdaho
> Are you sure it's a good idea to systematically reward a lack of ambition? >
> You proposed design will become a self-fulfilling prophesy. Putting people
> on a permanent wage because they will "probably never work again" will
> signal to those people that society considers them worthless. You will never
> produce anything of sufficient value for anyone to consider it worthwhile to
> feed you for the effort.

You provide question and the answer. The idea of universal income (which this
proposed wage is a limited application of) is that you give everyone a bare
minimum stipend, while encouraging people to go out and earn more if they want
more.

It wouldn't be event that expensive, considering what a modern social state
already spends on its citizenry.

In a sense, modern government is partially already a mechanism of universal
income (many government employees are unfit for being productive in private
sector).

~~~
mseebach
So here's where I'm coming from: Putting food on the table as a result of your
work is satisfying and a source of pride. Not being able to do it is shameful.
This is a fundamental dynamic.

While it's good that there's a safety net so slip-ups and bad luck won't put
you in the street and kill your children, institutionalising that dynamic
(effectively removing it) will have catastrophic effects on the values of
society.

These concerns are not crack-pot libertarian wet dreams, they were raised even
by social democrats when the Nordic social democratic welfare states were
designed. Britain has talked about anti-social behaviour and broken society
for years (it's not just something David Cameron invented with his good-on-
paper/WTF-IRL-"Big Society") - don't have that kind of language for it in
Denmark, but the same dynamics are present.

~~~
_delirium
I guess to me that's not an interesting dynamic for a society that's advanced
past subsistence farming. In subsistence farming, yes, you work to feed
yourself. If you have modern 21st-century farming technology though, producing
enough food to feed everyone takes only a few percent of GDP, not 100% of
everyone's time. Why not just give it to everyone, since its cost is basically
noise on modern economic scales anyway?

Then find some more advanced goals for people to work at. If they really,
truly, want nothing but a bare subsistence existence, and nothing else that
modern society has to offer, then fine, let them sit around eating 2000
calories/day for free; maybe in the future robots will do all the work anyway,
and lazy humans can just live off the munificence of their robot benefactors
(we're halfway there). But an "advanced" society in 2011 where the reason
people work is because they'll starve otherwise, despite the utter un-scarcity
of food, now _that_ seems like a pretty shameful dynamic. I'd be more
interested in asking, rather than setting up artificial scarcity so that
people have to work for the old scarce things (e.g. food) even though they
aren't scarce anymore (there's only a distribution problem, not a scarcity
problem), whether we can have a society where people work for something else.
Maybe the answer's no, but to me that'd be a pretty sad answer.

~~~
mseebach
Putting food on the table is a metaphor that goes beyond food. Here are some
statistics on Americans counted as poor:
[http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2011/09/understandi...](http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2011/09/understanding-
poverty-in-the-united-states-surprising-facts-about-americas-poor)

We have moved beyond subsistence farming and free food - "food on the table"
means a lot more, including many scarce goods.

~~~
DuncanIdaho
Indeed, we should make a point of not wiping anybody's fanny. What I had in
mind is a type of existence where one has bare minimum provided (shelter,
food, clothing, access to information), but that also as a feature provides a
social stigma. This institution should be viewed by society as a temporary
stop or a final refuge a safety net if you will.

You want tobacco? Go and work for it. You want booze? Go and work for it. You
want PS3? Go and work for it.

~~~
CWuestefeld
_You want tobacco? Go and work for it. You want booze? Go and work for it. You
want PS3? Go and work for it._

Isn't this how food stamps are currently _supposed to_ work? They only cover
staples, and users aren't allowed to pay for tobacco, etc. The thing is, in
the real world, food stamp recipients frequently barter their vouchers for
these luxury items.

When considering such measures, we need to stop imagining what an optimal
government might be able to do. Instead, look at the history of such efforts,
and the incentive structures (consider Public Choice economics) to understand
what is _likely_ to transpire.

------
patio11
If you actually dig into the statistics, the 9% of America with persistent
unemployment problems are mostly not e.g. bank underwriters who got creamed by
FICO scores making them totally obsolete. That makes for a great newspaper
piece, because well-educated people are not supposed to end up unemployable,
but it bears little relationship to reality.

Unemployment is dominated by sectors directly connected to the real
estate/financial boom (construction, real estate, finance) which are no longer
booming and could not sustain _historically high employment levels_. We're
simply seeing reversion to the mean plus a wee bit extra, which only looks
cataclysmic when your recorded history began at the top of the market.

~~~
yummyfajitas
Actually, it's a slightly weird situation. Unemployment is fairly level across
the economy. Job losses are concentrated in construction and manufacturing,
however.

Also, finance didn't suffer so much - only about a 9% job loss. I suspect
finance fared better than other bubble-related fields mainly because of their
highly flexible wages. (I.e., construction or manufacturing has layoffs,
finance just cuts bonuses.)

I graphed the figures a while back:
[http://crazybear.posterous.com/structural-shift-in-the-
econo...](http://crazybear.posterous.com/structural-shift-in-the-economy)

------
inkaudio
The author does not fully understand the totality of the work these
professional do. From the two example listed.

 _"Radiologists, who can earn over $300,000 a year in America, after 13 years
of college education and internship, are among the first to feel the heat. It
is not just that the task of scanning tumour slides and X-ray pictures is
being outsourced to Indian laboratories, where the job is done for a tenth of
the cost. The real threat is that the latest automated pattern-recognition
software can do much of the work for less than a hundredth of it."_

a very naive understanding of radiologists. This only one of the many task a
radiologists must handle, including interaction with patient, which is the
most important task. We are far away from replace that service with Ai.
Software handling one task won't eliminate the need for radiologists.

 _"Lawyers are in a similar boat now that smart algorithms can search case
law, evaluate the issues at hand and summarise the results. Machines have
already shown they can perform legal discovery for a fraction of the cost of
human professionals—and do so with far greater thoroughness than lawyers and
paralegals usually manage."_

Case discovery is only one of the many task a Lawyer must perform, case
discovery alone won't replace lawyers. It will only allow them to be more
productive. Lawyers still responsible for many other task, they have to broker
deals, consult clients and in the case of trial attorneys, win trials.

more thoughts at: [http://techiroll.com/post/10173031897/do-not-blame-
technolog...](http://techiroll.com/post/10173031897/do-not-blame-technology)

~~~
_delirium
I agree it doesn't cover everything they do, but covering just some of the
more routine activities can be enough for significant disruption. For example,
dermatologists are fairly worried that "upload a photo and we'll diagnose your
mole", either via software or outsourcing, will cut out a significant
percentage of their business. It's not by any means the _hardest_ work a
dermatologist does, but it's common, steady work that produces reliable
revenue, so it hurts to lose it. It may be that we won't need as many
dermatologists only to handle the actually-hard stuff.

(Though for medicine in particular, I think a mixture of "you can always do
more" and humans' seemingly infinite hypochondria means that medical spending
will continue to eat up as much money as we're willing to throw at it.)

~~~
tomjen3
If they are worried about it, why not preempt it? A simple upload form on the
internet where you can upload your a picture of your mole and have a
dermatologist take a quick look at it for $15 would be very attractive for a
lot of people (not least because it is easier for people to do it than it is
to schedule a visit.

And it would be a nice side income for some young doctor.

------
simonsarris
I don't see this as a bad thing, except:

In the 1950's people wondered what the future generations would do with all
their free time. They predicted, correctly, that worker productivity would
rise immensely. They also assumed that people would be just as wealthy while
working much less.

People are wealthier in some ways. In america, its pretty much standard issue
to own at least one car (partially perhaps because a car is needed to simply
get a job in most areas).

But in other ways it does not seem like the average worker is as well-off as
the past had predicted.

I could say things about concentration of wealth and other reasons the
productivity gains were not matched by gains in free time, but I'm not sure I
know enough to make those arguments.

~~~
mikeash
This is just my uninformed opinion, but I think a lot of it has fallen victim
to keeping up with the Joneses, and a lot of the rest to employers not being
willing to give decent terms to part timers.

People could get by with a much smaller salary (or keep the same salary but
save a ton of it) by having an older car, a smaller house, less fancy food,
etc. but everybody else has nicer things. I see people buying really nice cars
on credit and then they don't have much time to drive it recreationally
because they spend all their time working to pay for it. "Well there's your
problem!"

For the other side, let's say I make $X but only need $X/2 to live. Try
finding an employer who will let you work half time for $X/2. It's pretty
tough, especially if you make $X at something "professional", rather than,
say, digging ditches. Worse, for Americans, is the current link between
employment and health care. Half-time employment generally means having to buy
your own health insurance, which doesn't come cheap.

In short, it seems like it's pretty hard to work less and make less, and when
you do work full time and make good money, it's very tempting to spend a
larger portion of it on luxuries.

~~~
wycats
I have a better explanation. Wages have not even remotely kept pace with
productivity, so most people do not see the benefits of increased _overall
productivity_.

[http://rationalrevolution.net/images/EPI_Productivity_vs_Com...](http://rationalrevolution.net/images/EPI_Productivity_vs_Compensation.jpg)

~~~
true_religion
I'm curious.... if productivity increases rapidly in all sectors then how are
wages supposed to increase as well?

The theory is that employees should be paid more for producing more value per
head. However if _everyone_ produces more then wages can't go up without a
corresponding increase in prices.

The alternative is reduced prices, new improved goods and services, and a
steady wage giving the misleading sentiment of "everything is getting better,
but I'm still being paid the same".

~~~
mikeash
Why do prices have to go up with productivity? To take a toy example, let's
say that the entire economy consists of nothing but producing TVs, and that
enough TVs are produced for each person to have one TV per year.

Now some massive productivity increase comes along and doubles output with the
same workers. Now you're producing enough TVs for each person to have two TVs
per year. Either the price of TVs will drop by 50%, or salaries will double.
(Or half of the workforce will be fired....) Approximately. If everyone
produces more then everyone has to be able to buy more, otherwise there's no
reason to have the additional production in the first place.

------
kandu
Imagine a world where all goods and services required for a decent life will
be provided by AI and robots. Still, there will plenty of jobs for humans -
those related to the humanity of humans. Life could become dedicated to
enjoying art in various forms, and this art will be conceived mostly by
humans. If people will have no work to do, they could hire entertainers. They
could do jobs as a hobby - e.g., manually producing stuff that could as well
be made by robots, but that other humans will buy just because it was hand
made. They could enjoy experimenting with various lifestyles, effectively
creating diverse subcultures, and these cultures will trade items that are
uniquely developed within the culture.

Imagine a world where people could enjoy the variety of clothing that existed
in the world 300 years ago and that has been now elliminated by the hustle of
modern life and by a global trade in clothes. Even if they will be produced by
robots, designing these clothes will remain mostly a human job. Virtually
anyone could wear designer clothes, and many people could become such
designers. The same could be applied to food, music, movies, and so on.

Education and corporal care would also become a large part of the economy that
would hire humans and not robots. There will be plenty of niches, and people
will have the time to invest in developing specialized skills, rediscovering
skills long forgotten.

Eliberated by the stress of modern life, life will simply become more
enjoyable.

~~~
127
Sounds like a society of couch potatoes and drug addicts to me. From my
perspective you have a much too optimistic view on the human race. If people
are not forced to exceed, they will not. Suffering, that does not cripple,
defines us. It makes us stronger, more agile, more determined. I would go so
far as to say that when we have dreams and goals and we strive to achieve
them, by making work towards step by step, each moment we feel better about
ourself. Each success builds us and makes us more confident.

If it were not for women, I'd just sit home playing World of Warcraft,
drinking energy drinks and masturbating, to put it bluntly.

Even if our basic material needs are met through automation, we are all still
engaged in a very bitter competition for other resources, you do realize.
There simply can not exist a state of utopia as long as we reproduce sexually
(I have a very Freudian view on this). This is a catch-22 of course. The state
we are in defines what we consider an utopia.

You are assuming that if we didn't have to worry about producing material
resources, creativity and intellect would be the determining factor in who
gets their way. Why not violence? Why not intimidation and sociopathy? As
tightly knit social groups (small villages and communities) break down and we
live in one global village, nobody really knows each other. Most of the people
we meet are complete strangers to us. It's much easier for exploitative and
cruel personalities to thrive, because they can stay hidden in plain sight.
They can pretend and manipulate to their dark hearts content without the fear
of retribution. If they get discovered they can just move to a different
location.

As we have more material resources as welfare and a legal arm heavily
protective of women and children, women don't need a protector nor a
financier. They can just get the sperm they want and raise kids outside of
marriage. Old institutions that were the bedrock of civilized society will all
but crumble to dust. Widespread soft polygamy will replace it. Those with the
most instant charm and good appearances will win, instead of those who build
things to last on the long run. Short term strategies will win over the long
term ones.

These are all hyperboles I use to describe my views of the modes of societal
change and interaction.

It is my theory that the easier it is to meet material needs, the lazier
people get and more prone to instant gratification. It's not that difficult to
extrapolate from this one simple truth.

Also one of the problems I didn't touch upon, is how our natural instincts
that were developed for a very different world will overtake and corrupt us:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supernormal_Stimuli>. Slow seduction of
irrational and unbalanced stimulus can make our behaviour very self
destructive on the long run.

~~~
marquis
> the easier it is to meet material needs, the lazier people get and more
> prone to instant gratification. It's not that difficult to extrapolate from
> this one simple truth

And yet all literature (fiction and non-fiction) ever written on this topic
concludes that above all humans want to feel connected and valued. I
completely disagree with your theory and believe that given the opportunity to
not require demeaning work for subsistence, our species will overwhelming
choose to seek meaningful activities above becoming a permanent couch potato.
Why else would we have such a rich culture of arts and music, if our ancestors
preferred to spend their downtime watching the horizon/fireplace instead of
creating. Yes, there may be some who choose a less engaging existence but
given that of everyone I know, from poor cousins to independently wealthy ex-
financiers prefers to do something with their time, I am confident the
majority will also prefer meaning over stagnation.

------
conorgdaly
I really love the photo. :) The digital robot interfacing with the laptop
through it's keyboard; seemingly the only permitted I/O in the future. Trust
issues between different hardware vendors must have hit an all time low after
the various standards authorities fell apart!

------
gameshot911
For those who are interested in what a world where (intelligent) robots are
the source of production, and humans are the content creators, I highly
recommend this short story: <http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm>

Sounds like Heaven on Earth to me. Now to make it happen during our lifetimes!

------
HarrietTubgirl
Thankfully we're nowhere near where intelligence itself is being displaced,
only small subsets of work that were previously the domain of highly
specialized experts [sidenote: Mathematica has been doing this for a while].
Nor will advances in statistical machine learning and computing hardware get
us there. "AI" is a field we still have to make any real progress in.

I think what the current trend means though is that we're going to have to
teach people to learn and re-work education to maximize the ability to adapt.

I feel a little sorry for the radiologist whose effective supply is apparently
rapidly expanding, but there is still a long way to fall from a $350,000
annual income. :)

I'm scared that as we optimize test-prep and narrowly focus on passing
children through school, we're potentially decreasing the likelihood that
people learn on their own. We're decreasing the amount of effort it takes for
a kid to learn some [probably useless] skill, like drawing force diagrams on
pulley systems, where the point of the exercise [imo] in the first place was
to stretch the mind and force the kid to fill in the gaps and think for
himself. That same kind of stretching that might come in handy when he finds
himself displaced for whatever reason, be it technology or something else.

------
6ren
Ancient Rome had slaves - with _actual_ intelligence.

What can we learn from how they handled it? Our civilization already seems
more similar to their's than any other.

~~~
politician
They descended into an anarchy of self-indulgence ("bread and circus") just as
they reached the escape velocity for their technology level. Eventually, their
society collapsed from internal pressure to "make work" -- aka political
drama.

------
gojomo
Perhaps we can build a giant firewall to keep Illegal Intelligents out.

------
nazgulnarsil
"The point was that any increase in productivity required a corresponding
increase in the number of consumers capable of buying the product."

yeah, it's not like increases in productivity could simply create a surplus
that is then directed into other sectors. I write for the economist and cannot
into economics hurrdurr. This is like saying that a machine that lets me do
laundry faster is bad because I don't need to do 20 loads of laundry per day.

------
kokey
I found Eli Dourado's take on 'Race Against The Machine' quite an interesting
analysis and somewhat related to this article
[http://elidourado.com/blog/technologies-of-control-and-
resis...](http://elidourado.com/blog/technologies-of-control-and-resistance/)

It's mainly how points of control incentivize some of these factors to move
faster, or out of step with the other factors.

------
stretchwithme
Every time you create a tool or process or system that lets you do more with
less effort you are supposedly "taking jobs".

So stop whatever it is you are doing and instead destroy these things instead.
Then stand back and watch the ground swell of prosperity that sweeps the
globe.

------
brianobush
So if you work in AI, you are safe?

~~~
tomjen3
The last commit you ever make will be the AI that takes over your job when all
the other jobs have been fixed. It will also be the commit which brings about
the singularity (which should happen at about the time when you get out of
your car on the way home) so there is really no reason to fear that.

------
bambax
The article starts by predicting that the Dilberts of the world will start
losing their job in droves without being able to find another one, and then
mentions as examples... radiologists and lawyers making over $300K/year.

Radiologists are no Dilberts.

------
EGreg
Let me put it this way:

    
    
      GOOD THINGS:
      * automation leading to increasing wealth 
        and less employment in redundant jobs
      * social safety nets freeing people up to do work 
        they LIKE to do because it gives them satisfaction
      * guaranteed housing, food, and sexbots for all (basic maslow's needs)
        with ability to get more expensive things through capitalism
    
      BAD THINGS:
      * speculation by abusing resources and cornering free markets
      * government monopolies (patents, etc) restricting 
        freedom of production in fast moving industries
      * increased risk of terrorism leading to significant 
        culture changes around security/freedom issues
    

these are the long term trends

just my point of view.

------
troels
In which alternative world is increased productivity a problem? I don't get
the logic behind that. I just don't.

~~~
atomicdog
I suppose it depends what the cost of said productivity is. Slave societies
were pretty productive.

~~~
Thrymr
That is very wrong. Slave labor is extremely unproductive, that has been known
by economists since Adam Smith. It turns out that forcing people to work
against their will, with no hope of advancement or independence, is not a
strong motivator to productivity. Fear of punishment is a stronger inducement
to escape and rebellion than actual productivity, and slave societies need to
spend significant resources to enforce the system in favor of the slaveowners.

See, for example, Charles Mann, 1493, on sugar plantations in Africa and the
Americas.

------
humanfromearth
Thay took our jobs! <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=768h3Tz4Qik>

------
maeon3
The notion of weak artificial intelligence hurting the economy by taking away
jobs is a complete misunderstanding of the situation. To understand why, you
need to read and understand the parable of the broken window:

<http://freedomkeys.com/window.htm>

The key lies in seeing that when humans no longer have to do mundane
repetitive tasks, then they are freed up to do far more powerful and
interesting things. The last job to be completely automated is the programmer,
engineer and designer. And that too will one day be automated. I like to
believe that humans and AI will merge so that together, a human and the
machine will always be more powerful/more in control than just the AI.

~~~
Permit
The problem is that there are not a lot of people capable of doing
engineering/programming jobs. It is one thing to make the transition from a
farmer to a factory worker, but another entirely to move from a factory worker
to an engineer.

The learning curve for the jobs that may be created might be too steep for
those whose jobs were displaced.

~~~
maeon3
Yes, the cotton pickers will need to be forced to go to high school and learn
something that hasn't been automated. To the argument that this can't be done,
take away their food, they will adapt. Mercy can be used in exceptional cases.

I don't like the argument: "This human has such an aversion to learning that
they must be supported forever like a pet". I suppose you wait for them to die
and the problem solves itself. They can learn, they just have been positively
reinforced to not learn.

~~~
Permit
>take away their food, they will adapt.

Oh, undoubtedly. But they will go down the path of least resistance which will
more than likely be a life of crime. It's also important to recognize that not
everyone is cut out for intellectually demanding jobs. There is a wide variety
of intelligence levels throughout society.

