
The brave new world of robots and lost jobs - aburan28
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-brave-new-world-of-robots-and-lost-jobs/2016/08/11/e66a4914-5fff-11e6-af8e-54aa2e849447_story.html?utm_term=.97619a3e792e
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cousin_it
Simon Funk [1] makes a great point that in a mixed capitalist/welfare state,
automation decreases efficiency.

Imagine a worker, earning the bare minimum to survive, who gets replaced by a
robot with slightly lower operating cost. Now the robot is consuming slightly
fewer resources that the worker would have, but the worker doesn't stop
consuming resources in turn! Unless you're willing to kill the worker, he goes
on welfare instead, and the economy as a whole is burning almost 2x more
resources. Sure, the employer is spending slightly less, while screwing over
the economy via prisoner's dilemma logic.

[1]
[http://sifter.org/~simon/journal/20160704.html](http://sifter.org/~simon/journal/20160704.html)

~~~
TeMPOraL
I think the counterargument here is that if you don't need to move humans to
work and back home again every day, and if you don't need to optimize
workplace conditions for humans - by providing creature comforts and safety
equipment - your unemployed human is using much less resources than a working
human, and the robot is also using much less resources than a working human,
so the sum of unemployed human + working robot may add up to _less_ than
working human alone.

That, and also resources are here to be burned for our comfort. We should, by
all means, burn the minimum amount of resources required for said comfort. But
still, there are here to be burned. Otherwise, to minimize resource usage,
let's all give up on civilization and go back to caves.

~~~
leereeves
> resources are here to be burned for our comfort.

Shouldn't we also consider comfort in the future?

For that, we must manage resources to avoid exhausting them or destroying
ecosystems, because that would create a very uncomfortable future.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Of course! I meant exactly that, though I guess I could have stated that more
explicitly for clarity.

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neuromancer2701
My current theory is that this “automation bomb” won't really happen in the
sense that 5 million Truckers are going to get laid off all of a sudden.
Especially in the case of Truckers the average age is getting higher and
higher every year because Millennials have said that is not a job they want.

So my theory is that as Baby Boomer/Early Gen Xers retire automation will step
in and fill the employment gap. So there won't massive amounts of laid off
Truckers sitting around. It will be under-employed Millennials, which is the
same issue we have now.

~~~
humanrebar
> So my theory is that as Baby Boomer/Early Gen Xers retire automation will
> step in and fill the employment gap. So there won't massive amounts of laid
> off Truckers sitting around.

Young workers used to take those jobs, though. The young (especially men) are
underemployed right now. If you're right, they are the ones hurt the most in
the long run by automation.

~~~
neuromancer2701
I think the better question is why don't/haven't Millennials taken those jobs
as previous generations did. This is a problem that has occurred outside of
the technology debate.

~~~
mdorazio
There has actually been quite a bit of discussion around this. Here's one
article discussing it [1]. It's a combination of factors including low pay for
the number of hours worked, social stigma/low respect, huge amount of time
away from home/fun activities, and the fact that driving just kind of sucks.
Also, as another commenter mentioned, trucking companies have not made it all
that easy to get started from zero skill/certification recently.

[1] [http://www.overdriveonline.com/trucking-or-not-with-the-
twen...](http://www.overdriveonline.com/trucking-or-not-with-the-twenty-
somethings/)

------
hamilyon2
The obvious solution is more labour-intensive non easily automatable jobs i.e.
service economy. There is a limit of how much laptops and trucks economy
wants. But there is no obvious limit in demand of quality services like
education, health and leisure.

I want to be surrounded by caring people and care for others. That's natural.

Question is how to re-orient, re-train and re-educate people to both provide
those services and consume them.

For each advertisement of yoga lessons and massage sessions I see hundreds of
ads on new smartphone or car. That is ridiculous, because I need single car
and smartphone, but could go to yoga and massage every day.

edit: typos

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_yosefk
"If computers can be programmed to understand speech as well as humans do, 66
percent of jobs in finance and insurance could be replaced, the most recent
report says."

If computers can be programmed to understand speech as well as humans do,
probably >99% of all jobs could be replaced, 'cause it's pretty close to
passing the Turing test. I'm willing to get monthly payments from anyone who
wants to bet until this happens, and then pay out monthly payments after this
happens till I die.

~~~
alanwatts
The difference between your comparison is that automation of finance/insurance
would be achieved purely by mathematical calculations performed by software,
while the automation of many/most other jobs would require much more complex
robotics.

~~~
tarpherder
I read the parent comment as; getting to the point where computers understand
speech that well, is a far more difficult challenge than a large number of
robotic challenges.

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ldp01
Another one of these articles. It's almost like there is a robot somewhere
writing them...

------
crdoconnor
"Job insecurity is a central theme of the 2016 campaign, fueling popular anger
about trade deals and immigration. But economists warn that much bigger job
losses are ahead in the United States — driven not by foreign competition but
by advancing technology."

Technology in and of itself destroys _and_ creates jobs and it will keep doing
so until all human wants and needs are satisfied (i.e. never). While
automation of manual farm work in the 19th/20th century eliminated farming
jobs - which accounted for a huge majority of jobs; _it didn 't eliminate
jobs_.

The main thrust of this argument isn't even This Time It's Different, because
reasons, it's just "pay no attention to the history of automation".

Why would David Ignatius lie about this? Because the popular anger about trade
deals isn't misplaced at all. It's absolutely accurate. That _is_ what is
driving job losses, income losses and poverty - _not_ technology.

The rhetoric from 'elite' economists about the robotjobpocaplyse is simply an
instance of the 1% trying to dodge pitchforks.

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iliketosleep
It appears like the logical conclusion of capitalism: the majority of people
being made redundant due to AI/automation, and a small handful of corporations
basically ruling the world.

~~~
trgn
Compare this to the logical conclusion of capitalism that Marx put forward 150
years ago. For him, capitalism creates an ever-growing proletariat, a majority
of the population being transformed into a commodity; individuals become
interchangeable, and are payed only enough to have their basic needs met. The
proletariat as a whole was a necessary condition though. Their labor produced
value, the surplus of which went to the owning class.

Your take is similar, but instead now people will actually become redundant.
Not even producing value anymore.

Things did not exactly turn out the way Marx thought they would. I certainly
hope your prediction won't either!

~~~
iliketosleep
my prediction isn't necessarily a gloomy one. once people become redundant in
terms of their labour there are many possibilities. I see VR playing a leading
role :)

------
w8rbt
___" Politicians need to begin thinking boldly, now, about a world in which
driverless vehicles replace most truck drivers’ jobs..."_ __

Can we replace politicians with robots?

~~~
alanwatts
Reminds me of a Buckminster Fuller quote:

>"I'm going to give you an important kind of a picture. I hear a lot of people
say "I don't like machinery and technology it's making a lot of trouble", so
we're going to take all the machinery away from all the countries of the
world, all machinery, all the tracks and the wires, and the works and were
going to dump it all in the ocean. And you'll discover that within 6 months, 2
billion people will die of starvation, having gone through great pain. So we
say, "that's not a very good idea, let's put all the machinery back where it
was".

Then, we're going to take all the politicians from all the countries around
the world and we're going to send them on a trip around the sun, and you'll
find we keep right on eating. And the political barriers now...scientists say
very clear you could make the world work and take care of 100% of the people
at a higher standard of living than anyone has ever known despite the
increasing population, but you can't do it with the political barriers, any
more than you can try run a human organism with a wall between the ear, the
eye, and the stomach. It is an organic whole, it is total industrialization."

------
johngalt
Technology has been reducing the need for human labor since the invention of
the plow. And yet we aren't all unemployed hunter-gatherers. You could argue
that 'this time it's different', but you have to at least acknowledge that
luddites of every generation have made similar claims and been wrong every
time. Literally tried and proven wrong for centuries.

~~~
CaptSpify
[http://www.cgpgrey.com/blog/humans-need-not-
apply](http://www.cgpgrey.com/blog/humans-need-not-apply)

What is different this time, I think is that we're giving up our main
advantage: Intelligence.

Humans have always been able to fall back on work no animal/machine can do,
but we're running out of work that machines can't do.

~~~
johngalt
The video is a well articulated argument, but there are two large gaps in
reasoning that are common with this line of thought.

Grey ignores the idea that technology also allows for normal people to do jobs
that used to require highly skilled specialists. A big part of this is so
called 'brain' labor. A banker before computers had to have amortization
tables manually calculated. Now the personal banker who does your HELOC
probably doesn't even know basic algebra. If we ran technology in reverse and
took away the calculators we would end up with fewer banking jobs not more.
Because every banker would have to be highly specialized and costly. The
"factory jobs" were originally an invention of technology. A method to take a
large number of workers + automation to beat artisans and specialists. If
Watson is doing diagnosis, that means that more people with less training can
be effective 'doctors'.

Which brings me to my second point. Often when things become more efficient we
end up using more of them overall. Jevon's paradox applied to labor. Think of
what it cost to transport 20 tons of cargo from NY to SF before trucking and
standardized containers. How many man hours were involved? How many different
specialized jobs? Now done by one guy with a truck replacing them all. Yet the
number of people employed overall in transportation went up not down. IMHO the
best example is IT. Think about the server admin ratios in the early days.
Perhaps a team of 10 to maintain a single mainframe. Now we have 10 guys in a
data center managing 50,000 servers. Yet the overall number of people employed
in IT went up not down. As processes become more efficient and cheap we
consume more of it at an increasing rate.

~~~
CaptSpify
> Grey ignores the idea that technology also allows for normal people to do
> jobs that used to require highly skilled specialists.

Computers are much better at highly specialized jobs than people are. And the
amount of things they are not good at is slimming down all the time.

> If Watson is doing diagnosis, that means that more people with less training
> can be effective 'doctors'.

And it'll eventually improve to the point that we won't need 'doctors'. It'll
get to the point that your average person can be their own 'doctor', because
most of the work is shelled out to a computer.

> Yet the number of people employed overall in transportation went up not
> down.

Because even with more automated, cheaper shipping, we still had jobs that
robots couldn't do. But more of those jobs are disappearing every day.

I think your logic is skipping over the fact that computers don't have hard
limits like humans do. If a computer can't do something, just give it a
handful of engineers, and some time, and it'll eventually be able to do that.
Once a computer gets better at a task than humans, there's no reason to ever
go back to humans. It's a one way street.

Sure, computers can't do everything we do now, but they will. It's only a
matter of time.

~~~
johngalt
You're conflating technology that is available today with challenges which
occur only after we have AGI. When those are different problems with different
time horizons.

Post AGI. Obviously robots do everything. Post AGI it is the technology
singularity as we have recursively improving superintelligences. Unemployment
in this scenario is a trivial issue. Strong friendly AI would solve so many
problems that unemployment would be one of those historical footnotes.
Concerning ourselves with 'what happens when computers are better than humans
at everything?' is akin to asking 'what should we do after the rapture?'

Prior to AGI, human + computer is the norm for most tasks. Similar to my
banker example. You'll have specialized computers augmenting human
productivity. In each case driving costs down and in most cases usage up.
Specialized computers will make it easier for humans to do jobs they couldn't
do before. Even if truck _driving_ becomes fully automated there will still be
humans in the loop somewhere. It will just mean a more efficient ratio of man
hours per ton shipped. Which is not a fundamentally different issue than
dealing with any other efficiency increase.

> your logic is skipping over the fact that computers don't have hard limits
> like humans do. If a computer can't do something, just give it a handful of
> engineers, and some time, and it'll eventually be able to do that. Once a
> computer gets better at a task than humans, there's no reason to ever go
> back to humans. It's a one way street.

I don't deny that. Merely that we've been headed down this one way street for
a while and the houses keep getting nicer. I keep hearing that Efficiency
Avenue will take us towards human suffering, but we've been heading this
direction for centuries and never arrived there. In fact everything about what
we have seen so far says we should travel as fast as we can down that one way
street.

------
davidf18
Macy’s to Close 100 Stores as E-Rivals and Discounting Hit Legacy Retailers
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12277307](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12277307)

E-Rivals === Amazon. Amazon uses lots of robots for their distribution centers
-- they even purchased a robotics company and the subsidiary is called Amazon
Robotics.

I still think the major issue is trade agreements _and_ the importation of
foreign labor in using H1-B visas to replace STEM (think Disney and Abbott
Pharma replacing their IT workers with H1-B visas) and H2-A and H2-B visas
replacing blue collar workers. Do the numbers. The technology is
sensationalizing.

Although Amazon replacing Macy's is Internet automation and Robots in the
warehouses.

------
beat
I'm prone to saying my job is to build robots to do my job for me. Any time I
can replace my own labor with a robot (script/program), I do so. I won't ever
run out of work, because software is inherently creative. It's the uncreative
jobs that rely on humans as muscle or control mechanisms that are in danger.

It's not like humanity has never gone through this before, either. Two
centuries ago, 98% of people were employed in farming. Today, it's more like
3% and falling. But it took generations for the robots (farm machinery) to
take over. It wasn't as rapid as, say, the rise of self-driving trucks will
be.

~~~
system16
A lot of software development is far from creative. Many company projects
involve making versions of X that do Y (Facebook for the enterprise!), or
modifying an existing tool to fit a new requirement. A lot of it comes down to
putting together existing pieces, and while there aren't a lot of solutions
today that can accomplish this effectively without humans, I think it's a bit
short-sighted to think there won't be in the future and that just because you
are a developer you are exempt from this.

~~~
beat
I've been creating software professionally for over 20 years. The only tools
from the start that are still in my toolbox are Unix (now Linux) and SQL. Java
didn't even exist when I started, nor did Python or Ruby or JavaScript or even
Apache. But my job feels basically the same. It always will, because the
problems are always out there at the edge. They're incredibly specific, and
often at the bleeding edge of what software can do.

Basically, software meets human needs. You need humans to come up with
problems to solve, and describe them specifically enough that a computer can
be programmed to repeat the solution. So those creative tasks, and the
discipline of turning vague human ideas into strict logic, those aren't going
anywhere, at least not with the tools we have today, or a reasonable
extrapolation of those tools into the future. Programming languages may
change, but the existence of programming languages does not. You still need
humans to figure out how to say what they really mean.

On the other hand, I could spend days or weeks configuring a development
server old-school, or I can run 'vagrant up' and have a perfect, repeatable
development environment that works on any server. That's the robots. I love
the robots.

------
jr94g
As time goes on the necessity of a for-use economy becomes more and more
apparent. A for-profit system where human labor becomes less and less
necessary is going to lead to a massive concentration of wealth and the
destruction of the economic middle class.

It's time to accept that a worker planned economy is necessary. Not a
government planned one, but one run by the people for all society. Personally
I propose a syndicalist economy. Profit where the citizens in society don't
see returns, or can only exist by living off of government assistance bodes a
very grim future for all mankind.

------
thatfrenchguy
What if people with jobs worked less ?

~~~
formula1
You think through the eyes of idealism. Consider this

You are the owner of a fortune 500 company

You need to hire enough people to fullfill 1600 hours a day, 14 days per
paycheck.

You want to hire the people as cheaply as possible.

If the individual knows they only have to work 20 hrs per week to survive,
they have the power to negotiate. If the individual believes that they have to
work two jobs for 60 hrs per week to survive, the company has the power to
negotiate.

Why would you pay more money for same value and less negotiation power?

In your ideal world there are enough starving/superficial/ambitious people
that you can pay pennies for exponential growth.

~~~
fsloth
Sorry, I don't understand your point in the historical context. Original
labour conditions in factories were horrible. The conditions did not improve
through economic rationalization but because society recognized it as wrong
and forced factory owners to employ better working conditions.

~~~
zigzigzag
Working conditions for programmers though have become amazingly good without
unions or government intervention, just through competition for workers. See
the perk inflation in Silicon Valley in the Google years, or just wage
inflation in general.

~~~
Broken_Hippo
It depends on your definition of good. Programming is an office job with low
customer interaction (most times), but on the other hand, you might be working
quite a bit of overtime or be subjected to meeting after meeting. All without
having a decent vacation or sick leave policy.

I'd argue that such things like limits on workweeks, paid sick days that do
not risk jobs, and 3-4 weeks off a year (mandatory!) would mean a lot more
than the perks over time, but I very much doubt that stuff will happen without
government intervention.

~~~
zigzigzag
Perhaps this is a geographical problem. I've always had paid time off, sick
time etc as a working programmer. But I have been working in Europe. I know
Americans get _less_ sick time and vacation time but I'm pretty sure it's more
than nothing.

Being subject to too many meetings is a pain but most workers would hardly see
it as a major quality of life issue.

~~~
Broken_Hippo
Heh. Probably is. I'm in Europe, but moved from the states. A lot of European
countries either have a _really_ strong tradition of giving paid time off and
sick time or have those sorts of protections written into law.

There is no such thing in the states. While some companies give vacation, a
lot of folks have trouble taking more than a few days off at a time even if
they have 3 weeks worth. A few give sick time - paid vacation, but it still
counts negatively towards attendance at times. Yet still more folks get
absolutely none of this. Admittedly, a lot of programmers won't get this short
end, but they probably feel pressure to work even when sick and sometimes have
trouble taking vacation time.

There are federal laws that grant some unpaid leave for serious injury only if
you work at a qualifying company for a long enough time. A few companies will
give partial pay and some folks buy insurance to cover such things.

------
DyslexicAtheist
the underlying message from the top is rather brutal (or with a healthy dose
of realism?): "No matter if you're farmer, factory worker or good with your
hands, learn to code or be prepared to get swept away."

Obama's message to the kids about learning to code:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6XvmhE1J9PY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6XvmhE1J9PY)

~~~
Noseshine
But the only reason for having vastly more people with coding abilities is to
lower the price of coding. There is no need for so many coders. Every app,
every piece of code has to be written just _once_ , then replication is free -
that's even worse than in industry, where everything needs to be developed
just once too but at least production required people.

~~~
alanwatts
>Every app, every piece of code has to be written just once, then replication
is free

This is true in terms of physical reality, but not in terms of the patent
system.

~~~
Noseshine
Which is _human-made_ and not a property of the universe. That is not an
argument for OPs comment, since it can be changed very easily. Nor does it
have any influence even if it isn't (changed) - I don't see the relevance for
this sub-discussion?

~~~
alanwatts
>Which is human-made and not a property of the universe

Precisely my point.

>it can be changed very easily.

It would seem this is not the case, though I wish it was.

------
leeter
A few things to consider about robots:

* They require high tech manufacturing to maintain

* They require a power source (electrical, hydraulic, etc)

Humans while not maintenance free... or power source free (food is a
powersource) don't require a ton of technology to get working. While the
quality is probably not as good as a robot due to an inability to be perfectly
consistent it can be good enough.

------
known
I'd endorse
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income_around_the_worl...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income_around_the_world)

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yalooze
Can any one recommend any recent books or articles on this topic? I'm
particularly interested in what the current suggestions are for solutions (if
any), which this article doesn't tackle.

~~~
ldp01
I highly recommend Yanis Varoufakis: The ex Greek finance minister who was in
office during the Grexit crisis. He advocates basic income as a solution.

This is a speech rather than an article, but I found it pretty relevant and
compelling (He starts talking about AI at 7:50) [Yanis Varoufakis: Basic
Income is a Necessity]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BvgdtF3y0Ss](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BvgdtF3y0Ss)

------
dharma1
I'm not really sure we are going to see the kind of job losses from robots/AI
that people fear, not within the next 10 years anyway

------
continuational
We already experienced automation for decades. Has that lead to higher
unemployment? If not, why will it lead to that in the future?

------
emblem21
Doesn't this reasoning hold up for outsourced jobs as well?

