
Hey, Economist, Is Now a Good Time to Be Graduating from College? - sndean
http://libertystreeteconomics.newyorkfed.org/2017/05/hey-economist-is-now-a-good-time-to-be-graduating-from-college.html
======
observation
I suspect almost 100% of the people who run the ECB and Fed do not understand
Moravec's Paradox and Deep Learning - neither of which bode well for huge
numbers of white collar workers.

College students, don't get comfortable. Your information processing based job
is far more likely to become automated by programmers than that of a plumber
or gardener.

~~~
sndean
> Your information processing based job is far more likely to become automated
> by programmers than that of a plumber or gardener.

It definitely seems that there's too much focus paid to the automation of
transportation and the like, and even though those are going away, it's
obvious a lot of white collar/office jobs are easier to automate away

~~~
observation
"It’s also important to be patient. College is an investment that pays
dividends over your entire working life. If you’re a new graduate, you’ve just
incurred the upfront costs of this investment in your human capital, but you
have many decades to go to reap the economic benefits of your college degree.
"

I must admit, that triggered me. I say that is by far a too comfortable
assertion.

> It definitely seems that there's too much focus paid to the automation of
> transportation and the like, and even though those are going away, it's
> obvious a lot of white collar/office jobs are easier to automate away

Curiously under examined while the cries for basic income go on, often
projected as help for the working/welfare classes. Where do these cries come
from? The beleaguered middle classes.

Maybe we should read between the lines. I strongly suspect a lot of middle
income people don't have a Plan B more sophisticated than the truck driver
(fleeing into the universities is a brainless move in most scenarios) and
their incomes have been stagnant for a long time, so they're afraid of falling
through the cracks. A just concern in my view. People who deal with a body of
information can be just as entrenched in their habits as anybody else.

Some blue collar will be automated of course, but the salient point is that
nearly all blue collar labour _was already automated in the Industrial
Revolution_. That which remains will be harder to automate. The most humble of
jobs are incredibly frustrating for a robot to operate on economically in
human oriented environments.

I'd wager middle class jobs contain a large number of relatively high income
but easy to automate tasks.

This coupled with MP and deep learning, well you see the picture.

I'm quite far from a technological utopian, but when Hinton states that
radiologists should halt their training, he is not joking.

[https://youtu.be/2HMPRXstSvQ](https://youtu.be/2HMPRXstSvQ)

Coincidentally I'm sure, he looks a bit like an undertaker in that clip!

~~~
sndean
> I'm quite far from a technological utopian, but when Hinton states that
> radiologists should halt their training, he is not joking.

> [https://youtu.be/2HMPRXstSvQ](https://youtu.be/2HMPRXstSvQ)

Thanks for pointing to that clip. Hadn't seen that

