
Signs That a Job Is Due to Be Automated - jonbaer
http://www.fastcompany.com/3062739/the-future-of-work/six-very-clear-signs-that-your-job-is-due-to-be-automated
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themgt
I find it amusing in the Business Insider version [1] of this article
"managing others" features at the least-susceptible to automation end of the
chart. This appears to belie an oversight, that automation job loss is not
just about jobs directly replaced by robots, but the jobs (like managing the
to-be-automated workers) that simply become irrelevant.

[1] [http://www.businessinsider.com/jobs-that-robots-will-
take-20...](http://www.businessinsider.com/jobs-that-robots-will-take-2016-8)

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frogfuzion
Why do you need managers if there is no one to manage.

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a3n
You obviously need many fewer managers in that scenario. But I think you would
need humans to decide that a business should exist and start it, and to
continually set direction and goals (beyond mere financial goals).

It will be interesting to see the first businesses that are run almost
entirely by algorithms. If that becomes common, or the norm, why would we even
need separate companies? Maybe the algorithms will merge their "businesses."
Maybe Skynet starts not via military algorithms but business algorithms.

EDIT: I recently left a medical device company, whose products without a doubt
save and improve lives. This business was started decades ago, with two
obvious goals: make money, and improving lives. Part of the direction and
goals for that company has always been service to society (humans), and I know
that many or most of the people working there think of it in exactly that way:
they're serving society (and happily making money while doing it). That's how
I felt about it.

What incentive would an algorithm have for starting and running a business
like that? Particularly as fewer humans are required to serve that and other
"businesses" (processes?), might such a company be seen as a waste of
resources? Why not just let most of the humans die?

But then, following that thought to its sci-fi conclusion, once human
civilization has all but disappeared, what would the purpose of any Skynet-
like business algorithm be? Would it start shutting itself off,
business/process by business/process?

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parenthephobia
"Algorithms" don't have incentives. "Algorithms" do not seek to conserve
resources. "Algorithms" do not seek to shut down purposeless activity, or
indeed determine what activity is purposeless.

 _An_ algorithm might do some of those things, if the human that created it
wanted that to be the case, or they didn't but the implementation was buggy.

A human writing an algorithm to run an automated medical device company would
presumably include some terms which would ensure that the company's resources
were used in a way that served the public good, to the extent that that was
compatible with whatever other objectives that human had for the algorithm,
such as making profit, or avoiding kinds of research that human considered
immoral.

A human who writes an algorithm to run a company which prioritises "something"
over the survival of human civilisation and resists any attempt to adjust its
priorities once the error is obvious enough to be noticed, _and_ then runs
that algorithm on a system with the capability to actually cause the end of
human civilization, is a super-villain or a super-idiot.

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a3n
> a super-villain or a super-idiot.

Both of which exist, and have enough effect that they have to be considered
and guarded against. And sometimes they succeed. :)

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glup
Business media drivel. I can't seem to find the public answer to "What happens
to the share prices of energy companies when oil trades above $100 a barrel
and political unrest has recently occurred in the Middle East?," but I'm
pretty sure the answer is unsatisfactory (relying on a pretty impoverished,
massively overfit causal model) for anyone making actual investment decisions.

It's a great time in AI and ML, don't risk another AI winter by creating
unreasonable expectations.

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thyrsus
As a sysadmin busy automating my own job (perhaps a "devop", but the
developers in my organization - a tiny minority - use a different
infrastructure), it appears the only roadblock to being automated away is #6 -
clear rules for how to proceed. Yet my worst worry is my difficulty
communicating to my team when to automate and when not.

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inanutshellus
With many jobs, such as sysadmins, companies will just need fewer and fewer
people. Instead of needing two dozen people to manage your fleet of servers,
you'll need... two (really one, but you'll want a trainee/backup).

I read an article about how you don't need to go to the doctor anymore for
most problems (persistent cough, fever, etc) because you can just pull up your
smartphone and video-conference with a doctor 150 miles away.

Another example is Coursera and the like. You have Ivy League schools
recording their lectures. Well... if I can learn CS 101 from MIT for free...

It's super convenient, and also means we in aggregate need a lot less doctors
and teachers and, well, _everything else_. But those we need we REALLY REALLY
need.

So then the question is... what the hell are we all going to do with
ourselves? and... if you only need the super-experts... how do you ever get
the chance to be one?

Pretty interesting stuff! Exciting times we're coming to live in.

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Kalium
> Another example is Coursera and the like. You have Ivy League schools
> recording their lectures. Well... if I can learn CS 101 from MIT for free...

True! Abstractly, 100% perfectly true for everyone.

However... most people don't really learn well in a non-interactive
environment where they most be completely self-directed. So in practical
terms, it's far from ideal for most learners. It's not a coincidence that non-
completion rates in MOOCs are quite high.

"I can watch recorded CS 101 lectures from MIT" is really not the same as "I
learned CS 101 while attending MIT and being in an instructional environment".

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inanutshellus
Completion rates (as a percent of sign-ups, anyway) are rather irrelevant.
People sign up for free classes, poke around, move on. But you could easily
see a world where--regardless of drop-out rate--more people completed an MIT-
taught Coursera class than actually took the "real" MIT class.

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Kalium
I can easily see such a world is possible, yes.

That said, completion rates do matter. If completion rates remain so sharply
low, it will suggest that perhaps MOOCs are not quite the perfect replacement
for instructional institutions they are often cast as.

After all, success rate is the difference between telling a randomly selected
American kid "Anyone can become President!" and them actually doing so.

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rokhayakebe
You can compare completion rate for a free course and a paid course based
solely on how many students enrolled and how many completed the class.

You will have to set some point in the course at which you begin to compare,
say for example you will start to compare all students who have completed the
first half or third of the class.

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pps43
> one such analyst can ultimately generate millions of models

Right, just like one programmer can ultimately generate millions of programs.
That's why now that computers are so cheap and abundant, there are so few
programming jobs left.

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ape4
Insurance brokers, mortgage brokers, real estate agents, any kind of broker.

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tkyjonathan
What non-sense. According to this article, all car factories should be 100%
automated. Sure there are robots here and there, but even Toyota is going back
to experts on the production floor.

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thruflo22
It's all about the parable of the bear: you don't need to run faster than the
machines, you need to run faster than the other guy or girl.

Where running faster means being better at operating the new machines.

