
Will You Lose Your Job to a Robot? Silicon Valley Is Split - resdirector
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/07/upshot/will-you-lose-your-job-to-a-robot-silicon-valley-is-split.html
======
steven777400
Whenever I see the "positive" prognostications, I wonder if the author is
intentionally spinning a tale for their own ultimate benefit, or if I'm just
way too cynical. I don't see any way that the advance of automation can do
anything but destroy any desirable concept of society. To me, the future
inexorably looks like Detroit or Nairobi, not like Tokyo or Singapore.

Education is a red herring. Most people (and I'd include myself in this) are
simply not mentally capable enough to be trained to outperform automation in
any task automation can perform. More education will not rescue us.

The future I see is, like Asimov's "Solaria". In that world, what purpose does
a laborer have? What strength could even rebels have? When the "top" of
society controls machines that will produce, fix, and fight, then they are
completely insulated and the majority of humanity is disposable.

~~~
true_religion
I'm guessing that manual labor will be a thing of the past, and I struggle to
see how this is a bad thing overall.

If the same work is being done without human intervention, why not just _give_
people who're unemployed the products of that labour?

~~~
cousin_it
Because the entities that control the machines and give their products away
will be outcompeted by entities that keep the products to fuel their own
growth. Over time, the former kind of entities will die out. This is a general
argument, the "entities" could be rich people, companies, governments, AIs,
etc.

~~~
zo1
Some of those general "entities" you speak of are composed of smaller
entities. Trade (e.g. of labor) will occur between those smaller entities.

Where there exists scarcity and a differential in value, trade will occur.
Now, of course, that says nothing about the people that have nothing of value
to trade with. But I'd argue that everyone has something to trade, it just
might be of very low relative value. Even in such a scenario they'll trade
with their peers.

No matter what scenario of this dystopian future I play out in my head, I
always find equilibrium. The key is not to attempt to fix it, but to have base
rules that apply to all and will mean basic safety for all. You can't
guarantee a peachy life for everyone. Most people just want to play meddling
Deity with government money and violence, to suit their own personal ideals
and prejudices. That is why I'm an anarcho-capitalist; because it makes
everyone absolutely equal and everyone absolutely free to make their own way
in life without intervention.

~~~
cousin_it
_Where there exists scarcity and a differential in value, trade will occur.
Now, of course, that says nothing about the people that have nothing of value
to trade with._

You can have something of value, but still be unable to find a trading
partner, if that thing can be had for a cheaper price somewhere else. For
example, if machines make labor cost less than a living wage, then you can't
survive by selling labor.

~~~
zo1
Their labor has value to themselves. So they can always go farm/forage for
food.

But to actually rebut your comment:

 _" if machines make labor cost less than a living wage, then you can't
survive by selling labor."_ If machines reduce labor cost, then the cost of
goods reduces as well, making goods more _affordable_ for poorer individuals.
And consequently, reducing the amount of money required to be able to survive.
You have to understand that none of these things function in isolation, but as
a balanced equilibrium.

~~~
cousin_it
Powerful entities can extract more value from a piece of land than weak
entities. That means powerful entities will outbid weak entities, and in the
long run all land will belong to powerful entities. There will be no land for
you to farm or forage.

Labor isn't the only thing needed for survival. You also need things like
living space, air and water. If these resources can be more profitably used by
someone else, they will outbid you.

~~~
zo1
Like I said, these things don't happen in isolation. Nor do they just manifest
into existence out of thin air. It's a slow progression, and a slow co-
evolution of different elements.

 _" If these resources can be more profitably used by someone else, they will
outbid you."_ You use the word profit as a motive for "entities" consuming all
resources. But you fail to elaborate on where this profit comes from? Well,
other entities, and there you go, trade. But that's not really what you're
getting at. You want to draw a false dichotomy between the two extremes of
"powerful entities" and "weak entities".

Either way, all you need is the non-aggression principle and respect for
property rights. And these "powerful entities" will never be able to coerce
their way into the full market dominance that you describe. It's a self-
correcting system, and it can only perpetuate itself if you don't respect
property rights and the non-aggression principle.

~~~
TeMPOraL
I think cousin_it is not talking about just capitalism and markets, he's
talking about optimization processes and game theory. The idea is, if you have
two populations and one is better at using resources to grow than the other,
then the first one will outgrow and displace the second. The "populations" and
"resources" are free terms here; you can substitute for them "companies" and
"profit", or "rat populations" and "food" \- the point is, this mechanism
holds in abstract.

> _Either way, all you need is the non-aggression principle and respect for
> property rights. And these "powerful entities" will never be able to coerce
> their way into the full market dominance that you describe._

Non-aggression principles and respect for property are not laws of physics,
they need to be actively enforced to have any meaning. For example, the reason
patent trolling is profitable is that the victims stand to loose too much in a
fight, even if they would ultimately win. We're having a hard time enforcing
anything against rich people today, it's hard to see how this will change when
the rich get orders of magnitude richer while the poor won't be able to
provide any value to exchange for food.

The transition process will be hard and painful, but I do hope we'll emerge
victorious on the other side, and that cousin_it's vision will be only
temporary.

------
gutnor
IMO it depends a lot on the timescale. Give it 100-200 years and all the
positive scenario are the likely outcome.

In 200 years, people will only have hobby because that will be all they have
to do and most of their needs have been automated.

The problem is the transition to there and that's the annoying thing in all
those discussions, nobody ever talk about it.

For example, Industrial Revolution and the 2 World Wars were the fantastic
drivers that pushed EU and US in an unprecedented golden age. I'm sure the
majority of people would have been happy to get the golden a few years later
rather than going through the mass loss of lives or the misery of those years.

> This is not a technological consequence; rather, it’s a political choice.

Not quite sure how it is reassuring. Except China, there seem to be no move to
even acknowledge that we may have something to do other than "the invisible
hand of the market will solve everything"

~~~
tdfx
> In 200 years, people will only have hobby because that will be all they have
> to do and most of their needs have been automated.

This has not been the trend. Interconnectivity and ease of travel were
supposed to relax the amount of work we do, but instead people put in more
hours than ever. The efficiency gains have created winners and losers, but
both are working at least as hard as before.

~~~
davedx
Depends on the country. In the Netherlands we are definitely working less :)

"In the mid-2000s, the Netherlands was the first country in the industrialized
world where the overall average working week dropped to less than 30 hours."

Nice tables:
[http://www.eurofound.europa.eu/ewco/studies/tn0803046s/nl080...](http://www.eurofound.europa.eu/ewco/studies/tn0803046s/nl0803049q.htm)

------
cousin_it
Nah, it's not as bad as the article says. It's much worse.

1) If you don't lose your job to a robot, you'll lose it to an emulated human.
An em requires only a tiny chip and a little electricity, and is every bit as
capable of doing empathy and creativity as you are.

2) If you don't lose your job to an em, you'll lose it (and your life) to
unfriendly self-improving AI that has a use for your atoms. If you think
there's a law of nature against such awful things happening, think again.

3) Even if you learn about that bleak future with 99% certainty, you'll keep
living life as usual and hoping for the 1%, instead of trying to change
things.

4) And even if everyone on Earth sees that the bleak future is coming, we
won't coordinate with each other to stop it! Look at poor people today, they
are already suffering but don't coordinate to improve their lot.

~~~
pjc50
The feasibility and cost of "emulated humans" is not settled; it may well be
physically impossible.

~~~
cousin_it
Wouldn't it be nice if all the things that threaten us turned out to be
physically impossible?

 _" At the same time, the parts we do understand, such as that human
intelligence is almost certainly running on top of neurons firing, suggest
very strongly that human intelligence is not the limit of the possible.
Neurons fire at, say, 200 hertz top speed; transmit signals at 150
meters/second top speed; and even in the realm of heat dissipation (where
neurons still have transistors beat cold) a synaptic firing still dissipates
around a million times as much heat as the thermodynamic limit for a one-bit
irreversible operation at 300 Kelvin. So without shrinking the brain, cooling
the brain, or invoking things like reversible computing, it ought to be
physically possible to build a mind that works at least a million times faster
than a human one, at which rate a subjective year would pass for every 31
sidereal seconds, and all the time from Ancient Greece up until now would pass
in less than a day. This is talking about hardware because the hardware of the
brain is a lot easier to understand, but software is probably a lot more
important; and in the area of software, we have no reason to believe that
evolution came up with the optimal design for a general intelligence, starting
from incremental modification of chimpanzees, on its first try."_

[http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/week311.html](http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/week311.html)

~~~
Houshalter
A very relevant short essay: [http://intelligenceexplosion.com/2011/plenty-of-
room-above-u...](http://intelligenceexplosion.com/2011/plenty-of-room-above-
us/)

Thinking human brains are the pinnacle of intelligence is ridiculous. We are
just the very first intelligent thing to evolve. On top of which, biology is
severely constrained in many ways and stuck in local optimas.

------
Balgair
Often, the artist or novelist is a better judge of history than the professor
or engineer, as they have the distance to see.

Neil Stephenson's 'Snow Crash' is a masterpiece of scene and action. His
'dystopian' novel set a bar to which we judge ourselves to this day. I use
'dystopian' in quotes as Stephenson himself describes his novel as an
optimistic view of the future when he wrote it. Why? Because humanity survives
the Cold War.

In 1980, that was not necessarily true. I would like to remind any readers
that the facts have not changed in this manner. War has always been with us,
and the robots, though shiny, will be tools of war just as every keyboard,
scythe, and lump of granite has been. If there is one thing we can count on,
it is war.

You may argue that the robot will eliminate the scarcity of resources that
causes conflict. I hope so. However, history shows us again and again that war
is a part of man. If you eliminate it, you rid us all of a part of humanity. I
hope dearly for this.

But the consequences of that are not simple, there will be blowback to having
the robot take our darker sides away. It is a bargain I hope we strike with
the robot. But I have no doubt that my grandchildren will not be the same
humans we are if that deal is signed.

------
tawan
I see a darker future ahead: From a totally cynical but rational and economic
perspective I think human labour is cheaper than any machine workforce for
many tasks. We reproduce and maintain ourselves, we just need some water and
food. We are very flexible and can adapt to any task very quickly. No need to
order spare parts made from expensive raw materials. Human labour is only
expensive because we have civil rights and we tend to riot if we are treated
badly. Take away these two factors and you have a cheap labour army that's
getting bigger by itself.

We are also limited by the capacity and architecture of our brains. A.I can
rely on Moore's law, or quantum computers to benefit steadily from better
hardware. Therefore I conclude that the most successful agents in our economy
will be of A.I. The enterprises behind them might still have a human executer,
smiling all charmingly, but A.I. will be in control.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
But robots adapt (or their manufacturers do). Need a drill attachment for
construction? Just snap it on. NO need to use a human who needs a portable
drill with internal motor and cord.

~~~
TeMPOraL
You can adapt humans as well. Bolt in the drill and a battery pack to the
human "frame" and you're good to go. We're not Borg already only because "we
have civil rights and we tend to riot if we are treated badly".

~~~
JoeAltmaier
But much more expensive to adapt to a biological unit. The robot's drill can
share the robot's power unit. Mine has to be plugged in; has to have its own
motor; has to be shielded and safe.

------
owenmarshall
Once again sethf hits the nail on the head. The response is entirely up to us.

I'm not personally optimistic: this country has a deeply held Puritanical work
ethic, and even if we get past that we have a real nasty habit of not liking
to give any government benefits to " _those people_ ".

But if we can get past that...

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _Once again sethf hits the nail on the head. The response is entirely up to
> us._

I disagree. Short of halting the progress of robotics and software, there
seems to be no way to avoid the continued automation of things, and economy,
politicians and social habits will have to follow and adapt, like they always
did. More and more I'm buying into the view that it's the technological
progress that drives cultural change, not the other way around.

I recently found an interesting article touching this topic:

[http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/03/07/we-wrestle-not-with-
fle...](http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/03/07/we-wrestle-not-with-flesh-and-
blood-but-against-powers-and-principalities/)

~~~
owenmarshall
>I disagree.

I'm not sure with what, we're both saying the same thing. ;-)

I haven't read too much of it yet but your link looks very interesting,
thanks!

~~~
TeMPOraL
Well I understood that Seth was saying that politicians can decide to stop job
automation or let it happen. I believe that they can't; they have far too
little influence to stop a force this strong.

~~~
owenmarshall
That's not how I understood it, and not at all how I think he intended it to
be read.

His statement is that a question that sets "automation means less jobs which
is bad!" against "automation means more and better jobs which is good!" is
improper. Automation will _change_ the job landscape - that's an objective
statement, and we've been living it so far.

Whether we make it a _positive_ change and end up with Russell's "idle utopia"
or a _negative_ change and end up in some horrific dystopia is entirely up to
our response.

------
bduerst
The BLS has this documented fairly well over the past century:
[http://i.imgur.com/BPNyjM8.png](http://i.imgur.com/BPNyjM8.png)

As advances in agricultural automation removed laborer jobs in the 1900s,
workers switched to different, more-specialized industries.

In short, we will probably see jobs disappearing because of automation in the
2000s, but it won't necessarily be bad. Most likely we will also be seeing
many new types of jobs appearing as well - some which may have never been
conceived yet.

------
peter303
This debate has been going on since the 1960s when jobs started becoming
computerized. Yes, lots of bue collar manufacturing jobs were lost then. And
workers were afraid of automation. In the 1990s workstations and the internet
replace white collar clerical jobs. There are far fewer travel agents and bank
clerks now. The newer robots may replace the more sophisticated manufacturing,
delivery and service jobs.

------
api
If we were having economic growth, it wouldn't matter. Robots would replace
mundane labor, allowing people to be allocated to more economically beneficial
occupations.

The problem is that there is no economic growth to speak of outside a few
sectors.

IMHO the concern over automation and tech in general is shifting the blame
from where it actually belongs: conservative fiscal policy.

------
scj
I think the safest thing to say is that integration of any technology takes
time. Even if a technology exists, it won't be ubiquitous immediately.

If we accept that one day computers/robots will be able to outperform a
plurality of the population, three questions arise. When will that be? Will
enough of us see it coming? How should we respond?

------
pkorzeniewski
And then, in the next 100 or 200 years, a geomagnetic storm destroys all
electrical systems and no one will know how to perform basic jobs because we
delegated them to robots.. I know, a dystopian vision, but still possible :)

~~~
richmarr
Not just possible. Likely. The Brunhes–Matuyama reversal was 780k years ago
and the average gap is only 450k years
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geomagnetic_reversal](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geomagnetic_reversal).
Such reversal events can cause thousands of years of fluctuating protection
from solar radiation.

I'd be fascinated to see a study of how we might protect ourselves during such
an event.

Sadly I imagine nobody wants to be the guy that spent billions on EM shielding
50,000 years before anyone needed it.

------
malchow
1\. Automate thing x.

2\. Wail and fret for 50 years.

3\. Take it for granted for next ∞ years.

------
dmoo
The question that always occurs to me is, if most people are to be jobless,
then who can afford all the products and services provided by the robots?

~~~
owenmarshall
I'm not sure a capitalist system makes sense in a techno-utopia. If the robots
make themselves, mine the minerals, smelt the ores, assemble the smartphones,
and deliver them to me, there is not a labor cost associated with assembling
the smartphone, so why should there be a price?

Maybe the "cost" comes from the loss of the mineral in the ground, but if
we're going full on techno-utopia the robots would reclaim the mineral through
recycling, so does it become negligible?

Marx touched on the paradoxical nature of automation and advanced technology:
"Though machinery be the most potent means for increasing the productivity of
labour, that is to say for reducing the amount of labour time necessary for
the production of a commodity, in the hands of capital it becomes the most
powerful means... for lengthening the working day far beyond the bounds
imposed by nature"

And damn, he hits the nail on the head there.

~~~
krapp
Companies don't automate to reduce potential profits, though, but to reduce
the cost and inefficiency of human labor. Presumably, even with a fully
automated infrastructure, there would still be a human-run corporation at the
top, otherwise why would they bother creating the system at all?

But then I may simply not have gone far enough down the rabbithole in my
conception of 'techno-utopia.' If the automation is truly self-sustaining and
self-contained, in essence, a complete AI economy in and of itself, then
perhaps the "cost" comes in the burden of including humans at all?

~~~
owenmarshall
> Presumably, even with a fully automated infrastructure, there would still be
> a human-run corporation at the top, otherwise why would they bother creating
> the system at all?

IMO you're looking at the system before it reaches an endgame.

Investing in automation is a rational decision to reduce costs & increase
profits, so companies are going to make that choice. As automations continue
to improve more and more jobs will be eliminated in order to continue
increasing profits.

But as jobs are eliminated the people that _used_ to do the jobs are still
there - still wanting to earn money to feed and clothe their families. And as
they don't have jobs, they don't have money, so corporate profits begin to
suffer.

The system will eventually reach a tipping point. I just hope we end on the
side of "we run the machines and distribute their output for the good of the
people" rather than "we run the machines, keep their output, and give the
people worthless scrip".

>If the automation is truly self-sustaining and self-contained, in essence, a
complete AI economy in and of itself, then perhaps the "cost" comes in the
burden of including humans at all?

Hopefully our robot overlords would see it as an opportunity, rather than a
cost.

------
hyp0
people often hand-wave that "new technology creates new jobs". but it seems to
me there's a simple economic proof that it's true, based on demand and supply.
Is there one?

my favourite commentary on the singularity (comic)
[http://partiallyclips.com/2003/09/25/dome-
house/](http://partiallyclips.com/2003/09/25/dome-house/)

~~~
BugBrother
Well, there are practical experience of new jobs created despite automation
since at least the luddites.

------
nsxwolf
I think I'm going to have to stop clicking on these ones.

The future according to HN can be summed up as 30 years or so of Basic Income,
after which we will be turned into paperclips by an unfriendly AI.

Maybe it's inevitable, but then there's not much point worrying about it. It's
just another kind of death.

