To wonder what you all think of Stephen Hawking's thoughts on AI destroying the middle classes jobs?

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www.businessinsider.com/stephen-hawking-ai-automation-middle-class-jobs-most-dangerous-moment-humanity-2016-12?r=UK&IR=T

Sort of scary but sort of not. I don't know why I don't feel afraid of it all....maybe because I'm working class and know that money means little at the end of the day anyway.

IT work is expanding yes - but not at the same rate at which jobs are being lost elsewhere. That trend looks like it will get worse.

The number of people who can afford status symbol hand crafted goods is not going to be high enough, at least not looking at current trends in the UK, to support employment for all of the rest.

It's nothing new really. I work as a software developer. Not apps but business software. The whole objective of my job is to design software to reduce headcount. There is a lot of 'paper pushing' in offices. Once a software system is put in place, it can do the task much faster and with less errors. Examples are things like replacing people reading spreadsheets in emails.

Toad Urban slums were not created by rural people looking for work, but cities providing work in factories drawing people in and lack od sufficient housing. It was very much pull not push.
Henry Ford famously said that if you asked people what they wanted they said faster horses, they didn't expect the car.
There will be plenty of jobs in the future, mainly because if there aren't, then all the companies using technology will have no customers, so will go bankrupt.

I fail to see the distinction. If your choice is between starvation in the countryside or earning a pittance in an urban slum, it is irrelevant whether you are pulled or pushed to it.

Or are you suggesting that living conditions improved throughout the 1700s and 1800s?

useless class? Unless we get cheap androids equivalent to the functionality of ones in Humans, we're nowhere near that.

Silicon Valley, that high tech place that leads the way... I would bet good money is every day full of... domestic servants. Cleaners, cooks, gardening services, nannies -- and builders. They might live 20 miles away, but their job is there with the rich.

And guess what? Who collects the rubbish? Who transports it, sorts it into recycling, maintains the lorry, reviews the safety measures & teaches the garbage collectors what safety measures to follow. Real people.

Diagnosing patients? But who knows how to deliver patient-centred care? Not a robot.

Growing crops? But who reviews the world commodity markets & decides what the best crops are to plant next year, and decides which software to use to make that decision, repairs the vehicles, treats the livestock with cheapest materials, negotiates a good deal on hiring equipment or swapping labour with a neighbour.

I was pondering whether robots could take over in mining activities underground, though. Could save a lot of lives.

Apparently there was a piece on BBC Countryfile about robots picking vegetables in Lincolnshire. Very interesting post Brexit

I keep reading that middle class office jobs will be automated/outsourced abroad within 20 years but an article here says: www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2016/11/28/1-undershaft-tallest-tower-city-london-gets-green-light/ “Over the next 30 years I expect that we will need to deliver office space for more than 50,000 extra workers within the Square Mile"

NHS medical dictation is now being outsourced abroad (India and Philippines) and audio typed overnight - but some NHS Trusts are bringing it back in house as the quality was so poor! But I imagine medical secretary jobs will be vastly reduced as digital dictation and automatic typing becomes more common and fine tuned.

Healthcare professionals won't be immune - the trend seems to be to hire more "clinical support workers" at bands 2-4 to replace the qualified band 5 staff.

I also wonder who will buy all the goods/services that have become automated if nobody has jobs? Universal basic income? Or the 1% living in gated communities whilst the poor live in slums?

It will always be a human being who unjams the bloody printer, won't it?

lljkk I know a business which has to pick orders from a warehouse in response to daily requests. The picking is done overnight, packed onto carriers and pallets and then taken by the delivery drivers the next morning. All of the overnight process is completed by robots - there is not a single human on site. The only human element of the entire process is the delivery drivers; as and when self-driving vehicles become a mass market reality, then that element will cease as well.

Like many things, tech is expensive to start with - but as it develops and is adopted by the mass market, economies of scale make it cheaper. Robots don't steal, pull sickies - or indeed get sick, need holidays or mat/pat leave or parental leave. They don't need people management - 1-2-1s, appraisals, disciplinaries. They don't have wage rights or need bonuses or annual reviews. They don't fall out with colleagues or have 'bad days'. Don't forget this has a massive knock-on effect operationally; it removes the need for payroll and HR and an entire management layer simply by having no (or very few) people to manage.

It presents companies with an interesting dilemma: mechanise your workflow and processes and benefit from the cost savings you'll realise by not employing humans - as robots can work around the clock. But by not needing a human workforce, where are your customers? If there are so few people employed and earning more than a subsistence wage, then who is buying your products? Digitalisation could end up putting you out of business by making you so efficient!

That sounds like Argos. How long have they had that model?
Supply chains are so complicated now... the idea that robots will permeate every stage... no. Although like I said, robots mining raw materials, might have some merit.

paul

That's not a problem if you are selling your goods or service to other rich people. The market will simply adapt to take into account where the money is. Poor people could just become economically invisible.

lljkk Who do you think does most mining now? It is not men with picks and shovels and hasn't been for years. this film shows mining was mainly robots in 1945.

So why did those 33 guys in Chile get stuck down the mine for 2 months in 2010?

Modern mining relies on machines and miners. The level of mechanisation depends on variables like the ability of cheap labour and the ability of technology to do the job. In the deepest mines of all - the gold mines on the Witwatersrand, there's a lot of tech because of the money involved, not to say the dangers of mining by hand that deep.

There are plenty of picks and shovels still in use - speaking of mishaps there is also the Pike River mining disaster in NZ in 2010 - 29 dead. It's worth bearing in mind that miners in NZ are pretty well paid.

"Over the next 30 years I expect that we will need to deliver office space for more than 50,000 extra workers within the Square Mile"

Hmph. Another wart to disfigure London's skyline. I quite liked them when there were just a few, like the Gherkin. But now they all clump together.

Anyway, all that shows is that there will be an expansion in high-level jobs that aren't easily automated, but one that has probably already been more than offset by redundancies in more traditional clerical jobs e.g ones in bank branches.

Toad but the pool will diminish. The research I have seen anticipates that it's white collar jobs that will be impacted the most severely. So your current 'middle class', who are active consumers, will have less and less buying power meaning that the number of consumers available to buy a company's product, will shrink.

Don't forget that there are a lot of good out there that depend on mass purchase for success. Take fashion as an example. In many cases high end couture and accessories are a loss-leader; a brand will gift free items or even pay a celebrity to wear their products, because the ensuing exposure will ensure that the item becomes desirable and must-have and the mass market creates the profit. The mark-up on some of these items is huge because people are paying for the brand; a handbag that might cost £50 to assemble could retail for £600+. If fewer people are employed then the pool of consumers has shrunk and there won't be enough volume in the 'rich people' sector to replace that lost consumer segment. There's a good article on handbag markups here