to worry about the end of jobs ...

[Parietal]

... and the failure of our politicians to do anything about it.

OK, so here is the story -

In the movies, the robots look like humans and do the same kind of things, so we can understand them. But the real changes are coming from systems that don't look anything like humans. These artificial intelligence systems are starting to take over jobs, and will take many more over the next decade.

Here are a few examples -

Every time you shop and pay at one of those self-serve tills, that machine is doing the job that a human would have done 5 years ago.

Driverless cars & trucks (which will here in 5 years) will put taxi-drivers, bus drivers and truck drivers out of work everywhere. Driving is one of the last jobs available for people with minimal qualifications - what will all these people do when the job of 'driver' no longer exists?

when it comes to phone-helpline jobs, artificial voice recognition systems like Alexa are getting very very good - soon we won't need call centers with 100s of people renewing your insurance, because an AI will do it for you. That is a lot of jobs gone.

Manufacturing is vanishing, but not just to overseas. Again, machines can now do the job of many people so a factory can run on less people. Foxcomm in China (which makes iphones) fired 50,000 people in the last year because they had replaced them with machines.

And white-collar jobs are at risk too. Image recognition can detect cancers in scans nearly as well as radiographers. There are websites that can generate legal letters to appeal parking fines or housing benefits without needing a lawyer. There are artificial intelligences doing graphic design and advertising too.

Of course, not all jobs will go and not all at once. Many jobs requiring personal contact (childcare, nursing etc) are very hard for AIs to do. But gradually, the number of jobs available will go down and the jobs that are left may well be less secure and less well paid. Meanwhile, our politicians insist that everyone MUST work for a living rather than getting benefit. And the people trapped with no career prospects turn to right-wing populists (Trump etc) because no one else seems to listen.

Some people think that we need to have a Basic Income that everyone gets regardless of work, and move to a post-work era in which having a job is neither required nor expected. But it is not clear if the finance adds up, nor how we get there.

So, AIBU to think that the story above is plausible and worrying?

And if so, does anyone have any ideas of what on earth should be done about it?

I so agree.

Automation was meant to increase our leisure time.

But it seems to be just reducing jobs so no one can afford leisure time.

It is my current worry.

There used to be loads of jobs that don't exist now. My grandparents all had jobs that 1000s of people did back then but are rare as hens teeth now. I still worry. I think creative industries, health/caring and inventing, developing and maintaining our robot overlords are the way to go.

I'm sure we'll manage to find some sort of system to distribute money/wealth/goods and services
perhaps the nature of jobs will change somewhat, perhaps we'll be able to get credits of some kind for things that dont seem like work to us now, say posting a useful video on you tube, helping someone on a forum.

After all some of the jobs people do today would seem easy compared to hard physical labour, or hazardous factory work

I'm not worried, I think it will all be very interesting :)

things will probably change in ways that we just cant imagine or predict now, each change will throw up new problems and challenges, requiring us to come up with more solutions, thats how we progress, in a sort of dialectical manner

This two part (long but worth it) blog post has a lot of interesting and persuasive things to say about how AI is likely to change the world as we know it, maybe a lot sooner than most people would imagine:

waitbutwhy.com/2015/01/artificial-intelligence-revolution-1.html

I'm an actuary. (I do Hard Sums for a living.) Actuaries have been around since the 17th century. The invention of the calculator pretty much took away what an actuary did. So we thought of Harder Sums. Then they invented the computer which again took away what we did. So we came up with Harder Sums.

Human beings are very adaptable.

You're not alone OP. My industry will be virtually wiped out within 10 years by AI.

mumof I work with plenty of actuaries and I can well believe it!

OP I think this is a variant on the "lump of labour" fallacy. Basically (disclaimer I am not an economist) I think the point is that demand and supply are co-dependent to at least some extent, so the jobs that people do will evolve to supply demand even if some of the things people used to do are now done by automata.

we'll just fill the gap with boondoggles

☎️

Hello, is that Google/Apple/IBM/whoever?
Well I hate to tell you but someone called Hatesummer doesn't believe in driverless cars. Yes, I know that already work and stuff but you are going to have to uninvent them now.

I think you're definitely over thinking it OP, but then I'm planning in going into a career which needs human interaction (childcare)
The chances of my job being taken by a robot are very slim.

Self-service tills aren't even robots taking people's jobs. That would be like, you push your trolley into a box, and it comes out the other end with the total.

They're just making the customer do the work that the shop used to do.

In 1901, 5% of the population, 1.5 million people were domestic servants and 15% 4.5 million worked in agriculture. Nowadays, the numbers are 0.063 million and 0.7 million, around 1.3% of the population. They have all been replaced by machines. We do not have 19% of the population, c. £12 million people complaining about not having jobs.
In 1900 in the US, 18% of women over 16 had jobs, today the number is 60%.
Jobs will always exist.

Exactly Carol - central heating has taken away the need for coal men and chimney sweeps. Electricity has meant that lamp lighters are not longer needed. Alarm clocks mean that the knocker upper is long forgotten.
Very few people are employed as morning girls, housekeepers or footmen.

Desolate All driverless cars currntly being tested require a human at the wheel.
Google themselves admit that they have had 272 failures and would have crashed 13 times in trials without human intervention.
The key thing, however, is legal and warranty related. Who bears the insurance cost of accidents?
In warranty and error state terms, this JD power survey says new technology causes the most problems, but also the best brand in the world has 89 warranty faults per 100 cars. Do you trust the sensors that much?

Third thread related to this topic in the last two days. Is there a reason people are so exercised about it right now? Has there been something on TV?

I agree entirely, the internet alone has cost millions of jobs, look at all the shops that have closed down because everyone shops online ?? The jobs that have gone in publishing because people can read papers or books through a screen these days. DVDs, cds etc just aren't bought the same way anymore, it's all downloaded. There are hardly any record shops left !

Yeah the internet is fab as is modern technology but it isn't all good, particularly for those who will never progress past being a manual worker.

I agree OP, I am not worried though. Jobs will go but Ibelieve that the population will decline to a point where there are enough jobs for everyone. The interim period will be bad when people who loose jobs basically starve. But after that

I'm sure this is what people thought in the Industrial Revolution. Somehow we have all kept busy and I find it very hard to believe we won't keep busy for many generations yet.

Driverless cars can not work.

Hat to break it to you, but they are already here and they are already working.

caroldecker something like only one of those would have been an 'at fault' accident tho.

Driverless cars still require someone at the wheel because the insurance people require someone at the wheel.

The key thing, however, is legal and warranty related. Who bears the insurance cost of accidents?

The paperwork is a very different thing to 'this won't work, what happens if a person walks in front of the car'

There might be opportunities for robots in the care industry. The films I, Robot and Robot And Frank portray this.