To not be concerned that technology will destroy jobs...

[coconuttella]

It seems to be in vogue to predict that swathes of the workforce will soon be replaced by technology, leaving an army of jobless... However, hasn't technology been doing this for at least 200 years, going way back to the Luddites?.... with people re-training into jobs that are generally more productive and less repetitive and less manual. Why do we people feel it is different this time?

Actually, there are quite a few predictions that suggest that middle class jobs such as the more routine end of law and teaching could be automated fairly soon. It's not just unskilled work.

There's an enormous amount of interest and good work on automation. Two readable books on the subject are Paul Mason's Postcapitalism and Williams and Srnicek's Inventing the Future. However, many people are skeptical that automation will happen to the extent that these works predict - the demise of the automated car wash and rise of the low-paid car washer over the last 15 years might be one case. Sometimes, within capitalism, shit jobs are cheaper than machines.

Admit to NRTFT so apols if this is repetition...but I am not concerned about machines taking over because they never sodding work!!

Supermarket check outs a case in point...there are nearly as many staff sorting the damn things out in my local supermarket as there would be on a normal till...

I think I agree with the OP.

It is easy enough to foresee how currently existing jobs will be wiped out by new machines.

But far harder to see how new developments and a new society might create jobs that no one's ever thought of so far.

Which is basically what has been happening over the last 200 years.

I think it very likely that there will still be a preference for people to do people-orientated jobs, not only in customer situations but in the entertainment industry, in counselling, medicine, teaching, and in other areas that we may not even realise. The risk analysis may well be done by a machine, but a human being will still be wanted to talk the client through it. Machines will not be arguing cases in court unless we completely change the legal system.

What I do think will happen (sadly) is that the job market will become even tougher for those with limited people skills. But that is a development that has been going on since the Middle Ages.

As we don't even agree on what intelligence is, and how it works in humans, I think we are a long way of from true AI. All we see at the moment are systems than simulate intelligence, sometimes to good effect, but always in a very limited and parametrised manner. Big Blue might play a mean chess game, but it's pretty crap at changing a nappy.

What I expect is that some form of mechanisation and automation will continue to creep into most areas of work, with the biggest hurdle being cost of each unit, but we are a long way off from the majority of humans being replaced.

Basic income.

Supermarket check outs a case in point...there are nearly as many staff sorting the damn things out in my local supermarket as there would be on a normal till

No there isn't. Usually one member of staff supervises 6 - 10 checkout stations. They do work for most people and the frustrations of one item not matching the expected weight are a tiny fraction of daily transactions. This convenience comes at a very human cost in job losses. Exactly the kinds of jobs that offer the flexibility that workers with caring responsibilities (i.e. mainly women) need.

Think about airports. Check in is almost fully automated, bag check is automated, passport control is partially automated. Add to this that most people now book travel online with no human interaction. Technology has had a huge impact on travel industry - and obviously jobs.

Banking, shopping, house buying, even medicine, have all been impacted by technology. If our economy relies on people earning an income sufficient to finance a reasonable lifestyle then we will have to rethink how we organise the world of work.

Somebody upthread said 20 years ago there was no internet.
Yes there was! The WWW has been around more than 20 years and the internet much longer!
How governments and corporations respond to AI is what will determine it's impact on society.

People need to have skills that someone wants, is prepared to pay for, and can't be automated.

Pub landlord you say?

Couldn't we rework society though?

I mean if we have robots to do everything then can't we all just basically chill out and spend everyday reading, snoozing and having BBQs?

We might be able to create a whole different society?

Probably a tonne of upheaval in the medium term though.

I'm definitely going to have my DC into coding quite early on...that's where the money will be in the medium term.

Stumbly, have you seen Wall-E?

I'm actually just starting to work on a project for my current client to use robotic process automation to remove around 20-30 people's jobs.

That being said these are jobs that were already offshore in India. The simple, repetitive tasks like entering data into systems.

These robots are considered the 'simple' end of the spectrum but they're already very good. They work like a human does...so they log on to the computer...pick up an email, read the attachments and then log on to another system and enter in the data. The difference being that they do it in seconds and work 24/7.

Others in the industry (insurance) are already seeing how they might replace claim handlers and underwriters by AI in the future (but we're talking ten years plus I reckon?)

Cloud...I did think of that as I was writing it

Unemployment is a huge problem, in Europe, in the young- look at the numbers unemployed in France, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Greece. Unemployment in the UK in the young has been massaged by raising the leaving age to 18, and strong-arming 50% to go to university.

The thing is though:

If there are no jobs because everything is being made by robots, who is going to buy the goods and services the robots do?

Unless there is going to be a select few who have money and can buy the services?

(I'm guessing the same arguments have always been made through history as machines replace humans)

Does anyone think we should actually halt technological development because of this? The solution is to change society as required not fight technology!

50 years ago, a large portion of the UK workforce did back breaking jobs that destroyed their physical health... technology removed the need for this. That was a very good thing.

As for th comment that the Internet was around 20 years ago... it was but far, far less developed and economically influential than it is today.

But if we'd not had these advances we'd all be living a harsh, short medieval life... And many of the manual jobs replaced by machinery/technology that existed were hardly 'good jobs', anything but!

No one is saying they'd prefer to be stuck in the 16th century. you're asking why some people might be worried about technology taking jobs. If you're going to struggle to feed your kids that's your primary concern. This isn't difficult to understand.

Poppycock. They've been saying it for decades. Wasn't so long ago they said the future for everyone would be 3 day weeks and long early retirements. That didn't happen!

Poppycock. They've been saying it for decades. Wasn't so long ago they said the future for everyone would be 3 day weeks and long early retirements. That didn't happen!

Exactly, so why are people still worried by this!

Ok. I see why people on an individual level might be worried, but I don't get this feeling that tech advances are a 'bad thing' as they'll do people out of jobs as surely if we had that attittude through history we would be stuck in the 16th century!

All predictions will be wrong, things will pan out in ways that we can't foresee or imagine

I think there is some prescience but it can only be seen in retrospect and it rarely comes from experts in the relevant fields.
For instance who but Douglas Adams predicted the smart phone? 😉

You're ignoring the other side, which is that the increase of tech dominance creates more jobs. Just look around, its plain to see.

Depends how its handled, and how the wealth generated is distributed etc, I see two directions it could take us in:

It could mean loads more leisure time for everyone, maybe even some form of UBI, with people's time being freed up by the machines to pursue other things, whilst still enjoying a good quality of life.
There would probably need to be a high degree of international cooperation to achieve this, imo.

Or it could mean a lot of people unemployed/in very low paying jobs, while the wealth generated by increased automation becomes trapped within a small minority of people, with a rapidly increasing wealth gap; a positive feedback loop where money makes more money. This would eventually cause civil disorder, and would in the long term be shit for everyone.

I don't think that technological advances are intrinsically "bad" or "good", its all about how we handle the rapid changes that such progress will bring.

Lots of accounting jobs and junior lawyer jobs have been wiped out as programmes on a computer are just better at those tasks than humans! And I have heard of a medical programme delivered by a robot that could do the same to doctors - you will still need doctors, lawyers and accountants but far fewer. I think eventually there will be new types of jobs but there will be a transition period that will be painful. This is probably why the idea of a citizen's wage is gaining traction amongst politicians.

A citizen's wage is a fascinating idea, but will only be possible if there is high tax on those that own and make money from the technology, wont it?
Which is where I think the difficulty lies. It is much easier to extract tax from 10,000 each earning £25,000 than from one person earning £250,000,000 (have I got those zeros right?). Especially when countries will compete for that tax by undercutting each other, and when governments will be (completely understandably) reluctant to discourage innovators and entrepreneurs.