To wonder what will happen when there are no iobs

[rainandfire]

When technology does everything, driving, deliveries, retail ... what will people do then?

It seems most of the vanishing jobs are towards the lower paid end?

Maybe it’ll be like Star Trek and money will no longer exist, people will just do what needs to be done for the benefit of society. Mind you, in Star Trek, there was centuries of war and death after the point we are now and before they got to that point!

Not necessarily, I can think of lots of low paid jobs which are unlikely to dissappear.

Cleaning
Animal care
Labourers
Manufacturing of complex stuff like clothing
Customer service (because I genuinely think people will always prefer cafes etc with actual people)
Tech support
Teaching assistants
Care workers

The thing is with a Citizens Wage, I don't suppose many people will have the money to go round enjoying arty endeavours and patronising quirky cafes.

Rainandfire - that is true of many of the already-lost jobs, but technology is coming for the white collar jobs too. Accountancy, legal work - even medical diagnostics.

Driverless cars on city streets are many, many, many years away.
night deliver vehicles another matter

Cleaners/carers - sorry but no care home will buy a robot when they can pay a 19 year old £5 an hour

Agriculture - picking fruit/ veg is 20 years away from mechanisation

Food production - automated meat packing plants are decades away

Customer service - less but better jobs

and remember .... the workforce is shrinking so over a 70 year window, less jobs is a good thing

I will finally be able to get a tradesman to turn up. I'll get my bathroom and kitchen fully done. Can't wait.

morris

True re the middle classes. But law and medicine and teaching will always exist.

My organisation’s twenty year blueprint is a shocking read - there is an ancipation than four out of our six functions will be replaced by automatation and robotics leading to a demise of thousands of jobs.

And this is true for many organisations.

The 4th Industrial Revolution, which is what we’re now commencing, will be every bit as disruptive, destructive (note: creative destruction) and enlightening as the previous ones have been.

Where we will end up we don’t really know, yet, but that’s more because it’s hard for us, as humans, to imagine solutions to what we perceive to be problems impossible for technology to solve without a person directly involved.

You only have to consider things like Uber’s stock value, given the fact that it won’t reach its earning potential (losses are massive at the moment) until cars are autonomous/self-driving, to see what’s expected to come soon.

Re the secretary thing, our company are very hot on technology but as far as I'm aware we have roughly one secretary to two managers. The secretaries are forever complaining about their workload, and temps being rustled up. Their jobs look safe to me - as the cliché goes, they're the only ones that know how to bloody do anything.

Sorry I should say we have loads of managers, and roughly half that number again in the secretary pool. We're always hiring.

By that time there will be less people on the planet. Those who will have more than 2 kids will pay a large amount of tax and will face many disadvantages so they will think twice about churning out too many of them. This will apply globally.

There are some interesting TED talks on this topic if people are interested...

www.ted.com/topics/robots

Apparently the some of the easiest jobs for computers to replace are those in finance, those are pretty high end but I won't shed any tears when those folks are out of work, they've had it pretty good and should have a fair sized financial cushion

www.ft.com/content/3da058a0-e268-11e6-8405-9e5580d6e5fb

Also, the Japanese are determined we'll have robot caregivers but I'm not sure how far they are along that road. I'd like one of those seals though.

www.engadget.com/2017/08/29/robot-caregivers-are-saving-the-elderly-from-lives-of-loneliness/

Quite, ShellyBoobs .

I enjoy using Alexa. I don't have to fiddle about with the radio, peering at the volume etc. I just say, "Alexa! Play Radio 4!" and we're away. Let alone asking what the weather will be like tomorrow, or the traffic on the way to Skegness. Can you just imagine doing that two years ago, let alone ten or twenty?

So sticking your fingers in your ears and saying, "Oh, computers will never be able to do that " - don't be so sure. The world is changing very fast. I just saw that Conde Nast is massively contracting... no one buys glossy magazines any more. When I was at school every other girl (girls' school!) said their dream career was working on a magazine (very Bell Jar). I expect magazines will soon be as obsolete as the phone box.

I'm a senior manager in insurance and automation/robotics is the next big thing that financial services companies are investing in.

In the next five years I suspect a lot of admin tasks will be automated by robots. At first it won't have a huge impact on U.K. jobs as most companies have already offshored simple, repetitive tasks to places like India and the Philippines. They will be the first jobs to go.

We're still a way off automating more complex roles like insurance underwriters but some companies are starting to work on this now though I anticipate it will be 10 years or so before we see any real impact.

There are other roles I see as even more suitable for automation - accountants are the best example. I foresee a time in the next 10 years where teams of 20 accountants are replaced with 2 or 3 senior accountants who review the output from the robots and make adjustments and some tech support.

@MorrisZapp But likely a significant proportion of those senior managers are less tech savvy?

I can't imagine using a secretary...I don't use paper at all, booking travel can be done in a few clicks. I don't know what I'd actually do with a secretary if I had one...

Do you work in the Civil Service, MorrisZapp ? I think that the CS will be the last bastion of human workers! Secretaries? I don't know anywhere that has secretaries any more. Anyone who does admin in an office is called "admin" or if they are required to answer the phone, a "PA". Back in my day a PA was either a scary older lady guarding the boss with her life or a... dolly bird. Those were the days...

Rainandfire - that is true of many of the already-lost jobs, but technology is coming for the white collar jobs too. Accountancy, legal work - even medical diagnostics.

Speaking about my profession, accountancy, they've been saying this since I started in the 1980s! At first it was software and computers which would speed up book-keeping and replace rooms full of book-keepers writing in ledgers. Then it was from the use of cheap labour in Asia rather than highly paid UK based accountants. Then it was "self assessment" that meant people would all do their own tax returns and wouldn't need accountants. Then it was "cloud" computing which reads bank statements and scans of invoices. Now it's the new "making tax digital" initiative from HMRC. But none of the doom-mongers were right. We're as busy as ever. Thing is that software is never perfect and needs manual workarounds, ever changing tax legislation changes faster than the software providers can program the changes, people still foul up even with automation, OCR still makes mistakes and needs human checking. I could go on, but suffice to say, I'm not worried. My practice is just riding on the crest of each change as it happens - I'm certainly not fighting technology, in fact, I embrace every new challenge as an opportunity. It's the way we do our work that has changed, mostly to improve the services we provide, at a lower cost to the client as we can do things quicker!

This is a huge change on the horizon.

If our leaders had half a brain we'd:

• all know about it
• be planning how we were going to spend our leisure time once robots did all the work
• be discussing the very real dangers of harm from the robots being too powerful

Instead, what does this government give us? Fucking Universal Credit. Brexit. What is the popular press talking about? Benefit cheats and fighting over Brexit.
It makes no sense. Zero vision.

We are within reach of solving some of the fundamental issues of mankind. But our leaders have no vision, they're stuck in 20th century politics. We risk missing this chance completely.

Legal jobs are going to suffer massively from this.

Law is an industry that hasn't kept pace with the times. It still has a very heirarchical culture, with many firms using junior staff do jobs that computers could have done 10 years ago.

And they're expensive.

The government relaxed the law on what kind of company could call itself a law firm a while back. Once a few tech companies realise how they could clean up here, by employing a couple of lawyers, supported by tech to offer a quality service at a vastly reduced price because of efficiency savings, the traditional solicitors firms won't stand a chance.

Plus then with AI, computers will be able to do a lot of the work solicitors do now.

The industry is dead in the water IMO.

Same for accounting, insurance, loads of white collar industries.

Given that in 2017 there is still air conditioning that breaks down every time its slightly warm, i cant worry about tech taking over the world

They'll vote Labour, holding their hands out for freebies.

You are a large landowner who will be self-sufficient with enough lifestock to feed you? Of course you need no job when they are all gone then. They will work for you protecting this.

hotbutteredcrumpetsandtea is spot on and you can forget about a citizen's wage, where do you think the money for it would come from?

In the Civil Service, there are still loads of secretarial posts but they are called PAs or EAs and look after 2 or 3 managers rather than just one. It’s quite a dead end job unless you move into another role and I imagine there will be fewer assistants in 10 years time looking after a greater number of senior managers.

I can see a world where the 1% live in gated palaces with armed guards and the rest line up for basic rations and live in slums as there are no jobs. The rich will be just fine.