To wonder what will happen when there are no iobs

[rainandfire]

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

In terms of paperless office...I work in large commercial insurance...Lloyds of London, etc. Dealing with very, very large and complex risks.

We are paperless, and we don't use wet signatures but electronic stamps and signatures. So I'm surprised that other industries are so far behind @Ta1kinPeece and @hotbutteredcrumpetsandtea

I always thought we, in insurance, tended to be further behind than a lot.

And in regards to the insurance of driverless cars being 'impossible'...it definitely isn't. The insurance industry already deals with insuring complex risks..satellites, space tourism, cyber attacks. If there is an insurance need the industry will find a way to fill it. Driverless autos wouldn't be that difficult to insure TBH compared to other technological advances the industry cover.

Surely driverless cars are really useful in rural areas?

I live in a rural area...when I reach the age that driving becomes difficult I very much hope that driverless cars are around. It's very sad to see the degree that elderly and disabled people are cut off in rural areas if they can't drive.

eyebrows
Its less that audit is so far behind
than the fact that in Public Sector Audit - where you are signing off the spending of millions of other people's money, the NAO and DCLG and the Treasury
like to see evidence that the person actually saw the piece of paper.

We do loads of stuff electronically (I'm working with iXBRL in another tab right now)
but some parts of assurance need proof.

Yes, but that will change. The public sector is always a decade behind everyone else it seems.

I can't imagine many of us in our 20's and 30's now expecting to deal with paper in the workplace - I couldn't go back to how we worked even 10 years ago. I barely use paper for anything.

In fact HMRC are the main culprits for wanting to send everything as a letter...I hate it and can't think of any other things in my life where I get things by letter

The millenials won't be used to working in paper at all so I expect once they're all in mid to senior management the paperless office will be completely normal.

Male sex robots who can actually make you orgasm. With unlimited stamina too.

In my profession (law) there is a lot of talk about this and while I can see how some lower end standardised tasks disappear it’s going to require quite dramatic advances before the higher end stuff, especially things like litigation which involves an element of psychological manipulation of the other side, disappears.
So the question is how do young lawyers get a start, if the easy contracts and document searches are all done by robots.

And in regards to the insurance of driverless cars being 'impossible'...it definitely isn't

I said buses, and at the moment.

eyebrows I agree. we live in a rural area and a family member has had an operation and can't drive. They have been totally isolated unless their partner drives them out somewhere. It has been quite sad to see.

Whereas if we lived in a town, they would hop on a bus. You need to drive 5-10 miles here just to catch a bus or a train.

So yes, driverless cars in rural areas would be good. (Not so sure how they would cope with the blind bends, bushy hedges and people who drive in the middle of the road though)

So yes, driverless cars in rural areas would be good.

But would there be the demand and how would they be paid for? The reason bus services are reduced is lack of demand, i.e. it's not cost effective to lay on a bus for just 1 or 2 people. You can't have a fleet of driverless cars (costing tens of thousands each) just sat waiting on the off chance someone might want to use one. Then if you have just 1 in the village, what happens when two people need it?

Why not just use a taxi - probably cheaper and more convenient than these high tech driverless cars will ever be in our lifetimes.

Or do advocates of driverless cars just expect the taxpayer to subsidise?

Universal Basic Income - it will happen.
It must happen.
Or lots of us are going to starve. The cashier jobs are all going already, and soon we wont need drivers anymore...

Completely driverless cars are still a way off - you still need a driver to be able to takeover. High end jobs that require nuanced thinking, interpreting the shades of grey aren't going to disappear and new jobs will be created. My job didn't exist a few decades ago, it was created by changes in legislation. As for the citizens income, good idea in theory but who pays it if the workforce is diminished. I suspect that the population will reduce, the planet can't support those that are already here and those that have don't want to give to those that don't have.

karrie I don't advocate them, just pondered that they would be a good idea. I was presuming that we were talking about a world where all cars where driverless and therefore taxi's no longer exist unless they are driverless of course, and that the family member would own a driverless car as would all people as they would be the only cars available to buy.

Meanwhile, in the Real World, the nearest taxi's here are also 10-12 miles away so cost a small fortune.

I work all over Hampshire.
Much of the county is so remote that it is not economic to provide buses, broadband or mobile phone coverage.

City dwellers and policy makers really have no idea about such issues.
Rural poverty is brutal in its isolation

Driverless cars versus deer and tractors .... tee hee

A great point I heard in a TED talk was that at one time 90% of the population were employed in the farming industry.

If we could go back and tell them that tractors and other machinery would take over they would expect 89% of the population to be unemployed.

They would NEVER expect anyone to be employed as a yoga teacher or a nail technician. Those jobs would’ve been simply unimaginable.

So I imagine the same will happen again, there will be jobs we could never have imagined existing!

we could come full circle on automated manufacturing as big car manufacturers like Toyota and Mercedes Benz have done recently...

www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/feb/26/mercedes-benz-robots-people-assembly-lines
qz.com/196200/toyota-is-becoming-more-efficient-by-replacing-robots-with-humans/

robots replaced people but then people now replace robots!

There will be many more jobs focussed around the elderly, as there'll be loads of us.

Also one day, cash, credit cards and keys will be obsolete. All information you will ever need including bank account, access to your house, etc will be stored in a biological microchip inserted under the skin as a newborn. This will also be your identity. It will take hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of workers to manage these chips from the enormous data centres all around the world. We will all be working in these huge, city-wide offices doing that.

Idea patented for my future novel/film

The kind of tech you are imagining here is to a mobile phone what a rock is to the latest power tools.

Are you comparing driverless vehicles to a rock?

Once you have the technology, it's not a big step to all new cars having it. That's the fastest phase.
New cars are already full of sensors and software. It doesn't require a huge leap.

I've seen DNA sequencing take huge steps in the last 20 years. Both at incremental steps and major breakthroughs.

Hover cars no.
Driverless cars, yes.

You can't have a fleet of driverless cars (costing tens of thousands each) just sat waiting on the off chance someone might want to use one.

Why are people equating driverless cars with public services?

It's cars you'll be able to purchase. Some may be used as taxis. It's not a problem if there's only one in a village and two people need it. Just take it in turns. Surely having one is always better than none. The only problem is if nobody needs it.
And it would be cheaper than having a driver on call.
It could actually be the solution to lack of buses.

They would NEVER expect anyone to be employed as a yoga teacher or a nail technician

Well, I think there would have been plenty of yoga teachers in 7th century India....and I am pretty sure I read where the ancient Egyptians spent a great deal of time adorning their nails.

Once you have the technology, it's not a big step to all new cars having it.

But you need "ALL" cars on the road to have it before it fully comes into its own, i.e. ALL cars talking to eachother as they drive along to stay out of eachothers' way. It will take decades for all the older vehicles to be scrapped or converted.

Just look at digital radio. On paper/in theory, it should be fully rolled out by now and the analogue signals turned off. But the sheer number of analogue radios in use has dramatically slowed down the conversion and the last I heard the plans for turning off analogue had been effectively shelved and kicked into the long grass. If we can't make a relatively simple and cheap conversion for radios, there's no way that driverless cars are going to replace normal cars this century.

It could actually be the solution to lack of buses.

No, it would be far cheaper just to have a bus and driver that can cover several villages and carry dozens of passengers than each village having an expensive driverless car using an expensive infrastructure, just in case someone wants to go somewhere. If there's a demand and the residents have the money, they could club together to arrange a bus service, assuming no public money involved, which will be a lot cheaper than smaller communities clubbing together to buy several driverless cars.

But you need "ALL" cars on the road to have it before it fully comes into its own, i.e. ALL cars talking to eachother as they drive along to stay out of eachothers' way. It will take decades for all the older vehicles to be scrapped or converted.

You don't need cars talking to each other.

And I doubt cars will be made where the driver can't take over. Like planes.
And there aren't many cars over 10 years old on the road, let alone 20.
In fact, they might start lasting longer without the human factor. :)

*Jobs disappear in one area, more are created in another. Twas ever thus. People have been "banging on" about being replaced by automation for centuries. Wagon drivers complained about trains, horse breeders complained about cars, telegram workers complained about the telephone.

But in reality, big tech move slowly, and jobs change and adapt and when some disappear, new markets appear. This doom and gloom nonsense about all the jobs disappearing is neither true or useful*

I agree with this

Pardon for trotting out the logic here, but just because change happened in some way before....doesn't mean it will happen the same way again.

Just saying.