People looking at the Automatiopocalypse as being the result of advanced AI and super high tech are missing the scary point: We don't need self-driving cars or Turing-test-passing chatbots to put 30% of the population out of work. We just need to finish the roll-out of bog standard dumb automation to supermarket checkouts, airport baggage drops, self-service kiosks, fast food restaurants etc. People at the low end of the market are already scratching for jobs and they're running out of higher land to run to.
Couldn't agree more. Self-driving cars are exciting to report on, so get all the attention, but I'm absolutely convinced that general day-to-day automation of award-wage jobs will be the sneaky left hander that shakes society up.
When they get supermarket self-checkouts to be as foolproof as staffed checkouts (eg some kind of NFC/RFID based walk-through scanning, and not this current "customer does the work" one that still needs constant assistance and staffing), you're already putting a HUGE number of people out of work.
McDonalds has been pushing their automated systems HARD here in Australia, with all kinds of perks if you use their app or in-store touchscreens to order and pay. Our local one in the last couple years alone went from 4-5 staff on front, to 1, maybe 2 in peak.
Online grocery shopping is so common here now that I don't know many people who actually go to the shops for their big weekly shop, just to grab a few items for cravings and bits and pieces on the way home from work. Of my 5 closest local friends, 4 do their primary weekly groceries online, whereas a couple years ago it was 1.
Ikea does self-checkout now, and sometimes has no staffed checkouts open here, unless you have special needs then they'll open one for you (we're usually dragging kids and prams so they'll open one for us).
I now renew my car rego, insurance, license, etc online. Just a few years ago that HAD to be done in person, at the dreaded roads authority. I haven't been in there for a couple years now, and it used to be 2-3 times a year for various things.
Exactly. People see the one attendant standing near the self-checkouts and think "See? The jobs are still there!" But there's one attendant. Where are the other five checkout chicks they used to employ? They're not designing automated machinery or coding vision algorithms, that's for sure.
Yeah I know right. Just like how the invention of cars put all those rickshaw driver, horse breeders, horseshoe makers, hayrollers, cart makers, wheelwrights etc. all out of work.
The same old busted argument again and again and again and again.... ad infinitum
How many people do you know in any of those industries? You're just making my point. Those jobs (as widespread sources of employment, not hobbies / niches) are gone.
The difference this time is that cars can do one job: The job of a horse and cart. There were plenty of other industries for the farriers, wainwrights etc. to move into. There's not that many productive jobs that an unskilled human can do that can't be automated.
He's not wrong. But I think the biggest impact of all this restructuring will be underdeveloped economies which don't have natural resources to lean on. Economies with young and growing populations.
Western Europe, East Asia and the US will be much less affected than those whose natural populations have not stabilized. You can expect upheaval there from generations with no future either at home or abroad (if Yang's predictions come true).
What's surprising to me is that you have two different factions on the left: Traditional pro-labor camp who are worried about this possibility and the new technocratic progressive left which is trying to downplay the possibility.
As a non-economist, all one can do is take a stab at an idea. The natural pops of mature economies are decreasing, which eases the pain, but that also means a smaller contributory pop. funding non-workers. Can basic income close the gap? Doubtful. That gap is huuuuge. Bernie is crazy if he thinks radical taxation can cover the gap.
Underdeveloped economies may or may not be able to achieve widespread affluence, if there is no natural ladder to climb in an economy. On the other hand their expectations are lower than that of the pops in mature economies. Still, it seems calamitous.
Still, if his prediction plays out, then pain lies ahead. If it's slow coming like the one Japan is virtually experiencing, it may be palatable, to a great degree.
Everyone keeps saying that automation will mean we have/get to work less. People were saying it in 1900. People were saying it in 1950. People were saying it in 2000. People are saying it in 2018. Still waiting for those unemployment numbers to not be the lowest they've been in recent history.
Turns out people rather like working, at least more than the alternative. Most jobs suck. I'm not hoping for or expecting a future without jobs; I'm hopeful for a future with better jobs.
Back in the 70s computers were going to put all the clerk's out of work, yet here we are 40 years later, computers are everywhere, and yet we have more information workers than ever before. There are more people sitting at computer terminals today than there were people pushing pencils back before the computer revolution. The whole conspiracy to eliminate all those jobs completely backfired, we just kept finding new things to do.
The problem is that automation (like mechanization before it) is easiest to apply to simple repetitive jobs. The remaining jobs are 'knowledge jobs' like engineering, project management etc. which require a specialized understanding of the work (often on a project-by-project basis) in order to perform it. You need one individual (or a small group) who are responsible for 100% of a project, or the communication overheads become massive and the work becomes intractable.
Which is why we have what we have now - a few overworked people doing stupid hours trying to hold everything together, and a lot of underemployed / unemployed people who can't break in because they don't have the skills or proven track record required.
I maintain that automation means that we have to work more. Perhaps counterintuitively, automation creates more job demand.
And that's when the battle begins. If I work a little more with more work available to me, I have a little bit more to spend. And spend it I will... Probably on housing. Now you can't afford a place to live, so you have to start working a little more so that you can also afford a place to live. And so on.
It is not a coincidence that women started entering the workforce en-masse at the same time automation was coming into its own. Previously there wasn't enough work for women to do, but once automation created an abundance of jobs there were some who started to take jobs. Once they did, soon all households needed both a man and a woman (generalizing for simplicity's sake) to have jobs to be able to afford anything.
But now we don't have another gender to help fill the void. It has been fascinating (albeit unfortunate) to watch people start to flounder as this plays out, and it will be interesting to see what happens when it all comes to a head as there is only so much work one person can do.
Most people on HN don't have real jobs. The entire premise of venture capital is gambling that you'll be able to fund the next Facebook or whatever.
The reason that jobs would go away is more automation, but more automation means markets are more winner-take-all. And if more markets are winner-take-all, then that which means higher expected returns to capital if you can back a winning startup.
I don't know to what extent they balance out, but it seems at least plausible that as technology centralizes the economy then most jobs could basically be in service of gambling with investor money.
You're right, and productivity growth isn't particularly high at the moment (indicating a low rate of automation compared to past decades). I also think it must take a colossal lack of imagination - not to mention lack of awareness in the world around you - to think that we're going to run of of things to do anytime soon.
On the other hand, a lot of the work that needs to be done is stuff that needs to come from collective action (Replication crisis, aging infrastructure, global warming, cancer research, environmental destruction, food scarcity, etc.), which we don't seem to have much a a political/societal will for at the moment. And a lot of the work that people are currently doing seems rather pointless, or even having a net negative impact on society (soda, highly processed food, credit cards, car dealerships, arguably almost all advertising, etc.).
It's possible that we'll end up as a society where a larger and larger percentage of the population will end up working parasitic jobs meant to leech off of the smaller and smaller percentage of the population doing actual productive work. Again, this seems to stem from the lack of political and societal will to try to allocate resources more efficiently.
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 20.4 ms ] threadIt just hit me that the Mythical Man Month might have entail pretty important consequences for the future of mass (un)employment.
When they get supermarket self-checkouts to be as foolproof as staffed checkouts (eg some kind of NFC/RFID based walk-through scanning, and not this current "customer does the work" one that still needs constant assistance and staffing), you're already putting a HUGE number of people out of work.
McDonalds has been pushing their automated systems HARD here in Australia, with all kinds of perks if you use their app or in-store touchscreens to order and pay. Our local one in the last couple years alone went from 4-5 staff on front, to 1, maybe 2 in peak.
Online grocery shopping is so common here now that I don't know many people who actually go to the shops for their big weekly shop, just to grab a few items for cravings and bits and pieces on the way home from work. Of my 5 closest local friends, 4 do their primary weekly groceries online, whereas a couple years ago it was 1.
Ikea does self-checkout now, and sometimes has no staffed checkouts open here, unless you have special needs then they'll open one for you (we're usually dragging kids and prams so they'll open one for us).
I now renew my car rego, insurance, license, etc online. Just a few years ago that HAD to be done in person, at the dreaded roads authority. I haven't been in there for a couple years now, and it used to be 2-3 times a year for various things.
The robots aren't coming, they're already here.
The same old busted argument again and again and again and again.... ad infinitum
The difference this time is that cars can do one job: The job of a horse and cart. There were plenty of other industries for the farriers, wainwrights etc. to move into. There's not that many productive jobs that an unskilled human can do that can't be automated.
Western Europe, East Asia and the US will be much less affected than those whose natural populations have not stabilized. You can expect upheaval there from generations with no future either at home or abroad (if Yang's predictions come true).
What's surprising to me is that you have two different factions on the left: Traditional pro-labor camp who are worried about this possibility and the new technocratic progressive left which is trying to downplay the possibility.
Almost our entire cultural value is based upon labor and hard work being able to make a living for yourself. If you can no longer do so, what happens?
Underdeveloped economies may or may not be able to achieve widespread affluence, if there is no natural ladder to climb in an economy. On the other hand their expectations are lower than that of the pops in mature economies. Still, it seems calamitous.
Still, if his prediction plays out, then pain lies ahead. If it's slow coming like the one Japan is virtually experiencing, it may be palatable, to a great degree.
Turns out people rather like working, at least more than the alternative. Most jobs suck. I'm not hoping for or expecting a future without jobs; I'm hopeful for a future with better jobs.
Its not zero sum.
Which is why we have what we have now - a few overworked people doing stupid hours trying to hold everything together, and a lot of underemployed / unemployed people who can't break in because they don't have the skills or proven track record required.
And that's when the battle begins. If I work a little more with more work available to me, I have a little bit more to spend. And spend it I will... Probably on housing. Now you can't afford a place to live, so you have to start working a little more so that you can also afford a place to live. And so on.
It is not a coincidence that women started entering the workforce en-masse at the same time automation was coming into its own. Previously there wasn't enough work for women to do, but once automation created an abundance of jobs there were some who started to take jobs. Once they did, soon all households needed both a man and a woman (generalizing for simplicity's sake) to have jobs to be able to afford anything.
But now we don't have another gender to help fill the void. It has been fascinating (albeit unfortunate) to watch people start to flounder as this plays out, and it will be interesting to see what happens when it all comes to a head as there is only so much work one person can do.
Most people on HN don't have real jobs. The entire premise of venture capital is gambling that you'll be able to fund the next Facebook or whatever.
The reason that jobs would go away is more automation, but more automation means markets are more winner-take-all. And if more markets are winner-take-all, then that which means higher expected returns to capital if you can back a winning startup.
I don't know to what extent they balance out, but it seems at least plausible that as technology centralizes the economy then most jobs could basically be in service of gambling with investor money.
On the other hand, a lot of the work that needs to be done is stuff that needs to come from collective action (Replication crisis, aging infrastructure, global warming, cancer research, environmental destruction, food scarcity, etc.), which we don't seem to have much a a political/societal will for at the moment. And a lot of the work that people are currently doing seems rather pointless, or even having a net negative impact on society (soda, highly processed food, credit cards, car dealerships, arguably almost all advertising, etc.).
It's possible that we'll end up as a society where a larger and larger percentage of the population will end up working parasitic jobs meant to leech off of the smaller and smaller percentage of the population doing actual productive work. Again, this seems to stem from the lack of political and societal will to try to allocate resources more efficiently.