You're right about jobs for unskilled illiterate workers drying up... but the new robotics revolution will create many jobs and new industries. When I was younger and computers didn't have screens - and were programmed with punch cards... the word was that computers would replace most workers. The tech industries employ millions. My grandmother worried dial phones would replace operators... which did happen - later computers basically finished off that occupation. I'm guessing some jobs will be lost but many more will be formed.
What will the robots not be able to make or do better cheaper and faster than humans? You’ll struggle to find something. Where exactly or even generally are the new jobs coming from?
Accounting? Gone.
Legal fields? Gone.
Fast food? Gone.
Farming? Gone.
Mining? Gone
Teaching? Gone.
Industrial Jobs? Gone.
Taxi driver? Gone.
Clerks and Sales? Gone
Banking? Gone.
R&D? Mostly gone.
Trade Unions? Gone because nobody will have a trade.
Police? Mostly Gone because the driverless car won’t violate any traffic laws.
Delivery guys? Extinct and replaced by drones
Sex Workers? The Japanese are already developing robot girlfriends
Soldier? I hope not but fighter pilots yeah.
Clergy? Probably still here.
We’re almost to the point where the supervisors of robots will be other robots. That means the new jobs that open up are going to be filled with other electronic workers, not people that have been laid off from their old jobs. I’d hire a robot over any SJW right now if I were an employer.
Acting? CGI is going to replace live actors. This will lower the cost of making movies because they won’t have to pay Brad Pitt 50 million a gig and the CGI Brad Pitt never gets old. The graphics are getting that good. Maybe 20 or 30 years and Hollywood will be Hollygone.
This is not going to be like the 1950s or 1980s. There is going to be a huge amount of social dislocation in the next couple of decades. And unlike the past, I do not see where any new jobs are coming from.
What is supposed to open up? You cannot name a field that will not be overtaken by automated workers. (Maybe counseling, and I am not so sure about even that.)
We will be left with basically artisan stuff. Do you want handwoven wool cloth for your trousers? Great, but what are you going to use to buy it? I am not saying it is going to be all bad If handled right there will be huge benefits. For example, as the health care system is robotized even the cost will fall. That robot surgeon can operate 24/7/365 without making a mistake. We are standing on the brink of the most tremendous golden age in the history of the planet or on the edge of creating our own actual hell on Earth.
Given the history of humanity, I’d bet on the hell on Earth.
I think if I were 20 rather than 60 I’d become really proficient in a hobby that could maybe replace a career.
Please note, I am not planning to vote for Mr. Yang. But, he is the only one talking about this stuff. It is a real problem and it is only going to get worse.
Yang is a fool because he supports open borders. Let the Central Americans stay in their backward society and labor there until technology arrives We don’t need them here. We’re gonna have enough problems find things for the people already here to do.
Yeah, I have a somewhat dystopic view of the near future.