Posted on 02/18/2017 5:54:10 PM PST by SeekAndFind
Within the next 10 years, there's a good chance that 50% of the jobs today will be gone.And no one in Washington is talking about what to do to deal with this likelihood.
The cause of this coming massive economic upheaval is artificial intelligence -- a catch-all term that encompasses everything from driverless cars to sex robots. Its impact is already being felt on the factory floor, where smart machines are making American manufacturers more competitive, more efficient, and more profitable, but without the mass number of workers that used to be the backbone of the American economy.
Donald Trump says he can change all this, that he can bring these jobs back from overseas, or prevent illegal immigrants from taking them. And the president isn't alone. The Democratic Party and the AFL-CIO still believe that a manufacturing Renaissance is possible.
But this is a fantasy. Those jobs didn't go overseas. They're forever gone as super-intelligent machines are making human beings superfluous.
Unnoticed by most is that this Renaissance is already well underway. The problem for Trump, the Democrats, and the unions is that the new plants are employing 90% fewer workers than they would have a generation ago. As manufacturing jobs disappear, manufacturing output is soaring. We are making more things in the U.S. than in any other country except China. And we're doing it with a lot fewer workers.
A hugely significant meeting took place in Asilomar, California, in January at which the top experts in the field of artificial intelligence gathered to discuss ethical guidelines to prevent some super-intelligent machine from running amok and threatening civilization. This is a serious question that is being debated by dead serious people who know the potential of AI for good -- and evil.
But the attendees were far more worried about the impact of AI on the workforce and what it means for the future of the economy.
In the US, the number of manufacturing jobs peaked in 1979 and has steadily decreased ever since. At the same time, manufacturing has steadily increased, with the US now producing more goods than any other country but China. Machines aren’t just taking the place of humans on the assembly line. They’re doing a better job. And all this before the coming wave of AI upends so many other sectors of the economy. “I am less concerned with Terminator scenarios,” MIT economist Andrew McAfee said on the first day at Asilomar. “If current trends continue, people are going to rise up well before the machines do.”
McAfee pointed to newly collected data that shows a sharp decline in middle class job creation since the 1980s. Now, most new jobs are either at the very low end of the pay scale or the very high end. He also argued that these trends are reversible, that improved education and a greater emphasis on entrepreneurship and research can help feed new engines of growth, that economies have overcome the rise of new technologies before. But after his talk, in the hallways at Asilomar, so many of the researchers warned him that the coming revolution in AI would eliminate far more jobs far more quickly than he expected.
Indeed, the rise of driverless cars and trucks is just a start. New AI techniques are poised to reinvent everything from manufacturing to healthcare to Wall Street. In other words, it’s not just blue-collar jobs that AI endangers. “Several of the rock stars in this field came up to me and said: ‘I think you’re low-balling this one. I think you are underestimating the rate of change,'” McAfee says.
That threat has many thinkers entertaining the idea of a universal basic income, a guaranteed living wage paid by the government to anyone left out of the workforce. But McAfee believes this would only make the problem worse, because it would eliminate the incentive for entrepreneurship and other activity that could create new jobs as the old ones fade away. Others question the psychological effects of the idea. “A universal basic income doesn’t give people dignity or protect them from boredom and vice,” Etzioni says.
Been hearing this sort of talk since at least the 50s. Didn’t happen then and won’t happen now.
AI robots may replace much of that as well. Such a device could keep you from having to go to an assisted living center or nursing home.
I expect they'll be available by the time I would need them. I plan to live in my own house for the duration. Mine will be named 'Robby'.
Prices will drop, and quality will rise across the board.
Medical careers are far from a sure thing - as more diseases will be cured, we may need fewer health care workers.
The power of robotics and AI will become better and cheaper, becoming available to any entrepreneur, just as the Internet is today.
I hope I can still make buggy whips next year...
I think that is part of the point of the article. We are going to need robot repairmen and others with skills. Government schools are still doing things the way they were done 100 years ago, not just 40 or 50.
Let’s face it, the main purpose of keeping kids locked up in boring classrooms, marching lockstep with other kids based on age rather than progress or ability, is all about subsidized babysitting so parents can go to their jobs and keep the kids out of their hair. If schools were really about educating children, they would be tailored to individual students who could then graduate when they had achieved certain objectives rather than being warehoused until age 18. The entire system from pre-school through college is a dinosaur that just won’t die.
But nobody is going to be paid $35 an hour with great benefits to lower a Ford windshield onto a car. There are few good jobs left for people doing manual labor or unskilled work. About all that is left is the service sector, and that is shrinking, too.
The future belongs to people who have the attributes to learn the skills needed in the digital age.
The industrial robots based in Foxconn’s factories are also known as “Foxbots.” The company owns approximately 50,000 foxbots and other automated equipment. Foxconn is capable of performing more than 20 varied manufacturing processes, including stamping, polishing, packaging and testing. Currently Foxbots are used in factories including Zhengzhou, Kunshan and Shenzhen. The deployment also implies the possibility of lights-out, or worker-less, factories in the future.Foxconn’s in-house manufactured robotic technology is capable of covering up to 70% of the mechanical manufacturing process , said Chia-Peng Day, general manager of Automation Technology Development Committee of Foxconn Technology Group. Chances are that these robots will be used in Foxconn’s manufacturing bases including Zhengzhou, Kunshan and Shenzhen, turning them into lights-out factories. Meanwhile, Foxconn’s “Foxbot” may be commercialized and introduced to the market, reported South China Morning Post.
Millions of people are going to become obsolete in this utopian scenario. We get an apocalyptic world with the filthy rich lording over and eventually culling the herds of the filthy poor to stay safe, pampered, and powerful in thier compounds. Jobless, useless, miserable masses won’t have a place in this glorious new world.
Maybe thousands of call centers will fill the void. Oh that’s right - Alexa will handle all of that. Even those jobs will disappear. What am I missing here?
Even as robots and AI systems make for cheaper production and greater material abundance, there will still be a need for skilled people who can think up and refine new equipment, products, and processes. Customer service jobs will also remain in demand, even if only as genial and informed expert mediators between ordinary customers and the AI systems that are coming to dominate many service industries. The real problem with employment is that at every level, from K to 12, from college freshman to post-graduate and workplace education, our educational system and methods are poorly suited to their tasks. We urgently need better ways to motivate, teach, and otherwise prepare people for the new job market.
Also, if the automation plant is in China, then the truck drivers bringing materials to the plant are also in China, and the robot repairman is in China, and the cleaning crew is in China, and the automation engineer is in China. Losing some jobs to automation is not as destructive as losing industries to foreign countries.
I have never liked the idea of a guaranteed income either. I grew up when any able bodied young person who had at least average IQ could work hard and get somewhere but I see that things are vastly different for young people now. I used to think I knew the answer but now I am just waiting and watching.
Not really, this is just a continuation of a long line of automation, including other IT developments, that have helped to make American workers more productive and thus earn them a higher standard of living.
It has become the cover-up excuse for the dysfunctional Obama economy, just as “stagflation” was supposedly the new, inevitable and permanent state of our economy during the Carter era.
Don’t buy into the BS. The problems we have with tech involve its roll in our voluntarily harnessing ourselves into a police state of surveillance and control—not with the rising efficiency making our jobs obsolete.
Just kick out enough of the illegals and we’ll have plenty of better-paying jobs for low-skilled Americans.
Ha ha—is that really what that is?
You are looking a long, long way out when you are talking about those levels of robots building and repairing robots, including to the level of obviating the need for doctors and other medical professionals.
Also, a good part of why the low-skill service jobs are cheap is because we have taken in 10’s of millions of low-skill, largely illegal laborers. This has both pulled down wages via competition for those jobs and staved off the investments in technology that would make those jobs more productive and thus more valuable.
That that Luddite fantasy has been dreamt up to cover up for the Obama types intentionally bogging down our economy.
There was a massive inflow of technology, for example, displacing hordes of secretaries and clerks, in the 1980s. But under the Reagan revolution that became Morning in America, with “greed” decried by the left as more and more people became wealthy and saw their middle-class standards of living finally rise again.
Here s the most disingenuous statement of the century. The USA imports Trillions of dollars of durable goods every year. Goods that used to be made in the USA. So the writer would have us ignore the millions of container ships that poor into the USA every year. We run a $800B dollar trade deficit every year which amounts to $70B in lost wages, perhaps over 2 million blue collar jobs.
Worm tongued Globlaist link automation with offshoring. Don't fall for it.
Fixed it for you.
Not if the factories are in the 3rd world and we keep importing.
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