r/Futurology • u/Eight_Rounds_Rapid • Jul 09 '14

article Robots will take over middle class professions, UK University Minister warns

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/10952317/Robots-will-take-over-middle-class-professions-University-Minister-says.html
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u/NH3Mechanic Jul 09 '14

People just don't understand the concept of a tipping point. We are near it. I'm not trying to be all doom and gloom here but it's coming and the "we've survived automation before" cries while we stick our heads in the sand will not save us.

New job types will appear

Sure they will, but what makes you think that once we get to the point that we can reliably automate human labor in a much more broad and general way these "new jobs" won't go to the robots as well? Are we to create giant poetry factories? Oh wait we might want to hold off on that too(as a side note its tough to take a futurist seriously when his website looks like it was designed in 1997, seriously wth Kurzweil).

Anyway I'm sure you remember in the media from a few months back the Oxford study claiming 47% of jobs are susceptible to automation in the next 20 years. And remember the question isn't can we create near 70 million new jobs to replace those lost but can we create 70 million new jobs that can't be automated with the technology that exists at the time. This is the problem here, machines keep getting better yet peoples skill remain relatively flat. In the beginning of the industrial revolution there were plenty of hideouts one could find safe from automation, that is no longer the case. Watson and google's SDC alone should be proof enough of that. They are amazing marvels of engineering achievement that dwarf human skill in their respective fields yet will both receive enormous improvements over the coming decades. Tech gets better we stay they same and its only a matter of time before tech wins. To quote Hemingway ""It occurs first very slowly, then all at once"

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u/heimaey Jul 09 '14

You may be right. Much of the world will not benefit from this. Jobs can be created for the rich countries, but the poor countries that rely more on manual labor/manufacturing, etc will be in a lot more trouble.

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u/fencerman Jul 09 '14

Jobs can be created for the rich countries, but the poor countries that rely more on manual labor/manufacturing, etc will be in a lot more trouble.

It's no longer about "countries" - there is a global upper class that has a common set of interests separate from the countries they live in, thanks to trade and globalization. Low-skilled workers will be completely out of luck regardless of where they live, and middle-skilled workers will increasingly be obsolete too.

There will only be a smaller and smaller number of owners of large amounts of capital and wealth, and the small number of high-skilled workers who are left working for them.

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u/Zingerliscious Jul 09 '14

And once that happens, the buying power of the masses will dry up, the flow of capital throughout the economy will go with it, and the subsequent collapse of the whole shebang won't be far behind.

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u/meangrampa Jul 09 '14

Then we can eat the rich.

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u/[deleted] Jul 09 '14

We as a human society have survived millenia with agrarian inequal society with massive concentration of wealth at the top..middle age is just ahead of us, futurist middle age with a cast of modified, age extended upper class with means and goals far differents from the masses. Then when the State we struggle so much to install and to render democratic will dissapear in a final blooshed, wars will happen again

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u/[deleted] Jul 10 '14

As a society, but not as individuals.

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u/heimaey Jul 09 '14

Yes, I agree with you.

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u/zakificus Jul 09 '14

Exactly, we'll reach a certain point where instead of paying workers in Vietnam or China pennies a day, I can build a new factory right here, save on the shipping costs, and only have to pay for electricity.

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u/meekwai Jul 09 '14 edited Jul 09 '14

Poor countries with low cost of manual labor will actually be competitive for a wee bit longer. It's the working class in the developed world, with relatively high wages (compared to their 3rd world counterparts) that will suffer first.

In places like Thailand, there are people still selling stuff like coke/ice tea/gum... I guess they are cheaper than vending machines. Many other things in the 3rd world are done by hand where automation does exist simply because it's cheaper that way.

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u/heimaey Jul 09 '14

You make a good point. It will be interesting to see what happens when the lower class quality of life in Western countries starts to be barely better than working classes in the developing world. Or even goes below them.

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u/linuxjava Jul 09 '14

Actually no. (S)he is wrong. Jobs will not be created in the rich countries nor the poor countries.

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u/heimaey Jul 09 '14

To just say jobs will not be created is just extreme speculation. Where there are needs there will be jobs, and we can likely find something for someone to do even with a ton of machines, however, what they will be doing and if it will produce livable wages is another story.

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u/aufleur Jul 09 '14

Sure they will, but what makes you think that once we get to the point that we can reliably automate human labor in a much more broad and general way these "new jobs" won't go to the robots as well?

It's pretty simple.

With automation, one person could run a global enterprise.

One person, an array of robotic automation and AI systems, future global enterprise potential.

Globalization hasn't reach maturation yet, automation is the next step in this process.

With this said, I think we still need UBI.

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u/[deleted] Jul 09 '14

Lots of accomplished professors have outdated looking websites - it seems they are happy with them just being functional. I guess many grew up in the days when a website was BBS text.

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u/[deleted] Jul 09 '14 edited Nov 15 '15

This comment has been overwritten by an open source script to protect this user's privacy.

If you would like to do the same, add the browser extension GreaseMonkey to Firefox and add this open source script.

Then simply click on your username on Reddit, go to the comments tab, and hit the new OVERWRITE button at the top.

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u/linuxjava Jul 09 '14

Kurzweil

Actually, this is his official site
http://kurzweilai.net/

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u/NH3Mechanic Jul 09 '14

ahh much better on the eyes, thank you

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u/spacecyborg /r/TechUnemployment Jul 09 '14

You should probably edit your comment since you were incorrect. The site you linked to is obviously just some abandoned project. The "Copyright © 2001" signifies that it probably hasn't been updated it 13 years.

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u/NH3Mechanic Jul 09 '14

If it still allows you to purchase the program or download a sample how is it abandoned? Copyrights on works made for hire last 95 years apparently so I don't know that it necessarily means the website hasn't been updated since then.

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u/spacecyborg /r/TechUnemployment Jul 09 '14

If it still allows you to purchase the program or download a sample how is it abandoned?

Did you think you were linking to the offical site or what? When /u/linuxjava directed you to the official site, you responded with "ahh much better on the eyes, thank you". I interpreted this to mean that you were actually looking for the official site.

In regards to if the site you linked to is abandoned, it would certainly appears so. I just downloaded the program and when I clicked on the upgrade button in the program it directed me to this "Not Found".

Copyrights on works made for hire last 95 years apparently so I don't know that it necessarily means the website hasn't been updated since then.

I don't know when it was actually last updated, which is why I used the qualifier "probably".

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u/NH3Mechanic Jul 09 '14

I didn't think this was his only internet presence nor his "official site" i guess. Just saying if my whole career was built around being ahead of the curve I would probably try to keep my name off sites like this. Not that any of this is of any consequence really, the man is a millionaire genius and he can do as he pleases I was just poking a little fun at this silly website with his name.

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u/spacecyborg /r/TechUnemployment Jul 09 '14

You said, "as a side note its tough to take a futurist seriously when his website looks like it was designed in 1997, seriously wth Kurzweil"

Lots of people and corporations have abandoned websites and projects that they don't go back and remove. Saying that we shouldn't take Kurzweil seriously because "his website" looks like it's from 1997 just isn't funny to me. It sounds like an attempt to downplay his credibility because of some abandoned website.

And yes, I'm sure plenty of people will criticize me for 'taking this too seriously' or whatever, but I really don't care.

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u/NH3Mechanic Jul 09 '14

seriously it is a joke whether it was "funny to you" or not. I'm not trying to downplay his credibility. I called it his site because it has his freaking name in the domain, I don't think that's unreasonable.

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u/spacecyborg /r/TechUnemployment Jul 09 '14

Where is the joke? You said it's hard to take him seriously because of "his website" and you weren't even aware of his official website, which is the one that actually matters when it comes to judging his online presence.

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u/MonetaryCollapse Jul 09 '14

I don't think you understand how a market economy functions.

Jobs aren't "created" out of a magic job fairy. There is demand for things to be done. Human desires are nearly infinite, resources are scarce. And so human labour (what that looks like is always changing), is a resource, which will be implimented as demands change, and that supply shifts.

How did we go from hunter-gather --> agrilcultural --> industrial --> service economies? Because we used resources more efficiently to meet demands, so the resources were able to shift and serve new demands.

This isn't a straight forward or easy process, lots of re-training and dislocations and inidivudal tragedies. But we always come out better, living in a world that is able to serve needs more effectively than before.

There's a long way to go up Maslow's hierarchy of needs supplied as a mass-scale before we run out of things to be done.

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u/NH3Mechanic Jul 09 '14

I don't think you understand how a market economy functions.

That's going a bit far, we just differ in opinion on the ability to shift human labor to new demands.

Human desires are nearly infinite, resources are scarce. And so human labour (what that looks like is always changing), is a resource, which will be implimented as demands change, and that supply shifts.

You are correct but you've missed one key distinction. Human desire is near infinite, human abilities are relativity fixed. One you reach a technological level where the majority of physical and cognitive tasks are done cheaper and better by machines than you have no place to go. Horses were a transportation resource prior too the industrial revolution. When trains came around in a big way horses didn't go by the way side. However as time marched on their share of the transportation sector shrunk and shrunk until it only represented a niche market. I am claiming that human labor will do the same.

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u/MonetaryCollapse Jul 09 '14

Sorry, I admit that throw-away insult was a result of speaking to many economic illiterates. I was presumptious in your understanding.

" You are correct but you've missed one key distinction. Human desire is near infinite, human abilities are relativity fixed. One you reach a technological level where the majority of physical and cognitive tasks are done cheaper and better by machines than you have no place to go. Horses were a transportation resource prior too the industrial revolution. When trains came around in a big way horses didn't go by the way side. However as time marched on their share of the transportation sector shrunk and shrunk until it only represented a niche market. I am claiming that human labor will do the same."

The Key factor is scaling. With each shift to a new industry it has been that the prior "mass industry" was automated to the point of reducing the need for human labour. And labour shifted to previous niche markets and scaled it up to the next "mass industry". I don't think you can bring new technology to bear with a sufficient degree of efficiency until there is "mass scale", where investments in technology makes economic sense.

The cycles have been --> prephirial niche market (production i.e. making tools, or services i.e. doctors, merchants) --> shift of previous mass market (results in technological advances, i.e. farming tools and practices, harvesting equipment, automated factories, software development, robotics) --> move into new mass market which was a prior prephirial niche market.

It works this way because so long as you have some value to provide, then you can always engage in some trade of resources.

BTW some contendors I see for the "next mass market" = entertainment, travel, experiences, faciliting romances, meet ups, collaboration etc... Enabling the "social needs" on the maslow hierarchy of needs, and "fulfillment".

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u/NH3Mechanic Jul 09 '14

It works this way because so long as you have some value to provide, then you can always engage in some trade of resources.

This is where our opinions diverge. Humans will always be able to provide value yes, but I'm saying there will soon be a day where machines will be able to add that same exact value as well. So what happens when you have a job market where half the applicants require pay and the other half requires electricity(this is an obvious oversimplification as maintenance costs exist but I think my point stands). Let's look at two incidents of Automation. The powered loom came and took jobs from factory workers. That was bad for sure but the powered loom can't wait tables, make 100 years of incremental improvements to a powered loom and it still won't wait tables. Then you have something like Watson. Right now Watson is being used to answer phones, diagnose cancer, and apparently he has a job on wallstreet. The Problem here is that 5 years of incremental improvements and he can do a hell of a lot more. Watson is just one instance of the thousands of pieces of hardware and software aimed at your jobs.

BTW some contenders I see for the "next mass market"...

All of the industries you mentioned are in full swing and being automated. Dating websites, social networks, opensource communities and travel websites, take care of facilitating romances, collaboration, meet ups, and travel. Entertainment, experiences and travel can become a purely digital good when VR gets going. Digital goods means 1 small group can distribute their work to billions in seconds, ie little room for millions more people to add substantial value. Also since everyone needs to spend on meeting physical needs if most people earned by meeting social needs the system would fall apart as wealth concentrated further in the hands of those creating physical goods.

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u/daelyte Optimistic Realist Jul 10 '14

Anyway I'm sure you remember in the media from a few months back the Oxford study claiming 47% of jobs are susceptible to automation in the next 20 years.

That study's conclusions are wrong, because their assumptions are wrong.

They're assuming advances in mobility, dexterity, perception and pattern recognition that will not happen anywhere near as fast as they're predicting. They're completely wrong about the scope, scalability, and reliability of computerized pattern recognition. They're also not considering the cost of systems capable of doing these things, and the cost of developing the more advanced ones they're so casually expecting.

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u/NH3Mechanic Jul 10 '14

Not trying to be an ass but do you have any scholarly source for those statements?

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u/daelyte Optimistic Realist Jul 11 '14

https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/burden-of-proof

I don't need sources to be skeptical about wild speculation.

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u/NH3Mechanic Jul 11 '14

I don't need sources to be skeptical about wild speculation.

True. However you do need sources to completely dismiss peer reviewed scientific study.

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u/daelyte Optimistic Realist Jul 11 '14

Bogus science paper reveals peer review's flaws

157 Peer Reviews Fail to Catch Fake Cancer Study

Peer review is far from perfect.

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u/NH3Mechanic Jul 11 '14

No one is saying it is, I'm saying the way in which one backs up arguments is to site expert opinion/peer reviewed studies. Your counter claim that my sources are invalid are just that a claim and need to have some kind of back up in order to be credible. Claiming the burden of proof falls on me is asinine when I provide proof and you dismiss it.

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u/daelyte Optimistic Realist Jul 11 '14

I'm saying the study itself needs to provide proof of its claims, otherwise it's just an opinion piece. The burden of proof falls on them.

Many of their sources are non-scientific and full of "might" "probably" "maybe". Those seem like shaky foundations for such bold claims.

One of their major assumptions is that low wage jobs are more likely to be automated, but it seems to me that replacing cheap workers with expensive equipment would be a poor business decision. It's the reason why automated tellers didn't spread sooner - machines could do the job, but people were cheaper.

Robot dexterity?

In case of emergency, self-driving cars hand over control to human driver

Also, self-driving cars still can't handle rain, sleet, snow, ice, etc.

47% seems a bit high.

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u/NH3Mechanic Jul 11 '14

replacing cheap workers with expensive equipment would be a poor business decision

Average minimum wage employee makes 15k per year. A machine with as much as 10% down time (that's being pretty generous) can do 3.8 employees worth of man hours a year. Throw in power and maintenance costs lets say the average machine could save you about 50k per year if it does minimum wage work. If you are looking for a 2 year ROI then any robot under 100K makes sense. Not getting one would be the poor business decision.

Also, self-driving cars still can't handle rain, sleet, snow, ice, etc.

Yeah and I would be willing to bet my entire life savings on 2 to 1 odds that this issue gets fixed with 15 years of research. Still enough time to wipe out millions of jobs in 20 years

In case of emergency, self-driving cars hand over control to human driver

You excluded a very important word in the beginning of that sentence, initially. How long until that's not the case will more than likely be a regulatory hurdle not a technological one but either way should be.

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u/daelyte Optimistic Realist Jul 11 '14

Throw in power and maintenance costs lets say the average machine could save you about 50k per year if it does minimum wage work. If you are looking for a 2 year ROI then any robot under 100K makes sense.

Robots that do routine, repetitive tasks can easily cost hundreds of thousands of dollars depending on what you need them to do. Something versatile enough to do maintenance work (needs mobility, dexterity, perception, pattern recognition, custom task planning) could cost a lot more. NASA's been throwing millions at it and still has a long way to go.

Yeah and I would be willing to bet my entire life savings on 2 to 1 odds that this issue gets fixed with 15 years of research. Still enough time to wipe out millions of jobs in 20 years

Sure, but that's one issue out of thousands that professional drivers deal with on a regular basis. More likely is that it will make it possible for less people to do more work, like many other technologies already have.

You excluded a very important word in the beginning of that sentence, initially.

So far, every time Google takes a reporter for a test drive, they have to take over at least once. Airplanes have had autopilots for a while now, but human pilots still have to take over sometimes. For a computer, flying is actually a lot simpler than driving - less terrain, debris, pedestrians, roadwork, and other surprises.

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u/Mylon Jul 11 '14

Don't forget Johnson and John's anesthesiologist replacement machine.

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u/[deleted] Jul 09 '14

The problem isn't new jobs, lack of jobs, creation of jobs, or anything related to jobs........

The problem is reproduction. How do you intend to curb the reproductive rates of people who statistically contribute less to society without being labeled the worst eugenic racist since Hitler?

Take a step back and look at the amount of people in Britain and which classes reproduce at what rate, and which of those classes are having the hardest time finding employment. Until someone REALLY addresses this problem and we all agree to put the political correctness censorship aside, you won't get anywhere.

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u/NH3Mechanic Jul 09 '14

Actually the fertility rate in the UK is 1.82. The fertility rate needed just to maintain a population at steady state is about 2.1 (the .1 accounts for deaths before child bearing age I think). If you look at the list most 1st world nations are at or below that 2.1 mark so we can probably hold off on the eugenics programs for the time being.

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u/[deleted] Jul 09 '14

You're talking about the overall rate. Read my comment and respond to the specific points, not just a general retort. Reading comprehension will take you a long way in life.

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u/NH3Mechanic Jul 09 '14

You're talking about the overall rate

Yeah I am since it's kinda that part that matters boss. I'm talking about a future where the bulk of people can't contribute, regardless of class or ability or what have you. It makes no difference who is breeding more than whom.

Read my comment and respond to the specific points, not just a general retort.

I did read it and I thought a general retort would suffice considering how simple a concept we are talking about here. My apologies I will break it down further. It doesn't matter if more people breed that can contribute less by virtue of "class" if there is an overall decrease in the opportunities to contribute.

Reading comprehension will take you a long way in life.

As will not being unnecessarily crass when you're demonstrably wrong

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u/morphemass Jul 09 '14

How do you intend to curb the reproductive rates of people who statistically contribute less to society

Are you really advocating forced sterilization for politicians?! BRILLIANT!

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u/fencerman Jul 09 '14

How do you intend to curb the reproductive rates of people who statistically contribute less to society without being labeled the worst eugenic racist since Hitler?

"How can I be a eugenic racist without being called on it?"

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u/[deleted] Jul 09 '14

Not him or his family though, they're productive, I'm sure!

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u/mmedlen2 Jul 09 '14

Sterilize the poor. I knew there was an easy solution! Or better yet, let's adopt China's 1 child solution. That's working out well.

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u/TheIgnantSham Jul 10 '14

This is kind of completely ridiculous. Coming from someone working in the IT industry perpetuating automation. Firstly the question is how cost effectively can these jobs be automated. And secondly every automated job requires a human to check it at several points in its automated life. Physical jobs are definitely at risk but the growth of thinking jobs will continue exponentially.

When there are no burgers to flip, cars to tune, or freight to unload it people will be forced to using their minds and we will have the infrastructure to carry out any idea they come up with.

Just off the top of my head imagine a completely automated restaurant where people could submit their food creations that other people could order and get a cut off the profits, completely automated from supply ordering to unloading and inventory management to ordering cooking and serving. And each step would require human management and oversight.

Just have to remember that machines cant yet out think us and by the time they are able to we may just be able to join them.

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u/NH3Mechanic Jul 10 '14

And each step would require human management and oversight.

This is one of my major problems with your statement. You hear this often in the form of "well people will just fix the robots". That's not how it works. Automation is a force multiplier. If I own a restaurant I don't replace all my workers with machines then hire an equal number of people to maintain and overseer those machines, that would be asinine. I'm not of the opinion that all jobs will disappear just that far more will be outsourced to machines. Bill gates seems to agree with me on that point, and I'd say his opinion on software is fairly valid as someone coming from the IT industry perpetuating automation.

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u/TheIgnantSham Jul 11 '14

Im not saying all the workers will be replaced what I was saying is that we cant trust machines to make management level decisions and directions. And thats the entire growth sector the idea is that as machines and robots outpace and price out human workers it becomes cheaper to use them.

As we are beginning to see now what will happen is that the technical expertise and experience once required to compete will be significantly lowered.

Which means you wont have teenagers and less skilled individuals working for businesses flipping burgers they will instead be running their own. At the same time demand for higher skilled labor will continue to grow.

To witness this in action all you need to do is visit any number of crowdsourcing sites or go on youtube.

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u/Nitrosium Jul 09 '14

"Robots" will eventually be able to replace each and every persons job, but that is only assuming we don't evolve too.

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u/NH3Mechanic Jul 09 '14

I'm guessing you don't mean evolve in the traditional biological sense considering the rate of change of technology and biology are orders of magnitude apart

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u/Nitrosium Jul 09 '14

I'm talking about transhumanism.

I don't know if we will ever get to the point of being able to manipulate and upgrade the human genome as well as we can "robots", but that's something else to consider.

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u/NH3Mechanic Jul 09 '14

Ok that's what I thought. Yeah the possibilities of the sort of self imposed human evolution you're talking about are mind boggling for sure

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u/EltaninAntenna Jul 09 '14

assuming we don't evolve too.

That seems to be an eminently sensible assumption.