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Article applies likelihood of a job to be automated in future onto the number of people employed in that job now.

Human-friendly job of the future?  Nurses and teachers, But who will they nurse and teach if everyone else is out of work?

Of course, "musician" is such a rare job that it's not on the chart.

This chart spells out in black and white just how many jobs will be lost to robots

RMB and choose "View image" to see larger.

I still don't understand how a machine will ever be able to replace teachers.

I'm going to John Conner this stuff before Skynet gets off the ground.

Quote from: Exzaclee on Sep 04, 2017, 04:57PMI still don't understand how a machine will ever be able to replace teachers.

I'm going to John Conner this stuff before Skynet gets off the ground.

A robot could have replaced some of the college teachers I had.  They recited a pre-written lecture, showed a pre-recorded video, emitted a dismissive chuckle before answering a student question and gave multiple-choice machine scored tests.

There is a problem with this story.  Robots, whether you mean answering machines or something more clever, should result in more stuff sold per hour of real people working (robot hours don't count).  The improvement in that ratio is called productivity improvement. 

The problem?

It ain't happening.  We've got basement levels of productivity these years with not prospect for a pickup.  All this unemployment that is supposed to happen as a result of robots?  I just say,

Show me the money. 

Quote from: baileyman on Sep 04, 2017, 06:27PMThere is a problem with this story.  Robots, whether you mean answering machines or something more clever, should result in more stuff sold per hour of real people working (robot hours don't count).  The improvement in that ratio is called productivity improvement. 

The problem?

It ain't happening.  We've got basement levels of productivity these years with not prospect for a pickup.  All this unemployment that is supposed to happen as a result of robots?  I just say,

Show me the money. 



You must mean something besides "productivity" because, except for the recession, it's always growing in the US. 

Internationally, the US is always among the higher nations. Certainly not basement levels.

I believe automation is what is enabling the productivity increases.

Quote from: robcat2075 on Sep 04, 2017, 05:44PMA robot could have replaced some of the college teachers I had.  They recited a pre-written lecture, showed a pre-recorded video, emitted a dismissive chuckle before answering a student question and gave multiple-choice machine scored tests.

Yeah, I had a couple of those. The majority of my profs were pretty hands on, however, and seemed invested in our success, being available well past working hours.

I try to do the same. None of the courses I teach could even remotely be done with multiple choice tests. I can't even use the same lesson plans except for music tech and even that one requires a lot of tweaking semester to semester.

Accounting? Maybe the first couple of semesters...

Indeed, the chart predicts teachers as being least-likely to be replaced.

A good teacher would be hard to duplicate in software but I can imagine surpassing the level of a bad teacher with a robot, and there are bad teachers working out there.

And you could put robots with lasers in the schools where students assault the teachers.

Quote from: robcat2075 on Sep 05, 2017, 06:23AM...

And you could put robots with lasers in the schools where students assault the teachers.

Lasers or Tasers?

Computers can do a good job with basic teaching, but the thing that humans do better is to be able to react to the students and change approach on the fly.  Our level of Aritificial Intelligence isn't up to that and may not be for a few generations, if ever.

Note that jobs needing a lot of creativity can't easily be automated.  Problem is many people can only do jobs that are very routine and they will be casualties of the automation

My suspicion is that we will see the nature of what is seen as reasonable to be paid for doing will change in parallel. Even the most ardently free-market society cannot stand by while the majority of its workforce is left with nothing to do bar sit around getting bored and ready to riot.

A world where members of the town band get paid might not be such a bad one... People getting paid to play computer games? Some already do.

Computers will be good at providing answers to questions and they will never tire of doing it.

Consider that there probably aren't many new questions to ask in a college 101 class (or any high school class) and the answers won't change from year to year.

The problem of parsing out all the different ways one question can be asked remains to be solved but it's not undoable.

Consider that a human teacher doesn't always understand a question on the first try, either.


Quote from: BGuttman on Sep 05, 2017, 07:53AMLasers or Tasers?

I want lasers! And RPGs. 

Kids have it too soft these days.

Part of my "day gig" is to program robots. Don't forget that as robots take up their roles, people still have to tell the robots what to do. From what I've seen, all the tasks that robots are really good at are super-repetitive kinds of stuff - job which people don't generally enjoy anyway. The recent film Hidden Figures shows a group of female calculators adapting to this same kind of change: automation in the form of an IMB mainframe replaced them, so they learned how to program the mainframe.

Most jobs are repetitive stuff, aren't they?

I wonder what percentage of the workforce is engaged in doing really rad, original, where-no-one-has-gone-before thinking stuff?

People may not be happy with their repetitive job, but history shows us they get even unhappier when the job goes away. Dangerously unhappy.

Quote from: robcat2075 on Sep 04, 2017, 08:14PM
You must mean something besides "productivity" because, except for the recession, it's always growing in the US. 

...

Nope.  I do mean productivity.  I mean growth in productivity, which has hit the skids.  It has hit the skids at precisely the time when the fear of "Robots! Robots! Robots!" has gone viral.  The robots story is simply inconsistent with the productivity data.  Why?  Because increasing automation and other capital goods imply an increase in the growth of productivity.  Not just the level. 

Now, the robots may put a lot of people out of work, but so far not enough to see it in the data. 

Quote from: robcat2075 on Sep 05, 2017, 09:40AMMost jobs are repetitive stuff, aren't they?


No two sinks have exactly the same distance between outlet, P-trap, and drain pipe.  Every single repair is a redesign. 

(I fixed my toilet last night.  The flush valve actually fit first time.  The ball valve was a type I'd never seen, the replacement part a different length, and the bracket crumbled when I touched it.)

The guy who wrote Shop Class as Soulcraft is a motorcycle mechanic.  He says every model is different and he doesn't know until he gets them apart. 

Jobs to be lost to robots?

Broadway-style pit playing.

As soon as they get the virtual orchestra synth/computer interface so together that it can follow almost any mishap that might happen on stage?

Gone!!!

The unions will of course fight a delaying action, but ultimately they will lose just as they have lost against digital pirating.

Watch.

S.

We've already seen a lot of music jobs disappear due to various forms of automation, coupled with a severe case of acountancy fever.  Broadway pit bands are smaller and smaller.  Urinetown used a 5 piece ensemble and others use similarly small groups.  There are mixed tape and live ensembles on cruise ships and Vegas.  DJ's replace bands at parties.

All this time we have schools pumping out hundreds of extremely talented players with nowhere to perform.

We've already seen a lot of music jobs disappear due to various forms of automation, coupled with a severe case of acountancy fever.  Broadway pit bands are smaller and smaller.  Urinetown used a 5 piece ensemble and others use similarly small groups.  There are mixed tape and live ensembles on cruise ships and Vegas.  DJ's replace bands at parties.

All this time we have schools pumping out hundreds of extremely talented players with nowhere to perform.