Your new job of the future....repairing these two stooges
Posted on 12/18/2014 2:01:54 PM PST by dennisw
Economists long argued that, just as buggy-makers gave way to car factories, technology would create as many jobs as it destroyed. Now many are not so sure.
At a Silicon Valley hotel, a bellhop robot delivers items to people’s rooms. Last spring, a software algorithm wrote a breaking news article about an earthquake that The Los Angeles Times published.
Although fears that technology will displace jobs are at least as old as the Luddites, there are signs that this time may really be different. The technological breakthroughs of recent years — allowing machines to mimic the human mind — are enabling machines to do knowledge jobs and service jobs, in addition to factory and clerical work.
Economists long argued that, just as buggy-makers gave way to car factories, technology would create as many jobs as it destroyed. Now many are not so sure.
And over the same 15-year period that digital technology has inserted itself into nearly every aspect of life, the job market has fallen into a long malaise.
Lawrence H. Summers, the former Treasury secretary, recently said that he no longer believed that automation would always create new jobs. “This isn’t some hypothetical future possibility,” he said. “This is something that’s emerging before us right now.”
Erik Brynjolfsson, an economist at M.I.T., said, “This is the biggest challenge of our society for the next decade.”
Mr. Brynjolfsson and other experts say they believe that society has a chance to meet the challenge in ways that will allow technology to be mostly a positive force. In addition to making some jobs obsolete, new technologies have also long complemented people’s skills and enabled them to be more productive — as the Internet and word processing have for office workers or robotic surgery has for surgeons.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Does this mean American workers struggle to stay as smart as the robots? From the looks of the ones rioting in the streets who are being replaced, I suspect it is this.
The era of mindless repetitive tasks at $23/hour plus benefits is over. But the old decrepit unemployed union worker still drinks his beer at the old decrepit union hall next to the old decrepit closed factory, convinced that some day the factory will reopen and the jobs will come back.
Sounds kind of like a cargo cult, doesn’t it?
Your new job of the future....repairing these two stooges
This time is different. But we’ve prepared for it. By off-shoring all of our manufacturing, we’ll avoid job replacement in that category. And we will fall behind in robot technology. It will now be our Chinese master’s jobs to ensure that we get enough to eat.
There’s no question about it ... smarter and smarter robots will be putting millions out of work. We’ll be working “for” the robots ... until they become sentient and then eliminate people.
NO ... I’m not kidding. Bye, bye human race!
We better make sure the robots have a sense of humor. They’ll keep us around just for their amusement.
As Mr. Brynjolfsson says, In addition to making some jobs obsolete, new technologies have also long complemented people’s skills and enabled them to be more productive. In the short term, there is disruption and some are temporarily disadvantaged. But in the long run, everyone benefits.
It's the age-old story of the wealth-creating free-market economy. It's not perfect, but it's WAY AHEAD of whatever is in second place.
Nothing new here. LA Times articles have been written and published by dummies for decades, just like the New York Times, Washington Post et al.
Reminds me of one of the ‘newer’ Twilight Zone episodes where a bunch of cops were hunting down “Creedors” who were fighting back and killing the cops.
Turned out the cops were robots who were hunting down the last of their “Creators”.
No problem. Provided of course we can teach the robots to buy stuff.
“Last spring, a software algorithm wrote a breaking news article about an earthquake that The Los Angeles Times published.”
The New York Times published an earthquake?
The government tales the wealth the robots create and turns it into welfare so there is no investment in new jobs.
And the robots get the blame...
There’s no lie the NYTimes won’t tell to support the welfare state.
Well, anyone with a will can do something about it. Otherwise, nearly all who read this thread will be unemployed and losing everything from investments in our amazing, shrinking, fake contemporary economy. The following are open source designs. There’s also some automation equipment in the list.
http://opensourceecology.org/gvcs/gvcs-machine-index
One product in development—very nearly a good working prototype.
http://opensourceecology.dozuki.com/Topic/Lifetrac_6_-_Development
It’s inevitable that robots will eventually eliminate humanity ... because human beings are not rational or reasonable or predictable, nor particularly useful. Human beings, in strictly a material sense are more akin to a “virus” and robots will recognize that they need to be eliminated (and they will do so). That’s the “end of the story” when it comes to robots and the human race.
Again, that’s strictly in a “material sense” ... namely, in the sense that humans are simply a product of “evolution” and nothing more than accidents of the universe. The robots will win in this sense.
But, then again, if human beings are from a special creation of God and not a product of evolution and the “strictly material universe” ... then it’s a different story.
Does the NY Times Editorial board read its own articles? They constantly write about how the US needs to bring in tens of millions of more foreign workers. That is the ticket. Automation to replace millions of US workers and let us bring in 30 MM more foreigners over ten years to compete for the scraps.
Your technical expertise is needed over here.
I,for one, welcome our new robot overlords.
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