Posted on 09/13/2013 5:47:12 PM PDT by Vince Ferrer
Rapid advances in technology have long represented a serious potential threat to many jobs ordinarily performed by people.
A recent report (which is not online, but summarized here) from the Oxford Martin School’s Programme on the Impacts of Future Technology attempts to quantify the extent of that threat. It concludes that 45 percent of American jobs are at high risk of being taken by computers within the next two decades.
The authors believe this takeover will happen in two stages. First, computers will start replacing people in especially vulnerable fields like transportation/logistics, production labor, and administrative support. Jobs in services, sales, and construction may also be lost in this first stage. Then, the rate of replacement will slow down due to bottlenecks in harder-to-automate fields such engineering. This “technological plateau” will be followed by a second wave of computerization, dependent upon the development of good artificial intelligence. This could next put jobs in management, science and engineering, and the arts at risk.
The authors note that the rate of computerization depends on several other factors, including regulation of new technology and access to cheap labor.
These results were calculated with a common statistical modeling method. More than 700 jobs on O*Net, an online career network, were considered, as well as the skills and education required for each. These features were weighted according to how automatable they were, and according to the engineering obstacles currently preventing computerization.
“Our findings thus imply that as technology races ahead, low-skill workers will reallocate to tasks that are non-susceptible to computerization—i.e., tasks that required creative and social intelligence,” the authors write. “For workers to win the race, however, they will have to acquire creative and social skills.”
Computers are tools. Computers will never have wisdom.
Well damn we need more unskilled workers imported here from south america.
I have always wanted to write an iPhone app that says “You’re Welcome” when the automated checkout says - “Thank you for shopping at Walmart.”
The set of things that are considered beyond computers is diminishing rapidly. In a fluid economy governed by creative destruction, people who are made obsolete can usually retrain themselves to a new field. But this is not a fundamental law of economics. There can be such thing as such rapid change, in so many fields, that it creates a giant disturbance in employment. This is what we may be looking at in the next 20 years.
Farhad Manjoo: With this software, man’s slide into obsolescence begins
Let me know when they come up with a computerized Honey-Dipper. My septic tank needs to be pumped out.
New automation techniques and robotic solutions are continuously being developed, and having a particularly significant impact in the food industry. There is a huge increase in food and beverage manufacturers of all sizes utilising the advantages solutions in robotic picking, packing, palletising and vision systems offer.
For companies in the Food industry, efficient and accurate processes are paramount, second only to maintaining product quality.
MAR provides solutions for all aspects of the food industry ensuring our clients have the certainty of reliable and fast and accurate processing and quality assurance, including:
Dry and liquid raw materials handling & dosing and storage
Conveying
Vision and sensing systems
Robotic picking
Robotic packing
Robotic packaging
Automated labelling
Cartoning
Robotic palletising
Automated stretch wrapping
Full process automation
Well by all means hurry up and legalize 24 million people..! Then “family re-unification”, sure.
MS-13, 14, 15, 16, and 17...!
Dozens of ‘em..!!!
We are entering the age of automation.
3D printers of ever increasing speed, size and resolution will eliminate many jobs.
In 20 years entire buildings will be constructed by machinery. Roads and bridges will also be built and maintained by automated equipment..
Food production and transport will be done by machines.
Fewer and fewer people will need to work. We will eventually arrive at the state where the available jobs will be less than the number of people who enjoy working.
It will not be socialism, the working guys pockets won’t have to be picked to support the non-working. Labor will no longer be a virtue, it will be a luxury for those who crave it. As long as you don’t live off the sweat of others there is no shame in not working.
Creativity and intelligence will be in VERY great demand. Those who can create new designs for nano assembler machines will become an elite group.
I hope I live to see it.
Computers do have wisdom! It is the wisdom of the designer and programmer multiplied by orders of magnitude. You are correct that computers will never have true AI. But they will perform a great imitation of it :-)
Haw... not as long as a computer cannot have a /dev/spirit.
This is why I focused on immigration. If we Americans built a society where we can have the same standard of living with reduced work, I would be all for it. However, if there is a safety net where people don't have to work, and we let everyone in the country who wants to come in, we would still have rampant social problems and scarcity.
Save our jobs! burn the computers!
I agree except for one thing. Enter the Luddite politician. They won’t stand for it.
Someone still puts food Into those slots, yes?
There are things on the horizon that will make Siri seem like speaking to a rock. The age of the avatars is coming.
Well, the attempt will put people back in touch with some philosophical realities. The tools still need purposes to guide them. At some point will the tools know the difference between an irritated customer and a cheerful one and a curious one and whatever... and be able to be diplomatic? Artificial diplomacy will prove elusive! Because we are now in the realm of the spiritual.
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