Is a Robot Going to Steal Your Job? (60 Minutes segment)

[BoberFett]

I don't understand why automation and technology MUST be a destroyer of jobs. Take virtually any industry: it was born from some technology improvement; that industry's employment grew as it become more economically viable with more automation and technology improvements; then eventually the industry reaches market saturation and further improvements start reducing the industry's employment. So the real question is technology creating more jobs than it is destroying? I haven't heard a convincing argument for technology is destroying more than creating for an entire economy.



Refer back to post #3 and 7, about a robot that is easy(just about anyone) to program. So why would everyone need an advance knowledge base on nanobots, quantum physics, etc. to have a job which involves its use in the future? Nanobot programmer, drivers, loaders, etc.

Look at who is working fast food. People who need pictures of the menu items in order to run the register, and even then they get very confused half the time. You think they're EVER going to understand logic sufficiently to program even the easiest tasks for a robot?

 

[Zaap]

Refer back to post #3 and 7, about a robot that is easy(just about anyone) to program. So why would everyone need an advance knowledge base on nanobots, quantum physics, etc. to have a job which involves its use in the future? Nanobot programmer, drivers, loaders, etc.

The guy was caught in a dimbulb's argument so he resorts to idiotic extremes to try and make the bullshit work.

Yeah, right now everyone needs a masters degree to be able to drive a car or operate any piece of machinery. One needs a computer engineering degree to run a cash-register. So of course it stands to reason that in the future everyone will have to master quantum physics in order to use whatever technology comes next, because of course everyone has to be just as smart as the people who actually invent things, in order to use their inventions. You can't learn to fly unless you're Orvil Wright, or learn to use a computer unless you mind-meld with Steve Jobs. Somehow this will lead to everyone having their money taken away by enraged unemployed fast food workers.

Or... some people just make idiotic 'arguments' in order to cover up the fact that they were just spewing pure horseshit. Take your pick.

 

[Franz316]

Zaap, you always sound so angry and confrontational. Try and relax a bit, it will be okay.

 

[Zaap]

Look at who is working fast food.

Did you fall and hit your head and morph into a progressive moron or something? Aren't you late for a drum circle?

I know a couple of people who worked in fast food as teens who now are millionaires. Most of the people I know with normal decent career jobs now, once worked in fast-food when they were younger and starting out. I never did, but I did my share of shit jobs when I was growing up. Shit jobs were never meant to be career jobs, that's something that only morons believe, and then seek to preserve those jobs as such. Next you'll be arguing that they all deserve $35 an hour.

All your "look who is working fast food" as if they're all incapable of ever doing anything else horseshit is the kind of thing I expect from zero-sum morons who think 'the rich' and 'the poor' are forever literally the same people.

 

[Zaap]

Zaap, you always sound so angry and confrontational. Try and relax a bit, it will be okay.

it's just that people posting insanely stupid bullshit that I suspect even they know is insanely stupid have a tendency to piss me off. I expect better from my fellow man.

 

[Doppel]

In which world do you live where no one can ever better themselves, and thinks counting on a lifetime of being qualified to do nothing but dig ditches is a smart outlook?

In your mythical ditch-digging business/social club/ticket to prosperity for the low-skilled, the employer it isn't actually keeping 55 year olds with broken backs around to dig ditches. Eventually the professional ditch digger is let go anyway, replaced by a 20-something who can still actually- you know, dig ditches. This is not a lifetime employment gig except in debate-fantasyland.

So yes, once more, no matter how you slice it, eventually individuals have to better themselves and keep up with the technology of the times they live in. What happens to ditch diggers when they can no longer dig a ditch or someone gets a machine that can do what they did? I dunno- maybe the drive the machine, or work in the back office lining up where the next ditch will be dug, or they supervise someone else using the machine, you know, probably after learning to use some terrible advance in technology. Otherwise, I guess they just fade away.

You can replace my example with any menial task. A packaging machine for example, that can do in an hour what previously took 50 people.

I think the mistake you're making is this: low-skill jobs that technology has displaced have always been replaced by other low-skill jobs, so that there is no net loss of employment. I just don't believe there will always be an endless supply of low-skilled jobs. Machines get better and encroach on these professions. A lot of people don't, and never will get better.

And make no mistake about it: many in society are not suited to skilled, trained labor. If low-skilled jobs go away, their employment goes away.

I consider it quite myopic to believe that in a society of increasingly complex and capable machines and less expensive that we'll not continually be financially motivated to have them perform low-skill tasks. Even if they can do semi-skilled labor, eventually robots do that, and high-skill eventually robots do that as well.

 

[Doppel]

http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/515926/how-technology-is-destroying-jobs/

*Brynjolfsson, a professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management, and his collaborator and coauthor Andrew McAfee have been arguing for the last year and a half that impressive advances in computer technology—from improved industrial robotics to automated translation services—are largely behind the sluggish employment growth of the last 10 to 15 years.

l. They believe that rapid technological change has been destroying jobs faster than it is creating them, contributing to the stagnation of median income and the growth of inequality in the United States. And, they suspect, something similar is happening in other technologically advanced countries.

On the chart Brynjolfsson likes to show, separate lines represent productivity and total employment in the United States. For years after World War II, the two lines closely tracked each other, with increases in jobs corresponding to increases in productivity. The pattern is clear: as businesses generated more value from their workers, the country as a whole became richer, which fueled more economic activity and created even more jobs. Then, beginning in 2000, the lines diverge; productivity continues to rise robustly, but employment suddenly wilts. By 2011, a significant gap appears between the two lines, showing economic growth with no parallel increase in job creation.

 

[BoberFett]

Did you fall and hit your head and morph into a progressive moron or something? Aren't you late for a drum circle?

I know a couple of people who worked in fast food as teens who now are millionaires. Most of the people I know with normal decent career jobs now, once worked in fast-food when they were younger and starting out. I never did, but I did my share of shit jobs when I was growing up. Shit jobs were never meant to be career jobs, that's something that only morons believe, and then seek to preserve those jobs as such. Next you'll be arguing that they all deserve $35 an hour.

All your "look who is working fast food" as if they're all incapable of ever doing anything else horseshit is the kind of thing I expect from zero-sum morons who think 'the rich' and 'the poor' are forever literally the same people.

Talk about getting dropped on the head...

You know millionaires that once worked fast food, so all fast food workers are all capable of becoming millionaires? Is that the angle you're going to go with?