Are any of you concerned about losing your job to automation or machine learning?

OMM 0000

smurfjed wrote: »

When a man is unemployed, has no real work prospects, when he feels he's being left behind by society, he becomes hopeless about his future.[\i]

Ok I’m still curious about your generalisation of Saudi men ?

If you talked about war torn Syria or Iraq it might be different, but you are using a 13% unemployment rate to say that they don’t have a future, why ?

I didn't generalise all Saudi men. Stop pretending I did that.

I picked Saudi Arabia because it has a high unemployment rate and what could be considered a police state.

I could have picked another similar country.

For the last time I am not saying all Saudi men are hopeless and have no future.

Standman

Recently read an interesting book related to this topic, Life 3.0 by Max Tegmark. It takes an in-depth look at the current state and possible futures of AI.

There are a few parts that addressed some of the worries I had about this very issue, I'll post them below.

As regards what to look for in a career, this excerpt from the book is relevant:

Life 3.0 wrote:

• Does it require interacting with people and using social intelligence?
• Does it involve creativity and coming up with clever solutions?
• Does it require working in an unpredictable environment?
The more of these questions you can answer with a “yes”, the better your career choice is likely to be. This means that relatively safe bets include becoming a teacher, nurse, doctor, dentist, scientist, entrepreneur, programmer, engineer, lawyer, social worker, clergy member, artist, hairdresser or massage therapist.

How AI progresses and how it currently matches up to human abilities:

Life 3.0 wrote:

Computers are universal machines, their potential extends uniformly over a boundless expanse of tasks. Human potentials, on the other hand, are strong in areas long important for survival, but weak in things far removed.

Imagine a “landscape of human competence,” having lowlands with labels like “arithmetic” and “rote memorization,” foothills like “theorem proving” and “chess playing,” and high mountain peaks labeled “locomotion,” “hand-eye coordination” and “social interaction.”

Advancing computer performance is like water slowly flooding the landscape. A half century ago it began to drown the lowlands, driving out human calculators and record clerks, but leaving most of us dry.

Now the flood has reached the foothills, and our outposts there are contemplating retreat. We feel safe on our peaks, but, at the present rate, those too will be submerged within another half century. I propose that we build Arks as that day nears, and adopt a seafaring life!

Lastly, some AI-related myths addressed:

OMM 0000

OMM 0000 wrote: »

I didn't generalise all Saudi men. Stop pretending I did that.

I picked Saudi Arabia because it has a high unemployment rate and what could be considered a police state.

I could have picked another similar country.

For the last time I am not saying all Saudi men are hopeless and have no future.

That actually brings up an interesting point about retraining being very complex, there is high(ish) unemployment in Saudi Arabia and a huge amount of foreign workers so logic would dictate that the unemployed Saudi's should be trained to do the work that the foreign worker do but that is no happening.

Personally, think society will adjust after a period of transition.

Ethereal Cereal

I never really understood the fear and demonisation of automation. Progress and innovation can not be halted or slowed, it has to be accepted. Anything attempt to curtail innovation is dystopian.

It does however require strict government regulation to prevent corporations using it as a cash cow without regard to the persons they are taking out of work. Someone mentioned taxes above, corporations absolutely need to be taxed allot more, allowing for a universal basic wage and other national resources. Our current government is extremely lax in this are. Their thinking is to make money for the upper few for a while and let subsequent government worry about consequences.

If a job is repetitive and menial enough to be done by a machine, maybe the person that is currently doing that job would be happier doing something else. I know my own father worked 20 years on a production line in an electronics factory to put food on our table. He did not enjoy it, but he had no personal time to retrain or study because he was working 10 hour shifts daily. Since retiring he completed an arts degree and returned to his music he played when he was younger.

Ethereal Cereal

And Now This...

nthclare

Supposedly automation was an Idea for us to have less hours and gain some free time to enjoy our humanity, ironically that hasn't worked out to our advantage.

I work in forestry and horticulture and now there's machines in South America which can plough down acers of tree's in a few hours, absolutely destroys the eco system.

Toppling village's and ruining people's lives.

There's something dark about all this automation, working as an artisan not far from the sea in a two bed insulated house can seem very attractive to me for sure.

The choice is there, but I'm sure that'll be railroaded too

Tell me how

OMM 0000 wrote: »

I find that hard to believe...

No offence.

Most of those degrees are already considered "useless" for the real world.

Your examples (psychologists, sociologists) will always be needed. But gender studies, Irish folklore, drama, music, etc., aren't useful at all for 99.99% of jobs.

I should point out I do think these degrees have value (education has value in of itself); I'm disagreeing with your statement that arts/humanities will be considered just as important as STEM.

I'm not so sure. I think with the advance of Automation and the influence which that will have on the human race, we could see some roles developing which are purely to provide a need people/society has for human contact.

Automation is advancing at a fairly rapid pace (in the greater scheme of things) and it is going to continue to have an evolutionary impact on the human race. I don't think it is good for society that the world is moving towards people having less and less interaction with each other, but even if I am right, that doesn't mean that it won't continue to happen.