[Swami: comments after article]
“47 percent” of U.S. jobs are at risk because of advancing technologies -
http://govtslaves.info/47-percent-of-u-s-jobs-are-at-risk-because-of-advancing-technologies/
(Daniel Rivero) Somewhere out there, a robot is scheming to take my job. About a year ago, a breaking news story about a Los Angeles earthquake was fully written by a robot. Gathering data it received from the U.S. Geological Survey, an algorithm wrote and published the story on the Los Angeles Times’ website less than three minutes after the trembling began.
News organizations freaked out, some labeling the event as the “rise of the robot reporter,” sending all of us into a soul-searching quest to defend ourselves in the face of such a formidable adversary. “But my writing is original, and it oozes with style,” many a reporter defiantly told themselves. “A data-crunching robot could never fill my position!”
At The WorldPost Future of Work conference in London, a similar anxiety has begun to emerge—if not with workers, then with the economists who study them.
“According to our research, 47 percent of jobs in the U.S. are at risk from technology over the next 20 years,” Michael Osbourne, a co-director of the Oxford Martin Programme on Technology and Employment, told me. The group’s research combined U.S. Bureau of Statistics data with a complex machine-learning algorithm of its own to draw its conclusions.
For example, in retail, an algorithm might be a better predictor of customer preferences than a human salesperson thanks to the amount of data companies collect, he said. Logistics will be impacted by fast-moving advancements in autonomous vehicle technology that few took seriously just a few years ago.
“Forklift drivers, truck drivers, agricultural vehicle drivers,” Osbourne listed. “Those jobs could be gone very soon.”
There are some recent trends experts are sharing which show how this new world might look like, when the small percentage of individuals or corporations that own machines (the means of production) are the only ones able to make money, and as the rest of us (the middle class) lose our jobs for the simple fact that #RobotsDoItBetter.
Take the most-talked-about slide of the day (seen below), courtesy of Anthony McAfee, associate director of the Center for Digital Business at the MIT Sloan School of Management. The line that has been going up since about 2002 represents total gross domestic product (GDP) in the U.S. The line that is going down represents wages paid as a percentage of that GDP:
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“This is not just an American phenomenon, it is not even a rich world phenomenon. This same decline in labor share is happening in most countries where we have data across the world, including places like China, India and Mexico,” McAfee said.
“China is not offshoring to find cheaper labor,” he added. “There is obviously something else going on here.”
“It’s a societal problem,” Dr. Laura Tyson, professor of Business Administration and Economics, at Berkeley-Haas School of Business told me.
In the U.S., she notes, most job growth is already happening towards the bottom of the pay scale, much of which is driven by people whose traditional middle income manufacturing jobs have been lost to increasingly productive robots in the factory.
“I tend to worry about the quality of the job that will be available for them in the long run,” she said.
Few feel that governments are adequately preparing for the shift. Some, however, feel that increased productivity thanks to machines will let humans focus on something we are infinitely better at doing than robots: creative thinking.
“The remaining jobs will be increasingly creative and increasingly social,” said Osbourne, the Oxford researcher who says 47 percent of jobs are at risk. “I actually think it will be better for society, because these are tasks that we tend to do in our spare time as hobbies, and as we are more displaced by machines it will leave these more fundamentally human tasks to perform.”
Which sounds pretty good for people like me, who would love to refine the craft we feel most passionate about. Except… Osbourne’s final take on my question if this shift might benefit the arts in the long run left me feeling pretty dismal:
“Benefit? Hmmm,” he started. “I think there will be new kinds of art, and more people will be freed up to make art, but wages will probably get less competitive in the arts, especially because there’s going to be a lot more supply.”
~~~
What is so hard about noticing the solution to this "problem"?
Get rid of parasitical behavior, and automate the boring crap in life. And live your life like you are supposed to.
You worry about having a job, because you are only thinking in terms of the bills you have to pay. But why do you have bills? What specifically do you use money for? Specific products, resources, consumables? What about the value of the "money" you work for, and buy things with? Is it a constant? Is it able to be manipulated? There are parasites that feed off of you and everyone else, in every transaction that goes through them. Get rid of the parasites and all of a sudden there is no more 30 year mortgage payment. Yes, you need to learn how to do things for your self. Yes, you need to learn how to acquire certain resources. Yes, you need to barter with people for resources and distribution, for now. And if you learn enough to automate certain tasks, then you have free time on your hands. And, what if distribution and resource access is also automated? Will that eliminate the need to barter? Will there be any rediculous enormous waste of resources then, as there are now? Will retards be deciding what portion of your money (attention/effort/time) is used for? If there are only people helping people, then the rediculous behavior will not be at your expense, nor the environments.
Wow, what a novel idea. That is so deep man..
Are you going to dismiss this idea as another impossible utopia? Fine, go back to your "job", slave. Don't even think, or exercise your imagination or creativity. Just go along to get along, as we spiral down into ever greater magnitudes of stupidity.