Coincidentally, the video for a song on this very theme was released today.
The Robots are Coming.
- Thread starter Gord_in_Toronto
- Start date
I think that's a very dangerous assumption.
No the Hemingways and the Rembrandts and Beethovens and the Sir Laurence Oliviers of the world don't have to worry about being replaced by a machine but the people who write ad copy, do commercial jingles, and play "Unassuming Domestic Suburban Mom Stock Type #7" on yogurt commercials. yeah they do.
Ziggurat
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I suspect this actually won't happen within this time frame. I think the challenges will turn out to be harder than expected, and we will be stuck with human drivers for a long time to come. What I think might happen, though, is reliable "autopilot" for, say, long highway stretches. So you need a trucker for in the city or maybe even pulling in to the gas station, but when you're on the highway you engage autopilot and (unlike current Teslas) it's actually reliable.
Warehouse stacker and burger flipper are different than truck driving, and are much more vulnerable to automation. And the reason is that these are environments that you can control. You can control what comes into your warehouse. You can even control what's behind the counter at your fast food joint. But you can't really control what's on the road.
Doubt
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Complete replacement of human drivers is nearly impossible. But high traffic highways and urban streets are possible now. The hitch is the infrastructure is not there and we have people in Washington trying very hard to not spend money on this.
A few more years of political realignment may start to fix the infrastructure problems. But first they will have to fix what is wrong with the existing system before expanding on to what is needed for automated cars and trucks.
You misunderstand what I'm saying. I didn't mention actors or other performers, although they can fit in what I'm saying, as there will always be a market for for actual people to do arts and crafts.
I am aware that technology can replicate artistic styles, and that actors will get replaced for things like adverts, but that is a different part of a sector to what I was saying.
I constantly see artists and crafts people making and selling things as a % of the population will appreciate such human touch to make something. Of course there will also be a sizeable % who aren't bothered, and will be fine with a robot making there latest pop song or piece of art.
Overall though it is a worry as the video I put up shows. As even now, in the US, not enough jobs are being created despite the economic growth.
So basically you're hoping for enough hipsters to keep obsolete things going.
No. People will still want skill applied to things. This goes back to Victorian times, and has continued to today. We now see a resurgance in live music of small bands, of food production being polarised between the mass produced to the deli and resturants that people are willing to pay for.
Will it be enough? Probably not, but you can't assume the market will stay the same. New trends will emerge.
Armitage72
Philosopher
I don't know if it was a first, but we just had robots working as extras in a crowd scene on TV. The first episode of "The Book of Boba Fett" had a scene in which a group of Boston Dynamics robots moved out of the lead's path as he walked through an outdoor market.
TurkeysGhost
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This is the most Disney sentence that has ever been uttered.
I saw that. Both myself and a chap at work thought it really took you out of the experience, as it was an obvious plug for the technology.
Alls I know is if I'm a studio executive and I have a choice between:
- A flesh and blood actor who could get hurt, quit, get arrested, or cause a scandal
or
- Downloading "Stock Action Hero #2" from the app store and letting the boys in the CGI department deal with it
AND we've reached a point with the second option is cheap and indistinguishable from the first option (which is a point we WILL get to sooner than later) I know which one I'm picking for anything less than an Oscar bait movie and one I'm absolutely picking for background, bit, walk on, crowd, and stunt actors.
- A flesh and blood actor who could get hurt, quit, get arrested, or cause a scandal
or
- Downloading "Stock Action Hero #2" from the app store and letting the boys in the CGI department deal with it
AND we've reached a point with the second option is cheap and indistinguishable from the first option (which is a point we WILL get to sooner than later) I know which one I'm picking for anything less than an Oscar bait movie and one I'm absolutely picking for background, bit, walk on, crowd, and stunt actors.
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TragicMonkey
Poisoned Waffles
You're clearly not a studio executive: a studio executive will pick the human so they can sexually molest them.
Ziggurat
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theprestige
Penultimate Amazing
You're one step away from arguing that we should bring back manually-switched telephone exchanges. Restore all those switchboard operator jobs, and simultaneously reduce overall telecommunications traffic by 99%. That should give the economy a nice little boost with those jobs being added back in!
theprestige
Penultimate Amazing
This is exactly why my company only hires a handful of new devops engineers every year, and spins up hundreds of VMs in the cloud, instead of hiring thousands of new computers every year. Sure, we're growing, but we'd be growing a lot faster if we...
... bought or leased vast acreages
... hired construction workers to build vast workhouses for all our computers
... hired thousands more support staff to support our armies of computers
... etc.
... etc.
... etc.
I mean, look at your own household! Do you own a washing machine? You're stealing jobs from people who would happily wash your clothes for a living wage. (You could wash your clothes by hand yourself, but you probably have better things to do with your limited free time.)
Or take this forum: How dare the JREF and icerat automate this business of exchanging messages? Shouldn't we be taking up a collection to fund a team of human couriers, to transmit our comments to one another?
psionl0
Skeptical about skeptics
You are totally missing the point.
Nobody is arguing that we should turn back the clock to the "golden" years nor even that we should stifle future technological progress.
We just have to stop burying our heads in the sand and pretending that there will always be well paid jobs for everybody. We need to acknowledge the reality and come up with effective ways to deal with it.
Lukraak_Sisser
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This.
Mechanizing industry and agriculture led to massive unemployment and very bloody revolutions in a large amount of countries.
So it's not like we have no precedent.
We can either do the 'eh we'll deal with it once the problem becomes overwhelming' method you seem to favour, or preemptively deal with it.
Not by forbidding modernization, but we can alter our taxes so we do not get a unemployable underclass.
Now of course there are those that claim 'the market' will ensure that, but history suggests that will not happen and unless forced the ones making profit on this will mainly spend that profit on themselves.
The Great Zaganza
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every argument you can make for/against automation also applies to immigration.
Lukraak_Sisser
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I'd disagree with that.
First of all, many immigrants are refugees seeking a place where they do not get murdered for being who they are and those that are seeking a better economic situation take jobs the local population does not want to do.
Automation takes jobs that employers would rather not pay extra for but people were willing to do and did depend on to survive.