Automation and Jobs

RE: Automation and Jobs

e14 Contributor — Sat, 02 Jul 2011 22:03:17 GMT

Ultimately, our machines will take over design work as our automated tools become more intelligent. We may even find that our machines can predict future needs better than us, and negate the need for human management of the design process. Design philosphies such as "money is most important", or "the environment is critical", or "human life is the most important", should be programmed into our machines from the start. Humans are basically lazy and will willingly let things be automated so long as their own needs are looked after.

RE: Automation and Jobs

DAB — Thu, 30 Jun 2011 00:10:46 GMT

Alas, even service jobs will not be immune as AI and robotics improve. As for engineering, as the model to product research evolves into an implementation, even engineers will soon be replaced by capable automation. Eventually, even idea generaton can be taken over. If you doubt that, look at what WATSON was capable of doing to a posed problem. How long before it can be set up with a broad problem space and begin to correlate solutions using available technology.

So what are we humans going to do? I honestly do not know. As an avid science fiction reader, I have seen many speculative evolution concepts, both with and without automation. The book DUNE identified what could happen if humans make machines too capable to the point where they enslaved the humans. In other concepts, a melding of automation and human via nanobots improved human capability by augmenting our weaknesses with automated assistance.

I think we are still very undecided as a species as to what we want and how will we get there. The possibilities are endless. Automation is a technology, it is humans who shall decide to what level we integrate technology into our lives. That is the scary part.

This is one of those issues we need to seriously resolve before we are over taken by events.

DAB

RE: Automation and Jobs

Eavesdropper — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 17:57:49 GMT

It is very much like how manual elevators with operators were replaced with automation. Millions of people were out of a job, and they must have moved elsewhere. But the change was a cheap one.

When it comes to robotics replacing people, I believe it is a long way away. When labor is at the slave wage it is in some countries, robotics are just not a practicle option. There are plenty of examples of robotic worker's poised to take the place of humans. $100,000 dollar bot or $4 dollars a day dexterous human hands, which would most businesses employ?

Also there are some things robotics is still struggling with, such as garment manufacturing. It is getting better, but robots are still not quite ready.

On this subject, most jobs are lost to outsourcing to cheaper human labor globally.

For us humans, it looks like the service industry is our only refuge. Like being a waiter. Or, is it safe?

Eavesdropper