Smart Systems Threaten More Jobs Than Outsourcing 251
fbform writes "A strategy consulting firm called Strategy Analytics has announced that outsourcing to India and other countries is a small threat compared to having IT jobs replaced by 'smart systems'. Quote from a different news-source: 'higher value-added jobs - involving identification, assessment, conclusions, decisions, and recommendations - will continue to be lost to systems with increasingly intelligent capabilities'." Such as this one.
Maintenance? (Score:5, Insightful)
The more complicated the systems are the more people are needed to keep it running.
Re:Maintenance? (Score:2, Interesting)
Ok, ok, I don't speak English.
It'll be recursive (Score:2)
Re:Maintenance? (Score:4, Funny)
Yeah, because we know that tech support will never be outsourced.
Re:Maintenance? (Score:3)
Re:Maintenance? (Score:4, Insightful)
If these "smart" systems happen to be running *NIX, then practially 90% of maintenance can be done remotely. So it doesn't matter whether admin is located in room next to server room or half way across the globe.
The rest 10% job deals with hardware problem, and last I looked all enterprise grade hardware had self diagnostics built in. So if your next-gen "smart" system says drive is kaput, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to replace it... a janitor can do that!! Add to that these next gen smart systems will have MUCH better HW diagnostics and redundancy and you can see that admin job go non-local too!
Re:Maintenance? (Score:3, Insightful)
If these "smart" systems happen to be running *NIX, then practially 90% of maintenance can be done remotely. So it doesn't matter whether admin is located in room next to server room or half way across the globe.
Most likely, the supply of qualified admins is already in use, so I don't see outsourcing to be a serious problem.
Homeostatic systems (Score:3, Interesting)
This is generally true of systems humans have built in the past, but is not true of complex systems in general. For example: human bodies are some of the most complex systems that exist, and they essentially maintain themselves.
Once humans get better at designing homeostatic systems, something which major firms like IBM are working towards with their "autonomous computing" initiative, we'll see the amount of people requi
Hurry! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Hurry! (Score:4, Funny)
This is why I favor Microsoft and MCSE's. It makes us look better. Its this Linux/Unix shit that scares me to death.
Before you know it people will have computers that are *gulp reliable like their cars or factories??
Re:Hurry! (Score:5, Funny)
*Assuming the cave gets good broadband.
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Re:Hurry! (Score:5, Informative)
Can you imagine a "natural language" based system replacing that SQL app you spent two years writing? No? Well I be a journalist can.
This announcement is just one more dollup of horse-manure in a long line of horse manure.
This trend first(?) mentoned in 1811. (Score:5, Informative)
Textile workeres were losing their jobs to stocking-machines that did knitting more cheaply than themselves, and indeed decided to destroy the machines. They organized into a group known as the Luddites, until England cracked down hard on them - wikipedia reporting that "at one time, there were more British troops fighting the Luddites than Napoleon Bonaparte".
I think we're safe (Score:3, Interesting)
Not if they use macs (Score:5, Interesting)
PCs in the workplace are what Robery Cringley (I, Cringley) calls the IT dept full employment act. At my own workplace where PC techs outneumber macs techs 20:1 even though the number of macs to PCs is closer to 1:5, they once tried to force everyone to adopt a common platform and guess which one they voted on?
My mac does have sick days occasionally, but I dont envy PC users. My Linux computers are all just servers. So they really dont get much stress from constantly installing applications or doing thinks that cause them to red-line their disk usage. Thus they are as solid as a rock and never go down (same is true of my g4 mac servers). However they do get out of date on their patches and I truly worry about all the services I might have turned on that I dont know about. I'm not a good enough sys admin to trust myself to know if say Apache needs certain port maping and RPC sevices so I cant just go turning everything off. My solution is to firewall them and get a better sys admin to stay on top of the needed patches.
while my macs also have some "extra" srevices turned on I'm reasonably assured they were designed in a coherent fashion. When I turn on off a service the firewall automaticall closes those ports too. Since mac packages dont (normally) spray install files all over your system into places like /etc /usr/ /opt /bin and /sbin it makes removing things really easy and prevents cruft build up. (this by the way is why I will not install that loathsome gnu-darwin package: it for example even replaces /bin/make !!!)
Maybe this is what they meant about smart systems replacing IT techs.
What they really mean (Score:5, Funny)
It will take your job from you!
Re:What they really mean (Score:5, Funny)
rm -rf /etc
This is just silly (Score:5, Insightful)
It is not a problem that repetitive tasks are being done by a computer. That's what they're for.
In other news, factory robots are a bigger threat than outsourcing. Let's do everything manually, there's more jobs that way.
Stop your whining and adapt. It's fucking pathetic.
DING DING DING! (Score:2, Funny)
(Thanks for your help Mr. Hansen, there'll be a little extra karma in your account this week.)
Re:This is just silly (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:This is just silly (Score:3, Funny)
Re:This isn't silly (Score:5, Insightful)
Stop your whining and adapt. It's fucking pathetic
I'll bite.
Broadly speaking, we have a society that is divided into those who 'own' and those who don't. For the majority of society, that is not the owners, life is structured around working to survive.
When something is done in a new and more efficient way then in a sense, society benefits. However, those who really benefit are 'owning' segment of the population, not the 'workers.'
New technology has repeatedly caused a great deal of suffering as it makes people redundant. So when you say,
Let's do everything manually, there's more jobs that way.
Well that's exactly true. The problem is not that society is not benefitted by new technology but that the benefit is not shared around.
Modern Western society has long since passed the point where everyone is required to work the majority of their time to survive. The model of people doing this has long since collapsed in terms of essentials and it's only kept going by mass-consumption of goods we don't really need (mostly status oriented) and services.
Nor is this progression at an end. It should be especially obvious to the
Of course, we can't hold back progress for the sake of mass employment. The only good solution is for the profits of innovation to be shared out more easily.
But in the spirit of ending this negativity, which I fully agree with, it seems to me like society might be adapting. Perhaps not in terms of the skills which you meant, but in terms of how people work. For example, people are increasingly opting for less financial rewards in their jobs, such as greater flexibility and increased holiday, and this is a great plus because it means sharing the work out wider. Many more people are working in education too, which is a plus.
I hope to live to see the three-day week become an accepted standard.
Re:This isn't silly (Score:2)
I'm not sure that distinction really exists. 'Workers' only work for money. And they then use that money to purchase and own things. So, anyone who works, also owns. Consequently, if efficiencies benefit owners, then they benefit workers.
Re:This isn't silly (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm not sure that distinction really exists
Well I'm afraid that in my attempt to avoid writing a huge treatise on economics, I used some pretty clumsy definitions.
The distinction I was trying to draw was between those who have to keep running to stay where they are, and those who can sit back and watch the money coming in. A small scale example would be landlords and tennants. Some pay rent, and some recieve it. In a very broad sense (but a real one also) we are all landlords or tennants within society. the factories and the farms are owned by groups that are small in comparison to the size of society as a whole.
And they then use that money to purchase and own things
The distinction is between buying a new pair of shoes, or investing in property or a company. Someone doing the former wasn't what I meant. Someone doing the latter is clawing their way out of the worker category and into the owner category. Although this example shows that the groups are not clear definitions that an actual person has to fall into or out of. I'm just modelling how society works at a higher level.
When you say that efficiencies benefit the owners, therefore the workers and therefore society, I disagree.
Benefiting society? Yes - you need another society to compare it with, but between one that has cars and one that has horses, you can see the disparity of power. (Of course you should consider things like quality of life etc.)
But workers? Messier. The benefit is traditionally the falling cost of goods. Plot that benefit on one line. the negative is the lowering reward for a worker's time. Plot that on another line. See where they cross? Now at what point does the balance become a bad one for the 'worker?'
I say that this point has been reached for the average person.
Re:This isn't silly (Score:2, Interesting)
According to the US bureau of Economic Analysis, REAL per-capita disposable income has risen EVERY SINGLE YEAR SINCE 1949. Check the data yourself: http://econstats.com/grplist1.htm#nipa
So not only has our society benefited by the reduced cost of living that comes with cheaper products, it has benefited by the increased purchasing power of every citizen.
Look at the facts, not some trite manifesto printed in the 1800s.
How can you not see the irony of your whole argument? YOU ARE POSTIN
Re:This isn't silly (Score:2)
Again, I'm not sure that such a distinction really exists. No one can sit back and just watch the money coming in. In the tennants and landlords example, at first glance it looks like the landlords can just sit back and collect. But it ignores the fact that they are indebted to a mortgage. It ignores the fact that the landlord is responsib
We ARE adapting (Score:2)
Suppose you need to do some complex job of editing a lot of files. What does a competent programmer do? He writes a Perl script to do it. He's automating a task, which would take a person a lot of time to do. He *could* ask his manager to hire an assistant, of course, but he doesn't. A competent programmer is someone who automates his assistant's
Re:We ARE adapting (Score:2)
Exactly. I asked a similar question during the last big Slashdot debate on outsourcing:
Why is it OK if I write code that eliminates the need for 100 people and so increases a company's bottom line, but not OK if I outsource those 100 jobs and have a smaller positive impact on said bottom line?
The silence in response to the question was deafening...
Re:This is just silly (Score:2)
Why take the low-tech labor intensive approach to creating wealth when tons of wealth are just sitting there in other countries for the taking. You get to cut out all those profit-consuming design , development, and manufacturing jobs...and focus your efforts in the "wealth-extraction" phase....which is really the only important pase of any operation.
Come-on guys (and gals)
Pointing the finger Elsewhere (Score:2)
Actual Maintenance will require warm bodies to do the repair work.
And it is not like you could have a human in change of a robot economy. You can't just fire all the humans and replace them with slave labor robots. And have the robots all buy and send things from each other and you for your profit. Despite efforts of financiers to do this to people.
Any robot smart enough to
Re:This is just silly (Score:2)
(1) Invent new things, as it has always been
(2) Maintain the old things
(3) Laze around leisurely doing nothing.
But with over 6 billion people in the world, and rising, I doubt the world will have enough resources to support even 1% trying to live their life in leisure, having nothing else to do...
But that's just idle speculation by me. What do you think will happen when humans have practically nothing else to do?
Re:This is just silly (Score:2)
Have you seen the Animatrix? :-S
Also ignores the economics (Score:2)
See here is the problem, in my mind. There are actually several things that a system administrator is there for. These include basic things such as creating user accounts, and more advanced things such as managing the security/availability by deciding that software to patch. Many of these decisions cannot be easily automated. But the easier ones can be.
This means that the bar is raised for the le
Call Centres, maybe. Not IT.... (Score:5, Insightful)
From the perspective of the IT worker, I think that the impact on them will only be beneficial - if intelligent machines can be made to work, then they will be based on intelligent software, which someone has to write/maintain.
As an aside, I remember seeing a presentation from Oracle in about 1994-5 about clever automated database tuning technology, and that all those expensive DBAs would be a thing of the past. When I was at work last week, they were all still there, working damn hard too...
Re:Call Centres, maybe. Not IT.... (Score:2)
These IVR type technologies still require an IT person to set up and manage them, so I don't see the loss of IT jobs being threatened as much
Re:Call Centres, maybe. Not IT.... (Score:2)
It's about a gradual reduction (Score:5, Insightful)
It may not come in our lifetime, or not before we retire, but software creation and maintenance will be fully automated.
But think about the benefits: you can't get a job as a steam engine valve operator anymore, but you can afford a car. Every job that's lost to automation is one more job that people can get done for them at a lower cost.
Re:It's about a gradual reduction (Score:2)
Of course they will be. The jobs will be in creating and maintaining the machines or programs which automate the creation of software.
From the viewpoint of a mid-20th-century programmer entering machine code instructions with a toggle panel or punched cards, this has already happened. What is a compiler?
Re:It's about a gradual reduction (Score:2)
Nobody needs 3 billion guys working. The problem is mostly big corporations can compete, because they offer scale, lower costs and standarization. But they don't share the gains except for the people that work in diamond shaping and 5 stars hotels.
Democracy works as a contract as long as citicens can survive.
ANyway, I am positive that a solution will have to come, nobody wants the
Crap article is filled with crap. (Score:5, Insightful)
the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the research arm for the U.S. military, is leading a project to develop a vehicle that can navigate a desert for at least 10 miles without a driver. Prototypes have gone as far as seven miles, successfully moving around cactuses, boulders and other obstacles.
Wow! These guys are right, my job is on the line. DARPA's "10 mile desert navigator" (isn't it 100?) got a whole 7 miles. So now the ONLY OBVIOUS conclusion that I'm going to be out of a job??? Geez, this author sure does seem stupid.
What a trashy article. If it's not fit for publication, why is it fit for Slashdot? Oh yeah, this is Slashdot, where we talk about articles that really aren't fit for publication....
Re:Crap article is filled with crap. (Score:2)
You must be new here.
Re:Crap article is filled with crap. (Score:2)
As Michael Faraday [anglik.net] once said, a newborn baby can't do anything but cry and turn milk into shit. So the ONLY OBVIIOUS conclusion is that he will never be able to do anything, right?
The other choice (Score:5, Interesting)
Jobs maintaining these creations will always exist, because they wouldn't be able to administer themselves.
"I view this in the same way as the first flight of the Wright brothers," Cohen said.
Such advancements eventually find there way into businesses, which means someday fewer jobs driving forklifts and delivery trucks.
Does this mean that the writer believes that air travel is a bad thing? Does anyone think that we should do a harder, slower, more expensive and less reliable way so that more people have jobs?
Holding back the economy vs. progress (Score:2)
Who says that letting the market dictate its own future necessarily means "progress"?
Let's say that blacksmiths make car parts by hand in small workshops; there are millions of blacksmiths, but few cars because th
Re:The other choice (Score:4, Insightful)
To get a bit serious... there has been an intersection between the upward curve of job distruction by technology and the flattening of the upwards curve (now possibly down) of the generation of new jobs because of computers. Actually the effect has been more profound outside of the EU and USA than inside. It is starting to hit inside the EU And USA.
I could bore with statistics and I am sure no matter what nobody would be persuaded. We have finally reached the point at which large segments of society etc are simply being dumped as obsolete trash at a rate too high for them to adapte to the newer demands if they exist. Even the US Federal Reserve is starting to observe this and getting concerned. It isn't fun!
The rate of productivity rise is now globally at about 14% per year and rising. This is corresponding to an absolute dumping of masses around the world and is a substantial contributor to the issues behind the "War on Terror."
I don't forsee some magical uptick in jobs like the opimistic view holds nor do I see the apocolypse either. However we are faced with the reality that most of human needs and wants will be taken care of without human work. This produces a serious set of issues regards the distrobution of the results of this production and the value of persons in the world we are headed into. It is these last two issues that need the serious discussion and look at.
How do we maintain the value of persons in such a society and not foster antisocial and anti civilization behavior? How do we reward people? Surely it cannot be based on the fact of their grandfather's position. Property rights as important as they are, become a form of colonial hostile government in such a condition. How do we manage these.
One thing that is absolutely certain is that the concepts of the "Work Ethic" and such as well as "Free Enterprise" are not particularly applicable to this brave new world we are building. We are facing a set of descisions that is profoundly difficult and are into what are essentially uncharted waters.
I don't want to hear the ignorant claims of some Libertarian or Conservative or Liberal who takes on their partizan line here. Lets start talking about how we should solve the problems and not arguing that they do not exist or that the old structures are still working. They are not!
Re:The other choice (Score:3, Insightful)
Property rights as important as they are, become a form of colonial hostile government in such a condition.
Oooh, you communist you.
I agree with you for the reason that almost everything you said is logically derived from what we can see around us. What I have to add though, has to do with this:
I don't want to hear the ignorant claims of some Libertarian or Conservative or Liberal who takes on their partizan line here.
Society is dividing up quite unpleasantly into different groups. Tout what you'
Re:The other choice (Score:2)
How so? Unless you're referring to Western countries purchasing Middle Eastern oil, I don't see how a rise in productivity of American and European companies fuels the terrorists.
Re:The other choice (Score:2)
I agree we cannot hold progress, but if progress is paying us less (real income), then it will not work. High productitivy today focus a lot on paying less salaries and second, automation, while lowering costs (which is good), also increases the pool of unemployed. The consecuence? More people fighting for jobs, and that means that even if you are a rocket
Yes, I think we should (Score:3, Insightful)
--
No matter how hard it is for me, being a technology freak myself, I think I am going to have to answer this affirmatively.
Technologists, mea culpa, always have the urge to make 'things' more efficient. 'Efficiency' in the traditional meaning however could be translated, roughly, as 'Try real hard to use as many resources that we CANNOT miss (oil, energy, materials in some cases) to do
Re:Yes, I think we should (Score:3, Insightful)
Except that the guy in your example doesn't have a job, he has welfare. If I'm an employer and you tell me I can't use a computer but instead have to hire a less efficient worker, that's no different at all from letting me keep the computer and forcing me to pay the guy cash. You can talk about the "good feelin
Re:The other choice (Score:4, Insightful)
Problem is that we have a social model that requires the vast majority to work full-time to survive. And since growing food has dropped from employing the vast majority of people to a tiny percentage, there's very little that really needs to be done. So, to preserve this model, people need to be employed making countless plastic toys (or in the service industry)
Until that social model changes, we are trapped in a cycle of mas-consumerism. When politicians tell you that it's your patriotic duty to buy buy buy, well they're kind of right. But only within thier own paradigm. If everyone benefited from innovation, instead of just factory owners and stock-holders, then things would change. You'd start to see people working fewer hours, taking more time for education or recreation, etc. Which is what you might have expected when the tractor was invented, or factories were automated. Unfortunately the social-economic model wouldn't allow that.
As this process continues, expect the pressure to get worse until the revolution. 8)
Of course you know, this means war . . . (Score:2)
Maybe an open source project should be started oriented around automating strategy a
Technology threatens technologists the most. (Score:2, Interesting)
Truth is the technology threatens us computer geeks the most.
I have a book underneath a bunch of crap in the garage. "Unleashing Windows 98".
Some people spent weeks studying, learning about Windows 98 and master it. Who gives a shit about it now?
Everything you know, everything you think that you can do that is special will be done quicker and better by a 5 year old pressing a few bright buttons in a machine that you will end up designing and maintaining.
It's not so much that what you know will become o
Re:Technology threatens technologists the most. (Score:2)
Does that mean I can have George Jetson's job when I grow up?
Now that's a future worth to look forward to!
Re:Technology threatens technologists the most. (Score:2)
Yes, at some point people paid good money to have programs not only written by hand in assembly, but also translated by hand in hex/octal/binary. Machines were too expensive to be used for such mechanical tasks as converting assembly to hex. (No, literally.) Then the assembler started doing that for you.
Yes, at some point the only way to get good performance out of a C program (at least o
The shirt to impose the threat (Score:5, Funny)
Obligatory Matrix Quote... (Score:5, Funny)
Never send a human to do a machine's job...
Bad merchandise (Score:2)
outsourcing is a load of bull (Score:2, Interesting)
Myth #3: Outsourcing will cause a net loss of 3.3 million jobs.
Fact: Outsourcing has little net impact, and represents less than 1 percent of gross job turnover.
Over the past decade, America has lost an average of 7.71 million jobs every quarter.[4] The most alarmist prediction of jobs lost to outsourcing, by Forrester Research, estimates that 3.3 million service jobs will be outsourced between 2000 and 2015--an average of 55,000 jobs outsou
Re:outsourcing is a load of bull (Score:2)
You cite the Heritage foundation for outsourcing facts???
Let me guess, you use NewsMax to get your news, adn the Aberdeen group and Tocqville foundation for your linux related information.
Loser.
Bad stats, dude (Score:2)
The percent of layoffs due to outsourcing is only significant if layoffs are still a problem. So, you have a roughly 1% increased chance of being laid off due to outsourcing. But the other 99%
Re:outsourcing is a load of bull (Score:2)
But outsourcing is still a threat (Score:2)
Heh... (Score:2)
"Computer make me something, I don't know what but you understand don't you?"
The only smart things that computer does are those that computer knows the question. If question is not correct and answer in his database then computer isn't as smart as you'd think. Let say chess, extensive database and one question only, what to do in this position.
I don't know how smart systems would react to problems that would arise, like hdd crashed or similiar, but I know one thin
Not from a Security Standpoint... (Score:2)
Anyone with experience in Microsoft patching solutions care to run Microsoft self-assessment tools (even if it is originally @stake software)?
How many self-assessment tools (with AI being as "sophisticated" as it is) would be able to properly develop it's own risk assessment? Risk Assessment methodologies themselves are still somewhat "adolescent" IMHO - OCTAVE, NIST, and COBIT all leave something to be des
hee, hee (Score:5, Interesting)
who would make technical illustrations by *manually*
deleting centerlines and such from AutoCAD drawings
before exporting the images. Said it was great
mindless work to rest his brain.
When I showed him how to turn off layers, his eyes
got huge. "Don't tell anybody that! We'll lose our
overtime!"
If security is being traded out (Score:2)
Computer Science and "Decisions". (Score:2, Interesting)
It used to be that a computers 'usefulness' was measured not in terms of MIPS, or Desktop Dominance, or "user base", but in terms of Decisions made.
Any successful branch of a computer program, determined by its Logic Design, is a "Decision".
Think "Yes" or "No" trees in any flow diagram: this was a "Decision".
IBM used to promote their machines as having "made 150,000 decisions a day". These weren't just program branches, but real business decisions - e.g. "Is this account overdue?" - Yes == one successfu
Re:Computer Science and "Decisions". (Score:2)
People have tried to take a stab at this. Thats what the TPC benchmarks are for. But as almost everyone in IT knows, those benchmarks
GPS vs. Taxi Drivers.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Joseph Marie Jacquard's invention was fiercely opposed by the silk-weavers, who feared that its introduction, owing to the saving of labor, would deprive them of their livelihood. However, its advantages secured its general adoption, and by 1812 there were 11,000 looms in use in France. The loom was declared public property in 1806, and Jacquard was rewarded with a pension and a royalty on each machine.
Here's another example:
Our city currently has a shortage of 300+ tax drivers particularly during graveyard shifts. The taxi drivers union has proposed that cabs could be fitted with GPS and route-planning software, but the council refuses saying that any potential taxi drivers must pass the official exams (demonstrating their ability to have memorised "The Knowledge").
Introducing technology would create more jobs, and there is no danger of loss of earnings, since the council regulates the fares that taxis can charge.
Re:The Taxi Driver Union proposed that? (Score:2)
With the continuing redevelopment of brown-field sites, taxi drivers don't know the new streets anyway, while GIS/GPS systems are automatically updated once planning permission has been granted.
New developments tend to be on completely self-contained land with their own roads. Each development consists of quads of apartments surroun
Marshall Brain has thought about this stuff (Score:5, Interesting)
Brain chose polar extremes for artistic purposes, and to peg the ends of the sociological spectrum, so it's more an exploration than a prediction. But it's a very interesting and worthwhile read. If automation does displace almost all jobs, I don't think the current legal and financial system will do much to protect those of us who aren't super-rich.
This just in... (Score:2)
Social Change (Score:4, Insightful)
If you want to consider what would happen then think of how Saudi Araibia would handle running out of oil or a sudden technology that would allow the world to quit using oil completely. They've already asked what the world would do to help them. I doubt anyone answered though.
The point is were a mainly a capitalistic world and that type of society is incapable of comprehending a world where there's not such things as cost/profit. Europe is transitioning to a socialist type government but still it's inherently based on capitalist's who just wave the banner of socialism.
A Republican or Democrat cannot see past the people financing their elections and it's one of the biggest flaws in our democracy now that the rich and corporations are the only influence in our political system. Our forefathers never envisioned corporations or the super wealthy and thus no protections from these types of influence were built into our government. Thus until we change our ways in the end we'll be stuck with a government that wont go out of the way to help those who lose their jobs.
Re:Social Change (Score:2)
But, as others have pointed out, this has already happened several times over. A few generations ago, almost all of us worked in an industry (agriculture) that now employs a miniscule percentage of the worforce. And yet we don't have 90% unemployment....
--Bruce Fields
Reaction Throughout Modern History (Score:2, Informative)
This is the same reaction that has been given to new technology since the start of the Industrial Revolution, if not before.
Starting in the nineteenth century, a wave of time-saving devices and new manufacturing processes allowed a few workers to complete jobs that had previously required the laborous attentions of a multitude of skilled craftsmen. For one example out of many, consider the difference between clothing that was either simple and home-made or expensively tailored by a professional seamstr
It's true. (Score:2, Insightful)
Strange really. The industrial revolution seemed to lead to more employment. Not less.
Must be a totally different situation though. It's a well known fact that the world only has a certain finite number of jobs (which is apparently the same argument used against immigration), and if you create a new piece of technology,
Creative work (Score:2)
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what to do? (Score:2)
As technology advances, and burgeoning industries like computer vision and robotics continue their frantic pace towards matching human performance, it's inevitable that automation will replace humans in most service jobs (food, cleaning, construction), much like it has done in manufacturing.
The result of this will be nothing short of catastrophic. There will be a massive unemployed workforce lacking skills past what automation/robots can provide. The chasm b
Re:what to do? (Score:5, Interesting)
But even the life of the have-nots will be better. The poorest beggar in the world today is safe from smallpox, which even the richest people died from in the past. And even a refrigerator box is better than whatever shelter a beggar could get a hundred years ago.
Do we become a socialist welfare state
Something like that. What made communism inviable was the fact that wealth is finite. When productivity increases enough, people start giving things away. We get "free" email accounts with 100Mb capacity because the investment per account is just $0.10. Food productivity is so high that the goverment must buy and stock some farming products to raise the price.
The future I see is one where few things will be valuable. Real estate is one of them. Corporations are trying to raise the value of intellectual property, but I think it's obvious they will fail in the long run. For a while, arts and sports will be valuable skills, until art becomes fully automated and anyone can become a super-athlete, thanks to medical progress. In the end, we will either have the ultimate communist state, where wealth is distributed evenly by law, or we will the ultimate feudalist state, where the only wealth is owning land, acquired by inheritance. But the poorest serf will have a much better standard of living than any of us has today.
Automation could take my job (Score:2, Interesting)
However it's ironic that b/c it's a government position that "they" stil
Improve your skills (Score:2)
P.S. For those who are going to take up issue with the outsourcin
Basic Economic Fallacy (Score:4, Insightful)
If you still believe that creating an efficiency is wrong when someone loses their job as a consequence, then you must also believe that using a computer is wrong, because you could clearly have hired someone (possibly lots of people) to deliver your communications instead of relying on automation. And for that matter, why use a car, when doing so has caused the unemployment of so many buggy drivers and horse . And for that matter, why use buggies at all. A single person can only travel so far on foot before needing rest. To get your messege to the entire world, you could employ many, many more people if you insisted that it be delivered by foot.
Unemployment (Score:4, Interesting)
The sooner we realise that, and stop treating it as a problem, the better.
Another viewpoint (Score:2, Interesting)
For many years, I enjoyed six to nine month backpacking trips. I did thruhikes of major trails, wandered at whim through the national forests of America, and enjoyed what I considered a happy way of life. I had to work only few months over winter to finance these activities.
Others prefer overbuilt houses, accumulation of material objects, or whatever else they desire. They have made a choice, and tied their lives to the whims of thei
Give me a break (Score:2, Interesting)
These are the jobs that are being automated and replaced by machines, because people don
Obligatory links (Score:2, Interesting)
No Kidding (Score:2)
Plus the fall out will take out many others in the 'support' fields. ( even non-comptuer related, other industries are doing the same thing )
old argument (Score:2, Insightful)
Using machines on farms put people out of 16-18/hr/day back breaking work. Oh, no, stop the machines.
The cotton gin will put all the people picking seeds from the cotton out of work. Oh, no, stop the machines.
Using machines in manufacturing will lead to devastatingly low employment. There won't be enough employed people to buy the products. Oh, no, stop the machines.
Visual Basic/Smalltalk/Powerbuilder allows non-programmers to build their own app
Yup it's true (Score:2)
**Posted by Auto-Post 1.6
Maintenance doesn't cut it (Score:5, Insightful)
Let me put it this way: If the company's implementation of the machine doesn't put people out of work, why are they implementing it? If I'm already paying ten people to do a job, why should I buy a fancy robot and then still be paying ten people to go around fixing it? You can be certain that as machines replace jobs the number of human workers will go down, and the ones that are left will be the ones smart enough to be able to do things that machines can't.
Re:Maintenance doesn't cut it (Score:2)
It's called "increasing productivity" (Score:2)
Isn't this happening already? (Score:2)
I'm pretty sure the myriad of automated customer service tools used by many of the customer service lines I call regularly, which will either handle my request itself (such as checking my account balance, etc) or at the very least direct me to the appropriate
Artificial Intelligence (Score:2)
Its called evolution (Score:2, Insightful)
Everytime someone tries to implement something that is going to automat
Yes, I say this alot (Score:2)
A: Looks for job
B: Works
C: Finishes job
D: Goto A
In the long run, theres less jobs to be had, and more people looking for jobs.
Think out of the box - Jobs are not important (Score:2, Insightful)
If machines are able to decrease the amount of mundane work that we need to do to generate wealth is a good thing in general. True, in our present system, the people who are displaced by the machines lose financially. But the solution is not to cut off the head of the goose laying the golde
Re:ob (Score:3, Insightful)
I think someone is trying to generate hits to their consulting firm's website.
Re:Jobs computers can do: (Score:2)