Automation is replacing jobs – What do you think?
I am a firm believer that jobs are going away. And the current trend is supporting me in that:
See this video by CGP Grey for example:
Or this recent one by Kurzgesagt:
There is one sentence I hear every time when this topic comes up:
90% of our jobs will be gone by 2020!
That is scary! Not in the They are taking our jobs away!?! way but more like Our society is not ready for it. I am totally fine with not having to work, but if my society won't give me money, I am screwed.
There are ways out like The Venus Project:
But we are far away from achieving that. I stay by my claim: Our society is not ready for it.
But the last days I noticed: We already have something, that can help us: Steem
What do you think? Is Steem a solution? Do you have something different that solves this? Or do you think there is no problem?
I partly agree while automation will replace some job, some other job will come up due to the structural change. It happened in the past, happening now and will happen in future. The inportant thing is as human being, how we continue to innovate and add value.
I really hope you are right!
Did you watch the video? It's the first thing he addresses.
I sit somewhere in the middle though, I don't think we will be fully useless.
If nothing else people already assign novelty value to handmade items, and I assume this will continue well past singularity.
We irrationally assign additional value to our own in-group because it is in our nature to rationalize that we are good.
Goddamn do I love kurzgesagt! I'm so impressed by their progress, and I'm elated to hear that their patreon is doing fantastic. Thanks for sharing this post, really enjoyed all the content :)
@reggaemuffin Until AI becomes a commercial and accepted reality, I think automation will only affect the jobs of the industrial era. As an educator, we now focus on providing kids with the skills to survive and compete in a society of which we don't know what the makeup will be. Jobs are disappearing, however, different job markets are opening too. More and more 'thinking skills' based jobs are appearing and we focus on employability skills rather than knowledge.
Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) areas have been identified as the skill shortage areas here in Australia at least. Only a few years ago I took a group of kids along to a local technological firm (one of the giant conglomerates) and asked them what they look for in a new employee. There answer was Thinking Skills. Analysing, inquiring, complex reasoning, etc. These are the transferable skills of the 21st century. And although there is a high level of automation across some job markets, I believe that different markets will open up to replace those that are lost. Will they be at the same rate? What will happen to those people who don't have the capability for accessing these higher order thinking skills jobs? Only time will tell I guess.
Thanks for your viewpoint! I totally agree that thinking skills are what AI is currently not good at and what is in demand. I am worried for all the people who do not have that much skill/talent/whatever in it…
Here is hoping everything will work out :)
Skynet is coming.
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So you think that there will always be new jobs? I think that will not happen this time, but we only know that when it happened :)
What is your stance on the unemployment rate and the outcries The government has to make new jobs?
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I think this comment needs a disclaimer what country you are talking about. For example this would not apply to Germany or the Netherlands.
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Automation has been replacing the need for human labour for decades things are just speeding up now. I think we are creating new jobs now, I look at people who are making a living from things like Youtube, Twitch, Chaturbate, and here on Steemit, and think that this is the future we are heading towards, an economy based around what you do/who you are in life.. My main fear is things are going to end up like the second episode of the first series of Black Mirror.
I really hope you are right and we find things like steemit where we can still make a living.
Without spoilering the others, can you give an abstract of that episode? I sadly did not witch Black Mirror yet :)
You should go watch Black Mirror as soon as you can, it is fantastic. Each episode is it's own contained universe, so to speak, much like the Twilight Zone or Outer Limits so telling you about one episode won't spoil the others.
I'm really not very good at explaining these things so I'll just link to the wikipedia article about the episode if you're interested in a better explaination. Ok, so basically this episode deals with a world where everybody is paid in "merits" for cycling bikes that essentially power everything. Screens (TV, computer, etc,) have pretty much taken over every available space and people are constantly bombarded with advertisements that cost money (merits) to skip.
Right, that's probably the best I'm going to be able to explain it, it's been a while since I've seen it but out of every episode of Black Mirror I've seen it's the one I fear the most because of how close our society is to becoming like that one.
Wow that sound scary! I have to watch that! I love these dystopia scenarios.
Well then you will love Black Mirror, pretty much every episode is a dystopian nightmare.
Black Mirror, one of the best philosophical series out there ❤
Automation is definitely going to make our lifes a lot easier. At some point we should be able to work a couple of hours a week, in fact we should already be able to work 15~ hours a week right now if it weren't for the current capitalistic system we have in place. I am not saying capitalism on its own is all bad, but due to robots replacing humans and the profit going to a single minority it removes jobs without a benefit to the common man. Since this progress of technology is going at a very rapid pace it also means a lot of people still have to adjust to this new reality we are heading towards. To answer your question, Steemit, the idea its founded on will help in this process towards a healthy environment on the internet. I actually wrote an article on this I posted just a day ago.
If your interested in it here is the link: https://steemit.com/steemit/@droucil/how-an-idea-like-steemit-could-change-the-entire-internet
Thanks for the article, it was a nice read :)
Whatever that happens, i believe man is doing that for his betterment, there must be circulation of money to people irrespective of who worked; machine or man, else it'll lose value. Thanks for sharing your thoughts @reggaemuffin
What about Universal Basic Income? There's a lot of talk about this lately and some countries are testing this out already. I recall that Elon Musk has said he thinks that it will be a solution to the automation problem.
I personally think that is a step in the right direction :)
I agree with you, but also note that some jobs are likely to always benefit from the human touch, like social work, teaching, choreography, makeup application, and a lot of healthcare positions. If we gain skills in these sectors, we are more likely to stay relevant even as the 'main players' in the world as we know it, change.