Will automation kill off jobs in the future?

[Biggusstickus]

So Mister metokur mentioned how Automation in the PaulyFrog stream, at around the 49:00 mark, was going to replace entry-level jobs and careers like warehousing, trucking, programming, art, music. For any technology inclined Kiwis, do you think Metokur has a point? Or is it going to take decades for automation to kill off said jobs?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJj8p9VXGQo

On that note, what jobs and careers can automation never replace? Because it really sucks for any young Kiwis that are trying to get into the workforce via entry-level jobs they can’t get into.

 

[Retink]

Automation will take a long time to kill off a lot of those jobs, but really the point shouldn't be to stop automation or to try to find places it can't ever touch, but rather ask what new jobs will come as a result of automation and the like. Jobs as a whole are constantly changing and a lot of previously existing professions don't really exist anymore, though there are plenty of new options, and for all the millennials who complain about how easy boomers had it, I'm sure zoomers or whatever will complain how easy millennials had it because youtube used to pay so well. What none of them get is that they're only seeing the people who made it while the vast majority did jack shit.

 

[I am vomit]

Automation is going to kill the prostitution industry when they get walking robot vaginas and boobs with heating features.

 

[Dr. Geronimo]

Automation is going to kill the prostitution industry when they get walking robot vaginas and boobs with heating features.

At least they won't be able to cancel you.

 

[AmpleApricots]

Automation has killed off jobs for a long time. What's currently happening is not comparable to earlier situations where technological progress killed off jobs. When modern transportation came around for example, it did kill off jobs too, e.g. cowboys and uneducated farm hands. The difference was that while the progress of the combustion engine and later of the car destroyed old jobs, it also created a lot of new ones and even entire industries around them. The cowboy could go work in the city at a petroleum station and frankly, he was better off for it. It improved quality of life and gave western civilization a huge boom.

Nowadays automation destroys jobs without really replacing them with modern alternatives at a scale that would cover population growth or -demographics. A technology company maybe employs dozens, hundreds, maybe thousands of people but consistently automates jobs of other industries away without really creating new ones. People don't get better tools that improves their quality of life while working or enables them to do new things, they're actually in direct workplace competition with these tools. The jobs creating these tools are also usually highly specialized jobs that have a definitive cap on how many people in that particular workforce are needed in the economy. Not only can't everyone just "learn to code", they also aren't really needed if they did.

Even if you don't care about the struggle of the plebs to earn a livable wage, long-term this has big, negative implications on the economy. While work efficiency grows and a single worker gets more and more done with all the automation around him, the mass of people actually able to afford and consume this output shrinks further and further as life quality diminishes, making profit margins razor-thin. That's also why everyone is caught in this spiral of endless optimization now.

It's a big problem. Stopping automation is not going to happen. The only real way to fix this IMO are strategies like universal income, higher minimum wages and reduction of work hours. Besides socialist sperg-outs, people complaining this makes work or "the economy" meaningless haven't understood that everything is fake as hell already anyways, so making everything a bit more fake and meaningless, in the big picture, doesn't really matter. I personally don't think that is going to happen. I just think that life will get worse. Frankly, I'm too old to have to care anymore and I can't fix it.

 

[Freshly Baked Socks]

what jobs and careers can automation never replace?

I hear there are perpetual openings in the janitorial dept. Oh, were you expecting an easy, well-paid occupation?

 

[Judge Dredd]

It simultaneously will and won't. Both sides have a case, and while some entry level jobs will be automated, some likely won't be for decades.

There's a great documentary about why the Amazon drone delivery future we were promised never materialised.

The TL:DW Delivery drones can and do work, it's just a number of small niggling problems with no easy fix quickly mount up until the entire project is no longer viable in 99% of cases. Such as protected air space, people living in tower blocks, or people with pets.

When it comes to automated cars, it's a similar problem. They work great on test tracks or in a few isolated cities, but they struggle to deal with varied weather, terrain, and non-standard situations. I've had people get mad at me for saying that, but self driving cars have been "any day now" for years. According to wikipedia, they've been promised since the 80s.

 

[Biggusstickus]

I hear there are perpetual openings in the janitorial dept. Oh, were you expecting an easy, well-paid occupation?

An occupation with job security that can put food and a roof over a family and I would be nice.

Automation will take a long time to kill off a lot of those jobs, but really the point shouldn't be to stop automation or to try to find places it can't ever touch, but rather ask what new jobs will come as a result of automation and the like. Jobs as a whole are constantly changing and a lot of previously existing professions don't really exist anymore, though there are plenty of new options, and for all the millennials who complain about how easy boomers had it, I'm sure zoomers or whatever will complain how easy millennials had it because youtube used to pay so well. What none of them get is that they're only seeing the people who made it while the vast majority did jack shit.

Got any jobs in mind that will come when automation comes? I heard from a super and a contractor that electricians will be replaced by automation. And working with computers is not a long-term solution from old fag tech support who said they’re having trouble learning new things in the field.

 

[Weeb_Killer]

My prediction is they'll kill off most forms of coding and tech jobs before they kill off any traditional blue collar work. Why? Because it's cheaper to pay blue collar wages than it is to pay for white collar work.

I'll give you an example. I don't know if this was just a euro-centric phenomenon, but before 2000, automated car-washes were everywhere. But then the EU expanded eastward and the whole continent was flooded with cheap labour. Automated car washes are extinct now, replaced by gangs of Romanians that work 16 hours day for a $5 an hour.

When it comes to robo-taxis/robo-trucks, the same will occur. After you've factored in all the overheads and armies of people you'd need to maintain the vehicles, it's just gonna be cheaper to let someone else own the vehicle and give them an hourly rate.

 

[seri0us]

OT but can someone show me the bit where Jim talks about how Internet friends aren't real friends?

 

[Ronnie McNutt]

they can kill off jobs like cashiers and it's already happening with self checkouts, basically industrial society and it's consequences

 

[seri0us]

Not only can't everyone just "learn to code", they also aren't really needed if they did.

A funny thing is that most of the people who go on and on about "muh coding camps" or "learn to code" don't even know how to use their computer's terminal.

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

I don't believe it will due to the simple reason that at the end of the day, humans are just more cost benefit than machines. Why get top of the line engineers to create a system that will solve multiple specific problems (that can change with time), when you can just get a bunch of third world immigrants to do the job for a fraction of what a single engineer would take?
Not to mention any kind of full automation in the service industry is a waste of time since boomers will NEVER invest time to learn how to use it, making it so you always need an engineer.

Besides that, a lot of problems involving voice and image recognition aren't in any way "solved" to be used without chance for massive mistakes (ie, autonomic cars). And a lot of the elites are against automation once they realized a lot of their political goals don't align to a computer's objective world view (for example automatic bail has bias against niggers because they commit more crimes).

 

[teriyakiburns]

Automation always replaces repetitive labour, but not anything that requires creativity and contextualisation. As soon as the machine makes a repetitive task more efficient, even if it isn't immediately cheaper than having human do that task, the machine wins.

This means automation won't replace coders, but it will replace a lot of the boilerplate work they do on new projects. It will replace the process of ordering food, but not necessarily the production of food, because that does require a certain level of imagination to resolve unpredictable issues that crop up.

 

[tehpope]

I work with automation at my job. Probably not any time soon. I basically baby sit a machine learning to do a human's job. It still fucks up on a bunch of things. Damages things. Probably not in my lifetime will automation put humans out of every job. New jobs will appear. Like when we transitioned from the horse and buggy to cars. When we transitioned from using desk calculators to personal computers.

 

[Retink]

Got any jobs in mind that will come when automation comes? I heard from a super and a contractor that electricians will be replaced by automation. And working with computers is not a long-term solution from old fag tech support who said they’re having trouble learning new things in the field.

Don't know, don't care.

I'll let you in on a secret, don't think about a career as something you pick and stick with, but rather look at what opportunities are present and take advantage of them, and don't stop looking at opportunities. Almost all of the jobs I've held had little to do with my degree and in many cases skills I thought were non transferable ended up being what landed me a future job in a very roundabout way as they were tangentially related.

The other things to keep in mind, not everything will be presented to you openly so you have to seek things out and don't be afraid to tackle hard problems, just treat them as a fun game to do and if you fail and it ends up in you getting canned, well at least you tried, rebuild and keep moving forward. Don't forget that what you did in the past doesn't really matter, both negative and positive, and when you're asking for something it's good to use past accomplishments as a reference, but make sure to present future prospects. Otherwise you'll just look like the wash up who keeps reminding everyone of their one big thing they did that one time and no one likes that person.

 

[Obi Wan Kenobi]

I think theres some jobs that cant be automated ((yet)) like ones that require hand labour, you can imitate them with robots i.e making pastry but it just doesnt taste the same, or masseurs, best we've come up with for now is shit like that dicksucking hand fleshlight thing and massage chairs, cant beat the hand

Jobs that can be easily automated and as we're seeing now anyway is things like factory jobs, i.e producing cars which are more practical if a robot does it anyway, but then again things that require non-monotonous activities are still something robots struggle with, as well as hand labour as I mentioned above

 

[The Mass Shooter Ron Soye]

Truckers will argue that they can't be easily automated because of technology, insurance, and liability reasons. Even importing an unskilled foreigner to drive for your company is a bad idea because an incident can cost millions. I think there has been plenty of interest in getting trucking automated, it will happen eventually, and Null is right to point out that TPTB do not want another trucker protest ever again.

This means automation won't replace coders, but it will replace a lot of the boilerplate work they do on new projects.

A combination of partial automation with extreme competition and outsourcing will keep that field interesting.

I think theres some jobs that cant be automated ((yet)) like ones that require hand labour, you can imitate them with robots i.e making pastry but it just doesnt taste the same, or masseurs, best we've come up with for now is shit like that dicksucking hand fleshlight thing and massage chairs, cant beat the hand

Obviously, it's being worked on. Eventually some research institute or company will come out with a robot with a human-like hand that will do things with shocking precision.

Part of the next phase of automation will be to deploy one adaptable general-purpose robot into multiple areas. That was the idea behind Baxter.

I work with automation at my job. Probably not any time soon. I basically baby sit a machine learning to do a human's job. It still fucks up on a bunch of things. Damages things. Probably not in my lifetime will automation put humans out of every job. New jobs will appear. Like when we transitioned from the horse and buggy to cars. When we transitioned from using desk calculators to personal computers.

At some point we will be unable to create more jobs than are being automated away. Especially low-skilled ones. Not every fast food worker or grocer can learn to code. Drug dealing and sex work is more likely.

 

[Just Some Other Guy]

An occupation with job security that can put food and a roof over a family and I would be nice.

Got any jobs in mind that will come when automation comes? I heard from a super and a contractor that electricians will be replaced by automation. And working with computers is not a long-term solution from old fag tech support who said they’re having trouble learning new things in the field.

Lol how the hell is an electrician going to be automated?

Learn 2 trades.

 

[tehpope]

At some point we will be unable to create more jobs than are being automated away. Especially low-skilled ones. Not every fast food worker or grocer can learn to code. Drug dealing and sex work is more likely.

Sure.

Truckers will argue that they can't be easily automated because of technology, insurance, and liability reasons. Even importing an unskilled foreigner to drive for your company is a bad idea because an incident can cost millions. I think there has been plenty of interest in getting trucking automated, it will happen eventually, and Null is right to point out that TPTB do not want another trucker protest ever again.

Everyone keeps thinking its around the corner. I think maybe 100 years might be the earliest. I don't think it'll happen in my own lifetime. Maybe get close or very close. But it takes a lot of smart people and coding to get this shit to work. This Resession / Depression we're having is gonna put things back a little bit. Also companies still out sourcing to India, where they use example code for pretty much everything.