The robots are coming

TyreLever

With all the robots doing things that people would normally pay for, the people will be out of work and have no money to pay for those things. So what will the robots be doing exactly?

moneyistooshorttomention

motorguy wrote: »

I think its fairly cringeworthy.

30 years ago computers were going to replace as many jobs apparently. They didnt.

The sort of technology required to have robots perform roles like hes talking about is decades away.

They have replaced an awful lot of jobs.

To take just one example - ie in office jobs (the field I know best personally). Back when I started work every single letter had to be typed individually. Roll forward some years - and these days most of the letters we receive from firms are "standard" ones customised just enough that it's our name/address at the top of them. No-one has had to type that letter out individually. No-one has stopped and thought about the information in it being applicable to us (and us only) at a personal level.

Offices no longer have huge amounts of files. Bingo - that was the jobs of filing clerks gone then.

....and so on....

Employers just don't need nearly as many people to do jobs as they used to - and it is only going to get worse (ie with the double whammy of fewer jobs and more people needing a job). A lot of the unskilled jobs have gone in my lifetime and I don't think there will be many jobs at all at "my" (intermediate) level left soon. Those with professional careers are probably not that far behind us.

Personally - if I were at the start of my working life now - I would be distinctly disturbed at being expected to do things like working in an office "factory" (rather than a "proper" office with pretty leisured/civilised way of doing things) or work in the "gig" economy and not even be sure from one week to the next how much I would earn and just who was supposed to cover the cost of my annual leave and any sick leave. That's now - ie 2016. If I had to start my worklife now - I already strongly suspect my only realistic option for myself personally would be "back to the land" in a series of self-sufficient communes. I think we'll be very surprised at the calibre of the people that would also have to think along the same lines in, say, 10 years time.

DavidF

Last time I walked inside my own local Barclays bank I was met by one human who directed everyone I saw entering the place (myself included) to one of the many machines to complete our "banking". There was one other human worker (visible anyway) who was behind the traditional desk and she was dealing with a long queue of people who I can only assume refused or could not complete their transactions.
Every time we go supermarket shopping you see less and less workers on tills....our local morrison's for example has one employee tasked with overseeing 10 self scanning tills. This is replicated in any of the rival supermarkets that we have visited.
So yes the threatened computer/robotic revolution HAS taken place and IS removing jobs done by humans.
There is no real way of stopping this march. Youngsters should be focused on careers that they can envisage will still be required in 40 years time. Builders/Trades ect will always be required. Drivers are the next huge target...and the UK has promised to lead the way in the driverless cars/vans ect. Train drivers will soon be gone. I can also envisage a time when even police officers will be replaced by AI ....as said even lawyers and judges ect "could" be fairly easily replaced by automation.
Finally if the robots/automation doesn't make you redundant then watch out for globalisation where someone earning <$1 per day can do your job equally well ....it's going to come down to weather your employer likes your smile lol.

agrinnall

OP, this and other threads you have started are on the wrong board, they should be on Debate House Prices and the Economy. This board is about real world issues.

Gavin83

I've mentioned this on here before, I don't think there's a single job that can't be replaced by machines. Some are harder than others and some will just see numbers reduced before being completely eliminated but it's entirely possible.

I think over the next decade we'll see the number of self service tills massively increase and along with the increase of internet purchases the traditional high street retail job will massively reduce. This includes serving staff in the likes of McDonalds. Although we don't have that many manufacturing jobs left in the U.K. I can see those all but disappearing too. I think the next big industry to be targeted will be anything transport related ie: trains, haulage, taxis, buses etc. We've already got the technology for self driving trains and in the next year or so we'll start to see self driving cars. I give it a decade before only a handful of people work in driving jobs. I'm sure black cabs will stick around but more as a novelty thing, they're already heading that way without technology. Train drivers, or more appropriately the unions are making such a nuisance of themselves it makes sense to replace them. Sadiq has already ordered driverless trains for one of the underground lines but won't confirm this from fear of the union backlash. The others will follow. I think we're maybe a decade away from this.

Even in IT, an industry you'd expect protected I've seen jobs replaced with machines. We have software capable of monitoring systems and fixing them when an error occurs which would have previously required human assistance. Jobs are becoming more simplified and therefore come with lower salaries and of course a lot are being affected by globalisation. It's more difficult to retain your job on a good salary when someone in India can do it for a few dollars a day. With the increased development in communications this will only get worse and for more industries. I even saw a demo a few weeks ago of VR technology that allows people to be sitting next to people who are on the other side of the world and conduct a meeting. Location is becoming less and less important.

I think the next band of jobs to be targeted will be those considered dangerous, such as the emergency services and the army. Ambulance staff will probably escape it for a bit but I give it maybe 20-25 years before army personnel and firemen no longer exist, except those at the top making the decisions.

Another will be those jobs that people don't like doing, things like care work and cleaning. Taken with the above that doesn't really leave many unskilled minimum wage jobs left. I can see a wider split between the haves and have nots in a few decades time. You'll either have a well paid job or you won't have a job at all.

The traditional office jobs will more likely be farmed off to third world countries instead, the salaries still likely make them cheaper than robots.

TyreLever wrote: »

With all the robots doing things that people would normally pay for, the people will be out of work and have no money to pay for those things. So what will the robots be doing exactly?

This is the major problem, we'll head towards a country where only a select few earn any money and therefore most won't be able to afford anything. The issue with this is the best situation for a company is them using outsourcing or robots to save money while all their competitors employ people still. No company will want to be the one putting themselves at a disadvantage by employing real people. Therefore we'll likely have every company taking the outsourcing/automation route complaining that no one can afford their products because everyone is outsourcing/automating! It's a tricky one to crack.

Wayne_O_Mac

DomRavioli wrote: »

The same man said that after brexit the UK economy would crumble immediately (didn't happen).

Because Brexit hasn't happened yet?

PasturesNew wrote: »

So the population needs to start reducing by 15 million pretty quick.

Destroying London would be a good start.

Pennywise

Gavin83 wrote: »

I've mentioned this on here before, I don't think there's a single job that can't be replaced by machines.

Not just machines. There are a lot of "services" that people can be empowered to do themselves via the internet in terms of resources and advice etc. But, they still need to have competence, intelligence and education to do it themselves and some people simply don't want to.

Take my profession, accountancy. By right, most people should be doing their own accounts/returns as literally everything you need to know is on the internet and agencies like HMRC are falling over themselves trying to help people do it themselves. We have almost fully automated book-keeping software. Yet accountancy is still a growing profession. Yes, a lot of people do it themselves, but equally a lot of people make a right foul-up of it and get themselves into all kinds of messes - many just don't even bother and prefer to pay someone else to take away the stress.

I'm amazed at the sheer number of people who are home educating their kids or "tutoring" them themselves rather than hiring private tutors for 11+ and GCSE/A level support. I never imagined we'd have local facebook groups organising visits to museums, social get-togethers, etc. I believe there are now several organisations with teachers doing live "webinars" for home-ed children - where a single teacher can give a lesson to potentially hundreds of children rather than a class of 30. We could well start to see falling school attendances at a time of increasing population. That's not necessarily a reduction in teachers, but maybe more like a change in how teachers teach - i.e. more online and less in a formal school environment.

It's not all a matter of losing jobs - it's a matter of changing how we do things. People still need someone else to do things for them. It's how those services are delivered that will change. There'll be more workers involved in supporting those that want to do it themselves rather than doing it for them as in the past. As things change, new opportunities will emerge and new jobs will appear - jobs that we've never thought of yet? After all, in the midst of the industrial revolution, no-one would have thought that a job description of "web designer" would ever have existed.

[Deleted User]

TELLIT01 wrote: »

Automation in one form or another has changed working practices for centuries, and will continue to do so. The Luddites smashed machines to stop change in the late 17th / early 18th century and failed. The unions tried the same in the 60's, 70's and 80's and failed.
Wailing and gnashing of teeth won't stop change happening again. People have to adapt.

The reason the Luddites were proved wrong when they argued machines put people out of work is that they didn't foresee that the redundant labour would be re-employed producing other wealth that we wouldn't otherwise have had the manpower for. Economic growth is founded on productivity improvements, and productivity improvement is just another name for automation.

The problem that we are rapidly approaching is not that automation is new, but that we have grown the economy to the point where we can't consume everything, and the environment can't sustainably support it.

In order to protect the environment and climate from further damage we urgently need to start looking for ways of reaping the benefits of improved productivity in terms of reduced working hours rather than increased consumption. That's easier said than done though, because it will require international co-operation unless one country is prepared to put themselves at a disadvantage to others by acting unilaterally.

It's just rather sad that Britain and America have just voted for less international co-operation.

Raspberry_Queen

What jobs do you think are safe? Those in the medical professions?
Which STEM jobs will be safe in the future? Someone will have to fix the robots.

moneyistooshorttomention wrote: »

They have replaced an awful lot of jobs.

To take just one example - ie in office jobs (the field I know best personally). Back when I started work every single letter had to be typed individually. Roll forward some years - and these days most of the letters we receive from firms are "standard" ones customised just enough that it's our name/address at the top of them. No-one has had to type that letter out individually. No-one has stopped and thought about the information in it being applicable to us (and us only) at a personal level.

Offices no longer have huge amounts of files. Bingo - that was the jobs of filing clerks gone then.

....and so on....

Employers just don't need nearly as many people to do jobs as they used to - and it is only going to get worse (ie with the double whammy of fewer jobs and more people needing a job). A lot of the unskilled jobs have gone in my lifetime and I don't think there will be many jobs at all at "my" (intermediate) level left soon. Those with professional careers are probably not that far behind us.

Personally - if I were at the start of my working life now - I would be distinctly disturbed at being expected to do things like working in an office "factory" (rather than a "proper" office with pretty leisured/civilised way of doing things) or work in the "gig" economy and not even be sure from one week to the next how much I would earn and just who was supposed to cover the cost of my annual leave and any sick leave. That's now - ie 2016. If I had to start my worklife now - I already strongly suspect my only realistic option for myself personally would be "back to the land" in a series of self-sufficient communes. I think we'll be very surprised at the calibre of the people that would also have to think along the same lines in, say, 10 years time.

But we can't do that; there's simply not enough land. There are 66 million people in the UK, and 59,000,000 acres of land. It takes 15 acres of land to feed a human on a conventional diet (0.25 acres on a plant based diet, but people refuse to do that). The remaining land that is suitable for self-sufficient living (in my area, the most fertile land with the best, most untouched soil), is being destroyed by hundreds of thousands of new houses being built.

So, the powers that be have centralised everything to ensure that we can't be self-sufficient. We must be reliant on money. Really, all humans need is that 0.25 acres of good land, some seeds and tools to farm it, and they wouldn't need much else.

AshleyBurf

It's true that in certain industries will be taken over by robots. The creative industries won't be but things like driving trucks will be self driving, self driving taxis, cleaning may eventually be done by robots. I would certainly take a cleaning and cooking robot at home!