The General Economics Thread

Historically, automation doesnt reduce the number of jobs available. The money saved is used to fund more development and production, which creates new professions and provides more jobs.

The entire education realm is overpopulated.

Yup, there was also a chapter on Education which included an analysis about degree inflation and how the return on college degrees was no longer worth, especially if you took out a loan to go to college.

It's a week since I read the book so stuff may be hazy, but I think it overall recommended people to go into healthcare courses instead of into tech due to self-learning programs + that tech-type jobs are probably the most prone to be automated.

Right now, I wouldn't recommend borrowing money for a tech course, unless you've been steeped in computer languages before age 7.

edited 27th Nov '15 4:20:27 PM by probablyinsane

Plants are aliens, and fungi are nanomachines.

The argument via the people doing the study is most of those jobs will quickly get overrun by robots. Or as Brad DeLong says it, we're getting to the point all humans have left is 'Minds' and 'Smiles'. (Basically art, nursing and medical jobs and the like that probablyinsane is citing).

It's the same argument we've been hearing since they invented steam engines. I dont think it's suddenly going to come true now.

Steam Engines can't multiply the way programs can.

Plants are aliens, and fungi are nanomachines.

So apparently the West is heading for another big economic crash in 5-6 years, anyone care to explain this to me?

“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran

Technocalypse, basically.

Plants are aliens, and fungi are nanomachines.

I think that is grossly exaggerated. I work for a company that is on the leading edge of medical technology. We're still using Windows 7 and Office 2007. My job is to help automate processes that people are still doing by hand in Excel. It took us three years just to put in a new ERP system that has just as much manual work as the old one, if not more.

There is no way they're going to overhaul the entire business in five years to dump all the professional positions. Seriously, people.

edited 27th Nov '15 8:01:50 PM by Fighteer

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

No one's going to argue that the medical sector is gonna be slow-moving.

But other sectors - financial, retail, journalism, etc. is going to be more fast-paced.

Plants are aliens, and fungi are nanomachines.

Since I work with programing and automation, these articles always strike me as sensationalist, even the most advanced analytic computers available are still pretty dumb when compared to even untrained humans.

The costs alone make hiring some poor sod to do some menial work would be cheaper than assembling a computer and an automaton to do the same job, let alone replacing the whole production process.

When it comes to decision making, machines still are woefully behind insects, my AI teacher outright states that most intelligent computers are good for finding patterns on data and nothing else, but without some abstract thinking that so far only humans can provide, those patterns are anything but data on a spreadsheet since interpreting the data is something our computers can't do.

Inter arma enim silent leges

It depends on whether the required program still requires its own server.

Or if it's already available on the cloud.

Plants are aliens, and fungi are nanomachines.

I don't know, Computers can write novels now Crap now my future job is being usurped by the machines, and their is no way I can hope to get a job in tech or Science. Well I guess it's unemployment for yours truly

edited 27th Nov '15 8:15:35 PM by JackOLantern1337

I Bring Doom,and a bit of gloom, but mostly gloom.

Well, right now - like lawyer starter positions, it's mainly writer starter positions that's being gobbled by machines.

These programs basically search for the facts and then use templates to make the report.

Plants are aliens, and fungi are nanomachines.

Most programs are custom tailored to perform a single task, you can recycle codes but trying to use a generic code for everything in a single field is bound to fail, also being on a server or on the could makes no difference. The could itself is a server you can access through the internet rather than using the local server using LAN protocols.

You can't make an one size fits all program, unless everyone else is running the same variables. Which is something that doesn't happen outside controlled environments, really, my college is implementing an academic system on which I was working on. It consisted on standardizing all our college academic systems to use a single program, so far it has been a nightmare since each individual college has specific rules and standards. Adapting it alone is taking more work hours than my college could afford to and they don't pay me jack shit to test their software for flaws.

Trust me on this one, when you account for the users stupidity there is no smart AI or automation that can deal with it, you'd need someone who can actually think to solve the problem.

Unless your work involves very simple tasks than can be deconstructed to simple instructions with no variation on them, you are almost certainly safe from automation.

Nothing screws any automated system more than unknown variables, and unknown variables is something that other human beings are in no short supply off.

Yeah about the novel writing robots, nothing original since it is based on a computer that has a database worth or works from existing authors and a writing style from another human being. Nothing really new or original.

Computers can give laws by the book but exploring their interpretation, which the whole profession of lawyering does, still a human domain.

Retail gets worse, a computer can access your browse history to show things you may want to buy, but they can't convince the customer to purchase or haggle with the customer.

Designing a computer to do so also requires teams of programmers, administrators, software engineers and the whole people needed to build, assemble and maintain the platforms needed to run the software. Computers don't exist in a vacuum, trust me, I've spent many hours repairing from desktops to servers to know that anything that can go wrong will if you give enough time.

Besides hardware is expensive, software tailored for specific needs is even more expensive and maintaining those requires specialist knowledge that is driven my improvisation and problem solving based on abstract thinking.

Also these uber book writing or research programs run on mainframes or massive distributed computer clusters, nothing cheap or easily accessible even for countries with the resources to pay for them.

edited 27th Nov '15 8:39:07 PM by AngelusNox

Inter arma enim silent leges

I don't think we're talking about same kind of software.

My experience is in retail, rental with a bit of financing. Ever since the Ipad came out, there has been a flurry of cheap (more intuitive) programs for these areas.

Like, last year - I finally found a program which saved me a lot of time - it cost like 20 USD a month. But now, I'm thinking of shifting to another with even more features which will only cost me 5 USD a month.

Plants are aliens, and fungi are nanomachines.

And these assistant softwares don't steal jobs, they just make things easier, after all Microsoft Excel didn't replace any accountant but made accounting much more easier.

What I am addressing is the fear than computers and automation will make even creative jobs obsolete, when in fact they are very far from doing so.

Inter arma enim silent leges

Uh no.

I use the program to make (me) more productive, meaning I won't hire someone else to do something I know a cheap program can do.

The main problem is that the (big) companies are using more and more automation to make themselves more efficient. Which means they'll (1) hire less and (2) grab more market share.

Plants are aliens, and fungi are nanomachines.

I suppose it's worth admitting that my job is largely based on taking ridiculously manual processes and making them more efficient, by implementing tools that require only a few button presses to automate their associated tasks. But these apps that I'm writing have no judgment; they can't make decisions.

edited 27th Nov '15 9:06:03 PM by Fighteer

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

Who here said that programs are making decisions?

I don't remember mentioning that section of the book about a program which does the hiring for you.

Plants are aliens, and fungi are nanomachines.

Uhm, even if they made you more efficient, it doesn't necessarily mean someone lost their job to it, it certainly made you work more on different tasks than spending time on a single one.

Even if you had two people working on the same task, it doesn't necessarily means that having more people working on a single task makes it faster, actually there is a specific term for that. I can't remember it in english but there is a point where adding more people to a task decrease productivity rather than increasing since adding people takes time and space and it is only a matter of time until they start getting on each other's way.

Assistant software tend to shift work, not replace it.

edited 27th Nov '15 9:14:00 PM by AngelusNox

Inter arma enim silent leges

Then, you haven't been up-to-date on the subject.

Try Google News right now about "robots taking jobs". A bunch of articles came out last week. Link below ranks jobs at risk to automation.

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-34066941

Plants are aliens, and fungi are nanomachines.

They list risk of being replaced.

It does not necessarily means effective replacement.

My ISP uses an automated customer support, but still completely useless because I need to talk with another human working for them because that automated piece of shit is useless all the time.

Even the list of professions with over 90% risk can't still be replaced cheaply or effectively, but as far as I am concerned all telephone salespersons can go die in a fire and none of them will be missed.

Just because you can automate something it doesn't mean it translates in a better or more effective service, and every time you do you still need to have some support for it, which involves trained humans.

Take receptionist with 95% chance of replacement. Sure you can book in and out arrangements for room renting on hotels, but you can't really replace someone greeting you and handling your keys, specially you can't assign a machine to describe the details of the room or how to get there according to the expectations and reactions of a living person, neither you can program a machine to deal with unexpected issues like a customer having some issues outside the scope of the program.

Automation isn't necessarily cheap anyway, the costs you can attain with maintenance and purchase are still higher than the minimum wage paid to the workers at the high risk, the high initial investment alone is one of the main reasons why employers don't automatize their services, even when they could save money by doing so.

So far technology has aided and shifted the workforce, not completely replaced them.

Inter arma enim silent leges

You're thinking that they're going to replace everybody with machines.

No, they're just going to replace 90%. And of course, they'll keep the cream of the crop.

Like that restaurant that has like 10 Ipads as cashiers and maybe 2 staff to provide some help.

The point basically is not just "fewer jobs", "way fewer jobs".

Plants are aliens, and fungi are nanomachines.

Probably, has it occurred to you that you don't know the difference between cognitive processing and computer processing?

Because the computer programme that can do a customer care job to any level of satisfaction is a long, long way off. Interacting with people without hitting programming walls early is really, really hard.

Yeah and those 10 iPads are either going to get stolen, fooled by people or simply ignored because all they can do is take an order and those two staff will be overworked.

There is no objectively easy way to replace service jobs with automation.

Inter arma enim silent leges