More jobs predicted for machines, not people
October 24, 2011 | Source: New York Times
The pace of automation, which has increased as more and more work once done by humans is replaced by machines, is the central theme of Race Against the Machine, an e-book to be published on Monday.
A combination of technologies including robotics, numerically controlled machines, computerized inventory control, voice recognition and online commerce is rapidly moving automation beyond factories to jobs in call centers, marketing and sales — parts of the services sector, which provides most jobs in the economy, the authors say.
Yet computers tend to be narrow and literal-minded, good at assigned tasks but at a loss when a solution requires intuition and creativity — human traits. A partnership, they assert, is the path to job creation in the future.
h/t: Peter Christiansen
Comments (4)
by melajara
This is yet another rippling effect of an universal basic problem (IMHO), i.e. the widening gap between collective possible achievements of mankind and the limited cognitive resources each individual has at his disposal (no progress from millenia).
Indeed, if you look at basic schooling, there are not been much, if any, progress in pedagogy from Antiquity to our times (to pinpoint this compare your experience with e.g. 4th century St-Augustine account of his schooling experience in his “Confessions”).
Yet nowadays the amount of knowledge to grasp for making a positive (new) contribution is staggering and each new individual has to escalate this growing mountain again and again.
The top priority should be to find way to accelerate skills acquisition, e.g. by a more enactive pedagogy through intelligent use of multimodal interfaces coupled to more intelligent CBT in order to enhance individually tailored knowledge acquisition.
Yet, another shortcoming of our times is to mix information acquisition (mere facts) with knowledge. This is all the difference from an idiot savant to a wise (or to say it with more modesty, a truly knowledgeable) man.
To put in somewhat bluntly, without radical educational incentives and true breakthrough in pedagogy, we will have more and more unusable people eagerly replaced for their jobs by relentless machines.
by Imperator03
Good point Innovator, in addition new tech will free people up for developing new ideas into workable products and thus enrich the lives of us all. Modern America, indeed the entire West, seems to be at a watershed moment; much like that of the early 20th century. Blacksmiths, farriers, stagecoaches and other horse-related transportation industries faltered after the introduction of the automobile, but that same invention dramatically changed the standard of living for people everywhere.
The interesting thing about current trends in tech is that rather than mass producing cookie-cutter replicas of a product, we will see very soon mass production of individualized items. Thus items crafted for an individual will have the cost advantage of being mass produced. In addition, this automation will save resources in the long run so that they may be employed in meeting the needs of others.
by innovator116
Why so much focus on jobs AKA human rentals?, As nature and technology can provide most of human needs, economy has to evolve into a P2P economy. Those same machines which are taking ‘jobs’ will be so inexpensive and probably open source, that an individual will use them and not job giving corporations. A peers based economy where no one is employer and no one is employee.
by StupidPeasant
It may come to be that way. A totally new economy has to come. The transition will be tough for many.