Automation - How far can it go?

[Kermit power]

Morning all,

The BBC News had a piece this morning about Amazon starting a very limited trial of drone deliveries in the UK. Google & co are likely to have done away with driving - and therefore, the jobs of commercial drivers - within a couple of decades. William Hague's piece in the Telegraph this morning talks about white collar workers being made obsolete at a faster rate in the 21st century than blue collar workers were in the 20th century.

This is all highly probable, and some of the technology coming down the lines these days is just staggering, but ultimately, how long can this irresistible force of technological development continue before it hits the immovable economic obstacle that you always need enough people earning enough money to actually buy stuff, and if they've all been replaced by machines, they're not going to have enough money to buy the stuff the machines are making, selling & delivering.

Is there a technology high water mark beyond which there's no point developing technology any further, or are we just going to evolve the jobs we do so that we all work like we do now, just doing different jobs?

If we are all going to be working just as much in different jobs, what do we think those jobs might be?

[Kermit power]

RobDickinson said:

Much further than we are now.

We'll automate almost every job out of existence in the next 40-50 years....

Theres already cheap ($20k) one armed robots to replace cheap repetitive labour

Sure, low-skilled repetitive labour has already largely gone the way of automation in developed economies, but what we're looking at next is the demise of the middle class, skilled white collar worker.

I'm not questioning the notion that technology could replace most of us, but fundamentally, someone needs to pay for the technology.

If you and I and millions like us lose our jobs to technology, we no longer have wages to pay for the products being produced by that technology. If we can't buy the products the technology produces, then companies can't afford to keep buying more technology.

I'm sure that there are plenty more jobs still to go, and despite the demise of labour intensive manufacturing in this country, we are still effectively at full employment today, but how much longer can that continue? Certainly not to the point of eliminating almost every job, I don't think!

[Kermit power]

TLandCruiser said:

People say we will have a life of luxury while everything is automated, I can't see that happening. Technology was suppose to make our lives easier yet the reality is people now working longer hours than befor for instance; sit on train and use the work laptop, work all day then use the laptop on the commute home and once your home you have email at your finger tips via smartphones.

Only if you choose to. I use the laptop at work, then cycle home - strangely enough without trying to do email as I go round Elephant & Castle - and have taken work email off my phone.

If I need to work longer hours at certain points of a sales cycle, I will do so to whatever extent is required, but I won't routinely check email away from the office just for the sake of it.

Doesn't seem to be impacting my career at all at present.

[Kermit power]

mondeoman said:

TLandCruiser said:

mondeoman said:

No.

This was true as a concept back in the eighties.

Now, with AI coming on, self driving cars, on-line lawyers (that are better than real ones in term of accuracy), on-line Drs (that are better than real ones in term of diagnosis), on-line banking, cash disappearing from society, automated factories, automated farming, the list goes on...

We really are facing a quantum change, certainly for the 1st and 2nd worlds, and the future WILL NOT be a life of 40-60 hours work for the majority of people. I can see a lot of "just existing" and a few "living".

Chinese proverbs spring to mind....

Online doctor is better than a person?? Sorry but that's bks

Do some research on Watson and other AI - and note that I said diagnosis, not bedside manner
And NHS 24 On Line isn't what I was talking about either...
You have to look ahead, not back to see where this is going. Current applications are based in the 90's, not using the best, latest tech.

Indeed. It's not about necessarily being better than any single doctor so much as being able to nearly instantly go through millions of pages of text and other information - the output off thousands of doctors - relate it to a particular patient's situation, and then recommend treatment pathways with the results.

If you anyone wants to know more, try googling Watson Oncology.

[Kermit power]

davepoth said:

It's not about the elimination of all jobs, but the elimination of swathes of jobs with no sign of new employment for those people. Not everybody can re-skill and move.

in 1950 if you were a bit thick it was likely you'd still be able to get a well paying job - factory work, manual labour, that sort of thing. These days it's much harder. As I've mentioned above, in former industrial areas the world over there are now lots of people who don't work, and have no real hope of ever working. There just aren't enough jobs available for people who have strong backs but little else; work has already ended for that group.

And yet, here we are, in one of the most industrialised countries on the planet, with an unemployment rate below 5%, which is as close as most economists reckon we could ever get to full employment...

[Kermit power]

JagLover said:

As two examples French hypermarkets have electronically adjusting price displays.

That's not just about reducing staffing levels. Yes, it does reduce them, but they can benefit far more by rapidly changing prices, sometimes multiple times per day, depending on buying trends, remaining stock levels in store and so on, at a speed which shop floor staff just wouldn't be able to do.

[Kermit power]

davepoth said:

Kermit power said:

That's not just about reducing staffing levels. Yes, it does reduce them, but they can benefit far more by rapidly changing prices, sometimes multiple times per day, depending on buying trends, remaining stock levels in store and so on, at a speed which shop floor staff just wouldn't be able to do.

So why would you have people doing that job exactly?

You'd have to ask British supermarkets that, I suppose, but the point I was making was that manpower savings in that particular instance are an additional bonus rather than the core goal.