Your Job Is At Risk - Rise of the Machines
Discussion
Having an interesting discussion with a few colleagues and we have pretty much concluded that we are all screwed. I work in the IT sector where the emergence of Cloud technologies in the last few years could mean that we will all be out of work within the next decade.
So we start looking at exit strategies and plan B, except almost every other job you could do is being automated too.
A lot of high powered jobs performed by your standard PH'er are at risk, so you start to think OK thinking I can always do something else like become a lorry driver or minicabbie, that's gone with automated driver-less cars. Waiting tables? Replaced by menu apps etc, most fast food restaurants are doing this now. Even the old fall back of stacking shelves at the supermarket, nope robots will be doing that soon.
This isn't some distant future scenario, this is happening now. There have been studies carried out by Oxford Univeristy researchers which indicate nearly 50% of jobs will be at risk in the next 2 decades, i.e within most peoples lifetimes. The BBC has a link where you put in your current job and it tells you how at risk you are.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-34066941
So where will this all end? Are you worried about your job disappearing? What will the social implications be?
So we start looking at exit strategies and plan B, except almost every other job you could do is being automated too.
A lot of high powered jobs performed by your standard PH'er are at risk, so you start to think OK thinking I can always do something else like become a lorry driver or minicabbie, that's gone with automated driver-less cars. Waiting tables? Replaced by menu apps etc, most fast food restaurants are doing this now. Even the old fall back of stacking shelves at the supermarket, nope robots will be doing that soon.
This isn't some distant future scenario, this is happening now. There have been studies carried out by Oxford Univeristy researchers which indicate nearly 50% of jobs will be at risk in the next 2 decades, i.e within most peoples lifetimes. The BBC has a link where you put in your current job and it tells you how at risk you are.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-34066941
So where will this all end? Are you worried about your job disappearing? What will the social implications be?
I agree automation has been "coming" for what seems like ages but it looks like it's actually happening now. All the technologies I've mentioned are in development or even in widespread use now. The last 3 IT projects I've worked on have all been a part of a migration from internal IT services out to the Cloud and each time there have been redundancies involved.
Driverless cars - testing as we speak, probably out in the public domain in the next 5-10 years.
Learning\Expert systems are more accurate then humans right now for analysing financial data, data mining, even medical analysis.
Large companies are all pushing for automation as an automated system doesn't need to rest, go to the lunch\toilet\fag break, doesn't moan, doesn't get tired and makes less mistakes. In short they are much more cost effective and these companies are all about their bottom line. The problem is when everyone is out of work, who will actually pay for all these goods\services produced by robots? Is anyone actually putting thought into how a future automated economy would actually work?
Driverless cars - testing as we speak, probably out in the public domain in the next 5-10 years.
Learning\Expert systems are more accurate then humans right now for analysing financial data, data mining, even medical analysis.
Large companies are all pushing for automation as an automated system doesn't need to rest, go to the lunch\toilet\fag break, doesn't moan, doesn't get tired and makes less mistakes. In short they are much more cost effective and these companies are all about their bottom line. The problem is when everyone is out of work, who will actually pay for all these goods\services produced by robots? Is anyone actually putting thought into how a future automated economy would actually work?
Yep while obviously there is the option to retrain, as stated there will be fewer jobs in total so what do you re-train into? It's fine if I re-train into Cloud technologies but the whole concept of Cloud is based on doing more with less. I know of Cloud hosting companies who run multi-customer thousand server sites with only a handful of people.
Do we go on creating more "nothing" jobs simply to keep people employed? The system is straining already, how will it cope with more people out of work and on benefits? More people taking out and less people contributing. I think it's not something that has really been considered but could have far reaching implications within out lifetime.
Do we go on creating more "nothing" jobs simply to keep people employed? The system is straining already, how will it cope with more people out of work and on benefits? More people taking out and less people contributing. I think it's not something that has really been considered but could have far reaching implications within out lifetime.
anonymous said:
[redacted]
You are talking about DevOps, the problem with that is I'm not a developer, don't enjoy programming\coding otherwise I'd be doing that instead of what I do now. Development and Operations were traditionally two separate fields so you usually picked one early in your career. Some people like developing some people don't, now all of a sudden they want to merge them, again to do more with less people when they aren't really complimentary skillsets IMO. Re-training almost my whole skillset into something I don't really enjoy doing after 20 years doing another branch of IT, not for me. If I have to re-train I think I'd rather go do something completely different.Why did I go into IT, because I enjoyed messing around with computers when I was younger and realised I could make money out of it.
This isn't just IT related though, as we can see from other posts, the ongoing march of technology will effect many peoples jobs. Yes you could argue this has always happened, just ask the coal miners but I think the impact this time will be much bigger and wider effecting multiple industries. The Oxford University study really doesn't paint a very rosy picture and people like Deloitte etc are now using that data to try to highlight the point but it seems no one is really listening yet.
Yep this is what I was trying to get at. As an example in my field, previously when you had physical server tin, a good ratio might be 1 person per 100 servers, then we went to virtualisation and this went up to 1 person to look after 300 servers, now it's cloud based and the automation technologies now mean you can have 1 person looking after 1000+ servers. It's all about doing more with less so what happens to all the surplus people? Re-train? OK now you are competing in a market where 1 person is doing a job that used to take 10 people and this has happened in the last 15 years, what will happen in the next 15.
This isn't just in IT but across the board. Many of the worlds largest businesses are investing in automation in a big way, Amazon, Google etc they are all at it. Again I'm not sure anyone has really thought this through to conclusion. Automating nearly everything means eventually hardly anyone will be working. How do people pay for stuff that these big business are producing in their automated factories when they don't have jobs?
This isn't just in IT but across the board. Many of the worlds largest businesses are investing in automation in a big way, Amazon, Google etc they are all at it. Again I'm not sure anyone has really thought this through to conclusion. Automating nearly everything means eventually hardly anyone will be working. How do people pay for stuff that these big business are producing in their automated factories when they don't have jobs?
ikarl said:
good thread on AI that is quite apt to this thread - http://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&a...
I actually contributed to that thread too and yes AI would be a massive game changer too but I think we are still a few years from that happening whereas mass automation is happening right now in many industries.As for the robodentist no thanks....but then what happens when we work out a way to make new teeth regrow with a simple pill?
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