Pyro as Bill said:
Yes. |
"What innovation is going to spark this boom? Cuz unlike previous industrial revolutions' ability to enhance human input, the autonomous revolution is all about replacing it. "
haxxiy said:
If it were the case the US would be losing 350,000 job positions a month, right now, on average. Even more, I assume, since one would expect the first years of automation to be faster, given all the low hanging fruit, and since there are still advances to come on computing until 2025 or so, when we run out of die shrinks and even die stacking. Even now, the complexity of neural networks and algorithms matches and demands more of hardware, after all. Instead, even, most of the countries on the technological forefront, such as the US, Germany, Japan and South Korea have all some of the lowest unemployment rates on the world. Not to mention it varies from country to country, with most developed economies outside the US standing to lose less to automation even according to those predictions. That include countries with a shrinking population and workforce, such as Japan, where, you might imagine, automating large swadths of the workfore over the upcoming decades might seem a Heaven-sent gift to fill all those vacant spots and keep their economy from shrinking. These negative outlooks pop up from time to time since the industrial revolution. Time and time again we severely overestimate the capacities of our own machines and underestimate the adaptability of the market. Hell, Azimov in the fifties said that in the year 2000 the only job left would be of the psychiatrist, to take care of the unemployed, obsolete human masses thanks to robots. In fact, the current 2025 labour outlook for the US is many new job spots to open until then, specially on health care, so I wouldn't take seriously the Silicon Valley equivalent of "no arctic icecap by 2020!" alarmists. |
Mass automation hasn't hit just yet. It's still in the trial phase. Self driving cars need a bit more work and approval but will start gradual rollouts next year, Amazon Go is still experimenting in Seattle but has plans for large stores that need only single digit staffs, multipurpose robots like Baxter are still a bit limited but get cheaper and smarter all the time, but when technologies like these and more do hit in a handful of years they will be extremely disruptive. This automation will indeed be a godsend for Japan's plummeting population and net production for most countries will increase, but that will do little for the common man under today's economic models. Many more developing countries that depend on basic work and goods will be hit extremely hard.
