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Biggerboat1 on 13 March 2019
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NightlyPoe said:
Biggerboat1 said:

I think the strides that AI is making today, not tomorrow, is showing just how close we are to a huge disruption in the jobs market. We're a world away from the 90s...

Driver-less cars and trucks will absolutely come in within the next 10 years - there are working prototypes already out there - the software isn't quite there yet, but if we look at the acceleration of improvement it really does seem just around the corner. You really think it's gonna take them another 20 years to get it over the line?

AI is also poised to replace millions of call centre jobs, not to mention the huge amounts of jobs and businesses Amazon continues to render redundant by it's continued harnessing of technology and automation...

Hell, here in the UK, there must have been a tonne of jobs lost just by the introduction of self-check throughs in every supermarket.

I'd suggest listening to the podcast and let me know what you think : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTsEzmFamZ8

I don't deny the paradigm will change (though the outlines of that change are more difficult to predict).  I brought it up in the first place.  And I'm certainly not denying that technological changes change industries.  That's been happening forever.

I'm just saying the basic economic model won't radically change in the next 10 years.

Edit:  I should also note that the 90s ushered in the era of ubiquitous PCs in the workplace.  So it was an era of fairly significant change in how work was done and increased worker efficiency significantly.  So it's not really wise to scoff at it as compared to today.

I agree that there is a degree of unpredictability with these things but there are some serious job-replacement systems knocking on the door - maybe your 20 years prediction will prove to be correct, but maybe it will happen sooner and we need to be prepared for that... As I mentioned - the writing is on the wall for truck drivers and a little further down the road, ubers/taxis, delivery drivers & public transport - that alone will displace a boat-load of people, many of whom lack many transferrable skills or good education...

And in regards to computers - yes, I'm sure they had a big impact but what I would say is that a large amount of them require human input, whereas automation is another beast - it straight-up just doesn't need us!