Poll (When) Will the Robots Take Your Job?

[Triskelion]

Q1. Will a robot take your job?

A1. My result: Assimilate This

More Future Thinking About Stuff...

So this week Foxconn has begun making the switch to robots on the iPhone production line. They are cutting 60,000 factory worker jobs in China. As it has become financially viable to make this switch now, I suppose thanks in part to factors like Moore's Law and the ready increase of computing power at decreasing costs. (Well I guess too that Apple felt a need to offset their magnificent losses from the recent blocking of iTunes and iStore on Mainland China. And it may also relate with Apple's billion-dollar investment in China's Uber-rival Didi Xuching; and the future of automated vehicles, for which it sees China as a critical early adopting market. But that's another bedtime story).

Robotics can permit manufacture closer to the market to reduce shipping and logistics costs. Not only could increased automation de-centralize manufacturing hubs, (and gut local economies), it can redistribute industry almost anywhere, probably nearer to the customers themselves.

It also marks a kind of bellwether, as low-grade manufacture becomes a model industry decimated by robotic automation; which is now catching on with other manufacturers and gaining interest. It will spread to other industries too; particulary those with low skills requirements like driving or customer service. Eventually even high-grade manufacture may make the switch to automation.

We've already seen this kind of tech-saturation occur in other fields; such as Publishing and Media at the advent of the internet; and Public Transportation with the advent of the smart phone and mobile applications for private taxi services. Or even outsourcing call centers to other countries using VOIP technologies. Maybe a Hyperloop system cutting into the airline industry. I'm sure plenty of people here can cite other real-life examples of this "John Henry" story.

The general question ties in with other factors too, like replicator economics, oversupply of goods, academic inflation and decline of trade industry workforce, etc.


So here are some other questions:
Q2. What else besides robots could destroy demand for your job?
Q3. What other big changes, in your opinion, are in the works?
Q4. What new industries are emerging?
Q5. What will all those low-skilled workers do with their new free time?
Q6. Your Question_________________?

What do you think?

​

 

[Santaman]

Mwah, I build cable harnesses/ wiring looms and it will be hard to automate those, there's always stuff that needs to be adjusted along the way to prevent overtentioning, cornering too tight etc, I wouldn't mind if the robots will take over though, more time for hobbies then.

 

[Mary Ann]

Among my responsibilities is teaching knitting and crochet. While knitting machines have been around for some time now crochet has to be done by hand due to the nature of the stitches. This means that everything you see that is crocheted, including trim on garments and those thread doilies you find in pound shops/dollar stores, was handmade by someone, probably for slave wages.

 

[Bagofmostlywatr]

I think I'm safe. It'll be a while before they find a robot desperate enough to do this crap for a living, especially with these hours.

 

[Velocity]

Other, because luckily I'm retired. Robots can't do retired.

 

[auntiehill]

Maybe, yes. A computer program does part of my job already; in a few decades, the job will probably be done entirely by a computer program. Of course, by then I'll be retired or dead, so I don't really care.

 

[rahullak]

Q1. Will a robot take your job?

My Answer: Assimilate this.

Most probably not. My role is that of a Business Analyst. Eliciting and gathering requirements, coming up with high-level design etc. for the IT industry. It's unlikely that a robot can do this very interactive and judgement-oriented job, at least in the next 50 years. There's a creative side to it that involves assessing the features available in the market, gleaning the needs of today and tomorrow, and satisfying customer requirements as closely as possible while at the same playing a consultants role of providing recommendations where required. There's the art of convincing others too.

So here are some other questions:
Q2. What else besides robots could destroy demand for your job?

What could reduce demand for a BA job is feature-saturation. By this I mean, software products become so saturated with features that any and all possibilities are already accounted for and there is not much room for improvement. But then ALL jobs in the tech industry are at risk of feature-saturation.

Q3. What other big changes, in your opinion, are in the works?

Jobs that are downstream of a Business Analyst's are at greater risk from automation. Reusable models, automatic code generation, testing frameworks etc. would reduce demand for the typical design, code, test jobs.

Q4. What new industries are emerging?

Industries that require jobs of a more creative and complex nature involving usage of those automation tools would emerge. An analysis of the capabilities of humans vs machines could probably reveal where the future is headed.

Q5. What will all those low-skilled workers do with their new free time?
Q6. Your Question_________________?

Low-skilled workers would need to re-skill themselves for the sake of survival. Handouts and benefits probably won't last forever, and I doubt most people would be happy with mere subsistence.

 

[rhubarbodendron]

My job is rather versatile and spans from controlling water purification facilities to determining the ecological quality of sterams and rivers, flood prevention, first aid in pollution cases and - alas - forensic entomology on corpses found in the water.
The sampling will always be a human job as there are too many variables to be considered. Determining the species could partially be automated by DNA sequencing and computer-controlled automatical shape recognition. It already works for a few species, but the software fails where it comes to the finer details (particularly of species that are very mobile and can change their shape).

So, on the whole I'd say we limnologists will be irreplacable for the next few centuries. - Provided, of course, that until then mankind won't have succeeded in exterminating all fellow life forms from this planet...


I think the main prob so far is that computers think in 0 / 1 while humans think in a gazillion of steps between those two extremes. As long as an artificial intelligence doesn't grasp the concept of "maybe" there are many jobs that will remain too difficult for machines.

Q2. What else besides robots could destroy demand for your job?
Human stupidity : destruction of the ecosystem

Q3. What other big changes, in your opinion, are in the works?
None so far. But there are possibilities. With the sped of new developments in teh last decades you can never tell what someone might come up with tomorrow.

Q4. What new industries are emerging?
only few as to now in my sector. But drinking water is an important factor, particularly in this era of climatical change. There are already many wars about water and there will be more in the future unless we manage to provide enough for everyone. One might make a fortune by investing in water purification techniques.

Q5. What will all those low-skilled workers do with their new free time?
IMO we already see this development starting: unemployment leads to poverty, particularly among low-educated people, which leads to them becoming an easy prey for demagogues. As a result political extremists gain more followers and riots and even murder are the consequence. It's precisely the way WW2 started and it's an alarming sign that globally the right wing morons steadily gain power.

 

[FPAlpha]

I work at customer services for a logistics company which consists basically making up for mistakes of others 50% of my time so i don't think my job is in jeopardy just yet.

One part of it consists of collecting all the goods available to load in the system and figuring out how to best load them into the truck with the system.. if the pallets are standard sized it's a thing of a minute to create the transport in the system but if you have special requirements or anything else that's unusual then it can get tricky and take some time (and needs experience).

We have experimented with a third party software that did this for us.. you basically upload the data/measurements of the goods and it computes the optimal fit.. very high efficiency if it works but it usually broke down when variables or special requirements were to be considered so we scrapped the project recently because the software company could not solve the problems we had adequately.

So my job is rather safe i think until i retire in about 25-30 years but in that timeframe our loading crew might run into trouble. There's already high tech warehouses where automated forklifts are moving goods around, obviously still too expensive for widespread use but the direction of development is clear. In about 10-20 years i could also imagine automated loading.. the computer controlled loading forklift scans the inside of the truck to get exact measurements, knows the volume it has to load and already has the measurement data from every single pallet so i don't see a problem with a robot loading trucks in a controlled environment like a warehouse, especially if they have standardized goods.

Might be even far mor ein the future and i could see totally automated warehouses including self driving trucks that can back up to the loading ramp themselves, the automated loading system loads up the cargo and the truck leaves to the destination. Loading staff basically gone and just less than 50% personell in the office who just direct which ramp to be loaded on and which goods.. this will happen but when is the question. I'd guess within the next 30-50 years (maybe even faster if companies push hard enough to save costs and the tech works well enough in the beginning).

 

[Pondwater]

Not bloody likely. Where I work, they're strongly opposed to timers, I don't think they'll let bots take over....yet.

 

[think]

Good topic but this topic was obsolete when that twilight zone episode aired,..

My job is as a human servicing other humans on a voluntary basis... Servicing as in a facilitator of human time use. I might become obsolete when the human species digresses so dependently that the co-dependent and dependent are the same robot? Mmmm. IDK

Oh - looking back and probably don't need editing but this "extra time" question? What does extra time look like exactly?

 

[SPCTRE]

Highly unlikely (for now) since there are unsurmountable legal hurdles (and a lack of AI) for running a company.

For now.

 

[LordMudd]

There isn't a computer programmer competent enough to write a program capable of anticipating and compensating for the complete and utter incompetence that is human beings operating motor vehicles!

 

[SPCTRE]

Good topic but this topic was obsolete

THIS TOPIC IS BEING MADE OBSOLETE BY ROBITS

ROBITS!

 

[Doom Shepherd]

I'm not sure I'm not already a robot.

 

[Jedi_Master]

The robots don't want my job. I don't want my job.

 

[Australis]

They can have my job. As long as the Universal Basic Income is in place, I'm cool.

 

[Triskelion]

^Give me people striving for progress. Guaranteed income guarantees people will do as little work as possible, and everything will be half-ass*d. Also, "UBI" is no relief from predatory barbarism. It ends up being a way to mollify, stagnate and oppress the population, ensuring power is reserved for upper echelon cronies/kleptocrats.

Reward work, not dependence.

(Over a decade living in a communist culture talking).

 

[Tiger Devil Dog]

I operate drones so I should be safe no?

 

[bbjeg]

Hail the robot.

(Sucking up to the robot overlords for when they take over.)