Reddit reviews Race Against the Machine: How the Digital Revolution is Accelerating Innovation, Driving Productivity, and Irreversibly Transforming Employment and the Economy

See the book Race Against the Machine, by two economists at MIT, who argue that technological unemployment really is a serious problem, and provide data that it's already happening. (There's also a sequel, which I haven't read yet.)

For a more detailed analysis of the "AIs stealing human jobs" situation, see Race Against the Machine.

AIs will continue to take jobs from less-educated workers and create a smaller number of jobs for highly educated people. So unless we plan to do a much better job of educating people, the net effect will be tons of jobs lost to AI.

I have a wide probability distribution over the year of the first creation of superhuman AI. The mode of that distribution is on 2060, conditioning in no global catastrophes (e.g. from superviruses) before that.

I'm 57 and posting about college/jobs, but not about me. Im 57, dropped out of the corporate world in 1993, broke, started my own business, and doing well - I pay all my bills and my checks never bounce.

But posting to all the posts about college/jobs, most likely from the under 40 crowd. The BIG question that must be answered by YOUR generation is "what if we simply don't need everyone to work to provide ALL the goods and services needed and wanted by our society?"

It's only a theory (thus the LIE) that a capitalistic economy forever expands to provide (good) jobs for everyone who wants one.

Computers are in the 2nd half of the exponential curve of chip power, doubling in capacity every 2 years (Moore's Law) since 1958. Computers/robots/machines are now on-net eliminating human jobs.

READ: "Race Against the Machine": http://www.amazon.com/Race-Against-Machine-Accelerating-Productivity/dp/0984725113/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1333472572&sr=8-1

AND: "Abundance" http://www.amazon.com/Abundance-Future-Better-Than-Think/dp/1451614217/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1333472597&sr=1-1

and if you want to read an ancient novel, there's the 1952 book by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. "Player Piano" about a society where machines do ALL the work: http://www.amazon.com/Player-Piano-Novel-Kurt-Vonnegut/dp/0385333781/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1333472653&sr=1-1

This "lie" you've been told is not ever again going to become a "truth"... spoiled milk put back in the refrigerator does not become good again. This "recession" and/or high-unemployment is not just a cycle. True, there have been many "crying wolf" since the early 1800's when British laborers violently protested the automation of sock making, but I for one just don't see how "creating jobs" can happen in a world were we can produce so much stuff and services so efficiently with the aid of a computer.

I recc. his book. Pretty quick and concise read on what is happening and might happen in the near future. I don't believe it was strong, at all, in describing steps to avoid catastrophe.

http://www.amazon.com/Race-Against-Machine-Accelerating-Productivity/dp/0984725113/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1373994025&sr=1-1

Race Against the Machine by Andrew McAfee

http://www.amazon.com/Race-Against-Machine-Accelerating-Productivity/dp/0984725113/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1397898359&sr=8-1&keywords=race+against+the+machine

I'm just interested in economics for fun but I'm not an economist. However what you asked about is my particular area of interest. So I suppose take what I write with a grain of salt.

Yeah, I agree UBI is inevitable unless civilization collapses first. If you extrapolate increases in productivity indefinitely (reasonably or unreasonably) eventually very few people would actually be working. I suppose the traditional economic theory is that people would then develop other types of work to do instead. So for example in 1800 something on the order of 95% of the population was involved in agriculture. Now it's like 3%. Or in the early 1900s the US Gov tracked the use of time of the average housewife and something like 80% of their time was spent doing laundry.

According to the conventional theory, the increased productivity of those core things to survived enabled society to expand into other things like accounting, HR, law, scientific study, and more recently IT type jobs. But around 2000 productivity and automation increased even more. I haven't really read about it but there must be a sort of 'compound interest' with that productivity and automation too. Every year the effect will expand and increase, in my opinion. But aside from data scientists and cloud IT jobs, or biotech, what are other new jobs? Being a social media expert or youtuber, etc. I'm probably missing something but a lot of new jobs are like many of the old 'new' jobs. Different ways that subdivide or reprocess 'real' work that has already been done. By 'real' I don't mean that those jobs are pointless and don't exist for a reason. But an HR guy doesn't go home for the day having grown food for X number of people or having mined Y tons of copper ore.

But even the 'safe' intellectual and well educated jobs are not safe. IBM's Watson currently gives 'advice' to oncologists and surgeons. It processes thousands or millions of medical journal documents and papers, records, etc to synthesize the knowledge into a recommendation. Supposedly it's recommendations are very good. (The main backlash initially was it told the doctors what to do instead of suggesting, iirc.) So the version 1.0 of an 'helping' AI potentially makes an average doctor a great doctor. It's not hard to imagine that at some point the primary role of the doctor would be to be the human face of an interaction that simply gathers a massive amount of data and then figures out the likely best response.

I've also read about robolawyers who currently are focused on the discovery process. Which work 24/7 without getting sick, burned out, etc.

So I would say that you don't need to have an AI replacing civil engineers to affect civil engineer (overall) employment. I work in IT and there have been big increases in automation and standardization. This means that fewer and fewer people can do more and more work. (Increased productivity.) Obviously I'm not a civil engineer but if there were advances in software that allowed people to swap in standardized structural elements, or modular rooms, etc then productivity increases. Also, just in general with IT unless there is a monopoly the price of current features in software usually trends down and often quite quickly. The solutions get commoditized and it's a race to the bottom, which is why a lot of software firms are moving to a 'software as a service' model. But I digress.

(As a further aside, a lot of companies will offshore whenever possible, creating another race to the bottom there. However the cost/benefit appears to be unclear when higher skills are required. Anecdotally many IT shops that I work with offshored to India but the quality tanked so hard that it ended up actually being more expensive. Several are now onshoring that work again so they can keep a closer eye on the quality of work.)

So again, reasonably or not, if one extrapolates the current trends in automation almost everyone is unemployed, or has become a social media expert trying to sell each other shit. Or... something. Eventually if a large enough segment of the population is unemployed and threatened with starvation you would have social instability. Right now that percentage (apparently, since it's not a revolution) is not high enough. I have no idea when or where it would be. There definitely appears to be increasing tensions.

It would be logical to assume that eventually the elites get their heads out of their asses before it turns into a redux of the French Revolution. It would be logical that they would prefer some form of UBI as opposed to the world burning down around them. Then again with global warming it appears to be a similar situation and basically nothing is happening.

Anyways, sorry for the giant response but there's a lot of different things going on, I think. I think that one could argue about timelines but a lot of this stuff is inevitable unless we manage to kill ourselves off first.

*Edit some links:

In 1800 America had ~75% of workers involved in 'agriculture'
http://www.nber.org/chapters/c1567.pdf (page 3)

In 2014 it's ~1.5%
http://www.bls.gov/emp/ep_table_201.htm

Article on Watson Oncology being trained by some of the world's best cancer docs:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/national/2015/06/27/watsons-next-feat-taking-on-cancer/

Robolawyers:
http://www.techinsider.io/the-worlds-first-artificially-intelligent-lawyer-gets-hired-2016-5

Study stating that 47% of US employment is 'susceptible to computerization'
http://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/downloads/academic/The_Future_of_Employment.pdf

Book about the topic:
http://www.amazon.com/Race-Against-Machine-Accelerating-Productivity/dp/0984725113/

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0984725113/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o02_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

First off I'd like to mention the fact that nothing of what I said is racist, in fact I think all humans(bar mental issues) have the capacity to do any job, however the society structure we have forces minorities like the ones I mentioned to be over-represented in those low paying job spheres, those minorities are already being pushed on so much by the rest of the world huge unemployment like what you're suggesting is exactly the type of catalyst that causes social unrest.

I hold an Econ degree the problem is that the more you learn the more you understand how little we actually know. What was previously frictional unemployment will become structural as other sectors of the society fail to absorb the numbers of new no-skill job seekers. when once they could join the factories they have long been gone, and there are almost no retail jobs as everything goes online.

Here is a book I read recently on the topic I strongly recommend it, its called "race against the machine" this subject is being strongly discussed in some circles just not in the reddit circlejerk.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/0984725113/ref=mp_s_a_1_2?qid=1427045217&sr=8-2&keywords=against+the+machine&pi=AC_SY200_QL40&dpPl=1&dpID=51tMnMC05LL&ref=plSrch

[edit non mobile link]

Then there's /u/Semisonic, he develops on the question and gets around 30 upvotes =) He did put it better by saying "economic benefits of automation are going to be skewed heavily in favor of corporations, business owners, and the wealthy."

If you're interested in this topic, I'd strongly recommend this book.

http://www.amazon.com/Race-Against-Machine-Accelerating-Productivity/dp/0984725113/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1332820731&sr=8-1

Non-mobile: http://www.amazon.com/dp/0984725113/ref=mp_s_a_1_2?qid=1427045217&sr=8-2&keywords=against+the+machine&pi=AC_SY200_QL40&dpPl=1&dpID=51tMnMC05LL&ref=plSrch

^That's ^why ^I'm ^here, ^I ^don't ^judge ^you. ^PM ^/u/xl0 ^if ^I'm ^causing ^any ^trouble. ^WUT?