Difference Engine: Luddite legacy

[Pepsi]

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Fascinating.. scary.. some bits of a great article about how technology is putting and will continue to put a whole lot of people out of work -

Difference Engine: Luddite legacy

There is a good deal of truth in that. But it misses a crucial change that economists are loth to accept, though technologists have been concerned about it for several years. This is the disturbing thought that, sluggish business cycles aside, America's current employment woes stem from a precipitous and permanent change caused by not too little technological progress, but too much. The evidence is irrefutable that computerised automation, networks and artificial intelligence (AI)—including machine-learning, language-translation, and speech- and pattern-recognition software—are beginning to render many jobs simply obsolete.

This is unlike the job destruction and creation that has taken place continuously since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, as machines gradually replaced the muscle-power of human labourers and horses. Today, automation is having an impact not just on routine work, but on cognitive and even creative tasks as well. A tipping point seems to have been reached, at which AI-based automation threatens to supplant the brain-power of large swathes of middle-income employees.

...In many ways, the white-collar employees who man the cubicles of business today share the plight of agricultural workers a century ago. In 1900, nearly half of the adult population worked on the land. Thanks to tractors, combine harvesters, crop-picking machines and other forms of mechanisation, agriculture now accounts for little more than 2% of the working population.

Displaced agricultural workers then, though, could migrate from fields to factories and earn higher wages in the process. What is in store for the Dilberts of today? Media theorist Douglas Rushkoff (“Program or Be Programmed” and “Life Inc”) would argue "nothing in particular." Put bluntly, few new white-collar jobs, as people know them, are going to be created to replace those now being lost—despite the hopes many place in technology, innovation and better education.

The argument against the Luddite Fallacy rests on two assumptions: one is that machines are tools used by workers to increase their productivity; the other is that the majority of workers are capable of becoming machine operators. What happens when these assumptions cease to apply—when machines are smart enough to become workers? In other words, when capital becomes labour. At that point, the Luddite Fallacy looks rather less fallacious.

This is what Jeremy Rifkin, a social critic, was driving at in his book, “The End of Work”, published in 1995. Though not the first to do so, Mr Rifkin argued prophetically that society was entering a new phase—one in which fewer and fewer workers would be needed to produce all the goods and services consumed. “In the years ahead,” he wrote, “more sophisticated software technologies are going to bring civilisation ever closer to a near-workerless world.”

The process has clearly begun. And it is not just white-collar knowledge workers and middle managers who are being automated out of existence. As data-analytics, business-intelligence and decision-making software do a better and cheaper job, even professionals are not immune to the job-destruction trend now underway. Pattern-recognition technologies are making numerous highly paid skills redundant.

Radiologists, who can earn over $300,000 a year in America, after 13 years of college education and internship, are among the first to feel the heat. It is not just that the task of scanning tumour slides and X-ray pictures is being outsourced to Indian laboratories, where the job is done for a tenth of the cost. The real threat is that the latest automated pattern-recognition software can do much of the work for less than a hundredth of it.

Lawyers are in a similar boat now that smart algorithms can search case law, evaluate the issues at hand and summarise the results. Machines have already shown they can perform legal discovery for a fraction of the cost of human professionals—and do so with far greater thoroughness than lawyers and paralegals usually manage.

rest is here;

http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2011/11/artificial-intelligence

[ivanm]

Hallelulah, replace the clueless scumbag lawyers post haste.  And philosophy sots, who needs those parasites?

[ivanm]

This process began way back early in my computing career.  Software went from the most basic tedious stuff, to bettr stuff like COBOL, and on to canned routines that a simpleton that justs picks and chooses to solve a problem.

And the PC jocks think they are real geniuses?   

[ivanm]

If anyone thinks American  workers have a dismal future then how about the teeming masses in the sweatshop countries?  What will they do for a living?

Perhaps the limiting factor wil be the availabillity of affordable energy to drive these marvelous processes. Without it we are back to an agrarian economy, milking cows, and using horse power and man power to provide for ourselves. 

You Chicago thugs need to learn how to fish because that will be your best bet, and less taxing on your already weakened minds.   You could also use the crooked politicians for fish bait and do us all a favor, fewer sponges to feed.

[ivanm]

Wow this is the liberal's dream come true.  Now all they have to do is to lie on the couch, drink Budweiser, breed, and wait for a chick in the mail.

Gee, no payroll taxes, no income taxes, just blissful peace from Nanny. No taxes also means no Obamacare and no social security benefits.  Sorry libs, but you can't have your cake and eat it this time.

[johnhp]

Somebody has had a stroke.

[ivanm]

Luddites, as in union mobsters?  Google luddite.

John there is no danger of a machine replacing you, no need to as you don't do anything but whine and use up good oxygen.

Don't you love being the forum freak?  Look at all the affection that you garner.   

[Pepsi]

Here's the general idea.. most people used to work on farms.. the industrial revolution replaced workers with automation of farms replaced those workers, but they moved to factories.    Then factories were automated with assembly lines and then robots, and more people moved to service industries.   Now automation is threatening to replace a lot of service workers and there's nothing on the horizon to replace those jobs.   Seems society is just needing less workers.   So then what?  

[ivanm]

Somebody has had a stroke.

Joan you need to stick to pimping for the rump rangers as this action may be too much for your puny little whatever they call it.

[johnhp]

Luddites, as in union mobsters?  Google luddite.

John there is no danger of a machine replacing you, no need to as you don't do anything but whine and use up good oxygen.

Don't you love being the forum freak?  Look at all the affection that you garner.   

Stroke symptom:

Sudden confusion or trouble understanding simple statements.


When did you have the stroke?

[johnhp]

Joan you need to stick to pimping for the rump rangers as this action may be too much for your puny little whatever they call it.

You still smarting over your father forcing you to blow him and then beat you for blowing him?

[dustup]

Here's the general idea.. most people used to work on farms.. the industrial revolution replaced workers with automation of farms replaced those workers, but they moved to factories.    Then factories were automated with assembly lines and then robots, and more people moved to service industries.   Now automation is threatening to replace a lot of service workers and there's nothing on the horizon to replace those jobs.   Seems society is just needing less workers.   So then what?  

Sense the Industrial Revolution replaced workers on the farm.......why do we need illegal Mexicans

[Pepsi]

Sense the Industrial Revolution replaced workers on the farm.......why do we need illegal Mexicans

Well gee, not every single worker was replaced but what like 90% of the population used to work in agriculture before the industrial revolution.   There is still farm work to be done by human hands to be sure, are YOU doing it?

[dustup]

Well gee, not every single worker was replaced but what like 90% of the population used to work in agriculture before the industrial revolution.   There is still farm work to be done by human hands to be sure, are YOU doing it?

I put my time in behind the plow.......its now time for me to enjoy the fruit of my labor.....

[ivanm]

Sense the Industrial Revolution replaced workers on the farm.......why do we need illegal Mexicans

Americans won't do that sort of menial labor.  We have priced ourselves out of the market for one thing. 

It is really something, my wife and I had a small truck farm and orchard operation for a few years, but people don't want to pay you anything for your labor. So they go to the supermarket and buy imported crap that is laced with chemicals.