The Last Robot-Proof Job in America?
newyorker.com
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Likewise jobs like computer programming seem pretty 'robot-proof'.
It seems only repetitive, predictable work can be automated and we shouldn't waste human labour on those tasks in any case.
Personally, I think the threat of automation has been greatly exaggerated in the media, it is true that self-driving cars would have a huge economic effect but progress appears to be slowing down in that area.
Having seen how little many humans care about other peoples aging parents under their care, I'm not so sure robots would be a huge step down.
edit: but as others have pointed out, robots will/should be there to help humans do the hard parts of their jobs not completely replace them. So in the future we'll probably see a human and a robot doing what used to take 3-5 humans, not simply a fleet of robots replacing all humans.
Which is an issue. It's the old addage: I don't have to outrun the bear, I just have to outrun you.
If the robots are only maginally better than the humans, then they will out compete the human workers and we will have robots that may still be very bad at doing the task; potential failure all the same and with bad patient outcomes.
> So in the future we'll probably see a human and a robot doing what used to take 3-5 humans,
In Chess, these amalgams are called 'centaurs' and they consistently outpreform humans and/or the best computer programs. It's a good idea in chess, as most centaurs are made with very good human players. It's when the humans start to rely on the computers that you get into real trouble.
Depends on how you look at it. I see programming as the single most automation-friendly job there is. Even if all you do is add a few lines to your Makefile to run the test suite when you type 'make test', you're still automating a repetitive task you'd otherwise do by hand.
Looking at the bigger picture: programmers are constantly developing new programming languages, libraries, text editor plugins, build tools, deployment tools, continuous integration servers, SCM tools... These things are all designed to save programmers time and if we are successful it means we're increasing our productivity, which should mean we don't need to hire more programmers to do the same job otherwise.
Maybe the last point seems hard to accept in light of the fact that there are more working programmers than ever. Just try to imagine what it would be like to build an app like Uber if you still had to write code on punch cards and batch-feed them into a giant single-tasking computer.
Every line of code ever written is literally automating something. Yet no programmer ever worries "will this be the line of code that puts me out of work?"
Also the real threat of automation is wealth inequality. If workers own (a share of) the robots that replace their jobs then there is no problem. If all the robots are owned by corporations there is a massive problem.
The first places where automation is put in place is where labor is expensive. That is, both geographically and industry-specifically.
It's not the factory workers so much as the accountants, lawyers, and doctors that are marginalized first. Software is cheaper and the reward greater.
And with respect to geographically, Scandinavia employs the most robotics to augment manually labor jobs. They will continue to lead in this area.
But it seems most societies still seek jobs for jobs sake.
I think there's some pretty significant blowback coming. Poor people don't just disappear.
I often see these kinds of examples with 'non-automatable' work. I agree that the full extent of this might not be automatable, but there's probably opportunity for efficiencies through automation, which won't make all people reduntdant, but might decrease the number of people needed to provide this care.
One thing I could think of is camera systems with anomaly detection to watch over people to make sure they're not hurt or something. Or biometric devices that provide feedback to a centralized system. Sure, people might be weary, bot 15 years ago people were stil weary of mobile phones too.
I think the bigger problem we are going to encounter is a retiring workforce. And the lack of knowledge transfer in a lot of industries. I recently walked into an office with a PBX and no one knew how it worked. The servers were installed in a basement and the documentation was damp, moldy, and crawling with bugs. What should have been a simple transfer to VoIP now requires tracking down lines and real downtime.
Or a workforce that is "replaced" by young, fresh-off-university people that are desperate for a job that pays anything to survive with no benefits, while at the same time the old guards with real, proper incomes are fired as they are vastly more expensive...
I anticipate you are going to see a large wave of workforce retirement because there is such a large demographic who had to delay retirements. And that bill is now coming due.
My grandparents certainly could use a proper self-driving car if it were able to drive on the Croatian "magistrala" (central road on the coastline, very dangerous as it is), and my parents are really satisfied with the Roomba my sister and I got her for xmas two years ago. Probably what could be very useful to both is a robot that does laundry and dishes, basically the two tasks that are most demanding on their backs.
For people in retirement homes or with disabilities, robotic assistance in basic bodily functions (=showering/keeping clean/eating) or cooking probably would be a godsend.
This is the kind of robotics we need to free up (caretaker) resources, but unfortunately these tasks are simple for humans but exceptionally difficult for robots.
>would you trust a robot to look after your aging parents without hurting them?
Physical robots are not there yet, but you can already get an improved efficiency by camera monitoring. Using computer vision and pose tracking you don't have to always be present, you only need to be able to dispatch someone if a problem is detected.
On the other hand, I think we might not have really dealt with the changes from mass automation in the past. If you look at things like "bullshit jobs"[1], or large sectors of the economy that provide negative value to society, it seems like previous automation freed up huge amounts of labor that simply haven't been used to improve society. Since that's already happened, though, it's much harder for people to see it as a problem.
[1] https://www.newyorker.com/books/under-review/the-bullshit-jo...
Picking up trash is harder. But much of the high-precision picking can be replaced with coarse vacuum-cleaner-style action. The biggest problem likely will be determining what is trash and what is nit.
Robots should be introduced into caring for the aged as soon as possible.
I can't say this strongly enough: It is a really terrible world for old people who have reached a certain age or level of incapacity.
If you've spent any time with someone caring for an older person at home, or in a nursing home, or in a hospital, there is SO much room for the improvement of people's lives.
home care needs automation.
nursing homes need automation.
hospitals need much much better automation.
Things that people need: help getting someone out of bed. Help getting someone into bed. Help getting someone to go to the bathroom. Help giving someone a bath or shower. Help getting someone some food. Help going outside.
Getting help in these ways is so expensive they basically don't happen.
I could go on and on.
You're only seeing what's left after centuries of automation/mechanization. Thank of all the tools people doing physical labor everyday use, power drills, various power saws, nail guns, angle grinders, air compressors, etc. These were all done via manual labor not long ago, many within living memory.
You wanna know what is the ultimate robot-proof job? Be a politician. That job will never be handled by a robot. Or if that will happen then Terminator style world upon us.
But, like I said, while the politics can be done by AI, will never fall in those hands. That's the ultimate robot-proof job. In any country. Regardless of the regime.
The fish will have to be delivered right at the time they are needed, since our current technology is geared towards delivering fish at the beginning and then moving on to the next species. At that time, they will have to be fed at the right time, but you don't have any idea how long you might wait or how much time you'll have, and who could possibly get the fish if someone decided to eat the fish anyway.
You will end up with something like this:
In this case, you can even have an artificially intelligent fish, for example, that will be bred so it is much easier to keep the fish alive, but it won't do any better in terms of efficiency of operation. It will simply end up doing less work. A fish with artificial intelligence will just get tired and lose its ability to perform their job.
Another concept is that you could simply use roboticized boats that operate like a large farm or factory, with lots of fish and then moving animals into the water as needed.
Very often you actually don't just pay for the job done, you pay for the social surrounding.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moravec%27s_paradox
It only makes sense; brains were doing navigation and control of bodies for billions of years before they were playing chess.
It's not "AI" in the sense of actual intelligence of course, more like a labor saving device.
That said, it's entirely possible that letting the computers do these tasks, something important has been lost. It's more obvious in programming when people ship 10 or 300 megabyte "hello world" output when entire operating systems used to fit in 4k binaries. Might also be true in mathematical physics anyway, as they haven't exactly covered themselves in glory for the last 40 years.
Toyosu Market replaced Tsukiji in October 2018
He’s barely using the software.
This has to do with the different evolutionary strategies that women and men pursue. Women tend to pursue a low variance and consistent strategy (which makes sense considering their reproductive cap) while men take a high-risk high variance strategy (which also makes sense given their lack of a reproductive cap).
Women here take stable but probably mediocre jobs: hotel waitress, cleaner, food vender. Men on the other hand are always trying to get a big break and are never satisfied with a job and consequently often jobless. In fact there’s a saying over here translated goes something like this: A man that walks for nothing is different than the man who sits for nothing.
https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2017/03/06/chart-the-perce...
There are probably many reasons for this, not all of them good. However, one that comes to mind is how it feels vulnerable to let a stranger explore your entire house (likely without you there), and women are perceived as less threatening.
Medical personell -> over-regulated, their pay doesnt fully reflect the work they put in , but the work they don't allow others to put in
Legal professionals -> they control the regulation, they will always pay themselves even if they dont show up to work at all.
No, it's nothing like that. 640k of ram is an absolutely fixed point. "Everything that can be automated" continually increases indefinitely, but the point is that it's not going to discontinuously increase. Or at least, nobody who is concerned ever states a reason that it should.
A rare grammatical error from the New Yorker?