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Comment by petra | Hacker News Reader

The thing is: robot videos are viral.

That doesn't mean white collar jobs, even those that are high-skilled aren't at big risk.

You just need to look at the rate AI is advancing, the amounts of startups and money aiming at white collar jobs, and what's waiting in research.

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Be hired for your brain and not your hands. AI will never be able to think creatively.

Why do you believe that?

On the other hand, thinking creatively is often discouraged at the majority of bigco white collar jobs and executives would gladly replace an expensive person with cheaper software doing the same task if they could do so without tripping on labor laws.

Managers themselves often don't realize how much money automation could save them. Perhaps their role could be automated away ;)

With the amount of mind numbing easily automated work I’ve done in my career I wonder if they don’t realize or there is some kind of tacit social contract not to cause mass unemployment. Because companies could replace like 50% of office workers if they were willing to redesign their processes.

That's the thing, if you tell a manager you can replace 5%, they might be okay, but say 50% and they might get scared they're on the chopping block...

Mmm nope, they could replace the workers with more expensive programmers. So it gets into a question of how many office workers can you afford for the price of one programmer. Often not at all obvious, especially as programmers can often trend towards huge inefficiency in enterprise/corporate environments. ROI of business IT projects is not always positive you know.

Pft, please. Back when I was trying self employment in shareware games, the first thing I wrote was an AI to compose music for me. I can’t write music.

I've always thought that some of the last jobs to go will be in aged care and childcare. Both are hands over brains (roughly speaking).

The last profession to go will be the first one.

There are people working on this problem too.

The last profession will be programmer. Once it is fully automated the automated programmers will obliterate all the other jobs.

I've heard it said like this: AI will take over repetitive manual and repetitive cognitive tasks. The only thing required is that the task be repetitive (so plumbers are safe (every house is different), but truck drivers and radiologists maybe not).

In Japan, robots to aid with elderly care are being developed[1]. Probably won’t eliminate all elderly care jobs but likely will reduce the amount required. Japan is facing worker shortages and doesn’t like immigration, hence robots. I personally wouldn’t like to be looked after 100% when I’m old by a robot, but it will be interesting to see how it plays out in Japan. The rest of the rich world will face similar problems in the future.

[1] https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2018/feb/06/japan-robots-w...

Ok will hire an overseas person for 1/10 your salary.

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