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Comment by startupfounder | Hacker News Reader

I have mixed feelings about the rapid pace that technology is replacing human jobs.

As a consumer I couldn't be happier about getting things delivered faster and higher quality experiences with sub 1 hour delivery. Across the board technology companies are replacing humans and consolidating services.

My concern comes when I think about the accelerating rate that technology is replacing human jobs faster than humans can re-educate themselves to get new jobs. Education here is the missing link and if you look at our public education system it sucks, is leaving many poor and underserved people behind and creating a two class system.

I look forward to reading the pros and cons of technology replacing jobs with the understanding that HN is a pro technology community.

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If you see a human doing something it's only because it's too expensive for a robot/machine/software to do it.

Delightfully, robot comes from a Czech word originating in "hard work, servitude, serfdom". Basically a slave. Any business looking to drive down costs push their human components as close to slavery as is allowable by law or acceptable to the workers.

So when people fight to preserve human jobs in say, fast food, agriculture, or factories, in general you see them preserved by humans opting to work for less or in worse conditions. Cheap human labor actually starts to limit technological progress at this point.

So, where's that leave the future? Hopefully we can move to a post-employment world, where people don't need masses of near-robot human resources to make profits. I don't know what the world looks like, but to me it's better than a world where humans compete with each other to be better robots for their bosses.

Why would one need to 'make profits' in a post-employment world?

If you have all the resources you need to live out the rest of your life, then you wouldn't. Most of us aren't so lucky.

Why do billionaires need profits? Probably different reasons for each person. For some, it's just a way of keeping score.

Ultimately better education isn't going to be good enough. 100 workers replaced by a robot won't all get 100 jobs fixing or making that robot. Buggy-whip factory workers may have found new jobs in car factories, but it would be a mistake to assume that is how things will always play out.

Unless we want serious societal unrest, I am convinced that we need to get something like basic income off the ground sooner rather than later.

>100 workers replaced by a robot won't all get 100 jobs fixing or making that robot.

they will get jobs servicing each other as doctors, teachers, nurses, lawyers, soldiers, playwriters, government clerks/officers, etc... Basically actively employed in a re-distribution of the products made by the robots. Government for example one can see as an instance of such basic income program (it just comes with such strings attached as spending 9to5 in the office and regular kissing of the lower back of your superior)

> "they will get jobs servicing each other as doctors, teachers, nurses"

Are those robots going to create increased demand for doctors, teachers, and nurses, by virtue of automating away a welding job? Is your typical factory worker a viable doctor? If I lost my developer job, I don't think I would make a viable doctor, and I am a fairly smart university educated person. Not everybody is cut out for that kind of work; I sure aren't.

> "soldiers"

Military inefficiencies aside, don't be so sure they'll be safe from automation either. Furthermore, I shudder to think what future developments would necessitate even more soldiers.

> "playwrights"

The arts may flourish with some form of basic income in place, but without it, it is doubtful that it will become a viable career that can feed families for a significant portion of ex-factory workers.

> "government clerks"

Definitely not safe from automation. Computer automation alone, no robots required, eliminates many of those sort of jobs.

That's optimistic! Why aren't they doing that now, then? Not the right training, or no job available? Why is that going to suddenly change when McD's starts automating the driveup window?

it wasn't optimism really :) People in general aren't happy for changes. I've been through a country size systemic change in economy - USSR 25 years ago - when suddenly many jobs disappeared (or salary for those jobs disappeared). In a bankrupt country of collapsed economy it wasn't pretty obviously. Yet, there opened new possibilities and people who was open to change, they adjusted. The need for a welder on Navy destroyer disappeared, yet a need for an individual entrepreneur in retail appeared, etc...

(The opening a this book describes it pretty artistically. It is a mental shift one is forced to make. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_%22%D0%9F%22 )

The funny thing about your post is that the law profession is one of the hardest hit by automation over the past few years... not exactly a safe haven for people fleeing other fields.

Automation isn't just about factories full of robots, it is about software allowing 1 professional to do the job that 10-20 people used to do.

A field doesn't have to be fully automated before automation destroys the economic viability of the field for possible newcomers to it.

We shouldn't be impeding progress to save jobs.

I believe an ultimate goal should be to reach the point where people don't need jobs.

I agree, but how do you reach that point? Automating a steady income is a lot of work, and the goal is to just give it away? I don't see that happening anytime soon.

I have been having this debate with colleagues since I started taking Economics. We have not yet found a way to replace the current labor system without impeding the incentives that effect progress.

As much as i like technology adoption to go up, i am not sure if progress is really about replacing humans from jobs. I am not yet convinced that people don't need jobs. Besides, technology progress can happen much faster than change in governance, policies and culture.

I wonder the suffering that humanity has to go through before we reach a stage where we don't need jobs (assuming it is even possible to reach that stage). If we can replace human workers systematically, thoughtfully and steadily with the goal of freeing humans from work (at least most of it), that would be awesome. But I can't think of a single leader/country who is that forward thinking and smart. Every new technology (self driving cars for example) is going to very quickly replace humans, and nobody is going care about those displaced humans and that is going to be a big problem.

You could become that leader and/or petition your country to be that forward thinking and smart.

It (displacement) does seem to be a huge risk and it's probably better to devise solutions now rather than after huge displacements have occurred.

Yeah, I was thinking along the same lines. This is a global problem and it needs to be addressed at global level. Assuming self driving cars (just one example) becomes a reality in at least western countries in the next decade, does any one have any plan to help those humans that are going to be replaced? I was only trying to point out that our current group of political leaders don't seem to think that far ahead. Ideas like basic income etc needs lots of planning, testing etc at smaller levels before they can be implemented at a larger scale if we want to keep social unrest to a minimum.

That's a form of utopia I find extremely fascinating. Like it or not we (the animals called humans) need meaning in our lives, and (also like it or not) work provides many with meaning or at least the illusion of it or some kind of distraction... the need for meaning would likely become much more acute if nobody needed to work.

OK. But what's your proposal for how they get food, clothing, living space? The labor portion of food, clothing, shelter being automated only eliminated a part of their cost. They still have a cost, so if people don't have jobs, how do they continue to acquire the things they need to live?

I've been thinking about this for awhile. I believe that the dependency graphs need to be made explicit and open. Everyone should be able to see what resources there are, which are being used for what, the entire supply chain, and projections.

We'll likely need new distributed protocols to be able to make group decisions about things, but I think we'll be able to get a long way just by making key information widely available.

You just ask for them at the nearest replicator terminal ;p

Basic income.

Robotization and automation will leave tens of millions of people in the US without jobs. There's just no way around it.

This is happening as we speak. The next 30 years will be absolutely nuts.

That's why some form of socialism will become inevitable. We will absolutely have to provide millions of people with food, shelter and basic medicine. Or face famine and revolts.

I think that sooner or later we'll end up with higher taxes, and basic income. Over the next 20-30 years we'll have fewer well paid employees making more money, and masses of people out of job market, depending on welfare and government support.

Quadcopter Drones are just not viable for delivery with current battery technology. Maximum lift is a couple of pounds for 15-20 minutes of flight. Wide use of overhead power lines in cities makes drone delivery unsafe in cities. Rural areas could make sense, lots of open space for landing, sparse population and long drives for drivers,straightforward navigation and obstacle avoidance. But that's not something Quadcopters would be good for, these long-distance hauls, some sort of drone plane would make more sense.

I feel this is somewhat misguided, even a modern version of a pneumatic mail tube system would make more sense to me.

There many other much better use cases for drones and Quadcopters in other industries. I'd expect self-driving cars to have more impact on delivery.

Are gasoline quadcopters viable?

Depends what you want to do,

Gas engines are heavy, compared to electric motors and lithium batteries, so for modest endurance flights, electric works out better now, but for long endurance flights gas or diesel would be better.

Curtis youngblood demo'd a nitromethane powered quad as seen here

http://diydrones.com/profiles/blogs/curtis-youngblood-single...

I can't imagine anyone would use a nitro powered platform for any commercial use, the fuel is too expensive and the motors require too much maintenance.

I don't think we need autonomous machines flying around polluting (noise and chemical) spaces.

>Quadcopter Drones are just not viable for delivery with current battery technology.

AMZN can allow itself to implement infrastructure/process to use something like Al metal-air cells. Stick in, stick out, sent resulting Al oxide to re-processing. You'll get efficiency and range of at least gas engine without mess/maintenance. There are more advanced schemas available (like potassium based - more energy dense, easier for reprocessing), unfortunately most of the money is in Li based schemas which would make sense only if Li were to be the main by weight component, which isn't going to happen in any near future.

>Wide use of overhead power lines in cities makes drone delivery unsafe in cities.

that just control/sensor problem, pure tech and very solvable issue.

>I feel this is somewhat misguided

we need to utilize 3D en-mass, in particular for transportation. Whatever industry starts it doesn't really matter in big picture ... End result anyway will be an autonomous octocopter for commute :) (the autonomous cars Google develops will be great for trucks which will roam roads empty of people carrying cars)

Something just tells me transportation is not going to be the industry revolutionized by drones. I'm sure they'll revolutionize another industry, and another tech will revolutionize tansportation.

I guess at least companies are dreaming again and trying crazy ideas, aka "moonshots".

>I guess at least companies are dreaming again and trying crazy ideas, aka "moonshots".

Sitting on "moonshot" sized piles of cash and having engineering pools of that scale, one can expect that at least some would try ... I mean actual placement of Amazon logo on the Moon (like say using 100 "dots" - very bright LED array panels) would cost only something like few billion dollars.

Why do we need overhead power lines again? Distribute the generation of electricity (solar, fuel cell, wind) and connect it all via underground wiring.

Underground is harder, you have to dig up land every time you want to fix or replace something, this can be mitigated but it still isn't that great. More importantly in urban areas digging up land is really hard (sidewalks, roads, residences, buildings, water pipes, sewage systems...), not to mention the politics!

What is there to fix or replace? A properly insulated transmission line should last indefinitely.

Stringing taut wires is also hard and they are more susceptible to damage which require constant fixing (see Connecticut ~4 years ago).

The best-case scenario here is articulated well by Tyler Cowen in "Average is Over"[1] - new, future blue-collar equivalent jobs are going to be created to interact with and train the Cambrian explosion of narrow AI applications and robotics, assuming an ongoing paradigm of mostly supervised learning.

The worst case scenario on the other hand is pretty dystopian.

I for one, welcome our new overlords.

[1]http://www.amazon.com/Average-Is-Over-Powering-Stagnation-eb...

It means that human labor can be put to more productive use. Would you be happy delivering packages all day? Why would you assume someone else would be?

I would prefer a world that rewards people who pro-actively re-educate themselves.

At the very least, it punishes people with a "fixed" world view.

Are you familiar with the writings of Karl Marx?

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