Weekend Open Forum: Should we be worried about robots taking human jobs?

[Uncle Al]

If robots do all the labor, hunt and gather all the materials, build other robots, etc. it may finally push the forward the concept of no money supply, after all the function of a money supply is to promote capitalism and growth so it would have little, if any value in the future. Many Sci-Fi movies and shows seem to have already grasp this concept and the purest form of endeavor will be for the value of discovery, creation, and notoriety .... which are things that machines will not recognize for a long time.

Personally, as ugly as I have become, I'm holding out for the sex robots; and hoping they will have a model that is blind ...... you know, just in case mine is kind of picky!

 

[tonylukac]

My boss at the city of la always wanted me to see robocop. I don't think that's good with all the corruption of the red light cameras. Also, think of this one. With a speed camera, you may pass that way 30 times speeding (not knowing the speed limit, etc.) and get 30 tickets before the billing catches up to you in the mail.

 

[namesrejected]

The only people that should be worried are the old stooges who fail to adapt and adopt. New job skills and a new model of education or at least an adapted model of education will be needed. I see more private company involvement in the education and continuing education departments.

I wouldn't say I'm " old " or " young ", but I will say from what I have seen in the workforce is that older people tend to be better at adapting than younger people. Old people want to work, and are willing to, young people " in general " are lazier and want everything given to them on a silver spoon " in general ". I'm 36 btw, not really old or young so what I'm saying has no bias to it, its observation.

 

[Skjorn]

Damn, these walls of text fo comments. Yes, the jobs that can be automated should be. Tax them for it or use the money to make a human job or use the money to pay human workers more. I am for it though. As many as possible should be automated, so the humans aren't automated.

 

[RedGuard]

In the end the amount of work always rises, no matter how many people or robots one throws at it.

Why? We were 250.000 in the year 0. Now we are 7 billions. Does it look like jobs are scarce? Nope. Are there low-paying jobs? Yes, there are. But even so, there are jobs.

 

[mcborge]

Should we be worried... it depends, high skilled/artisan jobs or those that are benefited by human contact, yes. Dirty, repetitive or dangerous for humans, no.

 

[Paulos7]

No worries for now, but ask me again in five years. By that time there will be some great new food products for the poor made by the Soylent Corporation. I hear Soylent red and Soylent yellow will be pretty good, but I’d steer clear of the green variety.

 

[Spect]

I'm a courier. I pick up a package from "A" and drive it to "B". And very worried that in 10-20 yrs I won't have a job. I envision a company being able to load up a truck or "transporter" punch in the address or destination and hit "drive" and a driverless cargo vehicle navigates to its destination completely autonomously​. The beginnings of this technology is being tested every day. 5-7 years and we'll have self driving cars, and soon after that 10-20 yrs the kinks will be fine tuned and technology will progress enough to replace me. I'm almost certain of this. They will be faster, safer, cheaper, and more efficient. Also in 20-30 years I see Auto Insurance not being mandatory because everyones self driving vehicles will be many times safer than the old out dated human operated vehicles.

 

[Axle Grease]

No.

 

[Reachable]

Maybe these advanced machines will continue to free us from repetitive, unchallenging, or dangerous tasks and everyone will only have to work thirty hours a week and get paid as much as if it had been forty because everything still got done. This can be worked out, you know, once everyone realizes that we control money, not the other way around.

We have to have these machines, because the population is increasing and the amount of work increases faster than the population, because of complexity. Necessity is the mother of invention and population increase is the mother of necessity.

This issue is a mass hysteria brought about by pronouncements from people who are regarded as having authority, and then it spread and was taken seriously. But you have to know from whence it came. The movers and shakers in the tech world tend to be motivated by a science fiction-y vision, which in some cases can be harnessed to transform the very fabric of society and in other cases will forever be merely silly. We've all been entertained by the fantasy of artificial people walking among us but the there really isn't much in the way of human tasks that a robot will *ever* be able to do, and that is the truth.

 

[bandit8623]

"Should we be worried about robots taking human jobs?"

No, what we need to worry about is accounting for the increasing automation of jobs and plan around it.

We can go the rightwing way, where jobs are required for basic subsistence and automation automates the jobs away leaving people to destitution.

Or we can go the the universal basic income way and work with it for the betterment of everyone...

Sadly, the nasty rightwing dystopia option is the only game in town right now

so you want full distribution of wealth? when that happens you will have zero effort by anyone to work hard and want to succeed.

why work harder for a bonus at the end of the month when you know thats going to someone else anyways?

 

[BadThad]

The left is hopeless - they have been brainwashed into "government give me everything" thinking. They clamor for the very type of government our founding fathers left behind in England. They understood that confiscation and redistribution of wealth is a FAILED MODEL. The beauty of America is that ANYONE can do well given the drive and determination to do so. The left wishes to undermine that American philosophy in favor of "government does all" rule. More and bigger government is NOT THE ANSWER! Unfortunately, the leftist noodleheads don't understand that. I recommend they study Venezuela to see the result of apex liberalism/socialism because that is EXACTLY what liberals desire!