[Pops]

I do print graphics; "desktop publishing", pretty old hat now but at one point it was quite the cutting edge technology. Steve Jobs took a course in typography while in his "finding himself" stage and that resulted in the Mac having good type handling capability right out of the box. John Warnock came up with PostScript, a resolution independant page description language, then founded Adobe Systems and voilá, DTP was born.

Back in the day offset lithography required a number of specialized craftsmen with a high degree of manual skill to get from concept to printed piece. The PostScript printer connected to a Mac did away with most of those jobs starting in '85. A typical disruptive technology, DTP quickly displaced all those old prepress specialties with a Mac and one mouse-boy. Of course this caused a rapid drop in employment in commercial printing and of course newspaper, periodicals etc. The drop in newspaper employment shows the decline of those jobs began way before the peak of ad revenue just before the 2001 recession and the onslaught of web-based marketing:




I did well as one of the early adopters. I could do stuff with a mouse-click the old designers could only dream of doing and I could do it much faster and cheaper by far. I had the advantage of a pre-DTP printing apprenticeship so I understood the process and had a lower learning curve. Eventually the perception that everyone needed a website began to cut into printing and print budgets. Now DTP designers like me are always at the top of the rankings - of endangered careers that is, LOL.

As the data miners suck up ever greater amounts of personal information and learn to predict exactly what we want and when we want it, traditional mass advertising will go away. I've seen the phrase "I know half my ad dollars are wasted, I just don't know which half" credited to several different people but we are now getting closer all the time to narrowcasting ad messages. Ad revenues have supported the design industry for a hundred years or two but we are about at the end of using creatives to sell products scattershot hoping to attract a buyer.

So having said all that, I think I can hardly be called a Luddite when I ask the question that Pew asked in a recent "canvassing"

Will networked, automated, artificial intelligence (AI) applications and robotic devices have displaced more jobs than they have created by 2025?

And spice it up a bit with the added caveat:
And how will peak oil affect/intersect with advancing AI?

Reading about the questions posed by Pew Research their takeaway was such:

The vast majority of respondents to the 2014 Future of the Internet canvassing anticipate that robotics and artificial intelligence will permeate wide segments of daily life by 2025, with huge implications for a range of industries such as health care, transport and logistics, customer service, and home maintenance. But even as they are largely consistent in their predictions for the evolution of technology itself, they are deeply divided on how advances in AI and robotics will impact the economic and employment picture over the next decade.

The results (in case you don't want to read the entire report or even the few html pages are (my words)
Technology always makes more jobs than it kills by creating whole new classes of jobs.
vs.
This time is different (or will be) because machines are replacing thinking jobs, not just brute force or repetitive or even skilled tasks (like prepress).

Of course I saw no one mention any problem with declining available energy in the 10 year timeframe of the questions.


So anyway, what happens at the juncture of AI & PO?

.

[SILENTTODD]

The decline curve for "Paper Boys" in the period you site was probably even steeper.

I was a paper boy for five years between 1966 and 1971. I delivered an afternoon paper ( The Fresno Bee) which gave me my first job, and taught me responsibility to my customers.

It is too bad a modern generation of Paper Boys (or Girls) will never have that chance.

[basil_hayden]

So anyway, what happens at the juncture of AI & PO?

.

SkyNet? I could see "the machines" wanting energy dense liquid hydrocarbons more than us, and reacting...followed by a meek parental response.."Bad Google Car - Now Sit, Stay!"

There's a curve ball in there, you started with automation and dipped into artificial untelligence, I think. Maybe automation is just incremental AI.

Cultural changes might deal with automation as we currently know it, but AI? Not so sure. Some greater level of efficiency may be achieved, but the beer keg's already dead at that point. That's the beauty of kicking the can down the road.

[evilgenius]

Because of economics AI ought to introduce itself in waves. Each wave would only bring AI in as far as the users of it found that it could help them either save money or operate that much more efficiently. Eventually this will leave a remainder economy for actual working people, a kind of market stall thing where there are niches where humans can still operate more cheaply than machines. Things like self-driving cars eat away at it, but that kind of an economy is pretty resilient because it also includes hairdressers and restauranteurs.

At some point, though, the tech will become good enough that individual people can put it to work for them rather than them having to go to work for themselves. It'll become good, and therefore tradable, enough that it won't need the support of large corporate buyers demanding systems in order to thrive.

And then, we will enter the proxy state of affairs, robots and AI pushing around not just electronic money, but electronic work. So, then, nobody will work at all. That's when we had better already have addressed economic suffrage because inequality will be the name of the game if we haven't.

[Pops]

There's a curve ball in there, you started with automation and dipped into artificial untelligence, I think. Maybe automation is just incremental AI.

True. At some point, enough brute force computation can replace a lot of skill, experience and intelligence. I'd like to say only humans will ever be "creative" but more and more creativity is simply clicking a menu item on a drop down tab.

Much of human work and even creativity and "original" thought can be replaced by sheer computational power and memory, my experience in graphics shows that. But other "high-level" thought is mostly memory or researching other's memory, much of what a researcher does can be replaced by a machine that has read every court case ever, or knows every possible drug interaction or disease symptom combination, or can compute a beam size or assembly strength with a click.

What use is a cop if you don't need (or can't trust) his judgment and are forced to record his every move? Briton has 6 million video feeds I've read, one for every 10 people, the US records everything, including license plates and faces and you know there are "algorithms" combing those feeds 24/7 - Person of Interest is possibly the scariest show ever on TV to me.

What is the difference between God and the NSA?
The NSA doesn't wish it were God.
LOL

Sorry, a little off topic there. Many of the respondents to the survey above thought that the next 10 years would see a rapidly increasing impact of automation/AI on jobs and I think just like PO the rapidity of the change is the big factor. I remember visiting the Stockton (CA) Record newspaper sometime in the mid-90s and of course they showed me around the prepress area which was no longer a part of the printing plant but a tacked on room to the editorial department. There were half a dozen middle aged guys sitting at terminals, the ones who had been doing the skilled hand work previously (paste-up/camera/stripping/etc) but were too young to retire early and too old to change careers altogether. I'd say the crew went from 40 to less than 10 overnight.

When automation came to the farm is took a generation or two for farmers to make the switch and migrate to the city and find new work in newly created jobs building the machines that replaced them on the farm. The difference this time I think is not just dislocation as in the prepress jobs I described above, but machines are now replacing the human jobs and building the machines doing the replacing.

Ned Ludd might have retrained to be a stocking loom builder but there is no chance for a robot builder to retrain to become a robot once the robots can build themselves.

[lpetrich]

I've been interested in this question myself.

CGP Grey has made many interesting and informative videos, and ▶ Humans Need Not Apply - YouTube follows in his tradition. Computing power has been growing very rapidly, with no sign of leveling off (File:PPTMooresLawai.jpg - Wikipedia).

He notes that the US horse population peaked in 1915 and went down since, due to being put out of work by vehicles using internal combustion engines. Not just cars, but also buses and trucks and tractors and combines and ... Changes in the Horse Industry - HW37.pdf has some counts of how many horses the US has had, and according to it, the US equine population peaked in 1920. Mules peaked after horses, it seems.

So could many of us go the way of horses? He thinks that that is likely, and I agree.

He then discusses automatic-driving cars, and continues with software that can learn how to do various things from examples of what it is supposed to do. Like do stock trading. Writing certain sorts of articles, like sports stories. Searching through lots of documents in legal discovery. Medical diagnosis and treatment.

Will everybody become artistic creators? Unlikely. Only a small proportion of the population can make a living doing that, especially since doing so depends on popularity. Even there, software can make inroads, like the background music in part of his video that was composed by the Emily Howell software.

A further problem with new jobs is that the large majority of jobs that people do are not new ones, often having been around for a century or more. Since many of them are potentially automatable, that means trouble. Thus his figure of 45% unemployment. He actually tried to research how many people make lots of YouTube videos, how many iPhone app makers there are, etc.

CGP Grey has a transcript at his site at Humans Need Not Apply — CGP Grey, as well as picture and video credits.

H.I. #19: Pit of Doom — Hello Internet featuring CGP Grey and Brady Haran discussing "Humans Need Not Apply". It is most interesting. CGP Grey got into this issue because he noticed what machine-learning software can do, software like artificial neural networks and genetic algorithms. Strictly speaking, such software implements rather general functions with function optimizers to adjust their parameters for best fit. But the ability to learn means that it does not have to be explicitly preprogrammed in gory detail.

CGP Grey suspected that this time it is different because computers and robots are now competing in mental labor as well as in manual labor. He also tried to find out how many people are online video producers and smartphone app developers and the like. Something like several thousand, much less than the overall population. So there won't be enough new jobs available to absorb the large numbers of people likely to become technologically unemployed.

He talks about a "Pit of Doom", because he thinks that that's what's between the present and what massive automation will make possible: a society where everybody will be able to live very nice lives with robots and computers and the like doing most of the more routine work. In between is a state where large numbers of people are unemployed without any way of making a living.


David Graeber: “Spotlight on the financial sector did make apparent just how bizarrely skewed our economy is in terms of who gets rewarded” - Salon.com He discusses the rise of jobs that he compares to what certain farm animals leave behind -- empty jobs that do not produce much of value, jobs that make me think of digging holes and filling them up again. So could the emergence of such jobs be something that staves off the inevitable?

[lpetrich]

Report Suggests Nearly Half of U.S. Jobs Are Vulnerable to Computerization | MIT Technology Review
The authors did some subjective estimates and compared them to skills necessary for those jobs. Jobs requiring perception and manipulation were somewhat vulnerable, but jobs requiring creative intelligence and social intelligence are nearly invulnerable.

1. Moderately good AI: transport, logistics, production labor, administrative support, services, sales, construction.
2. Very good AI: management, science, engineering, the arts.

How Technology Is Destroying Jobs | MIT Technology Review

Brynjolfsson, a professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management, and his collaborator and coauthor Andrew McAfee have been arguing for the last year and a half that impressive advances in computer technology—from improved industrial robotics to automated translation services—are largely behind the sluggish employment growth of the last 10 to 15 years. Even more ominous for workers, the MIT academics foresee dismal prospects for many types of jobs as these powerful new technologies are increasingly adopted not only in manufacturing, clerical, and retail work but in professions such as law, financial services, education, and medicine.

That robots, automation, and software can replace people might seem obvious to anyone who’s worked in automotive manufacturing or as a travel agent. But Brynjolfsson and McAfee’s claim is more troubling and controversial. They believe that rapid technological change has been destroying jobs faster than it is creating them, contributing to the stagnation of median income and the growth of inequality in the United States. And, they suspect, something similar is happening in other technologically advanced countries.

[basil_hayden]

Landowner vs. renter might make a difference in the long run.

[MD]

The dynamic expressed in the title is important to consider:

The planet is blooming, like any flower.

Like any flower, it will die after blooming.

Like any dead flower, it will leave seed in its wake.

Do what you can to fertilize the soil, thanks.

PS: Archeological records indicate that the planet has bloomed many times in the past. There is no reason to expect that it won't bloom again.

PPS: Y'all are getting lost in detail.

[Herr Meier]

but machines are now replacing the human jobs and building the machines doing the replacing.

Are we going to achieve it? Productivity so high that nobody needs to work anymore?
I often wonder, with the productivity gains in the last 100 years I should be able to live a 1930's life yet only having to work 1 hour/day. Why am I still having to work so much?

[radon1]

I often wonder, with the productivity gains in the last 100 years I should be able to live a 1930's life yet only having to work 1 hour/day. Why am I still having to work so much?

Looks like a thought in the right direction.

[MD]

Why am I still having to work so much?

Yes, slaving away for 16 hours a day at repetitive tasks is hard to accept for you, no?

Tell me please, how many calories are you burning each day for your wages?

[Pops]

I often wonder, with the productivity gains in the last 100 years I should be able to live a 1930's life yet only having to work 1 hour/day. Why am I still having to work so much?

You're doing it wrong.

In the 1930s the average house was <1,000sf and > 4 people lived there
(today the average is 2,800sf & 2.something live there)
each room had one light bulb and one outlet
(if they had power most rural didn't)
No a/c
or clothes dryer
or electric tool to cut food
no electronic entertainment
except radio

in 1930 less than 1 person in 5 owned a car, now it's 4 out of 5 -
(a car is the second most expensive purchase)
The average person traveled less than 2k miles per year
Probably took public transit in town and mostly walked in the country
No caribbean cruises, disney world or road trips
Had a few changes of clothes, many had hand mades

They spent a large portion of their income on food (25%) and clothing (10%) - today it's 10% on food (US is only 7%) and less than 3% for clothing
Lots of people gardened
Preserved their own because canned was expensive and out-of-season was non-existant
they hunted/fished but they ate lots less protein because corn was expensive and soy didn't get going until the '40s
"a chicken in every pot" was a promise for Sunday dinner, not every day
Oh yeah, and they cooked from scratch because there was little option unless you ate out.


I've said before that if you can get a place to squat you can get by pretty cheap nowadays. You probably won't be buying the new iPhone 6 or Tesla roadster but you can have a good little life if that's what you want.

[Pops]

So I guess the answer I was kinda looking for to the original question was along the lines of ...

Automation will reduce skilled and white collar jobs just like earlier increases in mechanization and energy reduced unskilled and semi-skilled labor and similarly, as computers reduced low and mid level "clerical" and management jobs.

This time will be different though because instead of technology eliminating old and creating new jobs like before, this time the old jobs will go to 'bots and apps - but the new ones will likewise be filled by 'bots and apps, designed and built by 'bots and apps no less.

The result will be lower and lower wages for all but the most high level, creative jobs; designers of whatever kind but also strategic thinkers in business and .gov, goal setters, organizers, entrepreneurs and gamblers. Hands on people like plumbers will always have a job, that is as long as there is plumbing and some money floating around and people with enough extra to pay.

But that's the thing, what if the decrease in demand for workers due to automation erodes the economy due to falling wages and high unemployment? And what if, in addition, we are forced to spend more and more effort and money on producing energy - both more for FF and more to replace them?

That's kinda what I was thinking about.

[Herr Meier]

This time will be different though because instead of technology eliminating old and creating new jobs like before,

That's where I don't follow you. If I buy a robot to do the lawn mowing for me, it's because I don't want to do the work myself. I'm happy a robot does the work. If we cleverly use the gain in productivity we can all work a lot less and enjoy life a lot more. I don't want to work the same as I do now and use the gain in productivity to buy a yacht. I want the same life I have now, but work LESS.

[Pops]

I don't want to work the same as I do now and use the gain in productivity to buy a yacht. I want the same life I have now, but work LESS.

Your previously stated desire was to live a '30's life with little work and I pointed out that was pretty easy to since living a 30s life by definition means giving up all the goodies that have been deemed necessities since then. It is those marginal goodies that require 12 hour days.

But now you want all those goodies, plus a yacht, and free money to buy it.

LOL
The problem of course is that automation benefits capital by reducing the cost of production, it increases profit. If you want a bot to mow the lawn that is just a straight increase in cost to you unless you are already paying a meat unit to do the work now and the bot would be cheaper. Otherwise I suppose it might free up your time to work more - a complete reversal from the benefit to a capitalist. That's kind of the whole trap Americans especially have fallen into, we work more to buy more work-saving devices and we wind up working more.

And unless you have capital to invest you are a merely consumption unit, that is your cog in the Great Wheel of Capitalism. At one point your time and labor were exploited and syphoned off to make some capitalist a profit. But those days are coming to a close, capitalists no longer need you to do anything buy consume.

See the conundrum?

[basil_hayden]

The conundrum is called Desire.

The young have it, the old know better.

If you smash your TV and internet connections, it mostly goes away.

[basil_hayden]

PPS: Y'all are getting lost in detail.

Our lives are all about the details. Who cares when the sun blows up.

[Herr Meier]

I don't want to work the same as I do now and use the gain in productivity to buy a yacht. I want the same life I have now, but work LESS.

Your previously stated desire was to live a '30's life with little work and I pointed out that was pretty easy to since living a 30s life by definition means giving up all the goodies that have been deemed necessities since then. It is those marginal goodies that require 12 hour days.

But now you want all those goodies, plus a yacht, and free money to buy it.

Sorry no, that's not what I said.
I said if I lived like 1930 with current productivity I should only need to work 1hr/day.

If I consider EXPECTED future productivity gains due to smart robots I should be able to live todays standards with maybe 4hr work/day.

And unless you have capital to invest you are a merely consumption unit,

That's true. That's why it's good advice to own some production capacity. Just sitting on the couch watching TV is not good.