Peak Oil News and Message Boards

A once-in-a-generation convergence of technology and pressure to operate more efficiently has corporations saying many lost jobs may never return. The jobs lost in a monthslong cascade of white-collar layoffs triggered by overhiring and rising interest rates might never return, corporate executives and economists say. Companies are rethinking the value of many white-collar roles, in what some experts anticipate will be a permanent shift in labor demand that will disrupt the work life of millions of Americans whose jobs will be lost, diminished or revamped through the use of artificial intelligence.

"We may be at the peak of the need for knowledge workers," said Atif Rafiq, a former chief digital officer at McDonald's and Volvo. "We just need fewer people to do the same thing." Long after robots began taking manufacturing jobs, artificial intelligence is now coming for the higher-ups -- accountants, software programmers, human-resources specialist and lawyers -- and converging with unyielding pressure on companies to operate more efficiently. [...] The Labor Department projects that of the 20 occupations that will create the most jobs through 2031, about two-thirds will be blue-collar jobs that pay around $32,000 a year, including home-health and personal-care aides, restaurant cooks, fast-food workers, wait staff and freight movers. The professions with the best prospects for growth that require a college degree include software developers, operations managers and registered nurses. Those jobs pay around $100,000 a year and are forecast to be better protected than other white-collar work from AI displacement.
https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/the-di ... b-af0bd925

That may be a very good thing. As the USA and other Western nations approach a demographic crisis, and find ourselves short of workers, AI and automation may be able to fill may y of the missing slots. And the AI workers will not need health care, vacations, FICA, retirement, HR or office space.

BUT we will need to devote a new taxation paradigm to replace the government revenues.

Isn't the concept of a white-collar job racist? We should be applauding the end of white-collar jobs! Opps, sorry, I just realized that I have a white-collar job!

The catch is that robots aren't customers.

Yes, that is true. And in the infinite growth model that is a problem. But infinite growth itself is a problem.

The solution is that we need to abandon the I finite growth model, consign it to the same trash heap as perpetual motion, and for the same reasons.

The problem then becomes we have to adjust. Humans have great pride in our ability to adjust, make it so.

Newfie wrote:That may be a very good thing. As the USA and other Western nations approach a demographic crisis, and find ourselves short of workers

From my perspective it's good thing, but I'm not a 25 year old white collar worker still paying off a student loan and trying to work my way up a corporate ladder. The whole AI thing is interesting. My friend was reading an article to me about how even doctors will be replaced but I said I doubted that. People have roundly rejected AI controlled trains and planes, why would they trust their medical health to a machine that might decide it's better they died quickly than took up anymore resources lol. A whole can of worms it is. I don't think they plan on hard-wiring Asimov's 3-Laws of robotics into them.

Everyone will be affected, including older generations who are dependent on younger ones to do the work and to take care of them.

As always the devil is in the details, some places will get it more right than others.