[HN Gopher] Economists are revising their views on robots and jobs ___________________________________________________________________ Economists are revising their views on robots and jobs Author : blopeur Score : 12 points Date : 2022-01-25 22:00 UTC (1 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.economist.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.economist.com) | bottesting wrote: | sounds interesting | axiomdata316 wrote: | Previously posted here: | | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30067249 | contingencies wrote: | What drives the adoption of automation is not "labour is | expensive" but "labour is unavailable", "labour is too slow to | obtain/train", "labour is imprecise", "labour is dangerous", | "labour is untrustworthy" or "labour is unreliable". | | Generic industrial automation solutions are still very expensive | to integrate unless simplistic. Furthermore, if you automate one | unit operation, the rest of your process line also needs | automating or the adjacent operations will simply become the new | choke points. | timkam wrote: | Isn't the real development that automation and efficiency | improvements move more and more people into bullshit jobs? So | instead of becoming entirely obsolete, we continue working, not | knowing what value we contribute, if any. That's why my intuition | (and fear) is that in such BS jobs, the rewards will become more | and more skewed. So instead of a 9-5 corporate BS job, one gets a | highly competitive BS job (evaluated using metrics that are poor | predictors and assessors of individual quality of work) in a | high-pressure environment. | akoster wrote: | https://archive.is/L6TDA | blacksmith_tb wrote: | I cringe when I see an analysis begin with a trite conflict of | interest argument like "Warning people of a jobless future has, | ironically enough, created plenty of employment for ambitious | public intellectuals looking for a book deal or a speaking | opportunity." Yawn - that's charmingly glib, if factually | dubious, public intellectualism is not a growth industry in | general, let alone for bot-doubters. | | 1: https://archive.md/L6TDA | vorpalhex wrote: | This strikes me as the "AI will replace..." problem. Everyone | understands AIs are anything except intelligent. | bjelkeman-again wrote: | My take on it is that it is too early to tell. The automation | envisaged has not arrived, yet. (Maybe it will take a long | while.) Self driving trucks or book keeping systems without data | entry are still not widespread. | | At the same time, automation sometimes produces other results. | Not many executives in medium sized companies have secretaries, | rather the type their own messages, on a phone. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-01-25 23:00 UTC)