could your job be done by a powerful computer?

As it is right now, no, because it is not standardized and very driven by personal "style".

However, as we all know, jobs can change to be more automated to where down the line, it becomes easier to automate, so...can't say with any certainty.

I don't think so. Most of my job is people skills and communication, plus occasionally personal care, none of which I think are very suitable for computerisation.

No, & I can prove it mathematically.

I fully expect Burger Kings to be 100% manned by Cyborgs by 2025

Yes. I am an assassin and part time Arnie impersonator.

The thing with this topic is that I think all of us feel safe because we think no computer can do what we do as well as we do.

The problem with that assumption is that often, CEOs don't care about it being as good, or even being much more than mediocre -- I worked for a company once that offshored a work task that we previously said could "never" be done offshore, due to language barrier/cultural differences.

They did it any way--I was a mentor, and failed my mentees on every piece of work they gave me. Other mentors had similar results.

One month later they proceeded anyway, despite the concerns stated, despite COMPLAINTS received from customers in excess of complaints prior.

Why? Cuz they did an adequate enough job that the people up top didn't give a shit. It was like going from A- work to C work.

Similarly, I think CEOs are gonna be less likely to give a shit if a computer's AI-generated report has occasional trouble with subject-verb agreement if it saves em enough.

Ugh-uncomfortable topic.

What is the career field that is least subject to changes?

i dont think a computer could ever browse ilx as stealthily as i do tbqh

Despite Euler's appeal to Godel (?) you can take the position that anything a human can compute can be computed by a computer ("download the latest brain emulator"), so in theory any currently-performed job could be done. My job is basically AI research so you can blame me when it happens.

and if your job can't be done by a computer, you probably shouldn't have a job

my job mainly involves checking people against databases to find a match, and then uploading that match to their application. currently this cannot be done by computer, there are too many factors that can vary, person's forename and surname can be spelled differently, DOB and POB can be out and there may not be an address match but by looking at all the details together you can tell that it's probably them and it has to be investigated. i'm sure one day this could all be automated. pretty automated already to be honest.

The only reason I haven't been replaced by a robot yet is because robots are more expensive to maintain.

One we go all digital, they still might want to keep one of me around for nostalgic finger pointing and laughing reasons.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYPvMLPcJfo

I drive a school bus. The technology exists today to allow a computer to drive a vehicle, but research has proved that such a quest is likely to be futile for reasons unrelated to technology.

The key problem appears to be that any such system would by necessity be required to be exceedingly safe, or the manufacturer would be liable for any accidents while the vehicle was under the control of that system. Simple physics dictate that an unsafe following distance could not be tolerated by such a system, therefore any time another vehicle is detected cutting in ahead of the computer-controlled vehicle, the system would be forced to slow down until a safe distance was achieved once more.

So, in an environment where only a few vehicles were computer-controlled, the risk-accepting driving behavior of human drivers is almost guaranteed to force the computer-controlled vehicle to drive at a speed considerably less than the limit, causing still more drivers to pass and cut in, and so on.

In an environment where all vehicles are computer-controlled another problem arises. The computer-controlled vehicles would spread out very safely, but in urban environments with large numbers of vehicles, the carrying capacity of the roads would diminish as this spreading occured, until it was only a small fraction of the number of vehicles currently accomodated by our current road system.

So, basically, human drivers accept the risk of accidents, but in turn, they have optimized their driving behavior in other ways that compensate for the risk of accidents, but computers would not be allowed to do in the same conditions.

None of this even begins to address all the other things I do for the students I drive.

it asset management. some of it could be done by computer, but there's still a lot of manual work to be done.

If a lot of the pisspots sending me the updated data were replaced with computers, perhaps yeah i would end up going too.

A great deal of my job is already done by a powerful computer, either the one on my desk or one somewhere out there on the web. More than I'd like to admit. My job, more than anything else, is to make things pretty. Fortunately that's still not something computers are especially good at, at least not when they have to adapt to requests from clients.

Aimless' point is interesting - I believe that a hypothetical computer could be a much better driver than any human but we might not be willing to accept this if the computer has some non-zero chance of messing up and injuring someone. Likewise there are some jobs that we just want done by a human because we believe that they need human-human interaction or a sense of human "responsibility": teachers, doctors, judges, etc. Even in the way-out scenario that a computer could do the job better than a human.

it can be done by computers and offshored. the work product is shit, but buy cheap get cheap. and they'll go to American humans when they find out how fucked up the computer/offshored work is.

When you work in a field that is dependent on regional or national cultural tastes, that can't really be outsourced, even if a computer could do the job faster and more accurately.

My job could be done by a concussed parrot and/or a tape recorder.

"Despite Euler's appeal to Godel (?) you can take the position that anything a human can compute can be computed by a computer ("download the latest brain emulator"), so in theory any currently-performed job could be done. My job is basically AI research so you can blame me when it happens."

not sure if it counts as shitting up the thread to take this stuff up so: I don't buy your (almost-)explicit claim that every currently-performed job is computable. That's because I don't buy that human cognition is computational.

I think your case is more complicated though, because a lot of education - even university level - can be automated and that's where a lot of the $ that funds your prob-non-computable research comes.

from

aimless, Google has already tested out computer controlled cars, and they are out there in California (albeit with humans riding in them to take over in case something goes wrong)

the amount of computer assists in cars nowadays frightens me. call me a luddite but that's terrifying

I trust computers driving cars about as much as I trust 16 or 90 year olds driving cars

I don't think teaching of the kind most worth doing can be automated. But I know that people can get evangelical about their beliefs in "replacing" humans & I just tend to walk away, knowing that we can't even get a good Civ opponent coded up, let alone something more sophisticated.

like here would be a sweet assignment: write an ILX bot that can some ILX-centric version of the Turing Test.

(I'm hoping for a good alley oop here, folks.)

ask brodie

im not a bellhop yet but honestly computers or robots wouldnt be able to do the job right us humans do it better lets just hope we dont go to far in technology

I'm a bit rusty on this stuff but I'll do my best...for me the argument that "human cognition is/isn't computational" comes down to a mixture of gut feeling and the way one defines "cognition" and "computational", maybe even "is". I assume that the brain can be modelled as a complex (and probably random) physical system and the job is to predict its probable behaviour in response to stimuli; obv you can argue that modelling isn't "cognition" (Chinese room etc.) but then deciding what is or is not really cognition becomes impossible.

Uh and that the ability to model the brain as a dynamic system isn't inconceivable; I'm sceptical of attempts to prove that it can't be done. It's obviously quite far off though.

Someone's still gotta run said powerful computers, and thats why I work in IT. Well, thats what I keep telling myself anyway.

as someone looking to be an archivist/document conservationist in the near future --- yeah, computers could do vast amounts of what that entails. Can they really decide whats important to keep vs. let get destroyed through the ravages of time though? Naw... unless we're talking like post-singularity computers with hard AI, but then again, we're all fucked if those come about.

xp - Brodie I wouldn't want a robot handling my luggage and I certainly wouldn't tip one, so I think your job is safe.

like here would be a sweet assignment: write an ILX bot that can some ILX-centric version of the Turing Test.

I'll work on the Geir related subroutines if you do the Ned related ones.

I'm in a sales-related position (basically, a sales rep without the commissions, but also without the pressure to "make numbers"), and part of my job involves pretending to be interested in discussions of golf and college football. I am beyond certain that a computer could do a far better job of that than me.

Google has already tested out computer controlled cars

They aren't the first. They probably won't be the last. But attaining a product that can be sold is not going to happen anytime in the next 20 years, and I am guessing longer than that, unless we see a sharp decrease in personal vehicles and their replacement almost entirely by mass transit.

Not to mention convincing people to trust them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jeIy2MHZ0xE

I like how when he says the line, "Anger is more useful than despair," he sounds exactly like Werner Herzog.

Someone's still gotta run said powerful computers, and thats why I work in IT. Well, thats what I keep telling myself anyway.

I wouldn't be so sure about that. It depends on which comes first: computers that can look after the other computers, and even design new computers and robots, or computers that can perform every other type of job. I have a feeling some more menial, low wage jobs will be safe for far longer than IT.

I'm a graphic designer and the more I think about it, I'm sure my job could be done by a computer. Design is irrelevant to computers, so they would have no point of reference for evaluating the quality of their output, and a human would be needed to judge the results. But you could fairly easily create a system that would try out different things, allow a human to provide feedback, and the computer could then learn the person's taste in the process. After some rudimentary training from expert designers, such a system could probably be used directly by the client so they instantly get a bunch of acceptable variations and pick and choose what they want. Over time and through machine learning (and depending on the clients), I bet the system would eventually get to the point where its initial output was at a high enough level that no human intervention would be needed.

my dream would be for all cars to be computer controlled -- if my current commute to work could involve sleeping or reading i would be a much less stressed person i think

They aren't the first. They probably won't be the last. But attaining a product that can be sold is not going to happen anytime in the next 20 years, and I am guessing longer than that, unless we see a sharp decrease in personal vehicles and their replacement almost entirely by mass transit.

We need a log of confident long-term predictions that might turn out entirely false. Regarding mass transit, computer controlled motorway driving could be a perfect sweet spot between that and personal vehicles - you can have all the comfort of your own car, the ability to get to any destination at any time you like, but the actual motorway driving, which I'm sure many regard as something of a chore, done for you. And 'platoons' of cars on autopilot can actually increase road capacity - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platoon_(automobile)

work in IT Testing so reckon by its very nature it cannot.

Robocop 5: Stacking shelves at nights because being a policeman doesn't pay very well

Yeah, I think a powerful computer with arms could stack shelves. Or hopefully will soon enough that no-one has to do such an inane job in the future. And then they all turn out to be faulty and explode, leading to the great Tesco fire and food riots of 2028.

I assume that the brain can be modelled as a complex (and probably random) physical system and the job is to predict its probable behaviour in response to stimuli;

yeah i tend to agree with this.

No, because computers can't tell clients that "you're fucking stupid for pissing your money away like that because you won't use the policies that we've formulated on your behalf" with a degree of tact.

I am a computer programmer. My current job is to find ways to automate processes that a lot of the end users would probably be surprised to hear needed someone to work on instead of them just working by magic.

So, someone's still got to do that for these supercomputers, I guess. But on the other hand, in my current case, the end users are pretty much right - even basic, obvious things have been a surprising pain in the arse to get automated. So my current specific job definitely contains large elements that a computer really ought to be able to do.

in the year 2400, computers will be the aristocracy

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

my job bumping this thread was done by a powerful computer

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

so I guess 27 / 58 of us will have full-time jobs

I mean a few of us will have to feed the robots too I guess

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/30/opinion/sunday/our-unpaid-extra-shadow-work.html

ilx is at 17% unemployment apparently! that's gonna hurt obama in the election

my job could be better done by a powerful computer tbh, implacability a bonus

http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2011/11/artificial-intelligence

They already have robots that can lift and carry patients, and I'm assuming that changing their diapers will be the next automated task.

Lawyers are in a similar boat now that smart algorithms can search case law, evaluate the issues at hand and summarise the results. Machines have already shown they can perform legal discovery for a fraction of the cost of human professionals—and do so with far greater thoroughness than lawyers and paralegals usually manage.

Anyone know what this is referring to? I'm certain this is a crazy exaggeration of what the software does - I'd guess they're just talking about a fancy search engine whose results need to be filtered/summarised by experts - but I'm curious anyway.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/05/science/05legal.html?pagewanted=all

here's an article on that.

I think the fact that law firms get to bill by the hour and don't strictly compete on price is one reason why places might be hesitant to adopt this tech. but as w/ siri etc. this software is gonna improve and the efficiency gains are gonna be too attractive to pass up.

my job being done by a computer looks like horse_ebooks, basically

ya but what if google invests a billion dollars developing snarky blogger AI

Thanks for the link iatee - as I figured, it's mostly retrieval with a bit of network analysis and sentiment. You're still going to need humans to make sense of everything (for the time being anyway) but I see how it gets rid of a lot of high-paid routine work.

i've never seen that legal software, but it makes sense. it won't replace lawyers, though. for instance, software that "evaluates the issues at hand," and maybe predicts a likely outcome, depends on how a human lawyer inputs and describes the facts (a client could also input and describe facts, but presumably they're far more biased than the lawyer). and a client may reject the predicted outcome from such a program. and many times, a client pursues a litigation strategy for reasons arguably apart from the likelihood of success (e.g., to gain leverage in negotiations; as a matter of pride, not economics; to achieve a broader institutional goal, regardless of the outcome in a given case). finally, software can't craft persuasive, fact-sensitive briefs. even if it could, you'd need human lawyers to refine the work and argue it before a Judge.

yeah I don't think anyone thinks computers can completely replace lawyers anytime soon, right now this is mostly w/r/t the act of legal discovery. that's work done by struggling temp lawyers and is gonna make the struggling temp lawyer market even more miserable.

otoh I think where computers will replace lawyers-lawyering will be people willing to look at increasingly sophisticated online legal info sites instead of consulting w/ a lawyer over something small.

i guess. broadly speaking, that phenomenon is already true: people or businesses with small issues "wing-it" many times. i'm a litigator, so i think this type of software would impact me less (it could impact the consulting work i do (e.g., advising companies or people about how to avoid litigation problems)).

http://www.creditwritedowns.com/2012/01/bifurcated-society-technology-jobs.html

And one notable area of consumption that by definition differentiates the classes, that of conspicuous consumption, is going by the wayside. Yes, I believe we are seeing the twilight of the era of conspicuous consumption. Not that Gucci and Chanel are going to go out of business, but for most people that sort of status statement is increasingly becoming irrelevant. No matter what you are wearing and driving, a far better picture of you and your status is just a few clicks away. You don’t have to drive a Ferrari to let everyone know you are rich and successful. If you are driving a Ferrari, what it will convey is that you – who as everyone who cares to Google you knows is running a hedge fund and is worth tons of money – must like a Ferrari.

I'm not sure I buy this, but it's an interesting argument

http://www.newgeography.com/content/002656-the-three-laws-future-employment

Law #1: People will get jobs doing things that computers can’t do. Law #2: A global market place will result in lower pay and fewer opportunities for many careers. (But also in cheaper and better products and a higher standard of living for American consumers.) Law #3: Professional people will more likely be freelancers and less likely to have a steady job.

y/n

I predict more adult babies.

these arguments have been around since, if not the industrial revolution, then at least the time of the production line, iirc?

i can't remember how it works out, something along the lines of increased leisure time & consumption & existential angst, keeping modern economies running on the triple engines of hbo, ten buck lattes and pyschotherapy.

who will the american consumers be

unless it means machines

that consume americans

'american consumers' will be a hit tv show devised by cowell where awful people by crap in front of a crowd then tv viewers vote for the awful person buying the crap they liked the most.

Because we will all have so much leisure time, this will get 3 billion viewers, 24 hrs a day

these arguments have been around since, if not the industrial revolution, then at least the time of the production line, iirc?

yeah but technological change back then is not comparable to the kinda change that's happening now - machines that can replace physical labor vs. machines that can beat people at jeopardy

Inventing a machine that replaces physical labour has a considerably greater impact on humankind than a machine that wins jeopardy

I wouldn't argue w/ that, but that led to a world where people could do service sector jobs, the machine that wins jeopardy doing your legal paperwork or whatever frees up labor but doesn't necessarily create demand for a new type of labor

no, but it'll probably create demand & space for non-necessary labour

there's no economic principle that suggests that that demand for non-necessary labor will make up for what's lost

http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2012/04/can-the-computers-at-narrative-science-replace-paid-writers/255631/

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-05-03/the-recovery-squeezes-the-middle-class

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/wp/2012/10/14/why-were-facing-a-mcjob-recovery/

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/01/the-end-of-labor-how-to-protect-workers-from-the-rise-of-robots/267135/

thanks for these links, iatee. it's been interesting watching this subject start to come up in Krugman's recent columns -- by chance it's happening as I'm getting around to reading Norbert Wiener's books on Cybernetics, written in the 40's & 50's. a lot of the work of the Macy Conferences has been sidelined as utopian: in the conclusion of his introduction to 'Cybernetics: Or, Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine', he basically states that the rise of productive machines will prompt a societal crisis which will force us to find an enconomy of time that values a human life in other ways than a wage. Easy to dismiss as hopelessly utopian, and yet too many of the sentences in these books utterly nail everything Krugman's been inching towards in his recent columns.

Been thinking of starting a Gregory Bateson thread, but maybe not yet

yeah the subject has def begin to creep into the mainstream economics dialogue lately

krugman's article from 1996: http://mit.edu/krugman/www/BACKWRD2.html

actually predicted a lot of what's happening tho maybe was too pessimistic about robot plumbers /drivers etc.

from the other side of the fence, this hilarious article just posted

http://techcrunch.com/2013/01/12/10-reasons-why-2013-will-be-the-year-you-quit-your-job/

What's the general crisis scenario look like? Because a workforce that is forced to go on half-time and still get the same real wages due to robot efficiencies seems pretty good to me.

the robot efficiencies don't go to labor, is the crisis

blame our workaholic culture; don't blame the robots!

No, & I can prove it mathematically.

I’ll alert Nick Woodhouse.

lol at the techcrunch article

This is not true. Everyone is an entrepreneur. The only skills you need to be an entrepreneur: an ability to fail, an ability to have ideas, to sell those ideas, to execute on those ideas, and to be persistent so even as you fail you learn and move onto the next adventure.

always felt like the entrepreneur meme was a nice way to rationalize tearing up the social contract. "ehhh, you guys are on your own now ... start, like, a business or something ... worked out for those three guys over there."

if techcrunch were replaced by a robot you can't tell me all parties involved wouldn't be better off.

St3ve Din3rman

Wow! Just this morning I was sitting here thinking , how in 50 years from now historians will look back on this time and discuss just how wrong we all were by blaming this whole problem of a dwindling middle class on political mistakes by both sides rather then the reality of what really was taking place.The fact is there has never been a better time in the past 100 years to create products and ideas, and get very wealthy doing so..The downside is those that don't realize or are unable to transition to this new world of innovation in technology and thinking are getting left behind, and thus is the reason for the continuing divide between the haves and have nots.Anyone unable to imagine and create will get left behind. Sad but true........

what's the end game if we all became entrepreneurs ... would it be a barter system? i can just imagine everyone trying to trade the useless crap they came up with in exchange for more useless crap. "uhhh i'll trade you this vibrating anime woman massage seat cushion for your 'integrated mobile social networking space'. do you have any food or medicine i could have, by the way?"

B0do H0enen

Good article. But what are your thoughts on what will happen to the 90% of the population that will not follow this advice? How can those that do make it through the end of the industrial age support those that are left behind?

J4mes Altuch3r

When the plane starts to run out of air and the oxygen masks come out you put your own mask on first before you put it on the face of your 2 year old baby. The same thing here. The best way to help everyone else is to help yourself. Then it will become a very natural instinct how you can help the rest. Don't worry about it until then.

entrepreneurialism as an apocalyptic cult. interesting times.

just have your 3d printer build a farm-bot and a medic-bot

K3lly McFinn3ly

Thank you for articulating this without economic charts and graphs. I very much need to diversify.

nothing new under the sun

http://nyrbclassics.tumblr.com/post/41215596961/the-plain-truth-is-that-at-present-many-of-us-are

http://blogs.swarthmore.edu/burke/2013/01/11/apres-le-perturbation/

I work as an admin assistant in the civil service so yes it fucking could

http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2013/03/sam-altman-is-not-blithering-idiot.html

http://www.interfluidity.com/v2/4340.html

Could a powerful computer artificially inseminate goats?

NB: This is not my job at present, but I am merely curious about this in a general sort of way.

it could not naturally inseminate goats

what if they were using nanotechnology?

or if the computer was really goat hot?

na-a-a-a-anotechnology

i'll get me coat

It would have to be a very powerful computer

hahaha i met a bright-eyed young engineer at work who told me he'd come up with a logarithm that "does what you guys do"

There are a few recurrent aspects of my job that could totally be done by a script or handful of scripts and it is immensely frustrating to me that they are not. Like, that's what computers are for, surely, to do tedious repetitive tasks. It's 2013. What the fuck.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/14/opinion/krugman-sympathy-for-the-luddites.html

i met a project management guru the other week who is flatly, calmly convinced that robots will replace at least 50% of the jobs people currently have and that it would have happened sooner except no one knows how to replace the lost demand

maybe we can find aliens to buy our products and let the preponderance of humanity starve