Anyone else scared of machine learning and full automation? If globalization and semi automation brought us Trump, Brexit, Putin, and Le Pen; shouldn't we expect (cont.)

Well no one automation or company destroys the market - companies don't tend to look at the macro but rather their own economic well being. D2 you would seem to be assuming that a company understands the total impact of an innovation or even cares.

Often the total impact of a change is unknown. Apple didn't invent the digital camera but its integration into the preeminent smartphone, drove adoption. So it wasn't just kodak that was impacted but the film developers, photo labs and chemical suppliers. I doubt Apple considered the impact of its phone on the producers of cameras, film, flashlights, gps units, alarm clocks, etc.

Smart companies do practice creative destruction on a certain level. Service providers are better off automating themselves as opposed to being completely disrupted by automation as an example.

Companies that last for a century and beyond respond to these changes and often become different companies. IBM has changed so many times from manufacturing machines to consulting to predictive analytics.

@op, my recollection of warnings from those individuals were more Terminator Rise of the Machines than labor market focused. People have been scared of automation and predicting the end of labor since the candlemakers picketed lightbulbs and the horse and carriage union fought against Ford. iphones put Kodak out of business and created an entire app platform with hundreds of millions of users to innovate from, never mind the infintisemal increase in human productivity that resulted from having the sum total of human knowledge available at your fingertips on a mountaintop. I'm an economist and I don't care what Fox says or half the pop culture op-eds published say to sell periodicals and clicks. Yes, most of the manu jobs lost to China and Mexico are gone and not coming back, and many of those people were permanently injured for societies benefit, but the concerns about permanent job shortfalls are completely absurd. There's a higher percentage of the population employed than there was in the 70's, even while baby boomers exit the labor force en masse. You said you wanted to have a conversation but instead you just make ridiculous claims without a basic grasp for how the economy functions. Try econ 101 again

^ see, it's already happening.

I for one welcome our new technological overlords

I have done robotics installs for about 6 years now

There are simply too many people and too few jobs. Robots will work alongside people and ultimately produce better products. Then they begin to displace the people.

The legal profession was already significantly disrupted by legalzoom

Tax/audit will be one of the next areas - anything repetitive can be automated

Anything driven, from cars and trucks to forklifts and freight ships will be impacted.

You will order and pay on machines at your table in restaurants. More food will be made through timed conveyors eliminating jobs, it will accelerate if wages rise.

You already check into your hotels with your phone, self check-in kiosks and keyless doors will significantly impact the hotel industry

This isn't happening in 20 or 30 years, it's happening now

*humans... What's a jumana, weird ass phone

I'm pretty conservative but we are going to reach a point where universal basic income will have to be implemented.

Enjoyed this post in comparison to posts around shoes and Tumi

I welcome this new future and look forward to it. I support universal basic income and am hopeful of the new knowledge industries that will develop. It is ridiculous to me that some people spend their entire working lives doing tasks that can be replaced by robots, I personally would rather have people spending that time on recreational activities than be janitors/waiters/etc. their entire lives.

Yes, I'm terrified, and scared most of our jobs will be automated away in the next 10-15 years. I can't control what happens. The only things I can control are my saving/spending habits, and finding ways to make myself valuable at work.

Violence across the world when millions are out of jobs in the next 30-50 years? Truck and taxi drivers are expected to be out of jobs in the next decade and they alone can make a revolution!

There was a WSJ article a few weeks back talking about a need to pay large portions of the population because they will never be able to work again. Not because they don't want to, but because everything they do will have been automated in one way or another. Ironically, it comes down to the trade jobs that can't be outsourced to machines - haircuts, plumbers, beauticians, etc.

Think what else automation will disrupt:

Self driving vehicles typically need less maintenance and predictive analytics will reduce down time. This means fewer vehicles of all varieties will be needed.

Self driving vehicles will turn the trillion dollar insurance industry upside down

If the laws are followed, the lack of traffic tickets will cause massive deficits to law enforcement and local municipalities

As concepts like Solar City grow and people move off the grid, how will our grid be funded?

Tax issues will alter where people choose to live and delivery services will improve access to where they can comfortably live.

The domino effect will be wild

@PC1 and @D3 but how do you convince the masses to embrace the new age and change their way of thinking? How do you convince them that it's neither Obama's nor Bush's or the Mexicans fault and that no one man Trump or others can bring back the "great America"? And it's not just America; this is happening all over the world.

So basically how do you get rid of the member berries habit and make people move forward? I hope south park will be solving it this season!

@D2 try to switch to strategy consulting and you'll see everything you learned in school and preaching here doesn't work in the real world... Those execs only care about one thing: increasing profit. This equilibrium you're talking about doesn't exist in the real world. So far we've mentioned examples for every aspect of life and you keep repeating the same line from Econ 101. Do you have examples that support this anywhere in the world today? Do you not read WSJ or Economist or NYT or hear about Stephen Hawking or Musk or Gates warning about the new machine age? But what do they know I'm sure they're all wrong and the only true thing is your Fox News rhetoric that it'll all be great again if government stops interfering

@D2 yes you can't automate creativity and innovation but you don't need any creativity or innovation in over half if not two thirds of the job market today. A few people at the top can do innovation and creativity to adjust the machines to human need. This is already starting to happen. The few at the top are execs with armies of consultants to do the thinking and adjust the machines for them which why I posted this question here. @PC1 is spot on.

@D2 yes that is very ironic haha never thought about it that way

@OP. You need to give them something like Universal Basic Income. They have a right to be angry, our current policy decisions like free trade help grow our economies overall, but that population has been sufficiently impacted and have only had losses in their economy with the gains going to the coasts.

For me, best thread of FB to date... these are the things we should be discussing here

@K1 Yes this is definitely one of my best posts here lol thanks to @D2 and @PC1 for keeping it going

One thing I'm surprised nobody has mentioned yet: the first industrial revolution took around 70 years, the second around 40. The internet revolution has taken around 10. The pace of change is increasing. What happens to society if 1/4 of jobs are automated away in 15 years? Sure the jobs lost by technological change in the past have all been replaced with new jobs no one anticipated before that period of change - but they weren't replaced overnight. To argue that there won't be massive societal upheaval when these changes happen basically overnight is naïve to say the least

As long as the government stays out of the way, the market and jobs will always exist. You can't automate innovation, creativity or human/emotional interaction. And there is no incentive to automate if there's no market to serve.