What Can You Do that Computers Can’t?

[FSogol]

If recent developments are any indication, staying relevant in the work force is going to require a sea change in the way workers think about computers, the Internet of Things, and what humans bring to the equation.

W – O – R – K

It’s not often that I start these articles off with a four-letter word, but it’s the topic for this month. And unlike those television ads with all the small print at the bottom of the screen, I’m going to give my disclaimer right up front and in readable text:

The content of this article isn’t pretty. It’s not going to be gentle, kind, soothing, or relaxing. In fact, it’s going to be decidedly uncomfortable, painful, and may be difficult to accept. You may wish to have a glass and a strong adult beverage close at hand while you reading. I had one or two while writing it.

The rest of the article by John Rinaldi of Machine Design Magazine. I highly recommend reading this article. Awesome analysis of our work future.

x-posted to Good Reads

edited to add link. Sorry. http://tinyurl.com/ouh99ow

[frazzled]

1. Cook? /nt

[FSogol]

5. IBM's Watson creates unique recipes.

Guessing you only looked at the headline. It is worth a read.

[leveymg]

11. Reorganizing a unique sequence is not creating anew.

There is a difference. There is a unique "taste" to my taste that all the sensors, CPU and programming can't comprehend.

[HuckleB]

14. IBM's Watson doesn't exist without humans.

It doesn't experience taste. And that is only the beginning.

[TexasProgresive]

17. Does Watson actual produce excellent meals

Presentation, aroma, taste and texture served on fine china?

[FSogol]

20. You are missing what the article is really about by only reacting to the headline.

I encourage reading the article. IMO it is very prescient and wise.

[immoderate]

2. I demand a link!

--imm

[FSogol]

4. Sorry. OP updated.

http://tinyurl.com/ouh99ow

[immoderate]

9. And much appreciated!

--imm

[Kelvin Mace]

3. Fix computers

[jeff47]

29. Nope, they've got robot-repairing robots now (nt)

[Kelvin Mace]

45. Robots may be able to fix robots

but I have yet to see one role down a hall and install a hard drive.

Robots (and I work around a dozen or so) are great at repetive tasks in a controled environment. They suck at jobs that require actual judgement.

[jeff47]

46. For now. That's rapidly changing. (nt)

[Kelvin Mace]

48. I work in a highly industrial environment

We are always looking to automate, but our plan is always to free up people to work on the projects that cannot be automated. Part of what we do is program machines to build machine parts. When these machine break down, a human (a VERY expensive one) is needed to repair them.

[KamaAina]

6. Take a dump?

[Warren DeMontague]

18. IM SORRY DAVE

[KamaAina]

19. Silly Warren. That's not a computer. That's an android.

[Warren DeMontague]

34. yes, but what do you think is in that rusty metal head, cottage cheese?

and ketchup?

[lumberjack_jeff]

27. Heh. +1 n/t

[leveymg]

7. Intuit, create, feel, love, hate, emote, break my program. It is what separates me from a machine.

[FSogol]

8. I encourage DU to read the article instead of responding to the headline.

[leveymg]

22. I read it. The author doesn't answer the question posed.

The closest I came was this description of activities humans will continue to be perceived to do better than machines:

Humans are exceptionally good at leadership, social collaboration, goal setting, teaching, coaching, encouraging, and selling. These are innate, very human skills that possibly could be replaced by automation but that we don’t want replaced. A robot can teach math. It may even sense the emotions of the children, but it’s not what we as a society want or, I think, will ever want. We’ll always want and value these soft skills.

There isn’t a lot of good news here for us engineers. We’re guys for the most part, and soft skills aren’t what we’ve specialized in. We like to take things apart and build things. Generally, guys like working with things, not people. Those jobs are still going to exist in the future, but a lot of that may get automated. What’s left may still be important, but it may not be valued as highly as the jobs that have personal interaction.

Not as satisfying as I had hoped. But, perhaps I missed something? That would prove I'm human.

[treestar]

42. It was weird how he went into the gender issue

he really did not need that to make his point and just looks sexist.

[HuckleB]

10. Poop, stress out, fart loudly (not just a sound), have sex, know why pizza is good...

[FSogol]

13. See response #8. n/t

[HuckleB]

16. We've all read similar articles dozens of times before.

I'm glad you've read one, now.

[FSogol]

23. As friendly as ever I see. Please add me to your ignore list.

[Lochloosa]

12. Turn off the computer

[Chathamization]

21. Seems the author is incorrect. Productivity growth has been relatively low the last few years

This:

It’s happening again. But this transformation is happening even faster and with an even more significant impact on how we work and how we live. Robotics, Automation and the Internet of Things are driving this transformation, and it’s going to happen more quickly than ever: possibly within the next 10 years.

Doesn't match this.

[FSogol]

26. He never said productivity growth, he said transformation of society.

The part that precedes your excerpt reads:

The nature of work is evolving. It’s evolving faster than ever. Faster than many of us can emotionally and psychologically manage. The range and scope of change in what we do and how we do it is transitioning at a rate unprecedented in human history.

We were an agricultural society for 12,000 years. We worked the land. That’s it. Unchanging and static for thousands of years. That changed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It was called the Industrial Revolution, and over three or four generations we transitioned from that agricultural society to an industrial society. Then, in the late 20th century, we hit the information age. In the space of a single generation, computers and the Internet vastly changed what we do and how we do it. This time, in a single generation, we went from no computers to every job involving some sort of computer device.

[Chathamization]

39. Eh, the whole article is about productivity growth, particularly automation and robots. He's wrong.

His premise is based on the increased amount of output he's expecting per worker (because of machines doing a lot of the work), and the idea that this increase is now something much greater than it's been in the past. Granted, he doesn't call it "productivity growth", but rather the "new era of automation and robotics" (and terms like that). Still, the data shows us that what he's talking about isn't happening (it might happen eventually, it might not, but it's not happening now from what we can see).

[TlalocW]

24. Twist balloons

I've beaten the machine. I win.

TlalocW

[HughBeaumont]

25. Purchase products and services?

You know, unless there's ANOTHER way to keep Trapitalism going without those pesky "additional business", "tax revenue", "stock value", "demand" things . ..

[lumberjack_jeff]

28. That's it.

Businesses are caught in this terrible catch-22; the need to starve workers while attracting customers.

[lpbk2713]

30. Bathe

If a PCs motherboard gets covered with a blanket of dust it might not last much longer.

[gratuitous]

32. Or swim

But yes, all this work that computers do, why do we still need to be at a work site 40 hours or more of every week? I thought all this "labor saving" machinery and technology was supposed to free humans up to realize more of their potential. When do we get time to compose music, write poetry, or just sit and imagine things?

I don't care if the music is unlistenable or the poetry is terrible or the things we imagine aren't possible. It seems that the more work we save ourselves from doing, the more work there is to do. Why can't we redistribute the wealth so that more of us can live a life of leisure with a guaranteed basic income?

[Brickbat]

31. Understand a market and create targeted content.

[Avalux]

33. Imagine, create, innovate. BE MYSELF.

That's what makes this world so wonderful...we are all unique with our own thoughts, feelings and ways of expressing them...this leads to amazing stuff.

The world would be a boring hellhole if machines were in charge. Let's put a positive spin on this....what if we could successfully use machines to do ALL of our mundane analytical left-brained work, leaving human beings are able to focus on creating, having fun and playing?

I'd like to live in that world.

[tech3149]

35. A machine can replace every function of a human

and do it better except in one respect. A human can balance rational thought with ethics that go far beyond the results of any one decision. This can be proven untrue in many senses, we are willing to ruin the environment that supports our existence, but whatever the goal of any machine, it only does what it is built to do.
Even when we get to the point that we develop self-aware machines will we instill an ethic in them that would enable their own self destruction for a greater good?

[OilemFirchen]

36. Randomize.

And, of course, everything that stems from that, including irrationality and abstraction - quintessential components of a market.

[Blue_In_AK]

37. Anybody else watch Extant?

[Nevernose]

51. It's on my To Do list

But with the school year starting back up, it will be June before I'm able to watch TV again. I could squeeze it in at Christmas if it was worth it. Is it worth it? Will it blow my mind?

[Blue_In_AK]

53. I enjoy it.

I thought it was going to be cancelled after last year, so I was thrilled to see it back for a second season. At the point in the future that the story takes place, they have created "humanichs," which are robots which are essentially human in every way. The prototype, which the Halle Berry character had adopted as her son, is a sweet little boy, with amazing computing powers, of course, but now someone is creating a humanichs army to take on the alien/human hybrids that have come to earth through Halle Berry when she was in space for a year.

I won't tell you much more, but it's an interesting show, lots of action and things to ponder about ethics and so on. It might not be everyone's cup of tea, but I like it a lot. It sounds far-fetched, but you do get sucked in.

Be sure to watch the first season for the set-up.

[zappaman]

38. Kung fu. n/t

[csziggy]

40. What I used to do - train and care for horses - could not be done by machines

Sure, it would have been nice to have a shit bot that would clean the stalls. Or a pasture roomba that would keep the fields mowed of weeds. Or a fencing bot that would monitor the fences and make repairs as needed.*

But the horses would not be happy with a machine handling them and I doubt a machine could train horses and anticipate their moves the way a good trainer can.

The other part of my business - boarding other peoples' horses - also needed a human. The horse care part was the same but a good 50% of the job was dealing with the people and their idiosyncrasies. Often all I had to do was listen to my clients' worries about their horses. Sometimes I had to mediate between two or more clients as they developed antipathies and formed cliches.

* A fencing bot would be WONDERFUL! Especially back when I had my younger stallion. He'd spend all night testing the fence boards. If he found one with a little give, he'd work it until it came loose. There was not one morning when I didn't come out to find at least one board down in his pasture. He didn't do it to get out - he never crossed the fence line even when he'd get all the boards in that section off the posts. He did it because he was bored. Even after we gave him a toy - a 55 gallon plastic barrel - he'd go check the boards as an alternative activity.

Now much of my time is spent scanning antique negatives and photographs. Many are far too delicate to trust to any machine. Photoshop auto correct cannot handle some of the adjustments needed to make some of the old, faded and damaged images visible. Organizing the images is labor intensive and needs a lot of human choices. Correlating the images with family and regional history also requires a lot of human research.

(I have found software that makes it much easier to make digital albums and post them online. For anyone who wants to do that, check out jAlbum at jAlbum.net.)

My other activity, fine needlework, I elect to do despite the fact that machines can do similar work. I find needlework to be a very zen activity for me. It calms my mind and centers me. And some of the type of work I do would be very difficult to do with a machine - such as stumpwork. See: http://janenicholas.com/ for examples of what I am studying now. And keeping the art of historic needlework techniques alive is a worthy effort in my opinion.

[treestar]

41. A robot doing surgery

doesn't sound optimal. Things can go wrong in surgery, how will the robot cope?

He makes it sound like these robots are taking over whether we like it or not, like we don't have choices.

[Codeine]

43. Oral. nt

[bemildred]

44. Live. They're dead, Jack. nt

[ScreamingMeemie]

47. Fall hard on the ground and not shatter my touchscreen.

(oohhhh, that doesn't sound quite right, does it?)

[Kelvin Mace]

49. Author shows his bias here

A government decreeing that some work is to be paid x% more without a corresponding increase in productivity by x% is throwing gasoline on the flames of this transformation.

Anti-minimum wage.

This observation ignores the fact that productivity has been increasing for decades and wages are almost flat.

Women definitely have an advantage here. Women generally prefer working with people more than things.

Sexist generalization.

It’s our children that really worry me. Just as social skills are becoming more valuable, our children are becoming less socially capable than ever. Many spend less time in personal, human interaction than they do in electronic interaction.

Utter bullshit. It's called social media, after all. Yes, people spend a lot of time on line, but they also still interact with people. Certainly my sister is pretty happy with the various ways that she can stay in touch with my niece who is just off to college that didn't exist when we were in college.

Yes, there are a lot of possible social upheavals as robots and computers become more integrated into our society. But there are also a lot of positive changes coming as well.

This is just another old white guy pining for the "good old days" who has forgotten that they were not actually all that good compared to today.

[Nevernose]

50. Teach children to read, nurse the sick

While there are some excellent educational programs out there -- and no doubt will be much better ones coming soon -- nothing short of a sentient android straight from science fiction can do what a teacher does (and I'll never trust a synthetic, not after what happened on LV-426). Educational outcomes may be formulaic to the formulae-prone, but teaching is as much an inherent art as it is anything quantifiable.

I'd think much of what a good nurse does is similar in that regard. A machine can check to make sure the dosage is correct, but only a nurse could ease the minds of worried patients or their relatives.

So maybe jobs that require both a high degree of empathy and intuition?

On Edit: If the machine/computer is indistinguishable from a human being, is it still a machine, or is it a living being? Only Phillip K. Dick knows.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

52. Pee, poop and puke. Also, stomp the computer into tiny shards.

Also, serve as a host for a variety of bacteria and other parasites.