Are you an "automation denier"?

[CK_John]

Defined as: In the next 4 yrs automation will replace 50% of the current workforce, also 50% of the universities will not take in any new students.

14 votes, 2 passes | Time left: Time expired
	Automation will not be a problem.
	1 (7%)
	I believe automation will cause some proplems.
	11 (79%)
	Automation will be even worse than defined.
	2 (14%)
	No opinion.
	0 (0%)
	2 DU members did not wish to select any of the options provided.
Show usernames Disclaimer: This is an Internet poll

[randr]

1. Automation is real and will be a major influence on the future of humanity

[Wounded Bear]

2. It is a big "problem" in that it will continue to displace workers...

our job, as a society, is to devise peaceful resolution to the problems caused.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

4. Where is he getting the 50% figure from?

It seems dramatic

[Wounded Bear]

7. That part of it is probably hyperbole...

Truth is, though, if you count all of the jobs that have already been displaced by automation, we might be approaching that number.

[Codeine]

47. That's his schtick.

Everyone's got a hobbyhorse, his just happens to be self-driving and will result in 340% unemployment within the next six weeks.

[CK_John]

48. Automation is bigger than car/trucks.

[duffyduff]

59. It is nonsensical.

Logically, you can't automate everything because then you have nobody to buy anything.

This is just sci-fi crap.

[uponit7771]

3. The companies that IMPLEMENT the automation should not be able to dump employees on the markket

... just to have the state pick them up.

Fuck that

[CK_John]

6. IMO, this would help.

There has to be a price, the robot has to compensate the workers they replace.

Annual salary per robot per worker layoff, and an annual tax payment to replace what would be paid to the community and school system.

[el_bryanto]

5. Does the term Automation Denier kind of suggest that the answer is yes?

I mean people aren't usually described as deniers unless what they are denying is obviously true (from their perspective). I think Automation will continue to create some problems; that's guaranteed. But I don't know how you stop it, and I am not sure how many of those problems stem from automation or from our unwillingness as a nation and world to make automation work for everybody and not just the upper classes.

Bryant

[CK_John]

10. IMO, I may have coined the phrase.

[DetlefK]

8. Your time-table is way too fast. Not 4 years, more like 20.

And I recently read an article that said that about 40% of the current work-force can be automated at all at the current state of robotics, so 50% within 4 years is clearly over-the-top.

And there are jobs that will take more than a generation to be phased out: Customers will always feel more comfortably talking to a human.



Also, universities will take in students as long as they can pay the tuition.


Your claims are so ridiculous and nonsensical, they aren't even outlandish anymore.

[duffyduff]

56. It is just fantasy.

There has always been automation, but you cannot have too much of it because robots do not consume products.

In any case, automation has nothing to do with jobs being gone.

It is neolib bullshit.

[DetlefK]

67. Yes, there will be an equilibrium between workers and robots, but how will it be achieved?

Will the 21st century companies do it like Henry Ford and be nice to their prospective consumers?

Or will they gobble up all the profits and keep them for themselves and screw everybody else until the system collapses in yet another recession?

[CK_John]

68. Report: Google Shelves Self-Driving Car.The company will instead lend its software to established

automakers.

Read More:

http://www.pcmag.com/news/350279/report-google-shelves-self-driving-car

[RKP5637]

9. In the future, humans, many, won't even be cogs in the production machine. This will throw

a huge wrench into the current cogs. Minds can figure out what to do, but politicians probably won't listen unless they see big dollars for themselves, and many in the masses will be at war with themselves. Yes, it is happening, and it will happen quickly.

The capitalists will scurry to seize the reins of wealth and war might ensure to capture and maintain wealth. I'm not optimistic about humanity ... into the future, because as this happens I see many in a dystopian society.

Look at the mess today with production, productivity, automation, etc., many have been left out. As this continues, especially with AI, many well educated individuals will also no longer be needed. So, this cuts across the spectrum.

[brooklynite]

11. In the next four year? Not going to happen.

[Amishman]

26. I believe the 50% figure but not the 4 year timeframe

20 years from now? Very possible
30? Probable

[FarCenter]

12. Amara's Law

We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Amara

Change is harder to implement, and it requires discipline to accurately estimate change. There is a tendency to think that because something could be done quickly, it will be done quickly.

On the other hand, the change that happens over a longer period is often greater and a lot different than predicted. This is a failure of imagination.

One of my favorite books is MEGAMISTAKES https://www.amazon.com/MEGAMISTAKES-Forecasting-Rapid-Technological-Change/dp/0029279526

[SubjectiveLife78]

14. And what are the short and long runs exactly?

Today, and next year? 5 years, and a decade? A second, and a minute? Are they different to different people? Someone already having lost a job to automation, they're already past the long run. A kid in college studying whatever, they think they're at least good for the short run, but it's tough to know when that short run ends or even begins. Are they already in the short run? Do they skip the short run completely?

[FarCenter]

17. I would think that 1 to 5 years is short run and 5 to 20 is long run

1 to 5 years is the time needed to implement a process change in a given corporation, depending on the complexity.

5 to 20 years is the time to implement a process change in a whole industry or business sector. For example, it took about 15 years to implement the business, legal, and technical changes to eliminate the return of paper checks in bank statements. This banking industry process change resulted in the elimination of tens of thousands of jobs.

[NCTraveler]

13. You had multiple ops detailing why autonomous vehicles would determine the past election.

Multiple. You even called it an "October surprise that would throw the election."

Someone is a denier.

[Chathamization]

24. Indeed. Seems the "automation deniers" have a much better track record than the "automation hype"

folks. Always useful to look at people's predictions from a few years back and see how they held up.

[CK_John]

25. I asked our candidates to address the driverless car and none of them did and none won.

[NCTraveler]

27. You said it would be an October surprise that would throw the election.

"I asked our candidates to address the driverless car and none of them did and none won."

One of the greatest transitions on a position I have ever seen.

[hughee99]

33. None of our candidates came to my house for a nerf gun fight either, and none won.

I suspect both are almost equally connected to the election results.

[Silent3]

15. So where do the 50% and 4 years figures come from?

I agree that automation is advancing at a rate where it will likely eliminate more jobs than it produces. We're probably already experiencing some of that effect.

But your percent/time figures sound way off. It's highly unlikely for there to be so many jobs lost so soon. Having this opinion, however, does not make me a "denier" of any authoritative, well-established consensus of experts that I've heard of.

[CK_John]

30. I look at the Uber testing in Pitt,PA and Volvo testing in Spain since 2012.

Also Amazon announcement last week the e-commerce giant is opening a brick and mortar grocery store free of checkout lines.

It's my opinion that it is being pushed faster than we think.

[Bradical79]

43. So that's your guestimate

Not from any kind of study?

[Silent3]

45. When that opinion is published in a peer-reviewed economics journal...

...and eventually turns into a consensus opinion among the great majority of economists, then you can talk about people who doubt or disagree with your figures as "deniers".

Until then, not so much.

[NightWatcher]

16. It's ironic that there are automatic programs that correct spelling errors.

Screw the automation.

[JHan]

18. Next decade perhaps..but we ought to be shaping policy to prepare for it..

And have a national conversation about the ethics of AI.

I have a more optimistic view of automation, which would require a world where humans behave like grown ups and use technology as a force for good.

[JCMach1]

21. Policy isn't going to do it... it's going to take an economic paradigm shift

We will need a new system that isn't based on work (unit labor).

That means both Capitalism and Socialism will be officially obsolete.

[JHan]

22. agreed..

We need to abandon our current concept of work, re-evaluate the foundations of our economy.

Explored some of that here : http://www.democraticunderground.com/10028313107

and this is a great read..." by now we must know that this definition of ourselves entails the principle of productivity – from each according to his abilities, to each according to his creation of real value through work – and commits us to the inane idea that we’re worth only as much as the labour market can register, as a price. By now we must also know that this principle plots a certain course to endless growth and its faithful attendant, environmental degradation.

[JCMach1]

23. I should have said... policy alone... the world is currently burying its head in the sand

about this. The unemployment part has hit the world unevenly... Without that paradigm shift there will be some very bloody revolutions as resources are withheld from a majority of the population by the elites.

Think Hunger Games on steroids...

[Silent3]

60. With a time line a bit longer than the OP suggests, the way I think about automation...

...is something that becomes sort of like an artificial ecosystem. Once robots can build, maintain, and repair all of the other robots and other forms of automation, the whole economy can turn into a mostly self-sustaining system that takes raw materials and energy as inputs and produces goods and services as outputs.

If we solve the problem of sustainable, renewable energy, don't destroy the natural ecosystem, and don't otherwise kill ourselves off through recklessness and warfare, I think an automated economy is almost inevitable.

Once so much is automated, the idea of "cost of production" almost disappears, and with it prices and money and the value of labor become hard to define. There will be things that remain inherently rare or limited in supply, like beach-front property and front-row seats, or hand-crafted goods that are valued mainly because a human did the work. Perhaps money and some types of labor will still have significance due to such commodities, but not everyone can become an artist or a performer or whatever else is left for people to do, so guaranteed basic income and/or guaranteed access by other means to a decent standard of living will become a necessity if we don't want a dystopian world where even today's lopsided distribution will seem egalitarian by comparison.

[CK_John]

35. That is my goal to get people to see the problem and start looking

for solutions. I have been pushing to reduce Soc Sec to a min of age 50yrs.

[bhikkhu]

19. What surprises me is how many people are oblivious to the past

This is one of my favorite picture examples:

Frank Lloyd Wright's Larkin Building, on the floor where bookkeeping and so forth was done. The building was designed for a small army of workers, in 1903. The same volume of work today is performed by a single PC. The building is often given as an example of obsolescence in architecture, torn down in the 80's.

Another good example is agriculture. When the US was formed a farmer, on average produced enough food to feed 2 or three people, and 50% of our population was involved in agriculture. Now a farmer produces enough to feed 2 or three hundred people, and only 2% or so of the population is involved in agriculture.

Living in a semi-rural area, that history is right in front of me. The economic base here is still agriculture, but it requires very few people. In the 20's and thirties we had a large population out in the fields, lots of outbuildings and worker's quarters, and they'd come into the busy downtown and fill the bars and theaters on the weekends. Now we still have the farms, but you rarely see anybody working, and the bars and theaters are mostly empty or gone as well.

[Calculating]

20. I agree, but your timetable is wrong

Try 20-30 years rather than 4.

[SubjectiveLife78]

29. Nobody can know the timetable for sure

It really could be anything. Maybe we're already in year 25 of a 30 year timetable. Maybe the timetable started 10 years ago, and more people are only aware of it now, but think it started last week, and everyone will be off.

[CK_John]

38. But it is here already in

?1473712882

Uber’s self-driving cars are today available to passengers in Pittsburgh, a move that signals the ride-sharing giant’s seriousness about its future with autonomous vehicles. It is a pivotal moment for the company—yet Uber had to clear surprisingly few regulatory hurdles to get to this point.

That’s because all you need to operate a self-driving vehicle on public roads in Pennsylvania is the right technology: no special permit or license, no unique registration, no safety clearance, nothing. Uber’s driverless taxis will have humans sitting behind the wheel—ready to take control of the vehicle if necessary—and that’s all that matters under Pennsylvania law.

“As long as there is a licensed driver in the driver’s seat operating the vehicle, they do not need to be touching the steering wheel,” said Kurt Myers, the deputy secretary for Driver and Vehicle Services for the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation.

“At this time, that’s the case because the law is silent,” Roger Cohen, the department’s policy director, told me. “It doesn’t anticipate this technology coming on.”

Read more:

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/09/anybody-can-test-a-self-driving-car-in-pennsylvania/499667/

[LanternWaste]

39. You overstate it as now.

Trial testing, analyses and hypotheses are not the same as mass consumption. Unless of course, you believe mass consumption of the home PC began in 1968...

[CK_John]

41. The only problem is to change every state driving, insurance, and liability laws.

[pampango]

28. Automation will be a factor just like mechanization was in agriculture. A liberal society can deal

with massive changes like that. Our society, as currently structured, cannot.

[SubjectiveLife78]

31. Except it's not quite the same

Agriculture was one industry. A big one at the time, but one nonetheless. With this current issue, we're talking automating potentially every industry, and then not needing at least most people for any industry after that. We're not talking the buggy whip maker vs. the auto industry. We're talking the horse vs. the car, and we're the horse.

That's a significant difference, and I'm not sure that liberal vs. conservative captures that well enough.

[pampango]

36. A liberal society in which most of the work is done by robots will take care of people

in whatever way necessary. Plenty of people survive nicely now without actively working. We don't live to work; we work to live. If we can live without working, liberals can structure a society that makes that happen.

Agriculture was one industry. A big one at the time, but one nonetheless.

But it employed 70-80% of our population at the time. I suspect many people thought that American society could not survive the mechanization of agriculture.

[HughBeaumont]

34. That's depending on an individual solution to a structural problem.

BlindTiresias had this right:

Individuals who say that automation is exactly the same as industrialization are also incorrect and economically as well as politically illiterate. The problem with this position is twofold: First, automation is distinct from simple industrialization in that industrialization multiplied productive efforts but still demanded a large body of labor, automation has no such problem as the core phenomenon of automation is exactly the removal of this body of labor while simultaneously multiplying productive efforts. Secondly, even if we grant that humans will still have a large place in an automated economy the question of what to do with the wealth generated by these productive enterprises is entirely a political one. On average, life got much worse for most people after industrialization and it was only through organized resistance and violent action that gains were made to make the economy more livable for people. We have no such resistance today as the left has been broken and the post-left liberals have essentially signed on to the same economic theories as the right wing. That itself bodes ill of harnessing automation in a positive way and, at this point in time, suggests a greater likelihood that things will get more darwinian and the elite will double down on the existing ideology that preserves their power.

[pampango]

37. I agree with that. We do not live to work; we work to live. If we can live without working

a liberal society will make the necessary changes happen.

...the elite will double down on the existing ideology that preserves their power.

They always have and, I suspect, they always will. When the elite wins, you have a very illiberal society - as we have now. It could indeed get even worse. Of course, there was a tremendous amount of 'surplus labor' when FDR came into office, not because of automation but due to the Depression. He created a liberal society. We will have to do the same in the future since we let his creation get away from us.

[joshcryer]

46. The Republicans will have to deal with it.

The problem is that they will not be proactive and will not preempt the effects it will have. They will, eventually, but not as it stands now. Most government is run by them. Their jobs will be made obsolete. How will they adapt? They won't.

[bravenak]

32. I give it ten years

[Willie Pep]

40. I think automation as a problem is overblown.

Productivity growth has actually slowed in recent years. We had strong productivity growth in the past, as in the time from 1947-1973 and we didn't see a jobs apocalypse. We should pay attention to any problems created by automation but I think the problem is currently exaggerated.

Dean Baker has a good blog post on the issue.

See: http://cepr.net/blogs/beat-the-press/folks-worried-about-robots-taking-our-jobs-need-to-learn-arithmetic

[CK_John]

44. Reminds me of a clean coal advert.

[Chathamization]

49. Jared Bernstein also has a good piece on this. Seems like most economists don't agree with the hype

Here's Bernstein's piece:

[link:http://jaredbernsteinblog.com/back-to-the-futurefor-lunch/|
http://jaredbernsteinblog.com/back-to-the-futurefor-lunch/]

Also interesting is this interview he did with another economist regarding the "Robots are coming!" panic.

[CK_John]

50. He is just giving his opinion and doesn't think its a problem, I disagree.

All’s I’m saying is that tech change is always with us, and it’s really hard to tell by observation whether the pace with which it’s replacing workers is accelerating. And there are so many more moving parts to this. I’d bet a big difference between the economies in these two pictures is where the machines were manufactured. In other words, technology doesn’t historically kill labor demand. But it does move it around to different industries, occupations, and today, countries.

[Chathamization]

52. It's not just "his opinion." Productivity growth looks at output per worker, and it's low now

If we were seeing an increase in automation, we would see it in the productivity growth - but we don't. And they get into a lot of the evidence why this isn't the case in the interview I linked to (the second link)

These people are economists; they're the people we should be listening to when it comes to these things. We should remember that the term "denier" is usually thrown at people who refuse to believe what experts are saying and claim that they know better.

[CK_John]

55. So your a denier as per defined in the OP.

[Chathamization]

57. Sure, if you want to label people who agree with the experts as "deniers," then I'm a denier.

[tenderfoot]

42. No but the folks incessantly posting about it seem thrilled...

by the fact so many will lose their jobs.

[jack_krass]

51. No problem... all the jobs will be cenetered around the automation

Everything will be fine, until Judgement day, that is

[Warren DeMontague]

53. Do you think that things will never change?

You're in the wrong Universe for that.

[duffyduff]

54. This is just sci-fi garbage.

Automation had absolutely nothing to do with the economic decline and the vast number of job gone over the past thirty-five years. This is a neoliberal meme that has been pushed the past couple of years in an attempt to deny that ruinous trade policies, to say nothing of other D.C. policies, are the causes of this country's economic decline.

Since I was well into adulthood when the Reagan/neoliberal policies started taking hold, I KNOW the "automation" explanation is total bullshit.

Anybody who wasn't around then and wants to know what happened, read the Barlett and Steele books that came out in 1992, 1994, 1996, and 2013. The reporters explain what happened to this country. It was deliberate policy set by those in D.C. to destroy living standards in the United States.

[CK_John]

58. Your totally looking backward, I'm concerned about the coming 4 yrs.

[Shandris]

61. "Denier" is a word used by those under psyops and those participating in them.

Does not matter what prefix you put in front of it. That said, I'll move on.

Do I think all that will happen in FOUR YEARS? Hell no.

Fifteen to twenty? Yah, almost certainly, barring some freak alternative like Dune's 'No thinking machines' or 'Anyone displaced by a robot must continue to be paid' (which would be a horrible idea, by the way). But not four. Unless, of course, the global Establishment likes my suggestion of cutting off all money (currency) and generating a new method of acquiring it. YEAH, RIGHT.

Not the Universities thing, though. They'll probably take fewer students to be certain, but that's going to happen anyway simply by demographics and the internet.

[CK_John]

62. Whatever, making decisions is very difficult.

[Shandris]

63. ...pardon?

How does your post relate to mine? Did you accidentally respond to the wrong person, or am I overlooking something here?

[CK_John]

65. I was responding to your under psyops and I pointed out I gave a well defined

OP so you seem to have difficulty with the poll options.

[backscatter712]

64. Good thing I have a computer science degree.

Maybe I'll be programming the bots, rather than being replaced by them.

[uponit7771]

66. Nope... You'll be designing them... programming can be done off shore.. be part of the design team

... so the mind share on the bots stays here.