The conventional wisdom says that the economy will create 50 million new jobs to absorb all the unemployed people, but that raises two important questions:
- What will those new jobs be?
They won't be in manufacturing -- robots will hold all the manufacturing jobs. They won't be in the service sector (where most new
jobs are now) -- robots will work in all the restaurants
and retail stores. They won't be in transportation --
robots will be driving everything. They won't be in
security (robotic police, robotic firefighters), the
military (robotic soldiers), entertainment (robotic
actors), medicine (robotic doctors, nurses, pharmacists,
counselors), construction (robotic construction workers),
aviation (robotic pilots, robotic air traffic controllers),
office work (robotic receptionists, call centers and
managers), research (robotic scientists), education
(robotic teachers and computer-based training), programming
or engineering (outsourced to India at one-tenth the cost),
farming (robotic agricultural machinery), etc. We are
assuming that the economy is going to invent an entirely
new category of employment that will absorb half of the
working population.
- Why isn't the economy creating those new jobs now?
Today there are millions of unemployed people. There are
also tens of millions of people who would gladly abandon
their minimum wage jobs scrubbing toilets, flipping
burgers, driving trucks and shelving inventory for
something better. This imaginary new category of employment
does not hinge on technology -- it is going to employ
people, after all, in massive numbers -- it is going to
employ half of today's working population. Why don't we see
any evidence of this new category of jobs today?
Although I think he goes a bit overboard in some cases (robotic actors?), I still find this to be rather persuasive.
Enlighten us, if you don't mind, as to which results from complexity theory indicate that these things are not possible. By my reading none of them say anything of the sort.
All the results I know of don't apply to computers any more than they do to humans, who reason no less algorithmically than computers (even if our algorithms are currently more subtle); these results tend to say that certain magic cannot be performed without invoking new classes of computation, which has absolutely no bearing on whether computers can do the type of practical research humans have been engaging in for our entire history.
"Although I think he goes a bit overboard in some cases (robotic actors?)"
Not at all overboard - there are numerous successful animated movies. Granted they still use humans to provide the voices but I find it plausible that artificial speech could be constructed.
Comments
Marshall Brain's "Robotic Nation" explores this in some detail:
http://www.marshallbrain.com/robotic-nation.htm
His own view seems to be summed up as:
The conventional wisdom says that the economy will create 50 million new jobs to absorb all the unemployed people, but that raises two important questions:
They won't be in manufacturing -- robots will hold all the manufacturing jobs. They won't be in the service sector (where most new jobs are now) -- robots will work in all the restaurants and retail stores. They won't be in transportation -- robots will be driving everything. They won't be in security (robotic police, robotic firefighters), the military (robotic soldiers), entertainment (robotic actors), medicine (robotic doctors, nurses, pharmacists, counselors), construction (robotic construction workers), aviation (robotic pilots, robotic air traffic controllers), office work (robotic receptionists, call centers and managers), research (robotic scientists), education (robotic teachers and computer-based training), programming or engineering (outsourced to India at one-tenth the cost), farming (robotic agricultural machinery), etc. We are assuming that the economy is going to invent an entirely new category of employment that will absorb half of the working population. Today there are millions of unemployed people. There are also tens of millions of people who would gladly abandon their minimum wage jobs scrubbing toilets, flipping burgers, driving trucks and shelving inventory for something better. This imaginary new category of employment does not hinge on technology -- it is going to employ people, after all, in massive numbers -- it is going to employ half of today's working population. Why don't we see any evidence of this new category of jobs today?Although I think he goes a bit overboard in some cases (robotic actors?), I still find this to be rather persuasive.
I like how science can be automated but programming needs to be outsourced to India.
The results of complexity theory heavily suggest that automated science and automated engineering are impossible.
Enlighten us, if you don't mind, as to which results from complexity theory indicate that these things are not possible. By my reading none of them say anything of the sort.
All the results I know of don't apply to computers any more than they do to humans, who reason no less algorithmically than computers (even if our algorithms are currently more subtle); these results tend to say that certain magic cannot be performed without invoking new classes of computation, which has absolutely no bearing on whether computers can do the type of practical research humans have been engaging in for our entire history.
Then how do humans do it if we're Turing machines?
"Although I think he goes a bit overboard in some cases (robotic actors?)"
Not at all overboard - there are numerous successful animated movies. Granted they still use humans to provide the voices but I find it plausible that artificial speech could be constructed.