|
A Wizard of Goatse posted:heh heh, stupid american sheeple, mindlessly worshiping their ability to keep themselves necessary in the face of a hostile elite class, can't they see that begging for handouts to stay in college forever is the only rational way to live What is it that you actually want? I keep seeing people make the argument that direct redistributions in the form of free college, basic income, etc. are dehumanizing. I agree that creating an underclass that has no path to meaningful societal contributions is a bad thing, but just saying that isn't a solution. The fact is that there are a diminishing number of useful jobs that you can expect to do for the 40 or so years that people are expected to be in the labor force. It is becoming increasingly difficult for people to stay economically relevant throughout their adult lives. If ongoing education and training isn't acceptable, then what is? If you're just raging against a changing social structure then fine, whatever, but it seems like there's something you think should actually be happening.
|
#
¿
Feb 8, 2017 18:46
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 9, 2024 03:54 |
|
|
ColoradoCleric posted:This is primarily one of my issues with UBI, how can you have a currency be worth anything when its value is determined by mere consumption of resources rather than trade? What does this even mean? The value of a nation's currency would be subject to the same market forces whether a UBI exists or not.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 14, 2017 00:49
|
|
|
Owlofcreamcheese posted:All real progress comes by taking jobs that people need to do then taking people off of them and people moving on to bigger and better things. If the idea is soon no jobs will require people then congratulations welcome to the church of the singularity. Nobody is worried about this and it's ridiculous to see this strawman come up every single time automation is discussed in any context. The threat is and always has been the loss of a meaningful number of jobs that are accessible to most of the population. If people need highly specialized skill sets just for a chance to enter a competitive labor market then we are hosed. Automation is gnawing at the middle and lower ends of the labor market, and it'll only take the unemployment floor going up by a few percent to trigger to a massive crisis.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 28, 2017 01:50
|
|
|
Owlofcreamcheese posted:But I mean that when farming was automated enough most people didn't need to anymore one new thing didn't come and replace it. A diversity of things replaced it. When resources free up (time, money, labor) there has not ever been a time where no one could think of what to do with it. I don't think that is even possible. This isn't the point, though, and you seem to be missing that constantly. Give me someone who's unemployed and willing to work for $8/hour and I'll find something for them to do. There's going to be plenty of work for humans to do for a long rear end time, but that doesn't mean that it's going to be economically viable to pay people a living wage to do it. You keep acting like "automation" is a bunch of discrete events, but the process of automation that we're talking about here has been going continuously for around two hundred years. More importantly, the kind of growth that led to widespread (for white people, anyway) and increasing prosperity in the first world has only existed for about half a century. There's no universal rule that says that we're always going to find things for people to do andi pay them enough to live comfortably. In fact, this wasn't even close to being true for most of human history and it still isn't true for much of the world's population.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 28, 2017 17:50
|
|
|
Family Values posted:This is a true statement even without automation. Laying this problem at the feet of automation is conflating two somewhat unrelated (or loosely related) phenomenon. As you say, it pre-existed automation technologies by a pretty large span. Inequality is nothing new and it's not the fault of automation, but better automation has the potential to exacerbate the problem and remove what little power vulnerable groups already have. It's worth discussing because we've built a society that's fundamentally based around an individual's worth to their employer, and anything that threatens to diminish that worth for a large portion of the population is of major societal concern. flashman posted:Will perhaps the continuing decline in birth rates and demographics in the country alleviate the unemployment caused by increasing automation? If Japan is any indication, a shrinking workforce actually encourages a lot of investment in automation technologies.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 28, 2017 23:44
|
|
|
Tiny Brontosaurus posted:Power imbalances lead to abuse. Someone with all the money holds all the power. I could actually see a return to single earner households being okay. You'd just need to completely alter the economy so that people make twice as much money. Oh, and change our work culture so that people aren't expected to work continuously and employment gaps are nbd, that way partners can switch off every few years. Easy.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 1, 2017 17:33
|
|
|
For real though, there are so many issues with single earner households that it's not really worth considering. If we can shift our culture that hard, then we can shift it to 20 hour work weeks or some weird vacation scheme where you get six months off every year and employees work on alternating schedules. There are all kinds of practical issues with that too, but they're less serious than creating a bunch of households where one member has no financial power at all.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 1, 2017 23:51
|
|
|
Are we talking about an extreme dystopia where 90% of the population is unemployed or something more realistic like a few percent decline in labor force participation per decade? If it's the former, then who knows? That's so far out from how the economy works right now that I'm pretty sure we'd either drastically retool our society or watch it crumble. I don't see why a mincome wouldn't work for the latter case, though. The only alternative is to let people literally die in the streets, and assuming we don't go down that particular route I don't know why the wealthy would be opposed to a form of safety net that ultimately transfers money back into their hands anyway. The truth is that we could probably handle a sudden shock leading to a mass unemployment crisis way, way better than we could handle the slow decline, though. Our system is pretty good at dealing with acute crises, but not so good at long term stuff.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 2, 2017 09:02
|
|
|
Job loss doesn't necessarily translate directly into unemployment or loss of labor force participation. The US loses an absurdly huge number of jobs every year, but we generate an absurdly huge number too. A million jobs lost over two decades is the kind of thing you'd probably notice if looking at long-term unemployment or labor force statistics, but I doubt that Danish employment is going to go off of a cliff unless job growth halts completely.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 3, 2017 01:33
|
|
|
It's actually kind of annoying that the term "Luddite" has the modern connotations that it does, because the Luddites weren't actually anti-progress or technology at all, they were just responding to something that was legitimately loving their lives up. It's weird to point to them as proof that things always work out, because the Luddites were 100% right in identifying the problem that was affecting them and their livelihoods. Nobody really cares if things might be better two generations down the line if it means that your life is ruined right now.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 4, 2017 06:55
|
|
|
clockworkjoe posted:Don't worry guys, it will take AIs 100 years to catch up to us: https://mic.com/articles/172071/how-many-us-jobs-could-be-automated-and-why-robots-threaten-american-workers-most-mnuchin I find it incredibly depressing that most of these articles tend to use this as their attempt at a somewhat more upbeat conclusion: quote:Health care jobs are in a relatively safer category: Demand for nurse practitioners, home health care aids, physical therapy aids and more are all expected to grow by more than 30% by 2024. Nurse practitioners are obviously very well paid, but home health care aides and physical therapy aides are absolutely not. This is basically the equivalent of saying "but don't worry, you might be able to get a job at Walmart!"
|
|
#
¿
Mar 25, 2017 22:22
|
|
|
Blue Star posted:Yeah, i'm not talking about robots that are as smart as humans. I'm talking about robots that can do most of the same work that humans can do. That requires dexterity and the ability to adapt quickly and improvize on the spot. Not "strong artificial intelligence" but just a robot that can, say, unload a truck and carry stuff to the proper place, make a sandwhich, fold clothes, move and rearrange furniture, all that stuff. Stuff that is very easy for humans (sight, navigating through a 3D environment, etc) that is still really hard for computers and robots. In 50 years, maybe we can have robots that can do some chores around the house, MAYBE. But actually being as smart as humans is centuries away, imo. Not trying to be rude, but I don't think you really understand what we're talking about when it comes to "robots" and automation. No single robot needs to do all of those tasks. If you really want to automate the loading and unloading of trucks, for example, you just build a system designed to accomplish that one task. Your system probably isn't going to be a robot that actually picks boxes up and carries them around, because why would you want that? We only move things that way because that's how humans work and, up until very recently, everything had to be done by humans. Here's an actual automated loading bay to demonstrate what I mean: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SdpjuWfG2D4 Logistics is ground zero for a lot of automation at the moment, so there's plenty of stuff like this out there. The thing to understand is that if a task is difficult for robots then we can just change the task to make it easier. As long as the end result is the same (ie, unloading and storing something in a warehouse for later retrieval) it doesn't matter if we drastically change the steps to make automation easier. If you're building your warehouse from the ground up to be automated then you can build the workflow entirely around the automated systems that you're using. Part of the problem with this discussion is that people scoff at the idea of a robot being smart enough to do their job, but the reality is that the robot (or software system) that replaces you will probably be dumb as dirt. Paradoxish fucked around with this message at 08:28 on Mar 27, 2017 |
|
#
¿
Mar 27, 2017 08:24
|
|
|
Cicero posted:Eh, I think we can, with some adjustments. What do you see as the fundamental problems with doing so? The first step to answering this question is going to be to define what's meant by a "high level of development." The answer is going to be a lot different depending on whether we're simply talking about living in a technologically advanced, recognizably modern society or if we're specifically using the term to refer to western, consumer-driven lifestyles.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 28, 2017 18:33
|
|
|
Mozi posted:Here's an article I thought was relevant. This was an interesting tidbit from that article: quote:The paper adds to the evidence that automation, more than other factors like trade and offshoring that President Trump campaigned on, has been the bigger long-term threat to blue-collar jobs. The researchers said the findings — “large and robust negative effects of robots on employment and wages” — remained strong even after controlling for imports, offshoring, software that displaces jobs, worker demographics and the type of industry. They came to the conclusion that automation is having a negative impact on employment and wages in manufacturing without even considering job losses due to software. It's interesting that these effects are showing up even when you take a narrow view of automation that literally only includes robots, although I suspect that's probably only true in manufacturing and maybe warehousing/logistics.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 28, 2017 22:20
|
|
|
Owlofcreamcheese posted:Like "guy with absolutely zero job security in any direction loses job" isn't exactly something you can prevent by stopping technology from existing. Why do you think that the response to automation costing jobs should be stopping technology from existing? You seem to be working backwards from the conclusion that technology is good so therefore there aren't ever any negative effects from technological progress. Like, we can talk about technology potentially leading to net job loss without then reaching the conclusion that technology is evil and must be stopped. edit- ElCondemn posted:Those people go on to do menial jobs, but the younger generation takes the more skilled work as it's created. So the old jobs die out, and new ones replace them. If this weren't the case wouldn't we see a pretty direct correlation with unemployment and automation? Wouldn't we see the number of jobs dropping instead of growing essentially in tandem with population growth? There are a couple of things here. First, employment growth actually isn't following population growth. There's a small but significant decreasing trend in prime age labor participation over the last couple of decades. We are losing people from the labor force. I'm not going to make the claim that the drop is being caused by automation, but it is happening. Second, and more to the point, long term unemployment isn't actually an option in our society. Nobody wants to be out of a job for long if they aren't independently wealthy, so people who lose their jobs for any reason and can't get another one are going to eventually fall back work that doesn't pay as much. If you want to look at employment and automation you have to look at specific sectors, like manufacturing, and not the economy as a whole. The point where the unemployment floor is permanently increasing is the point where we're already hosed. Paradoxish fucked around with this message at 20:19 on Mar 29, 2017 |
|
#
¿
Mar 29, 2017 20:14
|
|
|
ElCondemn posted:I don't know where you're getting your data from but I don't see anything that backs up your claim. According to all the data I'm seeing the employment to population ratio actually seems to be growing... probably due to more women entering the workforce than ever before. I'm assuming we're talking about the US, in which case: code: The fall off after recessions is normal. The fact that we're not reaching previous peaks during recoveries isn't. Paradoxish fucked around with this message at 01:06 on Mar 30, 2017 |
|
#
¿
Mar 30, 2017 00:32
|
|
|
Owlofcreamcheese posted:It really is the future when I am being called a conspiracy nut when I am blaming poor employment conditions on employers instead of on a robot uprising. It's almost as if it's possible to talk about one thing (automation) while acknowledging that there are other, more indirect issues (weak worker protections, a toxic culture built around employment, insufficient safety nets) that cause the first thing to be an actual problem. You're the only person here freaking out and assigning blame. Nobody is "blaming" robots for anything because that's an absurd idea in the first place.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 30, 2017 01:22
|
|
|
Owlofcreamcheese posted:No, you are right, no one REALLY blames the machines, it is really just regular old anti-intellectualism, and a disdain for the stem fields and developers and inventors and that sort of educated. But people have a distaste for admitting that and will push that they absolutely love researchers and pull out some researcher or engineer from their ancestors 150 years ago or whatever that was good.  I have a STEM degree. I have literally spent the last year writing software for a client that is deeply involved in warehouse automation. You have absolutely no idea what you're talking about and you're so threatened by anyone who seems to be criticizing technology (which, coincidentally, is not what I've been doing at any point in this thread) that you come across like an actual insane person.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 30, 2017 01:48
|
|
|
ElCondemn posted:Go back farther, you're showing us a bubble in one generation. A single peak and valley doesn't make a trend. No, I'm not. Your link is labor force participation as a whole, which will capture people leaving the labor force as they retire or changes in how many people enter the labor force after high school vs. entering college and delaying entry in the job market. I was using the prime age labor force participation (25-54) rate to specifically rule out those effects. I chose to limit the graph to around 1998 since that's where the trend starts and the huge number of women entering the labor force over the preceding 40-50 years made it more difficult to see the relatively subtle trend of the last couple of decades. Here's the graph for as far back as the data goes:  You can see that 25-54 labor force participation doesn't have the same generational peaks and valleys as labor force participation as a whole. Any decrease at all over multiple decades is actually unprecedented. Paradoxish fucked around with this message at 13:12 on Mar 30, 2017 |
|
#
¿
Mar 30, 2017 12:59
|
|
|
Dude, what point are you even trying to make here? My post that started this absurd derail was in response to ElCondemn saying that the labor force has grown as population has grown. This is demonstrably false in the US if you're looking at the labor force rate as opposed to its absolute size. This: Owlofcreamcheese posted:Employment levels are as good as they have ever been, everyone has jobs as much as ever. Is also flat out untrue. The lowest relatively recent unemployment minimum was in the late 90s, when it was close to a full percentage point lower than it is right now. Combined with the lower labor force participation, this literally means that a smaller portion of the population is working right now than they were only 20 years ago. I also specifically said that I don't believe that this is necessarily the fault of automation, but it's pretty clear at this point that you're not actually reading the thread.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 30, 2017 18:31
|
|
|
Owlofcreamcheese posted:Okay, so why didn't that happen? All the hundreds of times bakeries improved tools or techniques over the last 6000 years? Why wasn't the peak in bakers in Paleolithic times when it required the absolute most labor to bake? Wait, what is it that you're trying to say here? It's one thing to suggest that automation has no long term effects on employment because positive economic growth will always create more jobs, but it's another thing entirely to suggest that employment within a particular industry is unaffected. The agriculture and manufacturing sectors are indisputable proof that automation has a negative effect on employment within the industries that it's used in. The only question is whether that effect is offset by the larger economic gains.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 13, 2017 00:00
|
|
|
I love that this guy apparently feels bad for the robot: quote:"I think this is a pretty pathetic incident because it shows how spineless the drunk guys in Silicon Valley really are because they attack a victim who doesn't even have any arms," Mountain View resident Eamonn Callon said. Poor armless security robot 
|
|
#
¿
Apr 26, 2017 18:30
|
|
|
thechosenone posted:I mean, when you think about it, of course a bunch of programmers can program a computer to play go well. but can you make a computer that can play go and chess? what about backgammon on top of that? how about charades? It isn't an AI thing, it is a computer programming thing (which I know is what AI is a part of). It just means some programmers made a really nice Go solver. AlphaGo was built to play Go, but its current behavior is the result of training against both human and computer opponents. A program that can "learn board games" is actually a pretty good description of how this stuff works. AlphaGo is a much, much better Go player than anyone that was involved in its creation because it literally learns by training itself. In any case, what you're talking about is narrow AI, and it's actually the focus of most serious AI research. We don't need general purpose AI for anything, we just need the tools to quickly design and train AI for specific tasks.
|
|
#
¿
May 24, 2017 06:36
|
|
|
Tei posted:Like a dad that drive their soccer daughter to a game, but don't play he the game, he only drives the car to move the daughter to the game. This is a seriously great analogy.
|
|
#
¿
May 24, 2017 06:47
|
|
|
Main Paineframe posted:If you wanted a hundred flyers for your lost cat or something in the days before home printers, you had to either individually write out all one hundred flyers or go to a print shop and work with them to design and print those flyers. Nowadays, even if you don't have your own printer, you can use desktop publishing software (or even simpler tools) to design it yourself and print it off at a library or Kinko's for less than a buck. It's one of those things where a lot of jobs and expertise were automated away, but it happened just long enough ago that people don't even realize it. Yeah, I actually had a friend in the mid-90s whose parents ran a little mom & pop printing shop and this was a huge, huge issue for them. His dad ended up moving into web development and I think the shop ultimately closed down. There are a lot of little things like that where the level of expertise required for high-end commercial products is still high, but there's no longer a need for specialist stores or workers at the consumer level.
|
|
#
¿
May 24, 2017 22:43
|
|
|
Cicero posted:That's a good idea. The one time I picked something up from Walmart that I ordered online (a sim card) I had to wait in line for like half an hour. Doesn't seem like the kind of thing that'll really have much of an effect on employment, though. You still need people to do the picking and then deliver to and stock the kiosk. I could definitely see a company like Amazon using something like this with a slightly more automated supply chain in the future, though.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 11, 2017 18:19
|
|
|
Ormi posted:The lean, mean machine of the modern multinational corporation, renowned for being free of graft and always planning for the long-term rather than fabricating and cashing in on speculation. It's more that these kiosks are probably just going to end up being a stopgap/fallback option until there's more widespread adoption of ordering through an app on your phone. That solves most of the problems (being unfamiliar with the interface, taking too long, etc.) since you can just sit at your table and browse for as long as you want on a device that you're familiar with. It's also never going to be the only way to get food. There will always be human staffed restaurants because that's definitely a thing people want, but fast food is primarily about price and convenience.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 25, 2017 18:40
|
|
|
Malcolm XML posted:The automobile put saddlemakers (except Hermes) out of business, a job that requires a lot of skill and training but let millions become truck drivers -- a job that requires at most a few weeks of training This is part of the problem, for what it's worth. Replace high skill jobs with low skill jobs and you end up depressing overall wages, because nobody pays as much for work that doesn't require as much skill or training. It's not going to be good for delivery drivers if their job description is reduced to babysitting an autopilot and helping to unload things.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 26, 2017 16:07
|
|
|
ElCondemn posted:It's already happening, with the rise of youtube and other social platforms people are making a living just loving around online and that's pretty great. This really isn't happening. Yes, there are people who do stuff like this full time, but the reality is that the vast, vast majority are unable to make anything close to a decent living off of it. It's really a very small cadre of superstars that are able to actually make a living off of "loving around online." And that's a poor description of the ones who do as well, since most of them are working far more than full time when you consider the time needed to record, edit, market, deal with their community, etc. The same goes for things like podcasts. The best podcasters have professional level quality because they are professionals with professional skillsets. What I'm getting at is that there's no way this kind of thing would ever be sustainable for most people, because it isn't even close to sustainable for the number of people who do it now. There are a huge number of people who stream games, makes podcasts, do vlogs, or whatever at an essentially professional level without getting anywhere near minimum wage for their work. It's not good and if this is the future then it's a very bleak one. You'd need something like a UBI or incredibly generous and freely available art grants to make something like this work.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 26, 2017 22:21
|
|
|
There's a point where the cost of throwing table scraps at people is less than the social consequences of having a massive, starving underclass. Extremely high levels of unemployment are a characteristic of failed states, and it's not in the interests of the wealthy for the social order to break down entirely. I really doubt there's any risk of something like this happening in the near future, in part because I think things would reach a crisis point much sooner (ie, at like 10-15% long-term unemployment). A less cynical (and apocalyptic) view is that everyone is capable of contributing to society, but the labor market as it exists is just really inefficient at helping people to do that. Something like a UBI theoretically frees people up to do volunteer/community work that traditionally wouldn't be enough to live off of, but that's still socially valuable. The same goes for artistic endeavors. A government that's actually interested in the welfare of its citizens should support policies that improve lives and help people to contribute in ways that they find meaningful.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 27, 2017 19:15
|
|
|
ElCondemn posted:Exactly, and lots of countries are actually moving in that direction. America is seemingly moving further from that at the moment, so we'll see how it pans out for us. To be fair, there are pretty major issues with a lot of these Utopian visions built around UBI or similar policies. If you give everyone the equivalent of a minimum wage salary then you still have a large portion of population living in poverty, they just no longer have to be employed. That's an improvement, but you've still created an underclass that's probably now permanently unemployable. Paradoxish fucked around with this message at 22:01 on Jun 27, 2017 |
|
#
¿
Jun 27, 2017 21:58
|
|
|
pointsofdata posted:idk maybe this time is different and technology actually will permanently increase unemployment but I'm not seeing it yet. distributive problems are fixable with tax/socialism. Spiralling rent seeking by almost the entire healthcare industry seems like a much more relaxing threat to American workers over the next 10-50 years For what it's worth, the argument isn't that technology is increasing unemployment yet outside of specific industries. The argument is that automation is eating away at middle income jobs (and has been for a couple of decades) and replacing them with a combination of higher and lower paying work. If you want to see a job market that's growing massively just take a look at home health care aides. This isn't something that's easy to automate, but it's also a low end job that pays ever so slightly above retail work. There's a lot of work that's available and that will continue to be available, but it's work that we've collectively chosen not to value.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 27, 2017 23:44
|
|
|
Solkanar512 posted:I really get sick and tired of this moralizing. what My point is that something like home healthcare work is lovely as hell and yet we pay the people who do it peanuts. The only "moralizing" in my post is that maybe we should pay people decent wages for work that's unpleasant yet socially necessary rather than expecting people to do it out of the goodness of their hearts.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 28, 2017 15:31
|
|
|
Tei posted:Software developing is about talking with people. Yeah. The core of software development is translating human requirements into something that a computer can understand. Tools are making it easier to do the rote, "manual labor" side of things, but that's it. I know people like to stick it to techbros and all, but the truth is that software development is pretty much the end game of automation. If that happens then it means we're at a point where we can simply tell a computer what we want and it will do it, which means that any job without a physical component to it is over. That's not going to happen for a long time, if ever. edit- In a way, software development is undergoing the same transition as a lot of other industries where the middle is being hollowed out and replaced by lower end, cheap developers at one end and highly educated, highly skilled developers at the other. Paradoxish fucked around with this message at 19:51 on Jun 28, 2017 |
|
#
¿
Jun 28, 2017 19:49
|
|
|
Main Paineframe posted:Maybe, but most of the time and manpower is in writing software. If all you had to do was punch customer requirements into a magic coding machine and let it do the rest, then you could replace five developers working for three weeks with a single sales engineer putting in a day or two worth of work. This is missing the point a bit, I think. "Writing software" is how those requirements get translated into something that a computer can understand, but the core skills and concepts being used don't have anything to do with the code that's being written. Better tools make it easier to write the code, but they don't solve the problem of taking human problems and making them computer understandable anymore than word processors automate the process of writing a novel. We're still very much at the better tools phase of automation for software. When you can punch customer requirements into a magic coding machine then we're at literal Star Trek-level technology and that changes everything on an absurdly profound level. We're absolutely nowhere near being able to say "Computer, make me an Excel" and accidentally ending up with a sentient Sherlock Holmes villain doing our books for us.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 28, 2017 22:18
|
|
|
Volkerball posted:It's not really star trek level. What it will end up involving is some sort of drafting process, where a model is created, and then that digital model is exported to a program that creates the code. And as the database of softwares becomes more fleshed out, and the modeling becomes easier, it will take significantly less people to create something than it takes today. We're already seeing this in machining, and the result is code that would take weeks for a skilled manual programmer to write, being done in a matter of hours. There is far more automation in writing software now than there was fifteen years ago, yet web developers (for example) need to have a significantly wider skill set than they did in the late 90s. The reason I say we're still in the tooling phase of automation is because better tools are simply enabling us to solve more complex problems, which in turn require more sophisticated skills. There will absolutely be a point where that isn't true anymore, but I think that future looks less like "no more programmers" and more like "most people do something that we used to call programming as one smaller part of their job."
|
|
#
¿
Jun 28, 2017 22:41
|
|
|
Rastor posted:But on the other hand, the fact that it is getting more and more abstract and high-level is an argument against it being highly automatable. This is what I was trying to drive at. Sooner or later the process of abstraction and simplification leads to the question of what problem am I trying to solve, and it just so happens that's actually like 90% of the work of programming anyway.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 28, 2017 23:07
|
|
|
Owlofcreamcheese posted:Yeah but a ball bearing is a specific concept and programming is a whole concept. Compare "programming" and "manufacturing" and it's a closer. It's closer, but it's still not a good comparison. It's also not really that software development is some special snowflake profession, it's just that computers are really different from other tools in a foundational way.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 30, 2017 00:20
|
|
|
Main Paineframe posted:There's plenty of laymen around to hash that out, including the project manager, customer relations, the UX designer, and various management folks to hash out. The job of the programmer in any sane organization (which, admittedly, tends to be the exception rather than the rule) is to take what that group comes up with and turn it into code. What you seem to be missing, and also why this is a pretty important topic in the wider topic of automation, is that creating a specification and feeding it into a computer is literally what programming is. The only reason we consider programming to be a highly specialized skill is because computers aren't capable of understanding the higher level business requirements produced by non-technical project members, so you need an additional layer of translation. Getting to the point where that translation isn't required anymore isn't just a matter of simplifying tools. We already have simple tools for writing code, including lots of pretty intuitive visual tools. The problem is that doing anything complex (and keeping it maintainable) with those tools still requires the exact same specialized skills as working with written code. They make it easier to teach a lot of the basic concepts and sometimes make it easier to offload simple work that it doesn't make sense to pay a programmer to do, but that's it. The leap you're describing to move beyond that point is just absolutely massive. edit- not to mention that you aren't so much talking about a world where programmers are obsolete as you are talking about one where everyone is a programmer. I suspect that's a world where most non-creative, non-physical work ends up being automated at a hilariously rapid pace. Paradoxish fucked around with this message at 19:40 on Jul 1, 2017 |
|
#
¿
Jul 1, 2017 19:38
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 9, 2024 03:54 |
|
|
Cockmaster posted:Well, part of the problem there is that not a lot of people who need that sort of labor could reasonably afford to pay what would generally count as decent wages for it. And between declining birthrates and younger generations faced with student loan debt they'll likely be paying off until they approach retirement, things are liable to get worse there. Japan has been playing around with automation in care homes, but that doesn't do much to help elderly who are still living on their own and whose survival and quality of life depends on home caregivers. Home health aides do everything from laundry to cooking to shopping to helping with grooming and bathing. We're as far away as ever from having robots that can do all of that independently.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 2, 2017 21:22
|
|