back to article Prognosticator, for one, welcomes our new robot work colleagues

On a scale of one to ten on The Reg’s own fear-o-meter, concerns about a future in which humans are mere canon fodder - or even worse - sources of nutrients for robots overlords rank pretty highly, but there’s nothing to be scared about people. It’ll all be fine. How do we know this? The folks at Forrester Research say so and …

  1. richardcox13
    Terminator

    It could be worse, they might be nice to us.

    Maybe the shoe event horizon won't be so bad?

  2. Martin Gregorie

    The Future of Jobs, 2025:

    No need for a report. The simple answer is that he has no future, having been dead for some time. I thought you'd have known that. Did you researcher johnnies mean "The future of Employment" by any chance? Idiots.

  3. Ralph the Wonder Llama
    Happy

    "shiny metal bastards"

    Arf.

  4. theOtherJT Silver badge

    Wrong paradigm

    In reality, automation will spur the growth of many jobs - including some entirely new job categories.

    No, it won't. It'll destroy jobs and force people out of work just like it's always done. The whole POINT of automating something is so a person doesn't have to do it any more, and if a person was cheaper and more efficient we'd let them carry on doing it.

    The problem is more that everyone is convinced that the only way to live is by working 9 hours a day, and employers and politicians are more than happy to perpetuate that myth because it's good for short term gains and no one care about the long term consequences. In a more sensible world the more automation there was the less work everyone would have to do, but instead each individual who actually has a job does the same amount of work (or more!) and other individuals are forced out of work entirely.

    1. Tom 38

      Re: Wrong paradigm

      The problem is more that everyone is convinced that the only way to live is by working 9 hours a day, and employers and politicians are more than happy to perpetuate that myth because it's good for short term gains and no one care about the long term consequences. In a more sensible world the more automation there was the less work everyone would have to do

      If work (and the reward for work) is spread evenly amongst the population and we all work 8 hours a week, then how do you solve the problem of an individual attempting to maximise their income by working longer?

      1. theOtherJT Silver badge

        Re: Wrong paradigm

        @Tom 38

        Simple, you enforce the working time directive. I mean, we already have laws that say people can't be forced to work what are considered "exploitative" hours - although it seems that every large employer out there spends an inordinate amount of time finding ways around those.

        The only place I see this being a problem is where we have a genuine skills shortage that can't be made up for because the jobs in question are too hard for the majority of people.

        The most obvious example I can think of is doctors. We don't have enough doctors now, and we'd need to double the number of them we have to reduce their required hours by half. I don't know exactly how many doctors there are in the UK, but I'm pretty sure we wouldn't be able to double that number by economic incentive alone, seeing as doctoring is really difficult and already quite well paid. If there were a lot of people out there that were smart enough and motivated enough to do the job, presumably they'd be doing it already.

        On the other hand, if education were treated as a source of important added value rather than an expensive luxury, and if everyone suddenly had 50% more free time, perhaps that's a skills gap we could fill in after all.

        1. Tom 38

          Re: Wrong paradigm

          Simple, you enforce the working time directive.

          Dear god. Your solution is to tell me that I cannot go out and earn money above what you have decided I am allowed to earn?

          The most obvious example I can think of is doctors. We don't have enough doctors now, and we'd need to double the number of them we have to reduce their required hours by half.

          Not just that, but because they are only working 8 hours a week rather than 80, it's taken 50 years instead of 5 to train each one of them.

          Guess how many people are going to go off and learn all that doctoring stuff, when they get the same pay as everyone else for their 8 hours work.

          Presumably, you've also worked out how to stop every other country in the world from out competing us, or from appropriating all of our vastly underutilised army of poorly paid doctors (qv Cuba).

          1. theOtherJT Silver badge

            Re: Wrong paradigm

            Ok, you can back of the straw-manning now.

            I don't know where this magical 8 hours came from, but if you went from 80 - which is dangerous and causes people to make mistakes because they're not sleeping enough, to 50 - you'd save lives, and if it took another 3 years to become fully qualified I doubt that would be the end of the world. Oh, and whilst we're on the subject who said anything about preventing people from training for any amount of time they chose to do so? Education and work. Not the same thing.

            I also don't remember saying anything about everyone getting paid the same regardless of what their job is - a quick check would appear to be because I didn't, which was a relief because that would have been pretty silly.

            As for emigration, why on earth would people leave here to go work longer hours somewhere else for the same pay? This would actually be a powerful driver for immigration if anything.

            You put wages up, and you put working time down and efficiency improvements made by automating things makes up the difference, it's really not that hard a concept to grasp. The only reason it doesn't work like this is because a bunch of greedy bastards worked out that they could make the same efficiency improvements, keep wages and working time where they are, and pocket the difference thus shafting the workforce.

            Once everyone earns enough money to support themselves comfortably I can't imagine there are enough people out there who are going to say "No, actually, I don't really want to get a decent nights sleep every night and spend some daylight hours with my family. What I really want to do is work an extra 20 hours a week so I can afford to buy a new car this year instead of waiting till next!" that it would actually make any difference.

            I mean, if they existed they'd all be out there clamouring to have their pointless wasteful weekends taken away so they could get on with all that lovely high paying work... right?

            People are working 2 jobs now not because they want to "Maximize their earnings" they're doing it because pay is currently so fucking shitty, and rent so insanely high that it's that or live on the streets.

    2. Denarius
      Unhappy

      Re: Wrong paradigm

      Unfortunately, Other, its the employers and their bought representatives in parliament land who push the longer hours for fewer people and to hell with the rest. At what stage do the peasantry (used to be citizens) finally say stuff the cheaper goods, we want a decent society to live in even it costs a more. to make it that way. eg, as said below. Humans at tills instead of those expletive deleted machines.

      I still remember the threat of 30 or less hour weeks promised 30 years ago

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Wrong paradigm

      Robotic automation will be a punch followed by infinite punches. When the wealthiest of capitalists can turn their vast resources into goods and services without the need for humans in the process, most humans are unnecessary. There aren't billions of jobs for artists, TV producers, and novelists.

      Luckily there will be bio options for eradicating excess population and portraying it as an accident.

  5. Doctor_Wibble
    Terminator

    Said it before, we have already lost!

    How many times does this need to be said? The machines have already won! We carry our tokens of enslavement with us, tending to their every whim whenever they demand our attention - and being wireless makes them no less of a leash!

    TFA> "robots will probably just scan your fruit and veg"

    They would but then they wouldn't be able to rub it in about who's really in charge so they have it set up so that a human has to do the scan and another human has to stand patiently while the machine messes about to see how long it can push it. Remember Mr Handshake Guy on Banzai? That CCTV on the tills isn't for security, it's for the machines to laugh at us...

  6. Roger Kynaston
    Mushroom

    Automation

    If self service tills are the future, I want out! I loathe those bloody things and refuse to go to a shop that won't provide a human to serve me. Supermarkets are dreadful enough without a stupid machine saying "unexpected item in bagging area" (its cpu if I have my way). At least Brixton market is still going strong(ish).

    </rant>

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Automation

      Buy a taser.

  7. James Cullingham

    "Canon fodder"?

    Interesting image, but perhaps not as threatening as what you actually meant to say...

  8. Denarius
    Trollface

    The One Upside of this punditry is

    that the pundits will be first up against the wall/unemployment/soylent green donation line as Big Data _might_ be less inaccurate than punditry firms.

  9. Jack Faust meets Mephistopheles

    Humans need not apply

    A lovely short documentary by CGP Grey described this scenario and it's much less rosy, they may not be after our lives but they will take out jobs.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU

  10. Your alien overlord - fear me

    As I was saying years ago when Personnel Depts. became Human Resources, we'll soon have Robot Resources, Alien Resources etc.

    And what happens when robots want a sick-day, or holidays? Equal pay ? Unions?

  11. Drudgery Leak

    Pft

    What's all this future tense? We already work alongside robots and we even choose to spend much of our leisure time with them too.

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    It's kinda 1930's style popular science that maybe atomic power will be possible 1000 years from now. Or 1950's talk that some day they'll put a "man" on the moon.

    I would say you have 5 years before you are confronted with a reality. The algorithmic nature of the human brain is becoming apparent. For example Ila Fiete's work on analog error correction codes in grid cells:

    https://clm.utexas.edu/fietelab/Papers/nn.2901.pdf

    Even without that you can still figure out ways and means.

  13. jmuzki

    Au Contraire! YOU WILL BE ELIMINATED !

    New technologies you see are mostly eating away market share from existing service industries. There is only so much you can eat, drink, smoke, watch, or experience. The biggest innovation is elimination of human labor.

    Nextflix is taking viewers from regular TV and movie theaters. Amazon.com is displacing small retail shops. Uber is displacing taxi license holders and investing money into autonomous vehicles that will not require human drivers. How many people do you think Netflix, Amazon, Uber employ vs. the total number of clients they have? It’s a very skewed ratio.

    In the recent past, automation enhanced human capabilities, now automation is simply replacing human altogether. Technology companies making the most profits are the one that deliver products and services with near perfect efficiencies and have a steady revenue stream. But 100% efficiency means 100% unemployment, which would be fine if there were no monthly bills to pay.

    In principle, automation should reduce the number of hours people are required to work. However, you can’t benefit from efficiency if you don’t own the process, hence bills will keep coming and so you will need a job. Bureaucracy, i.e. waste, is the only job creator for the masses. When resources dry up, reckoning will start.

    Until then, the jobs that can’t be automated require great skills and talent. More importantly, few positions will be needed. See http://ideabits.blogspot.com/2014/05/job-market-pyramid.html

POST COMMENT House rules

Not a member of The Register? Create a new account here.

  • Enter your comment

  • Add an icon

Anonymous cowards cannot choose their icon

Other stories you might like