Journos to be spared replacement by robots, BBC claims It's sighs of relief all round here at Vulture Central today as a handy BBC guide as to whether or not you're scheduled to be replaced at work by a robot reveals that journalists are at a mere eight per cent likelihood of automation*. Screengrab showing the BBC's prognosis for journalists The chilling facts are these: …
"I thought most journalists were robots anyway?"
More like conduits. Press releases are just passed through "journalists" straight to publication, pending editor approval.
(El Reg journalists mostly being the exception.:))
In reality, most publications only need an editor to screen incoming releases along their criteria (Left, right, sensationalist, pro or anti whatever), for direct publication, and even that job could be replaced with a simple program, no intelligence of any type needed.
"35 per cent of current jobs in the UK are at high risk of computerisation over the following 20 years".
They've been making predictions like this since the 80s! The thing is this sort of change happens gradually, so the reduction in jobs gets hidden in natural turnover. It's not like shutting down a mine or steelworks where the entire town gets laid off in one go.
There are strong arguments that suggest that this time may well be different - "Humans need not Apply" by CGP Grey is definitely worth a watch, one point is that transportation automation could happen pretty quickly which is where a large swathe of the population finds work and that would be a significant economic shock.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU
[...] one point is that transportation automation could happen pretty quickly [...]"
I think most of that reduction has already happened.
The railways and buses were once major employers. Buses reduced their workforce quite considerably by removing services and going driver-only. The proliferation of motorcars was obviously a factor in the service reduction - as was privatisation.
The railways also went through service reduction - and new technology reduced the staff on many trains to just a driver. New technology also reduced the number of staff needed at stations or maintenance facilities. The proliferation of long distance road transport usurped the railway's previous dominant position in moving goods about the country - including the local leg by road. Housing estates now cover the many acres of local goods marshalling yards.
"The proliferation of long distance road transport usurped the railway's previous dominant position in moving goods about the country"
Road transport hired far more people than it replaced in the railways.
This will be quite different.
Mind you, as has been written, it will happen gradually, in the same way that a single tunnelboring machine replaces a few hundred men with picks and then opens up opportunities that could never be practical otherwise (chunnel, corssrail, etc)
"Or in el Reg's case an irrelevant stock picture gets used."
Believe me, el Reg has nothing on Cambridge News. Most of the pictures are at absolute best tangentially related to the story, like this one (captioned "a fish" in case you couldn't recognise it) that headed the story of a man prosecuted for possessing fish porn(*) on his phone.
http://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/images/localworld/ugc-images/276453/Article/images/27730738/10868566-large.jpg
(*) No, no idea, still boggled.
The robots are usuallly found in the Academy/Free sector. They are known as 'classroom assistants' whose job it is to 'instruct' pupils in what ever wet-dream Gove's clone has dreamed up.
'Teachers' are far too expensive and likely to go on strike when pissed off. They also are an everpresent danger as they may encourage pupils to actually think.
Teachers... are an ever-present danger as they may encourage pupils to actually think.
IME not much chance of that, my daughter seems to be actively encouraged to learn-by-rote, and not inquire further, or otherwise distract from the "educational" process. Asking questions is frowned upon.
Seemingly programmers have a high chance of being automated. Apparently no body bothered paying enough attention to programmers to realise that's what their job is - hence compilers, libraries, etc.
If it ever gets to the point where humans are no longer required in that process, then humanity's probably boned.
Seemingly programmers have a high chance of being automated.
Eh? 8% 'It's quite unlikely' is it what it gives for 'Programmer and software development professional'.
Not that it should be taken seriously but how did you come to your conclusion? I'll admit that metaprogramming and to an extent IoC smack a little of self programming computers but we've got a long way to go yet.
Back in 1970 application developers were effectively middlemen** interpreting someone's expertise in a particular role to produce a custom application, I predicted that before long the customer would have computer languages at the right level of abstraction for them to produce their own applications. To some extent that has happened.
** and middlewomen too.
Journalist writes article saying journalists won't be replaced by machines.
The triumph of hope over experience, or was that article already written by a computer?
Although I can see a large number of sub-editors being replaced, After all it can't be that difficult to automate the spelling / grammar / fact-checking aspect, can it?
The two rules for defending your job against all-comers, including automation:
1.) Don't tell them everything you know.
2.) Well, that would be telling. Wouldn't it?
"After all it can't be that difficult to automate the spelling / grammar / fact-checking aspect, can it?"
The long overdue arrival of AI is littered with statements like that. Circa 1972 Donald Michie conducted a poll for the estimated number of years before “computing exhibiting intelligence at adult human level”. The graph shows 18% thought that would be by 1990 - and the extreme 25% thought it would be after 2020.
The quote has been culled from
http://www.nickbostrom.com/papers/survey.pdf
English is not a logical language. They say that AI in use of language will have come of age when it can make puns - so El Reg is safe for a while yet. There was a sci-fi story to that effect many years ago - robots or aliens - Heinlein??
But that will remove all the fun you can have trolling them. You'll no longer be able to pretend to be interested in what they're selling but also quite thick so that they have to explain everything to you and also hard-of-hearing so they have to explain everything to you at least three times. You can't hand over bogus credit card details and insist that they must have entered the numbers wrong. You can't give them the address of the local Chinese takeaway when they ask for a home address, or do anything else you can think of that will ensure they stand zero chance of hitting their quota for the hour.
The way I figure it, if they're good enough to waste my time, I really should be well-mannered enough to return the favour.
Around 20 years ago I was supporting a team of developers who's manager fell in love with a 4GL rapid development environment, and was firmly of the belief that "programmers are now obsolete" which he would explain loudly to anyone who would listen.
The developers hated it with a passion because there were always those things the poncy object dragging IDE couldn't do and when they tried delving into the code to make changes manually they entered a world of hurt with machine generated variable names, and the code ended up being 3 times longer and way more inefficient than something a human would write for the same purpose.
Probably why those kind of tools are a rarity these days.
If a droid did do telemarketing then it would actually obey the law and remove you from their list so you would't get a f call again rather than the same annoying company the next day or even not call you at all because your on the telephone no preference list that human callers don't care about even though they are breaking the law.
Medieval punishment of cutting off their hands needs to be enforce for everyone who works in the industry even if they don't have a phone oh and even if you enter a building where cold calls are made... you going to hell.
Suspect Journos will be replaced by popular Bloggers.
Since the quality of Journalism in general has dipped to levels that would make fox news happy, people will increasingly find other opinions in the great wilderness of new media (brought to you by cuke! the new cola flavour!).
Why waste 3 years studying journalism?
It is getting hard to find quality output (like this story) amoung the oceans of blogger guff (like my own blog). Some news sites are turning themselves into buzzfeed (like el Reg is sometimes must be said), when they would be better advised to watch the quality control and then let their output speak for itself.
In other words if you publish good stuff, written by professional writers (like this story), it will get read. If you publish blogger-level guff, it will just merge in and be lost in the digital ocean. Taking your magazine with it.
An idea for the Beeb. A new 'Apprentice' type show with a twist. In 'All Aboard the B-Ark' a carefully chosen group of especially undesirable wankers (civil servants, estate agents etc) have to make their case for not being dispatched on a spacecraft with a course locked to crash into a habitable (make this optional) planet a long way from here. The twist? They can argue all they want, but they're all going anyway.
In a later version, once initial interest has flagged, producers introduce a Disaster Area variation where contestants have the option on take part in the special finale for a large rock concert.
Suggestions for contestants to be open to the public.
Travel agents: "not very likely (26%)" to be replaced by automation?? I thought they already were.
Amongst the most likely to be replaced are "Non-governmental organisation (NGO) officer" at 96.8%. And yet a hotel manager is the lowest at 0.4%. Surely both are team managers and/or communicators?
Plenty of these jobs have much more intelligence in them than the ratings suggest. For example a "Pest control officer" doesn't just go chasing after rats with a frying pan; they will investigate an infestation and come up with a plan both to eradicate the immediate problem and to prevent re-infestation.
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