White House report cautiously optimistic about job-killing AI

That seems to be a balanced article with a heavy dose of reality tossed in as comment.

I am seeing some pushback in retail by customers. They don't seem to like "self-service" check-out and the stores are going back to human checkout. But that seems to be the only place at this point. Maybe the autopilot cabs will work, maybe they won't but that's still a long way off. Over the road truckers... same deal.

It probably won't be so much a revolution as a creeping line in the sand.

Telepresence Robots

One thing that is often mentioned is that manual labour tasks are unlikely to be replaced. I don't think that is going to be the case.

We now have quite good VR headsets and haptic feedback robotic hands as well as robots that can move around without falling overs. I expect that we will soon see tele-presence robots, initially for dangerous tasks, such as military and law enforcement, then for difficult manual tasks such as ditch digging, farm work or hospital porters, and eventually for household duties. (I'm not sure we will ever get to the situation portrayed in the film Surrogates, but it does give a hint of a possible future.)

The point is that these robots can be operated almost as well from Dhaka as they can from Sydney, and with significantly lower operator costs. Who thinks that businesses won't trade a person on local wage rates for a robot at $2 per hour?

"The situation might be likened to that of the Titanic, which had lifeboats – just not enough for everyone."

As even the article strays a bit off topic... interesting factoid: the Titanic actually had more lifeboats than it was required to have per the regulations at that time. Which goes to show that policy and regulations should be updated from time to time in order to keep up with technology.

BTW: China is building a theme park that will have a full-scale replica of the Titanic. Which means there will be a guy whose job it is to arrange the deckchairs.

Rise of the Very Big Killing Machines

I drive HGVs for a living, and full automation is coming. Read the trade press for accounts of sitting in a truck at 85kph 5 metrees from the one in front. Right now, my driver assistance kit can fully stop my truck without any input from me. Active cruise control maintains speed and separation, AEBS can slam the brakes on quicker tham I can react, lane departure warning tells me when I'm weaving.

BUT...the pushback from the public is going to be massive. The first driverless vehicle to kill someone (and it will, the law of averages being what it is) will set back the process back 3-5 years. Then there's security. It's a trivial matter to bring a vehicle to a halt, use a cell jammer to stop it reporting, and then make off with part of the load.

"drivers and cashiers"

Are these the two best examples the report could come up with? Because both are arguable.

Self-checkout has been around for a long time but is still only an adjunct to, rather than a replacement for, retail cashiers. There is nothing happening to suggest that scenario will change anytime soon.

Driverless vehicles are, in reality, still a dream. And, if recent Uber and Tesla missteps are any kind of indicator, the regulations will likely get a whole lot tougher. In all probability they will severely limit public experimentation and raise the bar on 'proof of performance'. Then the rate of adoption will stretch way out and the financial picture will look much less attractive.

So, no, the big AI disruption is far from certain despite all the PR drum beating.

Even if job gains are balanced by job losses

Society is still screwed, because the people losing their jobs will be positions with low skill or little room for skill transference, like fast food workers and truck drivers. If a robot revolution creates as many jobs as it kills, it probably won't be creating jobs that fry cooks and truckers will be able to do, no matter how much money is allocated for "retraining".

Anothe aspect

One of the other aspect of human labor being replaced by machines is the tax take that the government will have.

With each job replaced, the government will lose the TAX, NI etc., taken from that employment. the machine is not paid, so can't be taxed in the same way.

So while overall productivity may increase, and unless those displaced workers get other employment, there is less tax being paid and more unemployment benefits being paid out.

If, or maybe that should be when, the shift to automation becomes a significant factor, governments will need to re-asses how they balance the books.

Rude and inconsiderate

I have seen the new machines that replace human workers at a McDonalds in a casino already. I consider this to be rude and tells me the company doesn't care about me the customer, but only about my money. I went elsewhere to eat. Not only was this rude but they didn't even have lower prices for the money they say they saved by using machines instead of humans.

Companies that care not for their fellow man, intentionally refusing to pay a human being a living wage but instead would replace that human with a machine they say works 24/7 without complaint or sick days will soon find out that other human being are just as vicious as they are. Machines will cost a lot of money to repair when it makes a mistake a nd the person takes it out on the machine instead of having the mistake immediately taken care of by a human being. Also money is not the only thing a person can slip into the slot where the money goes. Humans will work through a power outage. machines will not. There are those of us out here that can and will hack their new fail safe machines and take their money or just shut them down. OR we can really make their machine sick, from giving it a mild cold to a deadly machine killing disease. It's called a virus. A very nasty little bug that makes both humans and machines sick and/or die. Wow, I figured this all out before my first cup of coffee and without a Harvard degree like some executives in companies like McDonalds like to thinks makes them better than us so called common folks that merely buy their food.

My advice to the executives at these kind of companies and corporations is, pay your employee's a good living wage. You get less theft, happier employees that work harder and are loyal to your company so you have less turn over and do not have to waste time and money constantly training new employee's. It' High time the corporations and businesses in America stop the greed and join the human race again.

Not just low skilled job at risk

Whenever the questions of AI replacing jobs come around, people tend to focus on low skilled jobs, almost as if it makes it easier to digest. "It's just low skilled cashiers, they'll just have to upgrade...go to school and get some skills."

People who believe they're skilled, and intelligent don't think they're at risk, but AI isn't about replacing low skilled labour. Billionaire tech investors aren't thinking "How can we make a menial robot today?" They are trying to make machines that can learn exponentially; become smarter, faster and better at any task it's trained to do, and eventually train to learn new tasks it was not even asked to learn.

I think the people who should also worry about Artificial Intelligence having an impact are those in the "Intelligence" business. 20 years from now, highly advanced AI could also help replace people whom today believe they can't be replaced because they're "smart" and can "think". But in reality, how many law clerks, tax accountants, CRA's, data processsors, software programmers, interpreters, others could be replaced too? Heck, even judges or lawyers could probably be replaced. And we've already seen how well bots can put together fake blogs and news stories, it wouldn't be a stretch for an automated reporting system to replace news reporters and bloggers.

I'm not trying to say "be afraid", I'm just merely trying to remind people to not simply believe this is an issue affecting "low skilled" jobs. Just like when outsourcing started to become a big thing, it was "well, those call center people can just upgrade and find better work..." before it became an issue for high paid IT departments and software developers.

"without actually risking a prediction"

The optimist in me suspects the report's authors, not knowing who to believe, opted to acknowledge us naysayers. Only idiots would enact policies based on a wildly optimistic Plan A with no fallback.

Automation is often counterproductive, as anyone in IT knows.

The tinfoil hatter in me says they're hyping AI and self-driving cars to distract the plebs from the real job-killer, a phenomenon our friends at NakedCapitalism have dubbed "crapification": optimization for low cost without regard to fringe benefits like quality, reputation, morale, flexibility, alternate supply chains, a health domestic economy, etc. Automate what can be cheaply automated. Source from the cheapest country. Eliminate unnecessary labor (QA, engineering, cleaning). Cut all features used by less than 20% of customers (yo, Apple). Replace distinct products with cookie-cutter variations (more trendy colors!!!)

remember whn Tractors were invented. goddam 4 wheel horses takin our jobs...