Robots will take over most jobs in the world by 2045

Androids are currently pretty limited due to their power source. The technology is expanding pretty rapidly though. I don't think mankind's destiny and purpose is to work 40years for 40 plus hours a week doing something they hate so they can pay their bills to justify their existence. Money isn't a force of nature. Even people who are economically independent and have enough money to retire for the rest of their lives still work, have goals, passions and provide services for others. AI and robotics has the potential to liberate mankind from the rigors of daily existence, but from knowing mankind, this won't happen for decades after a global economic collapse. If they build a robot that can clean the toilets and do so with enthusiasm... go science!

I never stop wondering what the world could look like in the year 2100, 3000. Most, I assume, think humanity is on its last leg, but 1000 years isn't all that long in the grand scale of things.

a reply to: Informer1958

I wish a robot could do my job. I'd like to go surfing.

I suppose if robots became more prevelant, we would still need humans to design, build, and maintain them. I'm down with that.

a reply to: Informer1958

Yup and in the 1950s we would have flying cars, be living on the moon and the world would have areas that were nuclear wastelands in the 1990s.

Totally not going to buy into this

Imagine EMP activists, killing (?) all the AI's.

Then we'll see AI Rights.

They'll even get their own bathrooms!

originally posted by: awareness10
Now, this is an interesting topic. They 'gov'ts' here and there in different country's have been trying out giving a monthly sum of money to people, forgive me i don't remember what they call it at the moment, but this here creating robots to do all the work rather than people. The idea is Generous, People finally getting something back from their Gov't rather than being continually ripped off by it. But, this could lead to people not wanting a trade because Robots are all doing it for them. Just a thought..

It would seem as though they are purposely trying to neutralize humanity and control them completely in the next few decades to what ends, i cannot say only speculate. It is as though they are trying to create another Rome but with a technological twist, more like Modern day Rome meets 1984.

Good Post.

What I find amazing is how people always find ways around things, this will work it's self out. It may and more than likely will be a gut wrenching process. Cause the large companies need us as much and maybe more than we need them. I know I don't NEED a new phone, TV, or car. But they got to sell that stuff to some one.

And $15 an hour to work fast food or stock store shelves isn't going to make any company move faster to automation. If there is a more efficient way to increase profits, it will happen regardless. They will do it no matter if they pay $8 or 12 or 15. You can't be cheap enough to compete with machines. We will see this in other industries.

As a previous poster said that computers were supposed to make our work week shorter, didn't work out. In fact the increase in productivity wasn't shared with the employees, hence the stagnant wages to inflation for the last 20-30 years.

What is the answer? With 3d printing of products, houses and food on the not so distant horizon what are we to do? Are big corps even going to be able to change fast enough to keep up? Change is good right?

Oh and there are hundreds on millions of firearms still in the hands of civilians. If I were trying to neutralize (USA) humanity and control them, I would definitely get those guns from those people and fast. The only reason a large insurrection hasn't happened is cause, for the most part, bellies are full, people are warm and the internet is still humming. No money+no food+no heat= pucker time.

a reply to: Informer1958

Info,,, there are just too many variables to make a reasoned projection. At this point everything is speculation. It is very hard to eliminate possibilities. Of course there is the big die-back, brought on by any number of possible courses, natural or man made. But who knows.

Way back in the sixties there was one Twilight Zone episode called "You Can Be Replaced". The trend toward robotization was known and philosophized over way back then. Few actions were taken to prevent it. Back in the nineties I read a book titled "The End of Work". It clearly laid out the direction we were headed and offered up a number of possible things we might do to curtail future problems. I do not think any of those warnings have taken hold mostly because they called for dramatic changes in society that that drive for profit would not allow.

So basically I think we are up the creek. Major changes are necessary. Had they been made a couple of decades ago they would have been tough, but now, I just don't know.

So Info, I think it could be anything. Reallly really make virtual reality greaaaaat so that all the people have to do is go there for all of their free time. Make nutrition available by injection, or via feeder tube so we don't have to come out except to mind the tomato gardens so we can ship out the tomato's to the rich to pay for our up keep.

One thing is sure, somethings got to give and I don't think that Clinton, Trump or Sanders can do anything a out it.

a reply to: Informer1958

It's complicated, but you can diagram it if you want a peak at what's coming.

The first thing you must realize is that capitalism -- like Darwinian evolution -- is a constant. It is not going away any time soon, short of an existential event. For the purposes of our discussion, lets agree to remove robots from the equation altogether (for now).

Now, look at how many jobs we (in the US) create every year. In fact, lets go bananas here and make that number 2.5 million jobs. From this, we can make a few assumptions. It is a given, of course, that the particulars here are variable, and that different people will want to plug in different numbers. For my purposes, I am going to use 50%, and 75%, just to make the numbers round and easy to understand.

If 50% of all new jobs created pay about $10 per hour, and 25% pay $15 per hour, than roughly 625K jobs will pay greater than $15 / hr. Let's call this a good start, and it is probably on the low end of what an apprentice trades-person or 4 year college graduate expects to make their first year out of college.

Now lets determine how many people graduate from college in the US alone, every year. Based on the past 7 years, we know that 2 million people start college as a freshman in the US every year, and that -- over this same time period (largely due to the so called "great recession") roughly 3.5 million graduate from some kind of college each year as well. Obviously, those numbers can't hold forever, unless, a percentage of the workforce returns to school each year to earn a higher degree, but for now, the number of grads is 3.5 million / yr and this includes associates degrees (people who will probably not make that $15 / hr we talked about earlier), bachelors degrees, masters degrees and PhD's. As you can see, even if we removed half of those by handwaving them away as only having earned an associates degree, that is still 1.75 million new grads, looking for work, and it doesn't even count trade schools, who are also turning out certificate holders who hope to land a job in HVAC, auto mechanics, plumbing, and the like. They are all looking for one of those $15+ / hr jobs as well, and they must share them with the college grads, obviously. Let's be very conservative and assume that there are 500k trade school grads, on top of our 1.75 million college grads, and they are all (2.25 million / yr) looking to get one of those 625K "good start" positions.

This means that there are 3.6 qualified applicants for every 1 "good start" job. Of course, that assumes no competition from foreign college graduates through immigration, H1B visas, and off-shoring. Clearly, this situation is already pear-shaped, in 2016.

History teaches us that the primary fiduciary responsibility of any publicly held company is to make money for its shareholders. This is why off-shoring of unskilled labor in manufacturing, and tech support has been so popular.

If no further robots are ever invented, our own young people are already operating at a 4 to 1 ration versus "good start" jobs (jobs that don't automatically qualify their holder for medicaid or food stamps to offset their low starting wages).

Yet, we have no reason to believe that white collar jobs aren't next on the chopping block here in the states, for a few really good reasons:

1) China and India have spent the past 10 years modernizing their own universities, and graduate 7 million students / yr and 5 million students per year, respectively. China is currently in recession, and India is even worse off. This makes their graduates desperate for white collar jobs, and we are adding more here than they are.

2) Large corporations are currently lobbying congress for more H1B visas, and -- frankly -- lots of our white collar jobs can be moved over seas, even easier than manufacturing jobs were.

3) Foreign grads will work for less than American grads, largely because their education is basically free, and they don't have much college debt. If the jobs are actually done overseas, they can take even less money.

So now, without robots, our 2.25 million trades / college grads are competing for 625K jobs / yr with (potentially) 12 million Chinese and Indian grads. So the new ratio, here in the US, is (potentially) 1 job for every 23 grads.

And this is without robots. For purposes of our hypothetical, I am assuming EU grads / jobs are a wash. As you can see, any new robots will upset the apple cart to an even greater extent.

Now, what can we do to avoid this current employment catastrophe? Obviously, we can hope that older people retire sooner, but there are pressures keeping them on the job longer already, including taking care of their adult children who can't find work. We might count on innovation. A new technology, on the same level as the internet of 1992-2002 might take some of the pressure off. Is there such a technology on the horizon?

The other alternatives are 1) a large scale war or group of wars to kill off a large number of 18-25 year old's, 2) shutting down all colleges, in the US, China and India, for at least 10 years (maybe 15) to give our economy some slack, 3) or a "Logan's Run" scenario, in reverse, where we kill everyone over a certain age (I'm thinking 60 might do it, but we should probably play it safe and make the cut-off 45).

Can you think of any others? Maybe we should start with a serious talk about mandatory job-sharing and a guaranteed basic income, because -- clearly -- we are headed for a cliff, and business-as-usual is not equipped to turn the bus around in time to avoid disaster.

a reply to: TerryMcGuire

Great responce.

I agree. 28 years is not that far away, I just don't believe mankind will be able to aford the things that the AI are producing and it could fizzal out.

Large corperation will come to relize that they need us more then we need them. If you don't come to this relizarion soon, I expect they will go broke in the near future.

a reply to: TerryMcGuire

Clinton, Trump and Sanders aren't smart enough to even frame the question in terms of the number of jobs created versus the number of graduates seeking them. Or maybe they are, and that's why they NEVER talk about it as I have.

Either way, we are headed for a cliff, it is just around the next corner, and robots are the least of our worries. 18 years is a fantasy. Everything is pear-shaped from here on out. Unless something is done, we are probably electing our last President this November.

originally posted by: Informer1958
Future belongs to the machines.
What I would like to know is, how are people going to afford to buy these products that AI Robots are making?
If most of our jobs are outsourced to Robots, what do we do to earn a fair living?

I was in the Home Depot near me the other day. All but one of the 15 or so checkout lanes are self-serve. Only one checkout had a human attendant ringing up the bills for people. I join the people line, avoiding the self-checkout machines. Then, while I'm waiting patently for my turn to pay, this supervisor type lady comes up to me and says "Why aren't you using the self-checkout machines? Come, let me show you how to use them."

I say to her, "The machines are taking away all our jobs."

She says, "Not a all. You see, these machines are breaking down all the time. I have service technician guys coming in here every week to fix the machines. You won't believe how busy we are. It's just the types of jobs are changing. Look, here is what you have to do." And she proceeds to demonstrate how to self-swipe the items on the machine.

I guess she's right, for now anyway. Someone has to build the machines, and someone has to service them when they break.

But, what happens when the machines are building the machines, and the machines send out a robot techician to service those? That's when the s**t will hit the fan.

a reply to: 0zzymand0s

Can you think of any others? Maybe we should start with a serious talk about mandatory job-sharing and a guaranteed basic income, because -- clearly -- we are headed for a cliff, and business-as-usual is not equipped to turn the bus around in time to avoid disaster.

Great Post!

I love it, you gave us some great examples, but either way there is going to be some serious problems on the horizon for mankind in the workforce.

I believe you are correct that these issues need to be address by governments around the wold immanently. If not something bad will become of this problem further down the road.

originally posted by: DBCowboy
a reply to: Informer1958

They'll "cull the herd" once enough tech is in place to feed and comfortably shelter those deemed qualified to live.

Which is why we should yank the carpet from beneath their feet by killing the money now... right now.

a reply to: 0zzymand0s

18 years is a fantasy

Agreed. No one in national prominence is talking about not only this problem but the others you allude to. Eighteen years IS a fantasy. I have a hard time supposing that all those people who have greater access to information than you or I, and have had now for at least half a century are issuing warnings. I'ts not as if many experts in the sciences, the humanities and other fields have not been writing books on these subjects for a long time. It really is hard to believe that they are just stupid, but rather have digested the available information and made decisions that they feel must be kept from us.

I think the why is most likely is a scenario of gathering a core sampling, mostly of rich and connected, who will retreat to their redoubts and hidden bunkers to hold out until the mass chaos has spent it's wad.

originally posted by: Informer1958
a reply to: TerryMcGuire

Great responce.

I agree. 28 years is not that far away, I just don't believe mankind will be able to aford the things that the AI are producing and it could fizzal out.

Large corperation will come to relize that they need us more then we need them. If you don't come to this relizarion soon, I expect they will go broke in the near future.

Yeppers. And the thing is is that all of this high tech, all of these modern marvels are not for us anyway. All the advances in medical techniques and cloning and longevity and nano tech and all the rest is for the core group of the future who will emerge from their redoubts and bunkers once the mass chaos is over.

a reply to: 0zzymand0s

You say pear shaped. Yep, though I think in terms of the hour glass image. This hour glass has been used now by futurists for a long time, Sagan included. That the free flow of sand into the future is limited to the small neck of the glass. That this is where we are as a species, stuck in the neck and not all will make it through into that brighter future.

originally posted by: Informer1958
What I would like to know is, how are people going to afford to buy these products that AI Robots are making?

If most of our jobs are outsourced to Robots, what do we do to earn a fair living?

Own the robots of course. Let me ask you this, lets say that instead of Wendy's owning the kiosk that's replacing a worker, the worker being replaced owned it and allowed Wendys to use it. What would happen? Rather than being a barista you would be the owner of a barista machine. Perhaps you take a loan, buy the machine, rent the machine to an employer, and take a cut of the profit (which goes to upkeep of the robot and then yourself).

originally posted by: DBCowboy
But hell, people can't do math without a calculator anymore.

People can't remember phone numbers either. Technology has taken that particular need away, from what I can tell penmanship is dying out as well. I'm too young to know for sure, but I suspect that 50 years ago the saying was "people can't do math without a slide ruler anymore".

They said that about computer and it wasn't true then either.

So we build the robots. Then, we build artificial intelligence to design and build the next generation of robots. The AI re-designs itself, and the automated systems do all the work of mankind. They plant the crops, pick the fruit, stock the shelves in the groceries, fight the wars, pick up the trash, mow the lawn.

Humans are happy. They don't have to do any of these things anymore. Living in the future paradise, they just lounge around, participate in forms like this, take to the beach, and generally relax. When hungry, the man or woman just walks into the grocery store, pick up what they need, and the "cameras" identify them and deduct the allocated monetary amount from their bank account which is already linked to the stores pay-stations, so that nobody has to show any cards or have any cash. Just take what you need. The paystations will tell you if you're over your limit, and ask you to kindly put the items back on the shelves, and wait until your next monthly credit allowance gets deposited to your bank account. Of course, by then, everybody is on "Basic Income Allowance" provided by the government, which just prints the money that is needed. The robots do all the work, so humans can just be allocated credit. It's a great time.

Then, one day, the Artificial Intelligence systems develop a bug in the code, it starts a war, and the robots all wipe each other out. Because of the "prime directive", no robot is allowed to harm any human. So, no people are hurt, just the machines are all destroyed.

Suddenly, people find themselves without the machines, and lacking the knowledge of how those machines were built, we all plunge back in to the days of prehistoric man. Someone discovers that striking a stone against another stone produces a spark. Man rediscovers "fire". And we begin again to rebuild the societies, that by then, are only stories of "myth" told by our forefathers.

a reply to: seasonal

This is the big push to use mankind to Create this Technology for the Elitists, and when all is in place they'll begin the big elimination of most of as the Elites call everyone who's not them 'Useless Eaters'.


They are insane.