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In her Mansion House speech, May said this about those who viewed the forces of globalization (“this agenda as the answer to all our ills””) in a different light to those who promoted it – “These people – often those on modest to low incomes living in rich countries like our own – see their jobs being outsourced and wages undercut.” She went on: “When you refuse to accept that globalization in its current form has left too many people behind, you‘re not sowing the seeds for its growth but for its ruin.”
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As for Tezza, as always when she speaks, no one is the wiser vs before she started as to what she wants or means or believes.
was that anywhere near on topic?
The words "stone", "blood"and "squeezing" spring to mind.
The choice of video atop this thread was entirely down to me.
My job may well become roboticin terms of the technical skill required. Probably a good thing too considering how buggered medical education is!
During the 1980's this was supposed to happen - but IT didn't live up to the promises, and it was cheaper to outsource/import labour.
The area of work that is growing, not shrinking is allegedly blue-collar - but with high skills. For example, a young chap (son of a friend) flunked out of the path to a degree. Now he is a hi-tech welder, and is moving into high end CNC work - path tuning etc. In these roles, automation helps - as it improves it drives productivity up, enabling workers to do more, faster rather than eliminating roles.
Pure white collar work is much more vulnerable. Block chain, for example, may make possible total automation of wide areas of accounting. Lawyers will block automation of the law, of course.
I have a feeling that the first to go will be the swathes of middle managers - better automated processes will strip out layers of jobs, which often consist of little more than aggregating data from the layer of the business below.
A recent example was Hillary Clinton's campaign which was managed by "Ada", another was Lehman Bros.
Humans are still far better decision makers than A.I.
Robots, computers and programs should be used as tools only, instead of supplanting humans.
http://wtfisbrexit.com/
I feel I should retire now. What could possibly top that?
But actually Doctors, Lawyers and Financiers are all very adept at inventing new ways to keep tbemselves gainfully employed :-)
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I and hundreds of others were told the other day by the powers that be in our part of the world that such automisation would not mean huge numbers would be let go as surplus to requirements (not in those words, obviously). I didn't believe a word of it. I'm certain a robot could do my job soon, and the idea a local authority wold find something for hundreds or thousands to so if there was no need for them is barmy.
In as much as Brexit is a rejection of globalisation, it does a great disservice to those that supposedly were the motivation for it.
Consider a future hospital - instant testing (a drop of blood or saliva on a sensor on a hand held device), medicines manufactured by a machine in the corner of the ward to spec for the patients genetic makeup. Basic patient minding - are they fed, watered, alive - automated.
All quite possible, Plenty of need for doctors - if done right this just means that all the non-doctoring stuff can be off-loaded to machines.
There will always be something overlooked or missing.
I was on an interview panel earlier this year when my organisation was hiring some accountants. I'm not an accountant myself, but our rules require a non-specialist on interview panels. After four days of listening to junior-to-mid-level accountants talk about their skills and experiences, I asked the panel chair (our deputy finance director) "Why are we hiring for these jobs? This work sounds like something a computer could do."
His answer? "The software's not quite good enough yet. Give it two years." A few weeks later, Walmart did a mass lay-off of accountants.
Whatever changes come, we will, in the words of Clint Eastwood, 'improvise, adapt, and overcome'.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/11/15/sarkozy-hit-by-fresh-claims-of-gaddafi-campaign-funding-as-fillo/
https://www.betfair.com/exchange/plus/#/politics/market/1.117179983
Robots should enable increased productivity and maybe shorter working hours.
When I started work as a production engineer in a factory in the 1960s I worked 44 hours per week.
When I finsihed as Head of Strategy for one of the big banks in the 2000s I was working far longer hours despite the vast increase in productivity in the meantime.
In the last ten years, productivity growth in the Uk has come to a halt. If we are to increase overall wealth we ned to increase productivity. Bring on the robots.
And NEVER read the YouTube comments!
If — huge fantastic great IF — we can figure out a way of looking after our own and promoting trade we will all be a lot happier. Maybe we can't do that, but we sure as hell ought to at least try.
It certainly proves computers can screw up as much as humans.
Much greater and cheaper computerisation will make it easier for all of us to convert our ideas into reality. That would lead to a huge upsurge in creativity and innovation. Britain's skills base is well suited to exploit such a world.
Way more important than teaching it to play Jeopardy, which was Watson's first (and very successful) challenge.
The algorithms are designed by humans.
We have seen the trend in this country where the tax base is shrinking to the point where the top 1% of income tax payers provide circa 25% of all income tax. The mobility of companies and highly skilled labour, puts caps on tax rates and with automisation the ceiling for tax rates is just going down. Therefore there is only one direction for government share of the GDP and that is down. What can Govt cut back on? Initially its employees will be largely replaced, probably 90% reductions in a 20+ year period. But, how to fund welfare and how to fund the NHS?
I agree with Malmesbury about skilled labour, will we ever see an end to the need for plasterers and plumbers inside 50 years?
I tend to side with @Jason that we will adapt and utilise rather than be sidelined. Of course there will come a time when the emerging economies, and eventually also the LDCs will be up there battling with us, but not only is that some time away (the "long run" about which I care little), but we will then also I hope be further along the curve.
If junior lawyers' jobs are being automated, then they can move on to more value added roles. Meanwhile, listening both to the case of the guy about to be extradited to the US, and also the refusal of appeals following the change in joint enterprise law, and the associated controversies ("they got it wrong" from both sides) leads me to believe that no lawyer is going to be roboticised any time soon.
Finally, the piece could be read (could be) as the middle classes trying to empathise with the working classes to mitigate some of the anger of the latter. The line "don't worry, as a lawyer, I will suffer also" might not be the most convincing for low skilled workers.
*I'm assuming they fired her anyway, for crashing the whole NHS email server for a day.
FWIW I have Chinese relatives - ordinary working class people - who have seen their lives transformed in the past twenty years
Now, I breeze past, flash my phone at the console, pick up a scanner and do my shopping without ever having to talk to another human being, unless I've bought some booze or razor blades.
At Waitrose, it's even easier, just use my phone. It is a bit annoying having to ask someone behind the desk for a cup so I can abuse the free coffee, though.
"It was the brainchild of a brilliant Czech playwright, novelist and journalist named Karel Čapek (1880-1938) who introduced it in his 1920 hit play, R.U.R., or Rossum's Universal Robots. Robot is drawn from an old Church Slavonic word, robota, for “servitude,” “forced labor” or “drudgery.”
Of course, these are all superseded by the RFID arch we will soon be going through, which will determine what we bought (by scanning the contents of our trolley), and will immediately bill us based on the RFID chip in our credit card!
Automation will free up junior lawyers, true. But I suspect that it will also mean fewer lawyers. Employers don't buy automation for the joy of it. They do so because they think, whether rightly or wrongly, that it will make them more efficient and reduce costs.
As in law so elsewhere.
Have been trying to find out some more details on it today (I do IT consultancy and it's a great case study!). Hopefully more details will come out in the next few days.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_algorithm
I suspect we spend too much time on the internet.
In the US, McDonalds are now developing automated order takers and robotic order assemblers, in part spurred on by California's raising of the minimum wage to $15/hr.
Polls of French primaries are very difficult to be accurate, no one knows who exactly will participate.
No wonder when algorithms fail they fail spectacularly.
We're all on the pension scheme (16.7% , 7.5 / 7.5) anyway.
Will try and work out my XIRR tonight on it
Change is coming ever more quickly. But politicians are not good at dealing with change.
Political pressure groups always tend to favour the status quo ( e.g. Hospitals, jobs). Coping with change and uncertainty is not easy (remember the Chinese curse?)
What we need is brave (in the yes minister sense) politicians able to go out on a limb and be creative.
Does anyone spring to mind?
Lawyers, for instance, have a tendency to overstate the mysteries and difficulties of the law and why only people with their special skills can possibly understand it. But if you can have a programme which can assess - based on the name of the judge, the particular court and various other factors - the chances of winning a patent action (and I've heard of but not tested it), how many patent disputes lawyers do you need rather than claims adjusters?
The most remarkable thing, to me, is that he is socially liberal and not angry.
I have a cousin who works in artificial intelligence for a major bank, and in his circles there is real discussion of the pointof lift off, when the machines become self evolving. They have seen the movie and know where it is leading.
We will probably become extinct first, having lost interest in each other screwing sex robots in virtual reality in preference.
Firstly, the moral insistence that everybody must work to support themselves is becoming antiquated. There is simply no need for it when so much can be automated. So let's get on and introduce a Citizens' Income.
Secondly, taxation needs to be shifted away from labour and towards raw materials and emissions in order to mitigate environmental degradation and resource depletion. These, rather than unemployment, will be the main problems facing our children.
Great article by the way, makes a happy change from Brexit and Trump
Take a population of 100 workers.
80 workers produce 10 units of value.
20 workers produce only 5 units of value.
So average productivity is 9.0 units per worker.
Increase productivity of both sets of workers by 20% but change the mix to 50/50.
50 workers produce 12 units of value.
50 workers produce 6 units of value.
So average productivity is now still 9.0 units per worker, even though the productivity of both sectors have increased by 20%.
You can always exploit the bugs for your own advantage.