Have you ever noticed that grocery stores advertise?
Well, here’s the thing: the driverless car and truck will very quickly become the sole kind of vehicle once it becomes as good as an ordinary driver. Driverless cars and trucks don’t get drunk, they don’t get sleep-deprived, they don’t have emotional issues that make them make stupid decisions. That alone will increase road safety by a HUGE factor. But there’s also this: the 85/15 rule: i.e., 15% of the drivers cause 85% of the accidents. Those 15% of drivers are the ones we all want off the roads, and with driverless cars and trucks, they will be off the roads. Those people make the advent of driverless cars and trucks inevitable once the technology reaches human-equivalent levels … and we’re almost there …
Sure, but there’s no human being walking me through the store persuading me to buy this or that brand of bread or meat or veggie. I buy because I need the product, not because some grinning people person persuaded me to.
My position on automation is that 90 to 95 percent of human workers will become unemployable within 30 years or so. The software needs to replace most jobs do not require AI, it’s a matter of incremental improvements in most fields, not some transformative revolution. We’re already on the track to get there and moving faster every day.
And given that most people will be unemployable, and unemployed … and I’m talking about YOU Dopers, not some mythical shlub … it’s time we started thinking aboutBasic Income, the next political Big Deal.
Right, but the grocery store has already “closed” the second you walk in the door. You’ve gone to buy groceries from them and not from their competitors. You’re not going to buy a house just because you’ve already walked through it. It’s a completely different sales process and your comparison doesn’t work.
Oh, it’ll be coffee. I’d almost guarantee it. Most everything about making a cup of coffee can be automated AND controlled to a finer degree than a human making it can even hope to come close to. Plus, most everything used in making a cup of coffee is a sort of liquid, except for the coffee beans/grounds, so they’re relatively easily dispensed and metered.
I mean, it’s not hard to imagine that they could integrate a series of hoppers of coffee beans and reservoirs of milk, cream, sugar syrup, caramel syrup, chocolate syrup, etc… and basically grind a specific amount of beans on-demand, brew it on the spot, and add the accoutrements to make the drink in question, and serve it.
Kind of like the old “coffee cup drops into the holder” vending machines, but more modern and sophisticated.
Still, there’s no human being involved at the grocery store. The job has been automated.
And I think the notion that “it’s a completely different sales process” is sales talk for someone who wants to sell me an idea … which I’m not buying.
I have no idea what you’re saying now.
These paragraphs could have been written 100 years ago regarding the automation of farm work. And yet we still have lots of jobs.
Yes, yes, I’ve heard the word “Luddite” before. Your analogy may have worked fifty years ago. But software has the ability to be adapted to almost any endeavor. It’s DIFFERENT from machines. If software and machinery can do 90 percent of the things humans can on a more cost-effective basis, they will replace 90 percent of humans.
Actually, they would have been right. I had a hard time digging up the numbers, but if this history of farming is to be believed, the amount of farmers needed per acre has been reduced by about 94% in 100 years.
I don’t think that counts undocumented workers.
Is that a profession that will cease to exist?
Corprate travel agent.
I’ve heard the “it’s different this time” argument before. It’s always been wrong.
Not sure about that. I think it will just be brought more “in house”.
They already are at lot of places. IBM and Bank of America, that I know of.
Before I retired, large companies were moving a lot of their travel to an online travel website that could only be accessed by employees. The reservation passed our inspection, then was issued. Domestic and basic international flights were handled this way, only complex itineraries would be handled by a human. We went from 100 employees to about 40 in my day.
It is only a matter of time.
Taxi drivers
Prostitution?