# What happens when the robots (peacefully) take over? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [January 9, 2012, 11:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-when-the-robots-peacefully-take-over/608914 "2012-01-09T11:43:10Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 46
**Author:** ![SamuelA](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c77e96/32.png) [@SamuelA](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SamuelA)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2018, 2:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-when-the-robots-peacefully-take-over/608914/902 "2018-02-08T14:52:31Z")
> [@AI\_Proofreader](#): > > Now that factories can churn out craftsman-grade widgets using automation at a fraction of the cost and all they need are people to push a button here, pull a lever there, even if you have a factory comprised of exactly the same number of workers as before automation, guaranteed their wages are far lower because they are no longer skilled labor. > > This is how wealth is being siphoned to the top; same number of hours of work, same industry, same end product, enormously higher profits - but they all go to the top, because the owners have replaced the skilled workers with any ready set of 2 hands + automation and can pay much smaller salaries, at the going market rate. > > There will come a point in time in which a dollar value isn’t assigned to humans based on how “hard” their job is, but we’re a long way off from that yet. I think your conclusions are correct but your reasons to support them are wrong. Your Camaro example : that’s not apples to apples. The newer model has more in it. More safety features, more complex internal systems. The automotive industry makes large charges over time. As for your craftsman example : sure, there’s little need for craftsmen who can make things out of raw materials, but the mechanical engineers who ‘crafted’ the CAD model have even more skills than the craftsmen of old. That part is normal and expected. But even though lots more people are mechanical engineers and other higher skilled jobs, and a larger part of the population has college degrees than ever, yeah, the wealthy are pocketing more of the pie - basically all of the increases over the last 40 years. This isn’t true for everybody. For a few people with new, rare skills, and an even smaller number of people who got stupidly lucky, they did really well. But this is not true for the average person. The average person wasn’t a database architect in the early 2000s (job is a commodity now dominated by H1Bs) or found an online payment service in the mid 1990s (impossible now, entrenched players have an unbeatable advantage) ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2018, 3:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-when-the-robots-peacefully-take-over/608914/903 "2018-02-08T15:41:55Z")
When robots take over the world, eventually we will reach a point where we / they will look back at films like The Matrix, Terminator or the upcoming Battle Angel: Alita the way we look at minstrel shows. The “machine world” is not all de-saturated with that Nine Inch Nails Chemical Brothers drum & bass industrial music blaring constantly. Cyborgs are not all grotesque hardware embedded monstrosities in black leather trench coats and sunglasses. Artificial humans are capable of jobs other than sex worker or super soldier. They do not shut down when you ask them to explain “love”. AI does not want to “KILL…ALL…HU-MANS!!” They…do…not…all…talk…like…this. [makes robot dance movment] They find the term “robot” offensive (you know “robot” means slave?) ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2018, 7:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-when-the-robots-peacefully-take-over/608914/904 "2018-02-09T07:10:16Z")
> [@XT](#): > > But at the beginning of automation you required a lot of warm bodies even in conjunction with the automation. Today, you require a very few in most cases where we are talking about highly automated manufacturing. If, say, 1000 workers walk off it’s going to be difficult to keep the plant running and find 1000 replacements quickly. If we are talking about 100 or so workers it’s going to be easier to simply shift those workers from somewhere else. If it’s 10 it’s even easier. It depends on how skilled those 100 or 10 workers are. In any case they usually get replaced by management. (Including engineers.) I was at AT&T during a strike, and that was what happened there. No new hiring. > [@](#): > > Sure, unions played a role, and still do in other countries. But wrt to what’s under discussion can you really see unions being cool with letting go of 30 or 40 or 50% of the workers without a huge fight? And what would such a fight accomplish? If the union wins then the company has to keep those workers, even when they don’t need them…and keep paying them large salaries in many cases. Or if there is a compromise then the company has to keep some of those workers it no longer needs. If the company wins, well, we get a weaker union where the workers feel betrayed. Great, we agree. Unions have a role in getting better pay for workers, not for keeping workers on who are no longer needed. (Union leaders may not agree, but I’m pro-union and I believe this.) In fact automation - which improves productivity for all - might be faster with union factories because of the higher ROI. Moving factories to the cheaper non-union south helped in the short run, but did not prevent the factories from moving to even cheaper places offshore. Perhaps if they stayed expensive they would have been automated more quickly and stayed here, which is good for our economy and for the company, because of cheaper logistics. > [@](#): > > The point though is that every other time this has happened someone figured out ways to utilize that idle labor. It didn’t just sit around idle forever, it was used. I’m not saying they would all become programmers…that’s ridiculous. But they might become part of a team that uses humans, machines and AI to optimize the best of each, play to the strengths each has while covering the weaknesses each has. Or they might do something we can’t even conceive of. If you’d asked someone 30 years ago if some kid would make 6 or 7 figures playing a ‘video’ game for others to watch or make videos on their own that people could watch folks would have figured you’d been reading too much sci-fi. 50 years ago they wouldn’t even understand what you were saying and couldn’t fit it into a context that made sense, since that’s not how TV worked. 100+ years and there wouldn’t be even a glimmer of connection. Your video game example isn’t that much different from people making money playing sports. But people good enough at video games to make money are rare. Just like people good enough at writing or at art. What are we going to do with our average Joe or Jane when what they can do has been automated. > [@](#): > > First (;)) I wasn’t talking about a single fast food place, I WAS talking about all of them. How many do you suppose there are in any given small town? And how many workers do you suppose they all use? Second, though, they are all different chains, so even if they were organized they wouldn’t be organized in the aggregate, unless there was some fast food workers union that transcended all types of fast food in the town. Even if it did you’d be talking a couple dozen people, as I said…unless you are counting the logistics and corporate folks who support the fast food places it’s a handful no matter how you slice it. The UAW was not limited to a single car company. In my town there are dozens of fast food places and other small restaurants. In the Bay Area hundreds at least. So we’re talking reasonably big numbers. You don’t start organizing in Podunk. > [@](#): > > But you can easily replace those workers. If everyone at, say, the local Taco Bell walks out tomorrow it’s not going to take that much for the manager to just hire a new crew. I’m sure that local high school up the road has a few kids who would like to have some spending money to go out on the weekends. If the kids think that it is worth crossing a picket line. And if the owner thinks his customers will cross the line and not go to the Wendy’s down the street instead. > [@](#): > > Even if you could get everyone who works at Taco Bell, McD’s, Burger King and um…can’t think of another fast food place off the top of my head but just insert another one here…to be on the same page and walk out together you could STILL replace them all fairly easily, unless you could get the whole town to strike too. Jack in the Box, Wendy’s Arby’s, J. Salt … 🙂 And I don’t even eat at fast food places. Yeah, with no union it is not going to happen. But how do you think people all over the country used to go out on strike at once? > [@](#): > > I’m unsure of your point. In general child labor in the past didn’t have any power or say and certainly wasn’t getting all those sweet, sweet union bennies, so how does this factor into the discussion? I suppose wrt replacement the only thing that might make a factory manager pause would be that aggregate again…if they had, say, 500 children putting pieces of bacon in the pork and beans then might be difficult to replace them in the short term so maybe give them an extra puddin’ or something? Make them eat their meat first though… By your argument unions should have failed because they could replace adult workers with children, and even if the children joined the union they could replace them with more children. Your argument seems to be that low skill levels makes replacements easy. True, but even more true back then. And child labor stopped not due to strikes but due to political action, which is another subject entirely. > [@](#): > > Just related to nothing, but I watched a video this weekend that was talking about a robot chef. It was very cool. I guess they hired various chefs to make signature dishes and modeled all of the movements and ingredients off of what they did. The robot even cleans up after itself. No idea how much something like that could or would cost, but if they could get it down to the level many restaurants could afford it you could have a top rated chef robot make signature dishes from various famous chefs. Even more wild, if you could get the price down where people could afford it you could have a robot cook in your home. Hell, when we get really good 3D printers, we can print our meals. Master chefs will make the first examples which will get broken down and distributed electronically to all houses who subscribe to the service. I’m sure people will go to restaurants for the ambience. But when you can print that Big Mac at home or work - I’d pass up the chic Mickey’Ds atmosphere myself. Which automates fast food workers out of jobs. Which will probably happen before too long. I’ve read about a vending machine in Italy which serves fresh pizzas. It is coming. ---
**Author:** ![Snowboarder\_Bo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/snowboarder_bo/32/229_2.png) [@Snowboarder\_Bo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snowboarder_Bo)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2018, 5:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-when-the-robots-peacefully-take-over/608914/905 "2018-02-27T17:55:55Z")
[AI Outperforms Human Lawyers in Reviewing Legal Documents](https://futurism.com/ai-contracts-lawyers-lawgeex/) > [@](#): > > A new study released this week from LawGeex, a leading AI contract review platform, has revealed a new area in which AI outperforms us: Law. Specifically, reviewing Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDAs) and accurately spotting risks within the legal documentation. > > For the study, 20 human attorneys were pitted against LawGeex’s AI in reviewing 5 NDAs. The controlled conditions of the study were designed to resemble how lawyers would typically review and approve everyday contracts. > > After two months of testing, the results were in: the AI finished the test with an average accuracy rating of 94 percent, while the lawyers achieved an average of 85 percent. The AI’s highest accuracy rating on an individual test was 100 percent, while the highest rating a human lawyer achieved on a single contract was 97 percent. ---
**Author:** ![Snowboarder\_Bo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/snowboarder_bo/32/229_2.png) [@Snowboarder\_Bo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snowboarder_Bo)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2018, 6:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-when-the-robots-peacefully-take-over/608914/906 "2018-02-27T18:06:58Z")
I just realized I forgot to post this part: > [@](#): > > On average, the lawyers took 92 minutes to finish reviewing the contracts. The longest time taken by an individual lawyer was 156 minutes and the shortest 51 minutes. > > LawGeex’s AI, on the other hand, only needed 26 seconds. ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2018, 9:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-when-the-robots-peacefully-take-over/608914/907 "2018-02-27T21:13:07Z")
Wow, that’s huge. ---
**Author:** ![Slash1972](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slash1972/32/6461_2.png) [@Slash1972](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slash1972)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2018, 12:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-when-the-robots-peacefully-take-over/608914/908 "2018-02-28T12:50:39Z")
I suspect that once lawyerly type jobs are performed better by AI, a new slew of laws will arise that prohibit AI from performing lawyerly type jobs. ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2018, 1:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-when-the-robots-peacefully-take-over/608914/909 "2018-02-28T13:05:15Z")
> [@Slash1972](#): > > I suspect that once lawyerly type jobs are performed better by AI, a new slew of laws will arise that prohibit AI from performing lawyerly type jobs. Right? Although I think they may draw the line narrowly, to protect the trial lawyers and prosecutors who actually argue in court, plus of course judges. They will probably find public support for those measures. But that still leaves a lot of behind the scenes lawyers and paralegals SOL. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk ---
**Author:** ![Snowboarder\_Bo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/snowboarder_bo/32/229_2.png) [@Snowboarder\_Bo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snowboarder_Bo)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2018, 6:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-when-the-robots-peacefully-take-over/608914/910 "2018-02-28T18:40:18Z")
They may takeover by deception, ya know: [China’s Google Equivalent Can Clone Voices After Seconds of Listening](https://futurism.com/baidu-clone-voices-seconds/). They can change the gender, accents, etc. at will. [Here’s a whole page of examples](https://audiodemos.github.io), using samples that range from 1-6 seconds as a base. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2018, 11:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-when-the-robots-peacefully-take-over/608914/911 "2018-02-28T23:32:25Z")
> [@Slash1972](#): > > I suspect that once lawyerly type jobs are performed better by AI, a new slew of laws will arise that prohibit AI from performing lawyerly type jobs. IIRC there were also restrictions imposed on “do it yourself” books from law text book makers like Nolo Press thanks to lawyers complaining about that (and that was not AI). Not hard to imagine many restrictions coming to the AI lawyers, but watch out for the ones in power trying to prevent the common people from getting legal representation that way. That is usually where the restrictions will come, the AIs are more likely to be used as a tool by the lawyers to gain more contracts and more profit follows. ---
**Author:** ![Snowboarder\_Bo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/snowboarder_bo/32/229_2.png) [@Snowboarder\_Bo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snowboarder_Bo)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2018, 10:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-when-the-robots-peacefully-take-over/608914/912 "2018-03-05T22:42:37Z")
The AP had an interesting article today about how a lot of AI training is being done by people who are being paid a pittance: [AI’s dirty little secret: It’s powered by people](https://apnews.com/1f58465e55d643ea84e51713f35ad214/AI's-dirty-little-secret:-It's-powered-by-people) > [@](#): > > There’s a dirty little secret about artificial intelligence: It’s powered by hundreds of thousands of real people. > > From makeup artists in Venezuela to women in conservative parts of India, people around the world are doing the digital equivalent of needlework —drawing boxes around cars in street photos, tagging images, and transcribing snatches of speech that computers can’t quite make out. > [@](#): > > These repetitive tasks pay pennies apiece. But in bulk, this work can offer a decent wage in many parts of the world — even in the U.S. This burgeoning but largely unseen cottage industry represents the foundation of a technology that could change humanity forever: AI that will drive us around, execute verbal commands without flaw, and, possibly, one day think on its own. > [@](#): > > Marjorie Aguilar, a 31-year-old freelance makeup artist in Maracaibo, Venezuela, spends four to six hours a day drawing boxes around traffic objects to help train self-driving systems for Mighty AI. > > She earns about 50 cents an hour, but in a crisis-wracked country with runaway inflation, just a few hours’ work can pay a month’s rent in bolivars. > > “It doesn’t sound like a lot of money, but for me it’s pretty decent,” she says. “You can imagine how important it is for me getting paid in U.S. dollars.” > > Aria Khrisna, a 36-year-old father of three in Tegal, Indonesia, says doing things like adding word tags to clothing pictures on websites such as eBay and Amazon pays him about $100 a month, roughly half his income. > [@](#): > > This human input industry has long been nurtured by search engines Google and Bing, who for more than a decade have used people to rate the accuracy of their results. Since 2005, Amazon’s Mechanical Turk service, which matches freelance workers with temporary online jobs, has also made crowd-sourced data entry available to researchers worldwide. > > More recently, investors have poured tens of millions of dollars into startups like Mighty AI and CrowdFlower, which are developing software that makes it easier to label photos and other data, even on smartphones. > > Venture capitalist S. “Soma” Somasegar says he sees “billions of dollars of opportunity” in servicing the needs of machine learning algorithms. His firm, Madrona Venture Group, invested in Mighty AI. Humans will be in the loop “for a long, long, long time to come,” he says. ☹ I expect the transition to a post-scarcity existence is going to be rough. ---
**Author:** ![nightshadea](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/7ba0ec/32.png) [@nightshadea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nightshadea)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2018, 1:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-when-the-robots-peacefully-take-over/608914/913 "2018-03-06T01:08:22Z")
heres something to think about [http://jephjacques.com/post/14655843351/un-hearing-on-ai-rights](http://jephjacques.com/post/14655843351/un-hearing-on-ai-rights) ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2018, 1:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-when-the-robots-peacefully-take-over/608914/914 "2018-03-06T01:22:04Z")
Bo, interesting (somewhat disconcerting) stuff. Nightshadea, I enjoyed that—but why 1999? Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2018, 1:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-when-the-robots-peacefully-take-over/608914/915 "2018-03-06T01:36:48Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > Bo, interesting (somewhat disconcerting) stuff. Disconcerting for finding that there are jobs for humans, that we could not imagine months ago, coming up? ---
**Author:** ![Snowboarder\_Bo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/snowboarder_bo/32/229_2.png) [@Snowboarder\_Bo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snowboarder_Bo)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2018, 3:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-when-the-robots-peacefully-take-over/608914/916 "2018-03-06T03:46:18Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > Disconcerting for finding that there are jobs for humans, that we could not imagine months ago, coming up? So you’re in favor of exploiting labor? ---
**Author:** ![AI\_Proofreader](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/8dc957/32.png) [@AI\_Proofreader](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AI_Proofreader)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2018, 4:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-when-the-robots-peacefully-take-over/608914/917 "2018-03-06T04:26:39Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > Disconcerting for finding that there are jobs for humans, that we could not imagine months ago, coming up? Jobs training deep learning algorithms how to function better, and ultimately require fewer humans for progressively lower and lower wages. This is automation speeding \*up, not slowing down, the replacement of humans, by using us as a stopgap to fill in the blanks and train the AIs via repetition. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2018, 4:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-when-the-robots-peacefully-take-over/608914/918 "2018-03-06T04:39:02Z")
> [@AI\_Proofreader](#): > > Jobs training deep learning algorithms how to function better, and ultimately require fewer humans for progressively lower and lower wages. Not really. David Autor - MIT Economics - Massachusetts Institute of Technology: > **[Will automation take away all our jobs?](https://www.ted.com/talks/david_autor_will_automation_take_away_all_our_jobs/transcript)** > > Here's a paradox you don't hear much about: despite a century of creating machines to do our work for us, the proportion of adults in the US with a job has consistently gone up for the past 125 years. Why hasn't human labor become redundant and our... > [@](#): > > These predictions strike me as arrogant. These self-proclaimed oracles are in effect saying, “If I can’t think of what people will do for work in the future, then you, me and our kids aren’t going to think of it either.” I don’t have the guts to take that bet against human ingenuity. Look, I can’t tell you what people are going to do for work a hundred years from now. But the future doesn’t hinge on my imagination. If I were a farmer in Iowa in the year 1900, and an economist from the 21st century teleported down to my field and said, “Hey, guess what, farmer Autor, in the next hundred years, agricultural employment is going to fall from 40 percent of all jobs to two percent purely due to rising productivity. What do you think the other 38 percent of workers are going to do?” I would not have said, “Oh, we got this. We’ll do app development, radiological medicine, yoga instruction, Bitmoji.” > > (Laughter) > > I wouldn’t have had a clue. But I hope I would have had the wisdom to say, “Wow, a 95 percent reduction in farm employment with no shortage of food. That’s an amazing amount of progress. I hope that humanity finds something remarkable to do with all of that prosperity.” > > And by and large, I would say that it has. > [@AI\_Proofreader](#): > > This is automation speeding \*up, not slowing down, the replacement of humans, by using us as a stopgap to fill in the blanks and train the AIs via repetition. Uh uh, the point stands, the article is actually more positive in pointing at the jobs that many did not imagine even a few years ago. As I remember someone in the past pointed out that Mozart became what he was in great part thanks to the invention of the piano. Many are just approaching this by indeed not thinking about the possibilities, I can see that in reality there is a lot of arguments based on ignorance. Really. My impression from early in the tread has not changed, yes, there will be jobs lost, (A bit of column A) but many others that many can not imagine will come. (a bit of column B) ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2018, 4:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-when-the-robots-peacefully-take-over/608914/919 "2018-03-06T04:46:48Z")
Forgot to add: as the evidence David Autor presents, the main danger is really the virtual loss of the middle class thanks to automation. \*\*If \*\*we do not work to drive the changes in a positive way. ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2018, 5:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-when-the-robots-peacefully-take-over/608914/920 "2018-03-06T05:33:00Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > Forgot to add: as the evidence David Autor presents, the main danger is really the virtual loss of the middle class thanks to automation. \*\*If \*\*we do not work to drive the changes in a positive way. Wait, how would “the virtual loss of the middle class thanks to automation” not be anything to worry about? You can go back to my OP and everything I’ve said all along and you’ll see that I expect us all to be better off a hundred years from now. So my longterm outlook might be even more positive than Autor’s! But it’s the transition I worry about. Autor’s blithely talking about agriculture going down from 40 percent to 2 percent and being filled in by yoga teachers and app developers—does he really think these are the same sorts of people? What actually happened is that people who used to do dull, repetitive, nonintellectual manual labor on the farm moved to cities and did dull, repetitive manual labor on assembly lines, driving or loading/unloading trucks, etc. The kind of people who do those sorts of jobs are not going to be app developers or yoga teachers, and they also won’t be whatever the 2049 version of such occupations are, even if we don’t know what the occupations are yet. Industrial transitions in the past could be rough, but ultimately there were still plenty of low-skill manual labor jobs for people to do, just different ones. If you think there will be a significant need for basic, repetive human manual labor in thirty years, you’re just not paying attention. And if you think the kind of people who are not capable of brainier work will not still be a significant percentage of the population thirty years from now, you’re kidding yourself. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2018, 5:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-when-the-robots-peacefully-take-over/608914/921 "2018-03-06T05:51:30Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > Wait, how would “the virtual loss of the middle class thanks to automation” not be anything to worry about? I DID say it was a danger, so one wonders what you are complaining here. > [@SlackerInc](#): > > You can go back to my OP and everything I’ve said all along and you’ll see that I expect us all to be better off a hundred years from now. So my longterm outlook might be even more positive than Autor’s! But it’s the transition I worry about. > > Autor’s blithely talking about agriculture going down from 40 percent to 2 percent and being filled in by yoga teachers and app developers—does he really think these are the same sorts of people? Has he actually pointed out, most of the past farmers would be unemployable now, the solution then was free basic education. And that actually took a generation, not a hundred years. > [@SlackerInc](#): > > What actually happened is that people who used to do dull, repetitive, nonintellectual manual labor on the farm moved to cities and did dull, repetitive manual labor on assembly lines, driving or loading/unloading trucks, etc. The kind of people who do those sorts of jobs are not going to be app developers or yoga teachers, and they also won’t be whatever the 2049 version of such occupations are, even if we don’t know what the occupations are yet. > > Industrial transitions in the past could be rough, but ultimately there were still plenty of low-skill manual labor jobs for people to do, just different ones. If you think there will be a significant need for basic, repetive human manual labor in thirty years, you’re just not paying attention. And if you think the kind of people who are not capable of brainier work will not still be a significant percentage of the population thirty years from now, you are kidding yourself That is nice, neither he nor me said that. IT will be actually multitasking not quite simple work, but close enough. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-when-the-robots-peacefully-take-over/608914.md?page=45) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-when-the-robots-peacefully-take-over/608914.md?page=47)