Whats the future of...work

Great Debates
1

I’ve seen several threads before that kind of touched on this, but I’m interested in opinions about what the future of work in general is for people. (if this thread has been done before, my appologies).

It seems to me that we are rapidly approaching a time when there simply isn’t work to do for the majority of people. Oh, we may not get there in my life time (in fact, I doubt we will…but the signs of whats to come are on the wall IMO), but I think the day will come when there is simply no need for the majority of mankind to work. Why? Well, I see automation taking the place of most if not all manufacturing in the future. Why use human labor if you don’t NEED human labor? Automation would be, in the long run, MUCH cheaper than human labor.

In addition, I see automation and expert systems replacing the need for humans in all kinds of other service and supply oriented jobs. Why do we need checkout men and women in stores? Already there are automated checkout lines in some stores, and I see this trend continueing. I can’t think of a service or supply oriented business that can’t eventually be either reduced to a very minimum of human workers or eliminate humans altogether. Certainly there will be some jobs that only humans will continue to do, but these will become more and more specialized and fewer and fewer.

Hell, even my own job is starting to become marginalized with the new router/switch expert systems and GUI interfaces. At one time it was very specialized, highly technical and required a lot of knowledge to design networks, install and properly configure a router using the CLI of most routers. Now the things pretty much do all the subnet calculations for you, and even cross check your configuration for internal consistance. It queries you for everything from filters to routing protocols.

Basically my job can be done for the most part by a semi-skilled technician now who has just a basic grasp of IP and the various routing protocols. Sure, the DESIGN part still takes a level of skill beyond that (only thing I’m good for now), but even there, with expert systems, someone who was not as knowledgable could put together a working infrastructure AND have it checked for consistancy. Eventually ANYONE could do it…just take it out of the box, plug it in and it will automatically configure itself.

Automation, expert systems/AI, nanotech self assembly, robotics. I’m speculating at this point, but what if in the future automated ‘factories’ are able to take raw materials (mined, assembled and shipped automatically) and produce products rapidly and cheaply without any human involved at all? What if in the future ‘factories’ don’t even NEED raw materials as we picture them today, but can assemble things at the atomic level from ANY materila at hand? A day may come when the vast majority of humans simply don’t have to work anymore…or more specifically when there aren’t any jobs for them to do. What happens then? Will we move to a different economic model at that point? What will people DO if they don’t have to work? How will they ‘buy’ things? Will there even still be a need for ‘money’ if you could pretty much assemble products out of sand, or garbage, or whatever, automatically? If such a thing were to happen, how would it effect the first world nations? The third world nations? What would the impacts be?

Reguards,
XT

2

As automation becomes easier, work becomes less valuable and wages reduce. Eventually this causes human workers to be cheaper than automation. So there is a bottom end to the plateau. The problem is that the relative advantages in costs gained by automation means that the plateau will likely occur at or below the subsistence level. And people being the peaceful, rational beings they are will simply adapt to… oh wait, no, they’ll start setting things on fire at random and butchering whichever racial/ethnic group is holding the blame check this time around.

This is one of those problems with humanity. The people in charge are playing a numbers game. Very few of them stop to think at that level, they’re just interested in nickel and diming their way to a few extra bucks. By the time things like downsizing have gotten to the point of biting them in the ass, it’s too late for an easy fix and we wind up with massive, violent change. And a whole lot of bodies to be disposed of. Can’t expect much more from talking chimps I suppose, but it is rather depressing.

3

laigle, who are those people in charge?

xtisme, I think these same arguments were made 100 years ago. Now that they have automatic looms, automatic typesetting machines, etc., what will people do?

4

CurtC, definitely they were made 100 years ago. And the arguements made turned out to be baseless, as we still have people working and manufacturing things. However, we have also increasingly become more and more automated in the mean time.

(Most likely, 100 years from now we’ll still be working in the same or similar fashion BTW. I’m speculating on what if thats NOT the case.)

The result is that a lot of the more repetative and less skilled jobs have migrated to other countries in an effort to lower prices and stay competetive. Understandable IMO. However, what I’m speculating on is, what if, through technology, you have what amounts to a magic black box. Basically, raw materials are transported (automatically without human intervention) to the black box. The black box then produces widget products, packages them, and automatically ships them off…without human intervention. Hell, maybe it makes the widgets on demand…a human buyer simply places an order and the thing is manufactured right then and shipped off automatically.

So, there is no need for the majority of human laborers anymore. Maybe even maintenance of the black box is automated and requires only expert systems to over see it. What I’m getting at is, IF this were the case, what how would it change humans and the concept of ‘work’? ‘Money’? What would humans barter in such a system if it wasn’t their labor? Is there anything they could barter in this case? It might be that my speculations are totally implausable here…maybe we’ll NEVER get to this scenerio, maybe there will always be a need for human labor in the loop. But what if there isn’t? What then?

Some possibilities are that it would free people up to do other things. To study or pursue things they enjoy simply because they enjoy them…not because they have to to make money. Maybe it would free up humans to explore our world and our solar system more systematically and throughly. But the stumbling point I can’t get my mind around is…what will we use for exchange if not our labor? How will be ‘buy’ all these magically manufactured goodies? If you could make, say, computers out of sand, for instance, and the only cost was energy, how could you justify not letting anyone who needed one have one? And if you couldn’t, how would anyone be able to pay for it if the vast majority don’t work (and if no one could pay, what would be the point of making them)? Food too…if you could completely automate the process of growing, harvesting and distribution of food that, say, never rots, how could you justify not feeding everyone who needed food? And if not, how would folks pay for food if nearly everyone doesn’t work? To me, this seems to indicate we’d need a new system, as our old system wouldn’t work.

-XT

5

Yeah, this argument was made a long time ago, and again in the 60s. What will we do with all this leisure time? Well, it didn’t happen then and its unlikely to now.

Our economies are largely kept afloat by the vast number of products and services we consume. Which keeps people in jobs making or providing them. Yes, you can easily see how technology could eliminate some jobs such as on checkouts. But there are many things that can’t be done as cheaply with machines as with human labour. Some of them menial tasks, such as shelf-stacking. The technology is there to do it, but the cost would be vast.

6

Here are some jobs that I think will remain stable despite any advance in technology short of AI so smart as to require ethical constraints similar to humans.

Programming, engineering, sales, service jobs where human contact is part of the product (waiting tables for example), counseling, entertainment, and advertising.

That still does leave a lot of people out of work though.

It’s hard to make predictions at this point.

I think most factories still require human employees. While they have increased productivity per employee, humanity has responded by buying more and more manufactured goods. Who needed a microwave, blender, tv, radio or computer at the turn of the century? The human to machine ratio should continue to get smaller but we seem to buy more and more products as that progresses.

Labor is becoming increasingly valueless, requiring more and more education to make it even viable. Currently most skilled jobs require constant re-education, and bachelor’s degrees have become largely unnoticable. Sometimes whole fields can become irrelevant inside a few years. With the rising cost of education, I think eventually we will reach a point of diminishing returns where people cannot pay off student loans with the jobs they can get with their education.

The only response that the world seems ready for at the moment is to create more and more unecessary products to consume. Can this continue indefinitely? Hard to say.

7

Err… CEOs, board members, politicians. Is it really that difficult to figure out the people who are making the decisions with regards to economic policy?

8

As mentioned, there would still be some jobs. Human to human interaction, by definition, can’t be replaced by a machine. Because then it would be human to computer interaction!

Also, I think the world would generally be very resistant to change like this. Even now, when there are still many many jobs, people form coalitions and protests about the unemployment rate, transporting jobs to other countries, etc.

Imagine if Ford one day announced they are replacing all their employees with machines. Do you think people would just go along with it? No one would buy a Ford again in protest. This isn’t just a matter of it being technologically feasible, its a matter of whether the general public would stand for it.

But thats not to say it won’t gradually happen. More and more things are replaced by machines until we can’t sustain so many out of work people. Then I imagine there will be another “New Deal”, whereby the government invests in new technologies to create jobs. The accelerated pace of scientific development could possibly push us towards accepting the technology that eliminates jobs.

Beyond that I can’t really imagine how it would progress. The transition between our current societal model and one where almost everything is automated would be rife with conflict I’m sure.

If eventually one day we develop the technology to eliminate everything that doesn’t require human to human interaction, I’d imagine that entertainment and intellectual pursuits would be king. People would entertain for free, no doubt. Space exploration would probably manifest itself as a driving force in the country again and progress rapidly. The country would certainly become more sexually open. This would be a paradigm shift unlike the world has ever seen. I dunno if the world would be able to sustain it though, humans are very competitive and without economic competition, perhaps we’d go back to physical competition and destroy ourselves.

Exciting stuff, hope I’m around to see what happens. I know we aren’t gonna be in this static paradigm forever though. Something has to happen, I just have no idea what.

9

Well, we’ll have to build and maintain the tiny robots that will fight the wars of the future, in space or possibly on top of a very tall mountain.

10

An interesting point. Wasn’t the great depression caused by over-production? People’s salaries hadn’t kept up with the increased production, so no-one could aford to buy all these new products. Putting vast numbers of people out of work.

I wonder if something similar won’t happen when our oil reserves finally run out.

11

The great depression was caused by over speculation, not over production as far as I know. Had nothing to do with over producing goods at all.

At a guess, when the oil starts to get critical we’ll switch over to an alternate fuel like hydrogen. It will certainly cause a lot of disruption to the economy and will most likely have a profound effect on our society too. But I seriously doubt anyone is going to simply let the world grind to a halt simply because we run out of oil. There is simply too much money involved for the folks that come up with a viable alternative.

-XT

12

Another limiting factor is research money. Automation doesn’t come cheap, and if the money going out to consumers isn’t sufficient to result in a market that can afford automation, it won’t happen.

Although with the huge amounts of consumer debt we rack up in this country, that could again yield difficulties in that the limiting factor wouldn’t restrict the problem until it had gone overboard.

13

That could have been a good thing…only nobody back then realized that the most abundant resource in the world would turn out to be people willing to work for extremely little.

14

Programming and engineering are stable, if you are in India or Russia. These jobs are being exported pretty rapidly. Sales is not needed as much due to the internet - you don’t need somebody knocking on your door when your computer can just tell your supplier’s computer “I need 100 units of product x”. Service where human contact doesn’t have to be physically close has been moving offshore for a while (for instance, tech support has gone to India). You could be right about counseling and entertainment, but entertainment is one of those all-or-nothing fields - either you make millions, or you make minimum wage. Advertising might not last. The best advertisement is word of mouth, and a google search on a product name is a reasonable substitute.

15

I know this all too well, but the fact remains that people are still employed at it even if they are in India.

The internet has probably cut into retail sales jobs, but there are many industries where a salesperson is tremendously more effective.

You’re right about that. A scary thought that we could all become minstrels for those who own the means of production and control the natural resources.

I beg to differ here. The trustworthy reference is not some random googled person. Most people don’t like doing research either.

16

Energy is another factor that could rear it’s head. We may wind up using hydrogen, but it is not an energy source per se, as it requires significant energy to package it. The groundwork for a hydrogen economy and its distribution could hardly be laid overnight. It will require a massive infusion of energy just to achieve this. I wonder if energy will already be to expensive to make a profit that way.

Unfortunately, I think we will probably rely on nuclear energy. I just hope we’ve thought of better things to do with the waste by then. I’m hoping against hope for solar in it’s various forms: direct, wind, and wave. But humanity seems determined not to live on a budget.

17

It depends what type of work. Some people define work to include such things as a rock rolling down a hill. Intentional beings are different though… How much work does it take to exersize if you get a $100,000 every time you plop your buns in a gym? There is a different type of work that is found in certain humans, the work of intentional beings – to make something inherently purposeful, something that translates and is not ambiguous or uncertain. Positive re enforcement doesn’t count as work to intentional humans, at least not when there is an inequitable distribution of that re enforcement. Not EVERYONE gets paid or is readily able to be paid the same amount of wealth to work out! An intentional being sees this, and sees work; they see accepting wealth when the re enforcement is inequitably distributed as the anti-thesis of work. If you want to know how to test what is inherently valuable about your purpose for believing that you exist as an intentional being, or your purpose for accepting something under the auspices of your belief that you exist – there are certainly methods of going about this that will prove it. These methods however, effectively place a lock on someones ability to use untranslated wealth – and people are very reticent to confront their denial systems head on.

18

I know a few people who are in wholesale (to retailers) or raw materials (for manufacturing) sales. Where they used to have reps in Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Detroit, Buffalo, Chicago, etc, they now have one rep that handles all of Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, western Pennsylvania and western New York. The reason why this happens is varied.

For the wholesaler, it’s because while there used to be a zillion mom-and-pop hardware stores, now there is essentially Home Depot and Lowes. No point in keeping 15 salespeople when you are really only dealing with a few customers.

For the raw materials salesman, the internet has taken over ordering. No point in keeping 15 salespeople when the computers work out most of the orders. You only need one or two people around to deal with problems or questions.

19

There are two basic trends:

  1. Utilize technology and automation to perform tasks that are repetitive, dangerous or tedious.

  2. Quantify and standardize complex tasks so that highly trained (and therefore highly paid) personal can be replaced by automation or generic processes that anyone can perform.

20

To return to the OP, this is a subject that I have thought about in depth before. Isaac Asimov was a great science fiction writer who sometimes came very close to covering this very topic, but as far as I know, this subject has never been delved into completely. The reason for this is probably because science fiction rarely deals with social economic situations.

I have to agree with Liagle. There would definitely be a period of “correction”, which is a simplified way to describe the bloodshed that would occur. I see this occuring in distinct phases:

  1. There is a price war between human labor and technology. The price of human labor reduces until it goes beneath the cost of technology. Then the price of technology reduces until goes beneath the cost of human labor, and vice versa. This is the phase that we are currently in.

  2. The result of phase 1 is that not only do salaries and paychecks reduce, but the dollar increases in value. We go through a period of deflation, or very slow inflation. On a global scale, this is good news for the US. Our goods become cheaper, although not as cheap as goods from China (unless the workers revolt and form Unions in the meantime), and we can undersell other countries. The demand for US goods increases across the globe because of our better technology at cheaper prices.

  3. But technology wins out over the cost of human labor, at least in the US. Unemployment in the US hits an alltime high, despite the increased demand for US goods - which are being manufactured by automation. By the end of this phase, almost 30 percent of the US is not bringing in a paycheck, but those that do have jobs are the ones actually designing and selling these technologies. A very few people and corporations become untellingly wealthy. Since technology isn’t as advanced in other countries, we can sell our technology for sky high prices to those countries. The result is that the US becomes a broker for technology worldwide.

  4. In order to survive, socialism takes over. Soon, a majority of the US population is surviving off government checks and stamps. The human spirit is broken, but the tax revenue really isn’t a problem. The main source of taxes comes from selling this technology overseas. Some Americans flee the US to potential jobs overseas. The rest that stay here are mostly unemployed, and spend their time and little money trying to survive. Socially, we will see single family houses housing several generations of the same family under one roof. Crime and poverty are rampant, but more focus is put on the family unit.

  5. As time passes, the US dips into second world country status and loses its Superpower status. But at the same time, the technologies that we exported have become more prevalent overseas, bringing some third world countries up to second world status. The playing field is now level again, and the US’s short Superpower status now appears as a brief bubble from bird’s eye view.

  6. I would like to say that at this point a Rapture happens, and we end up in some kind of utopian communism. But we won’t. The good news is that there will still be money, and high technology everywhere. The medical advances will be awesome. But we may regress back into a bartering type of commerce to handle such things as vehicles, water heaters, and roof repair.

But that’s just how I see it.