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Will employees still be useful in the future?

Anything related to matters of the mind

TDWorld

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I've been thinking, do you guys believe that with AI, Machine Learning, automation, employees have any chance of surviving in a digital world?

My point is, that robots will be much more powerful. How could humans compete?
 
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ElleMg

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I've been thinking, do you guys believe that with AI, Machine Learning, automation, employees have any chance of surviving in a digital world?

My point is, that robots will be much more powerful. How could humans compete?

I guess it depends on the field/industry. Robots are powerful but humans have creativity and will still be in demand
 

TDWorld

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I guess it depends on the field/industry. Robots are powerful but humans have creativity and will still be in demand
It's interesting. I do believe that humans will still want to speak to another human. Creativity could be paramount, but in terms of tasks or processes, will we have an advantage? The answer is no.

Also there's a lot of people who have been baffled by an AI's creativity.

Look at GPT-3 and 4 where AI's have been able to produce high quality text in the fraction of a time.

This is just the beginning, this tech has been rising for the last few months. I cannot imagine how life changing it's going to be. Work might be something of the past, leaving millions in distress.
 

VivaciousVipin

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I've been thinking, do you guys believe that with AI, Machine Learning, automation, employees have any chance of surviving in a digital world?

My point is, that robots will be much more powerful. How could humans compete?
Well yeah of course human will survive, but how the that future will look like, I am not sure.

In fact I'm curious what we'll in achieve in next 100 years or so. We'll be a spacefaring species, perhaps AI would be intricate part of our lives, possibilities are endless.
 
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Kak

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trylks

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Read the books from MJ DeMarco, in particular the CENTS commandments, and in particular the E: Entry.

If a robot can do it, you do not want to do it. If anyone can do it, you do not want to do it.

Instead, find something that sucks, and do it with a unique selling proposition. If you need employees, robots are cheaper.
 

TDWorld

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Itizn

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I'm still getting my operations up off the ground, but I'd say yes.

There are more than a few things I would gladly hire for if I had the capital for.

Sure, some of those positions could be delegated to software or apps, but I'd rather communicate about it with a human being.
 

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Yes, absolutely, with 100 percent certainty they will.

Not only that, their lives will improve and become more prosperous.

An oldie but good one: ‎Kill Bigger Radio with Kyle Keegan: Will AI Impoverish Everyone? Absolutely NOT - Ep 71 on Apple Podcasts

What you find, interestingly enough, is that there is a LOT of money to be made in democratization. Currently, so many things are gated to the wealthiest members of society, and bringing those things to the common man has made a lot of people extremely rich. Silicon Valley knows this.

Robinhood (whatever your opinion on what they did over the past few months) exists to make participation in the financial markets available to everyone. Shopify exists to make it possible for everyone to sell things. Google has made it so anyone can advertise their service or product. Tensorflow and AWS make it so anyone can get started building with machine learning, although the knowledge barrier is still high. I give it 10 years before these barriers are knocked down significantly.

A lot of people have a doom-and-gloom idea that the rich will simply make it so they get all the benefits while the poor get none. This does happen (particularly with the help of corrupt governments), but if you pay attention, it never lasts for long. Think about it: the Shopify guys are billionaires, but their product has made thousands of millionaires and has had a hand in some billion dollar businesses.

What will this mean? Knowledge workers will be able to use AI/ML tools to make their job even more justifiable, not less. Lower skilled workers will be able to acquire the means to build their careers or businesses at a much faster pace and with a lot less of a barrier than traditional education.

Sure, there probably will be an uncomfortable transition period while society catches up with technology. But in the end, I envision a more open and connected world.

But this is not inevitable. This will only happen if the incentives are in the right place, and if entrepreneurs do their part to discover killer apps for these technologies.
 

Kak

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Guest-5ty5s4

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I've been thinking, do you guys believe that with AI, Machine Learning, automation, employees have any chance of surviving in a digital world?

My point is, that robots will be much more powerful. How could humans compete?
100%.

Instead of performing low value tasks, employees can do higher value tasks.

Higher touch, better service, more human interaction, more *thinking* at the workplace, etc.
 

PapaGang

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A machine learning expert said that the trades for instance will be safe for quite some time.
Makes sense.

Do you know how hard it would be to program a robot to do finish carpentry work?
Or run new water lines, or even put up sheetrock and finish it?
Anything that involves fine tuned motor skills, distance measurement, estimation, reasoning, sight, dexterity, strength and balance would be difficult to program into an all-in-one unit.

Adobe can't even create a stable Photoshop update for the latest Mac OS.
Apple has problems with their simple Notes program crashing. Last thing you need is some robot flying through the drywall in your living room because it spazzed while receiving an update.

We're way off from having to worry about some Cyberdyne Systems cyborg taking over any trade or skilled labor job.
However, that dude in San Francisco that created a burger making machine? Genius. McDonald's people, they are in trouble. Those jobs will mostly disappear in the next 10-15 years. Good. They can do something better with their lives anyway.

I believe a lot of jobs will be safe. People tend to think in extremes when they imagine future scenarios.
 
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Guest-5ty5s4

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A machine learning expert said that the trades for instance will be safe for quite some time.
Makes sense.

Do you know how hard it would be to program a robot to do finish carpentry work?
Or run new water lines, or even put up sheetrock and finish it?
Anything that involves fine tuned motor skills, distance measurement, estimation, reasoning, sight, dexterity, strength and balance would be difficult to program into an all-in-one unit.

Adobe can't even create a stable Photoshop update for the latest Mac OS.
Apple has problems with their simple Notes program crashing. Last thing you need is some robot flying through the drywall in your living room because it spazzed while receiving an update.

We're way off from having to worry about some Cyberdyne Systems cyborg taking over any trade or skilled labor job.
However, that dude in San Francisco that created a burger making machine? Genius. McDonald's people, they are in trouble. Those jobs will mostly disappear in the next 10-15 years. Good. They can do something better with their lives anyway.

I believe a lot of jobs will be safe. People tend to think in extremes when they imagine future scenarios.
This, precisely.

The other thing people forget is that most of these tasks are not “do the same thing over and over” kind of tasks.

Welding, for instance, is easy to automate if you build the same exact product 500 times.

But when you have 78 welds in different sizes, on different locations, and the project is just one custom job of 100 you do that year... no, a robot isn’t going to do that.

At least not for a long time.

But when it does - the smart companies will be investing in that technology.

edit: also this is not a new conversation. When the industrial Revolution started, women who sewed dresses were losing their livelihoods and going to work in factories! But the difference was instead of spending 12 hours a day for a week to make one dress, they could work on a machine that made 100 dresses in one day!!

What that really means is far more value. And easier work - the women using the spinning wheels were breaking their backs and going blind from the delicate, intricate work they were doing that was far too inefficient.
 
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Dora Wi

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I always think about how people have been fearing that machines will replace workers ever since the industrial revolution. Of course, AI is another level, but we still need people to develop and maintain machines, and I don't think that will change any time soon. I think there is simply an ongoing shift in the kinds of employees / job fields the world needs.
 

Tony100

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edit: also this is not a new conversation. When the industrial Revolution started, women who sewed dresses were losing their livelihoods and going to work in factories! But the difference was instead of spending 12 hours a day for a week to make one dress, they could work on a machine that made 100 dresses in one day!!
To add onto that, I read that 600,000 jobs were lost in Britain when the sewing machine was invented in the 19th century. How many other jobs were lost that century because of similar inventions? Back to the present day there are 1.7 million people unemployed in the UK (and the population has increased by like 400% since the mid 19th century).

This shows people re-train and do higher value work. It's also how wealth is created. The costs of manufacturing clothes would have gone down. This means prices fall and people have more income that they can spend on other things. Those 600,000 workers probably went through a rough time during this transition but their wages and livelihoods most likely got better as they re-trained in new opportunities.
 
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Guest-5ty5s4

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To add onto that, I read that 600,000 jobs were lost in Britain when the sewing machine was invented in the 19th century. How many other jobs were lost that century because of similar inventions? Back to the present day there are 1.7 million people unemployed in the UK (and the population has increased by like 400% since the mid 19th century).

This shows people re-train and do higher value work. It's also how wealth is created. The costs of manufacturing clothes would have gone down. This means prices fall and people have more income that they can spend on other things. Those 600,000 workers probably went through a rough time during this transition but their wages and livelihoods most likely got better as they re-trained in new opportunities.
Exactly.

And everyone is better off, because now instead of the poor wearing old rags for their clothes, a nice dress is cheap and affordable for just about everyone.

It's crazy how awesome this process has been throughout history, and how little credit it gets.
 
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Lyinx

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What that really means is far more value. And easier work - the women using the spinning wheels were breaking their backs and going blind from the delicate, intricate work they were doing that was far too inefficient.
exactly, 100 yrs ago you would find every spinster spinning wheels to make cloth
now, it's done by machines and put unto big rolls and transported here and there
in 100 years from now, the machines will spin it, cut it, and put it on the shelf, ready for someone to come by and pick it up (and then it will replenish it with another one)
in 100 years from then, you will get up in the morning and your personal robot will have crafted a dress/pants/suit for you to wear that day. it will wash it during the night, and be ready to go the next day. The rich will have someone to hand tailor it with their logos
100 years from then, the peasants will have robot crafted, customized clothes, and the rich will have spray on clothes (maybe, maybe not)

automation just leads to more consumption if we aren't careful, which brings on the earth saving people, who complain and complain, but they still want to consume as much as the next person does.
 

WJK

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I've been thinking, do you guys believe that with AI, Machine Learning, automation, employees have any chance of surviving in a digital world?

My point is, that robots will be much more powerful. How could humans compete?
It has already changed during my professional life. When I started RE appraising in the 1980s, I needed 4, full-time secretaries in order to produce reports. I bought cases of film and office supplies. I need a photo lab to develop my pictures that my secretaries pasted into the reports. I needed preprinted forms from a printing company to put through the dot matrix printers to print the pages. I needed a corner office down the street from my home in order to house all of these activities. The reports were hand-delivered or mailed to the client. Think of all the people's jobs that my business supported. By the time I retired, I was a one-woman show. My reports were composed, completed, and sent via my computer out of my home office. The pictures were all digital. Nothing was printed on paper or touched by an employee's hands.
 

Tony100

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Exactly.

And everyone is better off, because now instead of the poor wearing old rags for their clothes, a nice dress is cheap and affordable for just about everyone.

It's crazy how awesome this process has been throughout history, and how little credit it gets.
Yeah that's true! Maybe we can blame the media for the lack of credit this gets. "600,000 jobs lost because of new machine" would have been the headline and the workers that lost their jobs wouldn't be happy.

It annoys me today how the media focus so much on physical stores struggling but barely cover the successful rise of e-commerce companies.
 

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