Doesn't job loss always accompany changes in tech?

[John Smith]

Coal jobs are not coming back.

Neither are typewriters.

Just as computers have replaced typewriters, new energy sources will replace coal and oil over time.

Robots replace people more and more.

[Paul Pless]

Doesn't job loss always accompany changes in tech?

no.

[Jim Bow]

Bloomberg magazine recently claimed that 89,000,000 blue collar jobs will be replaced by robots by 2035.

[skuthorp]

Bloomberg magazine recently claimed that 89,000,000 blue collar jobs will be replaced by robots by 2035.

Likely so, but history says that every change in tech. eventually results in more jobs.
Depending on how many Covid kills or maims or effects the birth rate, the robots might actually be needed………………………….

[epoxyboy]

I bet there are plenty of white collar jobs that go the way of the dodo too. Accounting has to be an absolute sitter for AI automation, including detecting fraudulent patterns of behaviour.
Software development, my job, is so much hard grind under the bonnet at the moment. Come up with a descriptive development model (I want xyz, instead of how the hell do I achieve xyz) and that industry will become unrecognizable. It would be analogous to an old school mechanic using a timing light, compared with plugging in an OBD2 diagnostic analyser. That might actually get more people employed though - technology as an enabler.

Pete

[skuthorp]

Technology will drive my grand neices choice of career. Originally medical robotics (prosthetics), she thinks that will be a bit old hat and is now shooting for regeneration, turning on dormant genes. At 14 she is already talking to the existing research team in Melbourne.

[Peerie Maa]

I bet there are plenty of white collar jobs that go the way of the dodo too. Accounting has to be an absolute sitter for AI automation, including detecting fraudulent patterns of behaviour.
Software development, my job, is so much hard grind under the bonnet at the moment. Come up with a descriptive development model (I want xyz, instead of how the hell do I achieve xyz) and that industry will become unrecognizable. It would be analogous to an old school mechanic using a timing light, compared with plugging in an OBD2 diagnostic analyser. That might actually get more people employed though - technology as an enabler.

Pete

Computing does not reduce the work load. It provides more data in finer detail faster. People still have to read it and make decisions based on the analysis.

[Too Little Time]

Eventually we will have enough cheap labor combined with automation that we will not need most workers. And then the riots will begin.

[CWSmith]

The technology that costs jobs (although fewer than it might seem) are the jobs with repetitive motion like assembly lines and coal mining. Who wants to go back into the coal mine with pick and shovel? I certainly don't.

Technology creates jobs like installing photovoltaics and repairing machines. It is true that we are moving into a societal model where the population could (should) be slowly reduced by having smaller families. This is not a bad thing.

[David W Pratt]

Technology will drive my grand neices choice of career. Originally medical robotics (prosthetics), she thinks that will be a bit old hat and is now shooting for regeneration, turning on dormant genes. At 14 she is already talking to the existing research team in Melbourne.

Good for her. The techniques that offer control of stem cells will, likely, also be useful in controlling cancer.

[epoxyboy]

Computing does not reduce the work load. It provides more data in finer detail faster. People still have to read it and make decisions based on the analysis.

I'm talking about the way we write software in the first place, not what we do with it once it's written. But to your analysis and decision making comment - given the number of data points a computer can correlate compared with a meat brain, they already are making a huge number of better decisions than we ever could - just look at the way industrial strength stock trading works. It's a bit Dunning Kruger to think that we can do a better job of that, but people want to think thst they are in control.

Anyway, we are already seeing automated code generation from high level modelling tools like Matlab. The art now is in setting up the models, writing code the old school way will slowly disappear as the tools get better. In my humble opinion .

Pete