BNW- Who Rob Our Traditional Salaries? (aka ROB O. T. S.)

FIRST GUESS:

John Maynard Keynes used the term as early as ............, warning: 

"We are being afflicted with a new disease of which some readers may not yet have heard the name, but of which they will hear a great deal in the years to come – namely, technological unemployment.

a) From AE (artcraft evolution) to IR (industrial revolution) took 2000 years1-“engines will free us from that which makes us automata job workers.”  

b)  From IR (industrial revolution) to AIR (artificial intelligence revolution)  takes 300 years
1-“automation frees us from that which makes us feel free.”  2- The nouveau-poor (precariat) will learn to live with less and enjoy all the new digital distractions, while the rich, well, they'll be the new benevolent ruling class'          (N. Carr)

In 1931, Aldous Huxley wrote  Brave New World. a book that has come to symbolise our instinctive reaction to the proposition of a happy pill: Born to run a mill. Another speculative idea slides into this argument—Brave New World echoed a successful factory in which Robots (we could call them Epsilons with Huxley) do all the rut (mechanical) work.

DEFINITIONS: 

               ............................   is  when .... 

• your neighbour loses his job. 
• you lose yours. 
• you, your neighbour and half the other people in your street lose their jobs too.

   use these:

 Recession   --- Catastrophe   --  Depression

EXAMPLE ONE. REPORTERS.
Notions of newsworthiness in a brave new world of automated content producer can lead us to any of these three: 
Automated Insights, Narrative Science, or another system built by IBM Research that can summarize sports events based only on tweets about them - according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Younger journalists may have less turf on which to prove themselves “better than a robot.”
  

SECOND GUESS. Some 1,896 experts responded to the following question:

The economic impact of robotic advances and AI— 

Self-driving cars, intelligent digital agents that can act for you, 

and robots are advancing rapidly.

Will networked, automated, artificial intelligence (AI) applications and robotic devices have displaced more jobs than they have created by 2025?

Join the ANSWER:

Some percentage of these experts (......%) envision a future in which  digital agents have displaced significant numbers of both blue- and white-collar workers—with  concerns about  increases in income inequality, unemployable masses of people.

The rest of the percentage of these experts (......%)  expect that technology will not displace more jobs than it creates by 2025.

DEBATE:

The race against the machine has begun. 

• And we are being OUT of the job market..... (outnumbered, outrun, outgunned and outflanked) by today’s increasingly widespread network of digital devices and algorithms.

1. Key themes: reasons to be hopeful 

1. Advances in technology may displace certain types of work, but historically they have been a net creator of jobs.
2. We will adapt to these changes by inventing entirely new types of work, and by taking advantage of uniquely human capabilities.
3. Technology will free us from day-to-day drudgery, and allow us to define our relationship with “work” in a more positive and socially beneficial way.
4. Ultimately, we as a society control our own destiny through the choices we make.

Key themes: reasons to be concerned

• Impacts from automation have thus far impacted mostly blue-collar employment; the coming wave of innovation threatens to upend white-collar work as well.
• Certain highly-skilled workers will succeed wildly in this new environment—but far more may be displaced into lower paying service industry jobs at best, or permanent unemployment at worst.
• Our educational system is not adequately preparing us for work of the future, and our political and economic institutions are poorly equipped to handle these hard choices.

FIRST GUESS:  YEAR 1930
SECOND GUESS:  48% NEGATIVE + 52% POSITIVE 

Robots are the way forward

EXAMPLE ONE. LAWYERS.Lawyers, even at the highest level, are vulnerable to the advances of artificial intelligence as Amazon, Google and Facebook focus on ways of replacing humans with robots in all parts of the workplace.

1- Nicholas Carr, author of The Glass Cage, 

'lawyers will be usurped by algorithms - citing Lex Machina software (which predicts the outcome of patent lawsuits) as an early example.'


2- Kevin Kelly, 'senior maverick' at Wired Magazine stated: 

2a) 'You'll be paid in future depending on how well you work with robots.'

2b) 'the main beneficiaries of automation will be those already rich enough to own the technology, leading to a world of billionaires and beggars.'

3- Thomas Friedman notes:
“Average is over, is connected to job skills. apparently means that you can’t get a good job anymore if your skill level is only average.'

 4- American economist Tyler Cowen about a brave new world:

'The key divide is between 12% of people who can work effectively with artificially intelligent machines. new elite as a “hyper-meritocracy”, and everyone else 88%.'

5- Andrew Keen adds: 

'for every senior maverick able to work with robots, there will be a legion of teachers, lawyers, accountants and diagnosticians whose "skills" will be increasingly redundant in the age of the intelligent machine.'

The vastly reduced costs to business, say the optimists, will create a boom that will ultimately lead to millions of new jobs — jobs that we can’t even envisage yet. 

May 2013

It’s time to talk about the burgeoning robot middle class | MIT