14 people killed on Alberta highways this weekend

[Coach]

Originally Posted by CliffFletcher

Yes, but there's reason to believe this time it's different. New technologies and new businesses are not labour-intensive. You only need so many software developers to keep them afloat. Kodak once employed 150,00 people. When Instragram was bought out, it employed less than 20. Google has a valuation bigger than IBM's ever was, and employs a tiny fraction of the number of people IBM employed at its peak. Even in professions like legal, accounting, and medicine, grunt-work is being automated. Five developers can create a product that puts thousands or tens of thousands of out of work.

So what do people transition to? Services? Are our grandchildren all going to be personal trainers and sommeliers? The question there is who's going to have the money for those services if 70 per cent of people are unnecessary to the economy? Maybe each mega-rich innovator and venture capitalist will employ hundreds of lackeys to serve his every need. Doesn't sound like an especially appealing future.

“I must study Politics and War that my sons may have liberty to study Mathematics and Philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce, and agriculture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain.”

John Adams

I once gave this quote to my boss to attach to his morning client email (as I do everyday). He hated it lol.

[Phanuthier]

Originally Posted by peter12

IQ requirements would rule out about 80% of the population.

No, not really true at all. I don't think its really that different from the corporate infrastructure of a Suncore or Husky. Lots of those jobs can be targetted to a the average person, any many of the trivial jobs can be targetted to lower IQ.

Originally Posted by CliffFletcher

Yes, but there's reason to believe this time it's different. New technologies and new businesses are not labour-intensive. You only need so many software developers to keep them afloat. Kodak once employed 150,00 people. When Instragram was bought out, it employed less than 20. Google has a valuation bigger than IBM's ever was, and employs a tiny fraction of the number of people IBM employed at its peak. Even in professions like legal, accounting, and medicine, grunt-work is being automated. Five developers can create a product that puts thousands or tens of thousands of out of work.

So what do people transition to? Services? Are our grandchildren all going to be personal trainers and sommeliers? The question there is who's going to have the money for those services if 70 per cent of people are unnecessary to the economy? Maybe each mega-rich innovator and venture capitalist will employ hundreds of lackeys to serve his every need. Doesn't sound like an especially appealing future.

Also not really true. Software infrastructure inherently will have bugs, the bigger the system, the more software developers that are needed to fix those bugs. 95% of the software developers are probably doing that.

Also, more opportunities will be out there for all levels.

Also, more of the jobs will go towards more useful tasks. This is no different then then the concerns for the past century. Its like saying now that machines can help drill oil rather then using a shovel, where will the jobs go? Well there were still a large number of people working at oil refineries.

what will be true is you may need more skills if you would like to make a higher salary, as the bar for a office job is probably raised.

Originally Posted by Cube Inmate

In addition to the processing power that goes into individual cars' "brains," the other huge factor available to advance auto-pilot is the ubiquity of wireless communications for information sharing. What we'll see is that rather than relying on a static map (or GIS database) of road infrastructure, the "database" will be dynamically updated and maintained by every single vehicle that uses the road. Potholes...pedestrians leaving football games...ice-covered roads -- in 10 years or less, our cars will know far more about the current state of our roads than we do now. AND, our cars will know about problems on the road minutes before encountering them, rather than seconds before (relying on an attentive driver watching the road)..

this is how i see it

Originally Posted by CroFlames

Artificial intelligence is a whole other ball game. The theory is that a computer can learn faster than a human can, and given enough time, the computers will be learning at such a rate that they will become smarter than humans. This is a real possibility. This video does a great job explaining it. And this guy is anything but a nutjob/conspiracy theorist.

also not really true at all, not really what AI is about. it may describe its application but I think this is a problem when you get a non-scientist trying to describe a science. you get some really weird interpretations and extrapolations.


(LOL at them using trig and quantum mechanic equations to describe how AI works, pretty much tells you how reputable the source is. they may as well have Schrodingers cat in there)

[CroFlames]

He explicitly said describing how AI works is beyond the scope of the video.

And yes he is "scientist". I believe he is a physics professor in England.

[Phanuthier]

really? well I guess academics do live in a utopian ivory tower. There are so many parts of what he says that make me roll my eyes or want to point out things he did not consider. But I guess thats just my POV.

Yes, some jobs get automated out. Some become more efficient. But thats been natural human progression, and humans have always filled that gap with something else. But lots of stuff out there still require custom work. Not to mention bugs that are inherent in the architecture (so it can do some but not all). Simple tools that I would think could be automated still are not yet (for many reasons I won't go into) ... so while you can see proof of concept, they aren't going to take over all jobs.

at least, in the next 2 decades, I don't see his concerns to be an issue. In 50-100 years though? I guess, not sure where the world situation will be and and it would take some sort of ground breaking new technology that would not only make this possible, but financially viable, systematically robust and reliable and the timing of the opportunity will have to match up. Its one thing for a robot to play chess, its another to do custom work that it "learned" (not to mention the capacity for it to process that information)

[peter12]

Originally Posted by Phanuthier

really? well I guess academics do live in a utopian ivory tower. There are so many parts of what he says that make me roll my eyes or want to point out things he did not consider. But I guess thats just my POV.

Yes, some jobs get automated out. Some become more efficient. But thats been natural human progression, and humans have always filled that gap with something else. But lots of stuff out there still require custom work. Not to mention bugs that are inherent in the architecture (so it can do some but not all). Simple tools that I would think could be automated still are not yet (for many reasons I won't go into) ... so while you can see proof of concept, they aren't going to take over all jobs.

at least, in the next 2 decades, I don't see his concerns to be an issue. In 50-100 years though? I guess, not sure where the world situation will be and and it would take some sort of ground breaking new technology that would not only make this possible, but financially viable, systematically robust and reliable and the timing of the opportunity will have to match up. Its one thing for a robot to play chess, its another to do custom work that it "learned" (not to mention the capacity for it to process that information)

I think this is a reasonable perspective to take.