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wienercat t1_j80wzvq wrote

Reply to comment by CedarAndFerns in North American companies notch another record year for robot orders by darth_nadoma

> whatever the allowance is called, for all people to ensure they have income.

Universal basic income.

The scary part is that we will probably have a mass joblessness scenario due to automation before we actually admit that a UBI is necessary.

Getting companies to pay workers more has been a problem for decades, even when they have been enjoying huge productivity gains leading to ever growing profit margins.

Things are gonna get much worse for the unskilled labor market because of automation. Not that I have a problem with those soul sucking jobs going away, I have a problem with them going away and nothing being done to offset those people's income.

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SadMacaroon9897 t1_j82teto wrote

That's why it should not be funded by salaries but instead by land. Valuable land will be valuable no matter who owns it so the revenue can't flee. Likewise it'll temper the speculative nature of land ownership and provide a more consistent level of income.

Also fun fact: UBI was suggested over 100 years ago and that was the suggested method of sustaining it.

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Soi_Boi_13 t1_j84oim1 wrote

If you think only “unskilled” labor is going to feel the pain of this you have another thing coming to you. In some ways, skilled labor fields are most at risk. I can see most programming jobs getting automated away more quickly and easily than most plumbing jobs (though both will happen eventually).

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wienercat t1_j84u66z wrote

Lol someone isn't a programmer and probably doesn't work in skilled labor.

Most skilled labor jobs aren't as simple as you think. People having been telling my profession, accounting, that our jobs would be automated away for decades. The only stuff that's been automated away? The unskilled labor...

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grchelp2018 t1_j84yvgg wrote

People have been saying a lot of things for decades, doesn't mean it will never happen. AI is coming for skilled labor as well. You'll have one experienced guy being able to do the work of 5 with the help of ai.

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wienercat t1_j8533wd wrote

Never said it wouldn't happen. It's just not going to happen anytime soon.

Being able to pull from a database of resources to answer questions on an exam doesn't make an AI a qualified doctor or lawyer. It means it can properly query its own database.

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grchelp2018 t1_j899me3 wrote

A lot of knowledge work is simply knowing stuff and knowing what to look for and where. Our current setup doesn't allow for robot lawyers standing in front of a jury maybe but they can absolutely replace the associates doing the grunt work of finding precedents/cases, drafting and proof reading briefs etc.

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Soi_Boi_13 t1_j850eq6 wrote

I am literally a programmer, nice job.

You’re delusional if you don’t think your job will fall eventually.

And implying that only unskilled labor has been automated away is insane and a complete falsehood. There have been many skilled jobs that have been automated away long ago, such as flight engineers.

Middle management is falling by the wayside now.

In some ways, skilled labor is most at risk because labor costs for skilled labor are so much higher and it raises the incentives to eliminate it.

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wienercat t1_j852qsd wrote

If you are a programmer you should know that only basic code will be handled by automation and AI anytime soon. The basic shit that is so simple it can be Google. Anything above that is still beyond AI.

> You’re delusional if you don’t think your job will fall eventually.

Again, people have been saying that about my profession for decades. Saying it will be outsourced too. It's never successfully done long term, someone always ends up having to go back and redo the work or double check it because of errors.

Try telling lawyers, doctors, engineers, research scientists, and any other job where interpretation of rules or regulations occur that their jobs will be automated any time soon. They will laugh at you.

Like the headlines of ChatGPT being able to pass a bunch of professional exams. It doesn't mean it's capable of actually performing the job. It's capable of using data it's been given to answer questions. Give nearly any human access to a database of relevant knowledge, not even connected to the internet, during an exam and they will also pass.

I'm all for automating skilled labor work, I want a future where humans can explore human existence without the required pursuit of soul crushing jobs for money. But acting like it's going to happen anytime soon is lying to yourself.

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