RE: The Robots are Coming!
February 7, 2012 at 11:44 am
(This post was last modified: February 7, 2012 at 12:16 pm by Mister Agenda.)
(February 6, 2012 at 2:31 pm)RW_9 Wrote:(February 6, 2012 at 12:52 pm)Mister Agenda Wrote: most of them are intellectually average or lower
Intelligence does not equal education. Don't be a douche.
Logically, 50% of the population has an IQ of 100 or less. Do you think it's likely that they are under-represented in low wage labor positions? I did not equate intelligence and education. Do you maintain that there is no connection at all between intelligence and likeliness of attaining a college degree? I acknowledge I may have been insenstive in my phrasing, but I am trying to be accurate, not PC. And in the interest of accuracy, please interpret 'most' as more than half. I have no idea of the actual proportions, but the alternative would be that intelligence has no impact on attainment whatsoever and that it's 50% on either side of the 100 IQ mark no matter what economic class you're in. That seems implausible. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that 40% of people doing unskilled labor are on the bright side though, people aren't obliged to seek high-paying jobs and luck in circumstances has a big impact. That still leaves my concern that a lot of people aren't going to be able to find jobs if unskilled labor is automated jusified.
(February 6, 2012 at 2:32 pm)thesummerqueen Wrote: Intelligence does not equal job acceptance. I do my job quite well. I make less than someone who doesn't because I don't have a piece of paper stating that I went to some boozy 4 year college or other.
In the USA there is an unfortunate tendency to make formal educational attainment artificially valuable. I recall losing the fight against favoring data entry operators with a college degree because we were on a government contract that incentivized us to hire as many college graduates as possible. I confess, I never actually weighted college experience in selecting an applicant, I don't consider it indicative of how good a job they would do. I'm sure other departments made up the difference.
I'm reminded of the quote from Dash in The Incredibles: 'When everyone is special, no one is.' Being awash in diplomas doesn't give us a better work force, it just cheapens the diplomas so people are investing ever more in higher education and getting less out of it, except for professions where formal education is really needed.
I've found many managers regard a degree as valuable only in that it shows the applicant has a little ambition and can finish something they start. I think holding down a previous job is just as useful a gauge.
Back to robots: I expect my department to be obsolete in it's current form about the time I qualify for early retirement (convenient, that). Advances in optical character recognition and reasonable expectations that more people use the web to submit documents rather than sending in paper make difficult for me to anticipate still needing 20 full-time operators. Granted, the department will probably be re-named and absorb new duties or whatever remaining tasks will be absorbed into another department; but keyer/operators are becoming obsolete. They will be followed by phone service operators as computer personas with advanced voice recognition and melodic tones take on more and more of the calls. It won't be that long before one person can do the work that it takes ten to do now: it already only takes one person to do the work ten did on phone service 20 years ago.
I see how a lot of my functions could be automated as well, so that one manager could run five departments with the workstations automatically tracking hours, performance, attendance, ratings, and even disciplinary actions; leaving the manager's main duties as special projects and walking around making sure everyone feels like there's a human in charge. I'm not down about it, I have a lot of options in life. I can see a lot of benefits springing from soaring productivity. I also see the kinds of dangers that Chuck describes. How do we avoid winding up with an unemployed 'underclass' that has to be kept pacified so they can't summon the outrage to fight a system that denies them the opportunity to satisfy ambition or feel like they are providing for their families?
Some technological left-turns might be upgrading their brains, or being amazed at what they can do creatively given laptop AIs and cheap robot labor; but that's not exactly a plan.
