[FRIAM] journalists

Russ Abbott russ.abbott at gmail.com
Thu Jun 4 12:15:32 EDT 2020 

Along those lines, my email included this.

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On Thu, Jun 4, 2020 at 9:11 AM Russ Abbott <russ.abbott at gmail.com> wrote:

> I suspect that there is no limit to the kinds of services we will want.
> How about personal shoppers, which has become a thing these days.  I can't
> think of all the services we may come up with, but I doubt we won't be able
> to think of enough to keep everyone busy.
>
> What I'd be more interested in is an analysis of how we all pay for it.
> There used to be a joke when people started moving en-mass to California.
> What will they all do? They will do each other's laundry.
>
> On Thu, Jun 4, 2020 at 12:52 AM Pieter Steenekamp <
> pieters at randcontrols.co.za> wrote:
>
>> I think we are talking about different things.
>>
>> I agree that all jobs will not be replaced by AI and automation. Not in
>> the near future in any case.
>>
>> My point is not that there will not be any jobs in the near future. There
>> will be jobs for many people. We will need nurses and plumbers. My question
>> is whether it is possible that in ten years there won't be employment
>> opportunities for say 20% of the people wanting employment? I'm not making
>> a prediction, I'm sketching a scenario and asking how likely it is. If yes,
>> then Houston we have a problem. I'm confident in the ingenuity of humanity
>> to solve the problem.
>>
>> My question is what is the possibility that in say the next ten years the
>> job losses caused by the Amazons and Teslas will be sufficiently more than
>> the additional jobs for nurses and plumbers and additional other new jobs
>> to cause social problems?
>>
>> On Thu, 4 Jun 2020 at 08:17, Russ Abbott <russ.abbott at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> I suspect there will be no end to service jobs.  We will always (at
>>> least for a long time) need nurses. No AI is going to provide a good enough
>>> human touch. Similarly for other health-care jobs. Many are low-tech, like
>>> changing bedpans in nursing homes, but they require people to do them.
>>>
>>> More generally, I suspect it will be a long time before AI conquers
>>> physicality.  Computers can do lots of symbolic stuff. But when it comes to
>>> dealing with the physical (and biological and human) world, that's a
>>> different story.
>>>
>>> What is likely to happen, though, is that we will re-architect our world
>>> so that it requires less physical touch. It would be a real challenge to
>>> replace sanitation workers with today's robots. But it wouldn't be that
>>> hard to design a sanitation system that worked pretty well
>>> without people--as long as we could train ourselves to feed it garbage
>>> properly.
>>>
>>> What about plumbers? It's hard to imagine today's robots making a house
>>> call to fix a broken water pipe -- somewhere in the house. But perhaps if
>>> houses were differently designed, and equipped with enough sensors, etc. we
>>> could get along with a lot fewer repair people.
>>>
>>> -- Russ Abbott
>>> Professor, Computer Science
>>> California State University, Los Angeles
>>>
>>>
>>> On Wed, Jun 3, 2020 at 9:59 PM Pieter Steenekamp <
>>> pieters at randcontrols.co.za> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Tom,
>>>>
>>>> I agree with you. I think the chances of AI and automation "taking over
>>>> most jobs" within say 10 years are very slim indeed. Further, as AI and
>>>> automation replaces some jobs, other jobs are created, so that with a
>>>> healthy economy you can have full employment. But that's not my point. It's
>>>> safe to say that as AI and automation replaces some jobs, new jobs are
>>>> being created. The million dollar question is how many new jobs are being
>>>> created for every one job loss. I argue that if that figure is less than
>>>> one, society faces huge problems.
>>>>
>>>> I don't make predictions, I look at possible future scenarios. For now
>>>> I'll discuss only two:
>>>>
>>>> a) After life returns to "normal" (whatever that is?), online shopping
>>>> will replace many small and "Mom and Pop" retail businesses. There could be
>>>> a significant nett loss in retail jobs. What are the owners and employees
>>>> of the lost small businesses going to do? Amazon is not going to employ
>>>> them.
>>>>
>>>> b) Peter Thiel famously said don't bet against Elon Musk. Maybe Elon
>>>> will not succeed this time, but there is certainly a reasonable chance that
>>>> he will succeed in full self driving cars and trucks within say ten years,
>>>> or very soon after that. I don't see enough other new jobs being created
>>>> to offset the job losses in human drivers.
>>>>
>>>> To come back to your point - I agree that in the near future AI will
>>>> not be able to do everything. Even if AI does not do everything, society
>>>> could still have big problems. All that needs to happen is that the ratio
>>>> of new jobs to disappearing jobs to be less than one. Maybe it will happen,
>>>> maybe not. But I argue there is a reasonable chance of that happening.
>>>>
>>>> Just to be clear, I'm not a Luddite. I am convinced there is enough
>>>> meaningful work for unemployed people to do. Let AI and automation do the
>>>> boring stuff, and let humans do the exciting creative stuff. We just need
>>>> to work out the details of how to organise the economy when a fraction of
>>>> the people are required to provide all the goods and services for all the
>>>> people.
>>>>
>>>> On Thu, 4 Jun 2020 at 01:19, Tom Johnson <tom at jtjohnson.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Pieter:
>>>>> Sorry for the delay in responding.
>>>>>
>>>>> The use of AI-type technologies has been around for 15-20 years as
>>>>> applied to constant, data-related topics, e.g. stock market stories ("The
>>>>> share price of X corporation rose Y on heavy trading today.") and sports
>>>>> stories -- football (yours and ours), baseball, horse racing, etc.  In a
>>>>> similar manner, obituaries can also be written if someone plugs in the
>>>>> vital components: So-and-so died X.  He was born Y in X and attended Z high
>>>>> school.
>>>>>
>>>>> I think though, it's going to be a while before AI can do everything.
>>>>> For example, all phenomena/stories have Qualitative, Quantitative and
>>>>> Geographic aspects wrapped up in a Timeline to understand and reflect
>>>>> change(s).  The journalist, ideally, has to determine where to get the best
>>>>> data -- and in what format(s) -- to understand the phenomena, then what
>>>>> tools are best for analyzing it and, finally, how will the findings be best
>>>>> presented (this could be presented in multiple formats, but each will have
>>>>> different requirements).
>>>>>
>>>>> Or to take a current live example, if reporters are on the streets
>>>>> covering a demonstration, can AI be trained to "see" the best photo
>>>>> opportunity from infinite angles?  I don't think so, at least not yet.
>>>>>
>>>>> Tom
>>>>>
>>>>> ============================================
>>>>> Tom Johnson - tom at jtjohnson.com
>>>>> Institute for Analytic Journalism   --     Santa Fe, NM USA
>>>>> 505.577.6482(c)                                    505.473.9646(h)
>>>>> *NM Foundation for Open Government* <http://nmfog.org>
>>>>> *Check out It's The People's Data
>>>>> <https://www.facebook.com/pages/Its-The-Peoples-Data/1599854626919671>*
>>>>>
>>>>> ============================================
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> On Sun, May 31, 2020 at 12:34 AM Pieter Steenekamp <
>>>>> pieters at randcontrols.co.za> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> I'm not a journalist, but offer my opinion in any case:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> a) Accoriding to Forbes
>>>>>> https://www.forbes.com/sites/federicoguerrini/2020/05/30/dozens-of-msn-journalists-to-be-replaced-by-robots/#14c9ff97333e ,
>>>>>> Microsoft does not produce their own stories, but uses editors to select
>>>>>> and adapt stories from other sources. They are replacing staff with AI, but
>>>>>> because they don't have journalists, they're not replacing journalists with
>>>>>> AI.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> b) I know it's opinion only, but IMO in a reasonably short time most
>>>>>> services and products will be provided with a fraction of all humans, AI
>>>>>> and automation will do the balance of the work.AI selecting news stories is
>>>>>> one example, Another example is, although Elon is probably not going to
>>>>>> meet his schedule with full self-driving cars, the probability is
>>>>>> reasonably high that he will achieve it in say 5 years. This is going to
>>>>>> cause massive unemployment - drivers are not going to learn to code, and
>>>>>> coders are being replaced by AI in any case too. If you're not a top
>>>>>> programmer, your employment prospects are not secure. Our challenge is to
>>>>>> adapt. I'm not American, but if America should elect Andrew Yang (maybe
>>>>>> 2024?) as president then America could lead the world in adapting for a
>>>>>> world where there are not conventional employment opportunities for all.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On Sat, 30 May 2020 at 20:34, Prof David West <profwest at fastmail.fm>
>>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> I see that MSN is replacing human journalists with AIs. Curious as
>>>>>>> to the reaction from real journalists among FRIAM?
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> davew
>>>>>>>
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