[FRIAM] journalists
Tom Johnson
tom at jtjohnson.com
Thu Jun 4 12:21:11 EDT 2020
Pieter:
Yes, I agree that there will be, overall, that it is likely there will be a
net loss of what today we call jobs.
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 Wed, Jun 3, 2020 at 10:59 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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