[FRIAM] journalists
Russ Abbott
russ.abbott at gmail.com
Thu Jun 4 12:11:19 EDT 2020
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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>
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