{"id":8175,"date":"2011-11-07T10:14:05","date_gmt":"2011-11-07T09:14:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.limbicnutrition.com\/blog\/?p=8175"},"modified":"2023-01-06T11:42:06","modified_gmt":"2023-01-06T10:42:06","slug":"robots-and-software-really-are-eating-jobs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.limbicnutrition.com\/blog\/robots-and-software-really-are-eating-jobs\/","title":{"rendered":"Robots and software really are eating jobs"},"content":{"rendered":"

Following on from my post last night (“Robots and the Chinese<\/a>“), I received a great link in the mail this morning.<\/p>\n

From the Economist, “Difference Engine: Luddite legacy<\/a>“:<\/p>\n

But here is the question: if the pace of technological progress is accelerating faster than ever, as all the evidence indicates it is, why has unemployment remained so stubbornly high\u2014despite the rebound in business profits to record levels? Two-and-a-half years after the Great Recession officially ended, unemployment has remained above 9% in America. That is only one percentage point better than the country\u2019s joblessness three years ago at the depths of the recession.<\/p>\n

…The conventional explanation for America’s current plight is that, at an annualised 2.5% for the most recent quarter (compared with an historical average of 3.3%), the economy is simply not expanding fast enough to put all the people who lost their jobs back to work. Consumer demand, say economists like Dr Tyson, is evidently not there for companies to start hiring again. Clearly, too many chastened Americans are continuing to pay off their debts and save for rainy days, rather than splurging on things they may fancy but can easily manage without.<\/p>\n

There is a good deal of truth in that. But it misses a crucial change that economists are loth to accept, though technologists have been concerned about it for several years. This is the disturbing thought that, sluggish business cycles aside, America’s current employment woes stem from a precipitous and permanent change caused by not too little technological progress, but too much. The evidence is irrefutable that computerised automation, networks and artificial intelligence (AI)\u2014including machine-learning, language-translation, and speech- and pattern-recognition software\u2014are beginning to render many jobs simply obsolete.<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Following on from my post last night (“Robots and the Chinese“), I received a great link in the mail this morning. From the Economist, “Difference Engine: Luddite legacy“: But here is the question: if the pace of technological progress is accelerating faster than ever, as all the evidence indicates it is, why has unemployment remained … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[32,33,19,22],"tags":[300,296],"class_list":["post-8175","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business","category-computing","category-sociology-social-sciences","category-tech-internet","tag-processed","tag-published"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/prY0k-27R","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":8172,"url":"https:\/\/www.limbicnutrition.com\/blog\/robots-and-the-chinese\/","url_meta":{"origin":8175,"position":0},"title":"Robots and the Chinese","author":"Limbic","date":"November 6, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"In a recent article ( Are jobs obsolete? - CNN.com) , Douglas Rushkoff points out that the reason for the US Jobless Recovery is that technology is replacing humans at a faster rate than jobs can be created. New technologies are wreaking havoc on employment figures -- from EZpasses ousting\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Business, Economics & Finance"","block_context":{"text":"Business, Economics & Finance","link":"https:\/\/www.limbicnutrition.com\/blog\/category\/business\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":16884,"url":"https:\/\/www.limbicnutrition.com\/blog\/merry-christmas-to-you-and-your-robots\/","url_meta":{"origin":8175,"position":1},"title":"Merry Christmas to you and your robots","author":"Limbic","date":"December 23, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"","rel":"","context":"In "Images & Photography"","block_context":{"text":"Images & Photography","link":"https:\/\/www.limbicnutrition.com\/blog\/category\/humanities\/images\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":24969,"url":"https:\/\/www.limbicnutrition.com\/blog\/criticality\/","url_meta":{"origin":8175,"position":2},"title":"Criticality","author":"Limbic","date":"April 6, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"I love discovering the correct name for a mental model. For years I was using the metaphor of supersaturated solution to describe a state I now know is called being \"critical\": \"In physics we say a system is in a critical state when it is ripe for a phase transition.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Mental Models"","block_context":{"text":"Mental Models","link":"https:\/\/www.limbicnutrition.com\/blog\/category\/mental-models\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":31731,"url":"https:\/\/www.limbicnutrition.com\/blog\/thomas-friedmans-5-pieces-of-advice-for-his-daughters\/","url_meta":{"origin":8175,"position":3},"title":"Thomas Friedman’s 5 Pieces of Advice for His Daughters","author":"Limbic","date":"December 17, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"From http:\/\/deloitte.wsj.com\/cmo\/2017\/12\/07\/radically-open-tom-friedman-on-the-future-of-work: I have five pieces of advice for my daughters. My first rule is: Always think like an immigrant, because we\u2019re all new immigrants to the age of accelerations. Second, always think like an artisan. Always do your job in a way that you bring so much empathy to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Books & Literature"","block_context":{"text":"Books & Literature","link":"https:\/\/www.limbicnutrition.com\/blog\/category\/humanities\/books\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":37499,"url":"https:\/\/www.limbicnutrition.com\/blog\/technology-for-the-bowling-alone-generation\/","url_meta":{"origin":8175,"position":4},"title":"Technology for the Bowling Alone generation","author":"LimbicNutrition Shorts","date":"April 8, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Technology for the Bowling Alone generation","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":42433,"url":"https:\/\/www.limbicnutrition.com\/blog\/technology-for-the-bowling-alone-generation-2\/","url_meta":{"origin":8175,"position":5},"title":"Technology for the Bowling Alone generation","author":"LimbicNutrition Shorts","date":"April 8, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Technology for the Bowling Alone generation","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.limbicnutrition.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8175","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.limbicnutrition.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.limbicnutrition.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.limbicnutrition.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.limbicnutrition.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8175"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.limbicnutrition.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8175\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.limbicnutrition.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8175"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.limbicnutrition.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8175"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.limbicnutrition.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8175"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}