Hello guys,
I hope you're all doing well.
I was inspired to write this article after watching a TED talk with Elon Musk. The 40 minutes TED talk interview with Elon Musk was pretty quick and you can hear a crazy guy get interviewed, he talked about some insane project he's working on like 3D highway, tunneling system in LA and there's a bunch of other things he's working on. The guy is really insane, and I really think he's a maniac but he's also changing the world, so all the power to him.
[1]After seeing the talk and hearing about a lot of buzz in the news recently, the thing I wanted to explicate about in this article is the idea that robot “AI” and software are going to replace human jobs and that's what a lot of people are talking about recently. I just wanted to take some time think about it, everything on this article is just my opinion but thinking about the future is always a little fun.
Introduction
The first thing I want to put out here is that robot replacing jobs will happen, it's just a matter of time. I think 10-20 years, I believe that self-driving cars is going to replace a ton of taxi drivers and it's just a matter of time until that happens. What will those people do? What kind of jobs are available to these types of people? How many people are going to be replaced?
In my opinion, the major problem to solve is not how we grow the tech or which direction we grow the tech, but it's how society handles technology coming in and changing things or disrupting things, I hate that word. It's how society handles change when tech has more influence in it.
Personally, I have a very idealistic way of looking at that problem, so let me just give everyone a background first.
The first thing we must understand is that computers and humans are fundamentally different and we're good at different things. Computers are good at crunching a ton of numbers, humans are good at telling stories, so because of this fundamental difference, there are stuffs that computers are good at and there’re just stuff that humans are good at. There's a fundamental difference and because of that difference, I don't think it's really a matter of replacing.
[2]I don't think computers can fully replace humans, and humans cannot fully replace computers, but they have to work together, they complement each other and that's the strongest way to do it. It's not a matter of only computers are better than only humans or only humans are better than only computers, it's that computers and humans together are the best. That's the premise of where I'm coming from.
All in all, we have no business doing what robots or computers are good at and we shouldn't even want to do those kinds of jobs because as humans, our time can be better spent elsewhere. Let me explain that.
Imagine you're a cancer doctor working at a hospital and you're a new doctor at a brand-new Hospital and you have 1,000 new patients, each of these patients has a history of all these MRI documents that you have to sift through. As a doctor, you could spend three months looking at tens of thousands of MRI images or give that to a computer, for the computer to process, if you have this smart computer vision model that's trained to detect cancer and images.
[3]The computer could run through 10,000 images in minutes rather than months and at least give you a baseline recommendation of what to do with those images. As a doctor, you take the baseline and then you put your human touch on top of it, but you don't spend three months looking at images. I think everyone's getting the gist of where I'm coming at here but the jobs that will be replaced, I do think that those are jobs that humans don't want to do and shouldn't do in the first place.
Assembly line repetitive jobs are perfect examples of jobs that should be replaced in my opinion, I don't think anybody really enjoys those jobs.
[4]There are certain set of jobs out there in the world like factory worker assembly line, really repetitive jobs that I don't believe humans should do but, in some place, it’s so cheap that they force humans to do crappy jobs like that. Those are exactly the jobs that computers or robots should do.
Now that we understand types of jobs that computers can potentially replace, like those crappy repetitive jobs, sifting through data, let's go about it from the other side.
What are jobs that humans need to do, and computers can never replace?
The one thing that I truly believe, I don't think computers will ever replace human consciousness. What I mean by consciousness is the real biology of how we're wired, so I think this is science fiction and it will stay science fiction. Kind of like iRobot or Terminator, computers will never replicate our consciousness and if that ever happens, if we're ever close to having that happen, I think mother nature will just wipe us all out with water because that's something we shouldn't even try to replicate.
[5]Consciousness is being angry, being sad, feeling connected to somebody, comforting your friends, getting mad at your friends but all that stuff is innately human, and computers will not replicate them.
In Conclusion
If many of the jobs that require highly repetitive tasks are going to be replaced, like if all assembly line jobs will be replaced, we need to create new jobs that require humans and those are jobs that require some level of consciousness. This is actually what society has as a challenge because we have to put more focus on those human jobs, like being a teacher, high school counselor, coach of a soccer team. The computer is not going to be the little league soccer coach, so those are the type of jobs we must put in more value. These are just my thoughts and if you enjoyed this article, don’t hesitate to smash that upvote button below.
References: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4
Image sources: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5
GIF made by @foundation
I agree there are these repetitive jobs, that robots are fit for purpose and can save some wear and tear on people. As I see the advancements of robots, the superhuman strength, agility, speed I think it's amazing and kudos to the people who develop the technology. Like all technologies, it's how it is applied or potentially abused that worries me. I would hazard a guess that much of the research and development of these technologies, advanced robotics and the like are funded primarily with military not domestic applications in mind. I am not against the tech, I actually think it's great and hope to give it a try. That is try some robotic crafting and making someday. Thanks again, for the post.
Good to read your thoughts but the military part scares me, I don't wanna witness the fictitious movie "iRobot" in real life. Domestic application is fine with me but I feel bad for those that'll loose their jobs to robots.
I read somewhere that 40% of jobs will be replaced by robots in the next 40 years. Thats quite a scary thought. Elon Musk is going to try to tackle this by trying to combine human intelligence with AI intellegence...imagine your brain being able to download information from a cloud. Pretty crazy stuff.
Really crazy and cool stuff, Elun Musk never ceases to amaze me.
There is a Swiss hospital doing exactly this and they start to be quite good at it.
I think it is importend to progress and robots are awsome. I can see that it might be scary for some people as they could loose their job, but if you see the bigger picture robots and automation is what enables us this great and comfortable life. I really don‘t feel like hunting every day and sleeping in a cave... :P
There's no denying the fact that robots will do things faster and make us comfortable, but what happens to those that'll loose their jobs to robots? That's a major disadvantage.
I like your doctor example and the post topic itself very much. However, you make the same mistake a lot of people who discuss this topic do - you assume there are special human things that can never be automated.
Consider that doctor in your example. First it's a machine that speeds up MRI readings. Then it's one that can read MRIs as fast and as well as the best human doctor -- except this machine can be mass-produced and the human doctor really can't.
Then it's a machine that reads MRIs better than a human doctor.
Now apply that same sequence to X-Rays, minor surgeries, diagnosis and so on.
Eventually, sooner than we think the doctor goes from having useful tools to having helpful assistants to having students. The progression is tool-user to teacher-of-tools to supervisor-of-tools to replaced-by-tools (also known as "unemployed" 😞)
Impossible? That's what the chess players and Go Players and fighter pilots and taxi drivers thought.
Driverless cars? It won't stop at taxis. Your Elon Musk has already started selling driverless lorry (eighteen-wheelers, whatever). What about forklift drivers and the guys who work at ports and docks loading ships. Driverless car alone kills all of them.
Look up Boston Dynamics sometime. The fire service, the soldiers and the police are about to follow that doctor down the same road.
It's going to be a very interesting 15 years between now and 2033 🤖🤖🤖
Baba, the rate of unemployment then would be alarming, I hope it doesn't turn into chaos. God keep us all till then, fingers crossed.
Robot replacing human is not a good thing and it also a good thing
My field of study I noticed robotics has almost covered ever part and now there are machines dat don't require humans to operate on them before they can work
But I believe there are area human has to come in
That's why I said "they have to work together".
Very good your post 👍👍👍