In reply to Boost_Crazy :
That depends on whether $15 was a livable wage or not. If not, then maybe society did help them...or at least prevented them from becoming part of that unorganized corporate subsidy program which is economically unhealthy. History shows us that the minimum someone is willing to do the work for is far below what would allow them to support themselves. People will take jobs that only slow their descent into deeper poverty rather than halting and reversing it, because delaying homelessness and starvation is a worthwhile endeavor to an individual even if it's bad for the economy and society.
I reconsidered my answer. There will be plenty of criminal justice jobs in the future. Law enforcement, parole officers, correctional officers. Automation and AI will eliminate the need for a large portion of existing jobs. We will move towards a basic income for many, and competition for the jobs that survive will be stiff. Basic income will provide for a comfortable living, but it won't matter. The divide between the haves and the have-nots will widen, with less opportunity. Crime will increase. The courts will get more efficient due to a decrease in the amount of judges and lawyers needed.
I think I just described "The Expanse" without the space part, but I think it's pretty close. I do think population growth will slow dramatically.
In reply to Boost_Crazy :
Yeah that is very much like how Earth is on The Expanse. A less optimistic version of that would be the Earth in Elysium.
Nursing will be safe, for a large variety of reasons. CNA work too- assuming that you can build a machine that will work with human beings better than your average trained aide, it's real use is going to be for heavy lifting and repositioning than all the things that require a soft touch. I cannot see a machine cleaning asses basically.
Doctoring I think is actually safe, but what I fear is that AI diagnosis algorithms are going to become powerful enough and demand so much infrastructure that it will help to cement the insurance and medical technology industries that control and maintain them. Not to start a patio, but insurance already dictates your care and what your doctor can do based on what they're willing to pay for- and because of the sheer amount of time a doctor has to spend doing paperwork, are beginning to become more like "managers" that sign off on treatment plans that are spearheaded by groups of PA-Cs and NPs. So I could see a future where a doctor is the leader of a group of these that has to cozy up to medical insurance to gain access to powerful AI diagnosis tools for X-ray/CT scan/ect and signs off on them, with independents falling by the wayside because they lack access to these powerful tools.
In reply to GameboyRMH :
In reply to Boost_Crazy :
That depends on whether $15 was a livable wage or not. If not, then maybe society did help them...or at least prevented them from becoming part of that unorganized corporate subsidy program which is economically unhealthy. History shows us that the minimum someone is willing to do the work for is far below what would allow them to support themselves. People will take jobs that only slow their descent into deeper poverty rather than halting and reversing it, because delaying homelessness and starvation is a worthwhile endeavor to an individual even if it's bad for the economy and society.
And that is the great difference. Why must the minimum wage be a living wage? To do so would effectively ban jobs that are not valuable enough to support a lone adult. Jobs that still would have had value, possibly much value to those that would take them. Minimum wage has never been a living wage. It can't be, because then you are saying the value of ANY work is sufficient enough to support a person. That overinflates the value of that work, which just leads to inflation. Which would then require a raise to the minimum wage. Here is a good article as it relates to the value of the minimum wage. It has never been what you want it to be, and it can't be...
What the minimum wage was worth historically
From the above article...
In 1938, the first federal minimum wage was established at $0.25 an hour across the country. Adjusted for inflation, however, that would only be worth $4.63 an hour today. Cities and states have the option to set their own minimum wages, and currently, 29 states and Washington, D.C., have minimum wages above the current federal rate of $7.25 per hour. However, for states where the federal minimum wage applies, workers are experiencing the longest period in history without an increase in the federal minimum wage. The federal minimum wage was intended to establish "the wages of decent living" for workers across industries, according to President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Despite these intentions, the minimum wage has not guaranteed a living wage for workers for most of its existence. Though the minimum wage has been raised more than 20 times over the decades, it has not kept pace with inflation and the cost of living in many places across the U.S. That means that although wages were generally higher, workers were able to afford less when paid at that rate. This is clear when you adjust the minimum wage each year to February 2021 dollars using the Consumer Price Index. When adjusted for inflation, the "best" the minimum wage has ever been was in 1968. Though it was $1.60 an hour, today, that's the equivalent of more than $12 an hour.
Singing: "Merrily we go off topic, go off topic...." The thing about the minimum wage is that to have some relation to reality there should be regional variations. $7.25 goes a heck of a lot further in some parts of the country than others. There should be a well-considered cost of living index that the wages tie into. But even then you are going to have variations based on availability of transit, prevalence of illegal immigrants, et cetera. You'll never hit it right on the mark, but it should be a lot closer.
TR7
Reader
9/29/23 2:46 p.m.
Im surprised that no one mentioned AI designer as being AI proof....
Boost_Crazy said:
In reply to GameboyRMH :
And that is the great difference. Why must the minimum wage be a living wage? To do so would effectively ban jobs that are not valuable enough to support a lone adult. Jobs that still would have had value, possibly much value to those that would take them.
Because if the minimum wage is less than a living wage, then minimum wage jobs have a negative value to the economy and society. Someone who isn't making a living wage is relying on some form of charity, and the company is profiting from that charity because it allows the person to afford to do the job when they otherwise couldn't. The job only appears to have some value to the worker because it slows their descent further into poverty, but that assessment isn't looking at the big picture. The lack of a job would quickly impoverish this person, but having the job is impoverishing them as well, just more slowly.
Minimum wages can have less effect at times of high unionization when workers have more leverage and companies are willing to pay above it, so a sub-livable minimum wage won't necessarily have much effect on the lowest wages. Even today a surprisingly tiny number of jobs are exactly at minimum wage, most pay slightly above it.
TR7 said:
Im surprised that no one mentioned AI designer as being AI proof....
Only until the singularity 
(Edit: Seriously though, although it's something amateurs dabble in, AI designer jobs require rocket-surgeon levels of education)
I feel like we've had this conversation on wages several times, with the same people (including me) making the same points. Going to steer clear of it this time.
I'm not sure there are future proof occupations. The rate of progress and change is accelerating, and unpredictable. Back in the 90s, I never would have believed we'd be carrying a device that contains the sum of all human knowledge in our pockets. That also records our location, conversations, etc. and sends it to a central server. And we'd use it an unhealthy part of the day. The current version of AI, which to me isn't really, may be a new societal change lynchpin, or it may not. I wonder how long before we can create a genuine AI, rather than just data aggregators that do a sort-of impression of one.
Without knowing which jobs will be valuable, all I can hope for is that we keep trying to improve things for the most amount of people. I'd much rather live in a post-scarcity Star Trek: TNG than a post apocalyptic or dystopian corporate future.
In reply to GameboyRMH :
Because if the minimum wage is less than a living wage, then minimum wage jobs have a negative value to the economy and society. Someone who isn't making a living wage is relying on some form of charity, and the company is profiting from that charity because it allows the person to afford to do the job when they otherwise couldn't. The job only appears to have some value to the worker because it slows their descent further into poverty, but that assessment isn't looking at the big picture. The lack of a job would quickly impoverish this person, but having the job is impoverishing them as well, just more slowly.
Minimum wages can have less effect at times of high unionization when workers have more leverage and companies are willing to pay above it, so a sub-livable minimum wage won't necessarily have much effect on the lowest wages. Even today a surprisingly tiny number of jobs are exactly at minimum wage, most pay slightly above it.
You are missing huge parts of the picture. Not everyone who is working a job is working that job to support themselves. The idea that EVERY JOB should be able to support the full costs of living for an individual is wrong. There are plenty of jobs that should just be for supplementary income. A kid in high school or college working for spending money. I retired person looking for a little extra income and something to do. There are lots of examples of people working minimum wage jobs they don't rely on the income to live, as it should be. If someone is relying on minimum wage to live, there is something wrong with them, not the wage. Lack of skill, motivation, ability to pass a background check, something that they personally need to fix. Pricing the job out of existence won't fix anything.
GameboyRMH said:
Robotics was a field I considered going into, I chose not to and I still consider that to be a good decision. Even now robotics is a very small industry, probably on par with motorsport, except if you get a degree in robotics there isn't a big "mainstream version" of the industry to fall back on like production automakers if you don't get a robotics job.
That sentence explains a lot about your perspective on housing and jobs..........you think robotics is a small industry?
Boost_Crazy said:
In reply to GameboyRMH :
In reply to Boost_Crazy :
The way I see it the minimum wage of a service is completely artificial, and it's up to a society to decide the minimum that a person should be able to work for. Naturally it will tend toward 0 and if too low will produce the kind of society seen in gilded/depression era US or victorian England. If it isn't set at a level that allows a worker to fully support themselves then low-paid labor acts as an unorganized corporate subsidy program by allowing corporations to ultimately benefit from society's charity. And trying to keep minimum wages low enough to compete with automation is a race to the bottom since automation tends to decrease the cost of production over time.
Agreed, it's completely artificial. The minimum wage should be the minimum someone is willing to do the work for. Instead, it's what society deems to be acceptable. Unfortunately society has shown to be largely ignorant of economics, and fails to understand the negative consequences of an artificial minimum wage. When set at a level which is "reasonable-" a level fairly close to the minimum wage at which the average low skilled employee would accept anyway- it has minor impact. At worst it inflates prices slightly for those goods, at best it prevents a handful from accepting too low a wage. But when society sets it too high- to the point where the consumer is no longer willing or able to pay the extra cost of the good or service, that job goes away completely. Say a worker has $15 an hour worth of skill to sell, but we tell them that they cannot accept less than $20. They get no job instead. Did society really help them?
I'm really tired of the minimum wage argument.
Less than 2% of people in this country make "miniumum wage" and of that less than 2%, 80% are in jobs where they receive tips. And from many friends in those industries, they like it that way because they don't claim the cash tips on their taxes.
Javelin said:
Bartender
Outside of the aforementioned ambiance things, I think that might be one of the easiest things to replace. Granted, when I go sit down at bar for a cocktail I like an amiable bartender to shoot the E36 M3 with.
But it would be real easy for a machine to make an Old Fashioned.
z31maniac said:
Javelin said:
Bartender
Outside of the aforementioned ambiance things, I think that might be one of the easiest things to replace. Granted, when I go sit down at bar for a cocktail I like an amiable bartender to shoot the E36 M3 with.
But it would be real easy for a machine to make an Old Fashioned.
You'd be shocked at how many variables there are in bartending. The tartness of the fruits is wildly different depending on ripeness and season, the flavor of the alcohol (especially good ones) varies batch to batch, and different customers have different pallettes and might prefer a sweeter drink, or a stronger one. Yeah a robot can dispense a simple drink to a pre-determined recipe, but it's like eating a frozen dinner steak versus an expertly prepared aged wagyu.
I need a haircut, it occurred to me that barbers are pretty hard to outsource or replace with AI.
SV reX said:
In reply to Curtis73 (Forum Supporter) :
Not in our lifetimes. Or our kids.
I predict.
Agreed. So maybe we should define if future-proof means for us, or further into the future.
Steve_Jones said:
Curtis73 (Forum Supporter) said:
In reply to SV reX :
Very true, but there will come a time when there are no more of the structures that exist today... at least not in large numbers. A very long time, but it will come.
There are plenty of 150+ year old houses being lived in Today in the USA. They're not going to suddenly disappear. In parts of Europe, 150 years old is young.
New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, etc. I don't think there will be a time old houses are gone.
Heck, I know of places in Europe from the 600s, but they won't be around forever. I'm just saying that some of them fall down or get torn down for new construction, and as time goes on I think there will be fewer and fewer "old" houses to repair.
Cousin_Eddie (Forum Supporter) said:
Firefighter/ paramedic. That's gonna be a real safe path to take for younger folks joining the workforce.
Cousin_Eddie beat me to it.
When E36 M3's on fire, or you're clutching your chest, we outshine the Googles.
j_tso
Dork
9/29/23 11:49 p.m.
In reply to OHSCrifle :
nah, there's gonna be a robot for that. One that can be hosed down.
If you want to pursue the lack of wages and opportunity all the way to the root cause, you'll discover a decline in education. Getting to the reasons for that is the worst part of all.
z31maniac said:
Outside of the aforementioned ambiance things, I think that might be one of the easiest things to replace.
Yes. So easy that they could have been replaced by now. We've had flow meters, solenoid actuated valves, and logic control circuits for quite a while. I went to an automated bar a decade ago.
And yet... bartenders haven't been replaced yet.
Automated bars haven't spread. If customers preferred them, if they made more money, they would have taken over by now.
Woody (Forum Supportum) said:
Cousin_Eddie (Forum Supporter) said:
Firefighter/ paramedic. That's gonna be a real safe path to take for younger folks joining the workforce.
Cousin_Eddie beat me to it.
When E36 M3's on fire, or you're clutching your chest, we outshine the Googles.
I think this is actually a good example of a place where we'll see robotics and AI really shine in the future. That technology will be used to augment, but not replace humans.
I think we'll see firefighters using AI drones to more quickly search houses. Taking on dangers that it wouldn't be worth sending a human into when you don't know whether or not there is a person who needs to be removed. Once that drone identifies someone who needs to get extracted, you'll see humans come in to handle them. This will remain a person because there are too many possible variables of what a person might be trapped under and what sort of injuries they might have. Humans are good at solving novel problems, computers are not.
Here's a video talking about how militaries are planning to incorporate drones into combat in the future. In summary - drones won't replace human pilots. The model is most likely to be a few manned aircraft with a couple human operators surrounded by a swarm of drones carrying sensor and weapon packages. The drones will use AI to fly themselves, identify targets, execute maneuvers, and calculate firing solutions. The humans will be responsible for evaluating threats and making calls on if, when, and how to engage targets like a quarterback leading a play.
Kreb (Forum Supporter) said:
I've been thinking of this for two reasons: First, my son is a college Sophomore currently focused on sociology and psychology. Obviously, I want the best for him in his professional life. Second, my wife is a marriage and family therapist with a thriving practice. She loves her job, plans to do it for as long as she can and thinks of it as AI-proof. But then I listened to a podcast where the speaker spoke about psychology being revolutionized. Why navigate your problems for $150/week for 50 minutes when you can buy Psychbot GPT for a song, and have someone to talk to 24/7? Someone who never gets tired or annoyed. Someone who brings no bias or agenda to the table? Someone with access to a range of experience and knowledge that no human can ever match. So 5 years from now, will my wife's once-thriving practice be reduced to Luddites?
It's going to be real interesting.
What are the best bets for the post-AI future?
Funny, I was *just* thinking of that today.
Counseling and therapy isn't really all just about venting, it's strongly about unconditional positive regard from another person. Consider that our brains are hugely wired for relationship.
