Generational Dynamics

As I wrote in "29-Dec-15 World View -- Artificial Intelligence breakthroughs in 2015, the Singularity by 2030", the year 2015 saw many major achievements in artificial intelligence, and the Google's AlphaGo technology continues that trend. 

What's interesting is that as recently as 2014, most experts thought that for a computer program to play Go at a master level was at least a decade away, and possibly several decades. This illustrates how many people in the computer field underestimate how rapidly computer AI is improving, and how quickly the Singularity is arriving.

 

Above playing board for the game of Go.

How to play Go...British Go Association 

As I wrote in the article referenced above, I estimated in 2004 that the Singularity would occur around 2030, and I have no reason today to change that estimate. However, people tell me all the time that computers won't be as smart as humans for many decades, even centuries, because we don't yet understand enough about the human brain. However, this misses the point. Humans are smarter than apes even though we don't understand apes' brains, and computers will become more intelligent than humans by using technologies that don't require understanding the human brain.

In fact, we're going to start seeing rapid changes well before 2030. According to a new report from the World Economic Forum, AI is take away 5 million jobs from humans in the next five years. 

Jobs that are most at risk of this transition to artificial intelligence are in administrative and office divisions, so much so that some jobs today are already being replaced by mobile apps and algorithms linked to the internet. For instance, a website may offer finding better hotel deals than a travel agent, or a mobile application can help you learn better Mandarin or French than a personal instructor. Other sectors that are also at risk are manufacturing, construction, health care, and even the arts and entertainment. 

And it's my personal estimate that AI will replace most computer programmers' jobs within the next five to ten years.

DYI Comments:  The biggest area where jobs have been displaced or outright vanished is in manufacturing.  Despite the move to China and other Asian countries the biggest villain has been automation.  For every one job outsourced 1.7 manufacturing jobs vanished due to automation.

Why Factory Jobs Are Shrinking Everywhere

A report from the Boston Consulting Group last week suggested the U.S. had become the second-most-competitive manufacturing location among the 25 largest manufacturing exporters worldwide. While that news is welcome, most of the lost U.S. manufacturing jobs in recent decades aren’t coming back. In 1970, more than a quarter of U.S. employees worked in manufacturing. By 2010, only one in 10 did. 

The growth in imports from China had a role in that decline–contributing, perhaps, to as much as one-quarter of the employment drop-off from 1991 to 2007, according to an analysis by David Autor and colleagues at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. But the U.S. jobs slide began well before China’s rise as a manufacturing power. And manufacturing employment is falling almost everywhere, including in China. The phenomenon is driven by technology, and there’s reason to think developing countries are going to follow a different path to wealth than the U.S. did—one that involves a lot more jobs in the services sector. 

Pretty much every economy around the world has a low or declining share of manufacturing jobs. According to OECD data, the U.K. and Australia have seen their share of manufacturing drop by around two-thirds since 1971. Germany’s share halved, and manufacturing’s contribution to gross domestic product there fell from 30 percent in 1980 to 22 percent today. In South Korea, a late industrializer and exemplar of miracle growth, the manufacturing share of employment rose from 13 percent in 1970 to 28 percent in 1991; it’s fallen to 17 percent today.

DYI Continues:  No one is immune both white and blue collar jobs are effected.  Brick and mortar stores are in a death spiral as on line shopping reduces and in some cases the entire need for a store. To say the least the term "future shock" has arrived.

  Toffler argued that society is undergoing an enormous structural change, a revolution from an industrial society to a "super-industrial society". This change overwhelms people. He believed the accelerated rate of technological and social change left people disconnected and suffering from "shattering stress and disorientation"—future shocked. Toffler stated that the majority of social problems are symptoms of future shock. In his discussion of the components of such shock, he popularized the term "information overload."

Shattering stress and disorientation is an excellent description for our northern manufacturing areas especially Michigan and ground zero Detroit.  I don't have any answers only to state the obvious; technological changes will require an individual to be in constant training and education plus fast on their feet.

DYI