UKC

The Year 2040, that's only 23 years away. Not long.

Humans rarely drive cars.
Congestion and parking are no longer a problem.
Independent businesses are vanishing.
Robots do most agricultural work.
Most items are bought online, high streets are experiential, mostly staffed by AI and robots.
Robots have taken most construction jobs.
Utilities and finance is overwhelmingly automated.
Accountancy and law are automated.
Demand for human doctors is dwindling, health is monitored by friends.
Education has become recreational.
Professional politicians are rare.
Unemployment stands at 50%.
The gap between rich and poor countries has closed.
Consumer travel has been replaced by VR.
10% of us are addicted to drugs or VR to cope.

Is this a possible future?
Are you ready for it?
What can we do if anything to stop it?
Are you happy with this vision of a future?

(Perhaps you ought to attend one of my free courses .lol)

In reply to The Ice Doctor:

All credible to various extents, notably except "The gap between rich and poor has closed". Who owns and operates the robot-manned businesses? So how does wealth get distributed to others? While it looks like an attractive outcome, it's difficult to see how it could come about in practice without radical system reform.

In reply to john arran:

John - I'd perhaps tweak the projection, the gap between most rich and most poor countries, and 99% of people has closed.
There will still be a layer of super wealth.

This is also where the concept of a living wage comes in. To replace all the jobs lost to automation. It is even being suggested that robots are taxed where the are seen to replace a human job. Obviously the details of this are all to be thrashed out as and when it happens

In reply to john arran:

Share holders and corporations own the robots. The financial returns go to them.

In reply to ClimberEd:

Do we seriously believe the superwealthy who control the supranational robot/AI companies will be providing a living wage for the rest of the planet? If it develops that way then it will be a dystopian future of mega-slums for the unemployed, not recreational education.

In reply to The Ice Doctor:


2001 A space odyssey dealt with AI and was once over thirty years in the future.

The future meant more leisure time as automation took over.

Space never really happened and people work even harder, even though there are 20% more of us.

The leisure future arrived in a different form, Star Trek phones and TV’s you can hang on the wall made it!

In reply to The Ice Doctor:


I doubt it.

The year 1994, that's only 23 years ago. Not long.
What's changed, really, in a big way like your list? Not a lot really.

In reply to The Ice Doctor:

Will robots have CV's?

In reply to The Ice Doctor:

If the majority of people have no jobs, how will they afford to buy anything that robots make? Would this lead to robot redundancies?

In reply to Andy Hardy:
Good point. You are one of the fewer thinkers, so far to respond more thoughtfully, as for those that don't believe these scenarios are not possible, it is my opinion that you may be rather close minded.

With no demand, capitalism will collapse.

In real terms in the last 17 years the US economy has not actually created new jobs, it should have created 17 million, in line with the way the population and economy grew. It didn't. Some of you are far to fast to mock what could be a pretty scary future, if people have not planned for it. The outcome of a Dystopian future is possible.

In reply to The Ice Doctor:

Do you mean "don't believe these scenarios are possible"?


and will be replaced with what?


Correct me if I'm wrong, but my impression is that in the last 17 years the gap between rich and poor in the US has grown rather than diminished. You'll need to explain your predicted mechanism for wealth redistribution, along with the incentives for it as will apply to those people expected to be holding or earning such wealth, before you have anything close to a convincing argument.

In short, do you envisage evolution or revolution?

edit: I see you've edited your original post, which changes its meaning a lot.

In reply to Lusk: maybe he's only thinking 23 years , 1994, but if I think back to East Anglia in the 70's, then things have changed , a lot and fast. If you go on YouTube you can find some interesting 'world in action' documentaries that will show how quickly life has changed.

Many of what the OP predicts seem very likely to me - if you don't have an education, skill, in an advanced and likely creative skill, get ready for a life time of hard work and marginal pay

In reply to The Ice Doctor:

Thanks a lot. I have a few comments on your list:

Humans rarely drive cars.
WHAT IS 'RARELY'? ANYWAY I DOUBT THIS. LOTS OF PEOPLE LOVE TO DRIVE AND WILL KEEP GOING
Congestion and parking are no longer a problem.
YOU MUST BE JOKING
Independent businesses are vanishing.
THEY'VE SHOWN NO SIGN OF VANISHING IN THE LAST 50+ YEARS, SO I STRONGLY DOUBT THIS
Robots do most agricultural work AND Robots have taken most construction jobs.
THIS HAS BEEN PROMISED FOR DECADES NOW AND HASN'T ARRIVED YET. I DOUBT THIS
Demand for human doctors is dwindling, health is monitored by friends.
DEMAND FOR DOCTORS HAS BEEN VERY HIGH FOR A VERY LONG TIME: I CAN'T SEE IT DIMINISHING. PLUS - CANCER, BRAIN TUMOURS, HEART FAILURE ETC. "MONITORED BY FRIENDS"? I FIND THAT VERY UNLIKELY
Education has become recreational.
YOU MEAN PEOPLE WON'T NEED QUALIFICATIONS TO WORK? I FIND THAT VERY UNLIKELY
Professional politicians are rare.
THIS ONE MADE ME SMILE. I THINK THIS ONE IS VERY UNLIKELY
The gap between rich and poor countries has closed.
I SUGGEST - THIS IS VERY UNLIKELY. THE GAP WILL WIDEN, I THINK
Consumer travel has been replaced by VR.
I SUGGEST - VERY UNLIKELY
10% of us are addicted to drugs or VR to cope.
CAN'T COMMENT UNLESS YOU DEFINE "ADDICTED"

In reply to bouldery bits:


Only the ones with drive shafts.

In reply to abseil:

I am citing said list from a book written by Calum Chace, I have not challenged his ideas like you, nor am I suggesting they will happen. These are possible scenerios and I am not going to simply discount the, and unless you have a crystal ball and can see what is going to happen.

Robotisation, automatisation has already taken place in many factories, Self driving cars already exist. Perhaps the fact you are so cynical will make it more difficult for you to adapt, or perhaps you don't believe these thing are not possible, so the pace of change will out pace you and make you a dinosaur , perhaps in 5 years you will be redundant and unemployed.

The arrogance of some people on here quite shocking. Life is not this laid out path of what will be, it is full of surprises and uncertainties, or perhaps you are playing devils advocate.

Call in in 2040, and tell me how wrong I was....

In reply to The Ice Doctor: what do you think might happen? (I'm certainly not going to attend even a free course if all you've done is copy a book)

Auto mission and the separation of haves and have nots as traditional middle class jobs disappear is a big challenge to the whole economy

In reply to The Ice Doctor:

Your course seems to have missed the two big wild cards - the unknown cost of low-harm energy in 2040 and the unknown increases in longevity.

Automation/roboticisaton of jobs has been happening since the early 1800s with inventions like the Jacquard loom and early modern steam engines. To date more automisation creates more wealth and more jobs elsewhere. My job wouldn't exist without the increased per-person productivity of automisation, yours probably wouldn't either. Without machines and automation of some sort we'd both probably be farmers or at best tool makers.

Interesting times ahead for sure. I think socialism will become more important as automation increases. It should become less expensive.

In reply to The Ice Doctor:




Thank you for your reply. I wish you had said in your OP that were citing from a book by Calum Chace - that fact would've been helpful to forum readers, I think. As for your comment "the pace of change will out pace you and make you a dinosaur... perhaps in 5 years you will be redundant and unemployed", you're entitled to your predictions/ forecasts about me, but sadly my current circumstances show you are 100% wrong and could not be right: you didn't know that, but perhaps you shouldn't have said it, not knowing me.

Back to your OP. 2 items seem particularly strange to me, [1] "Demand for human doctors is dwindling, health is monitored by friends" - again, do you really think cancer, brain tumours, pregnancy, and advanced heart disease could be 'monitored by friends' rather than treated by doctors in the near future? [2] "The gap between rich and poor countries has closed" - there is a large amount already written on this topic, which contradicts this idea.

In reply to Ridge:


This is what I forsee for the future.
Maybe as much as 99% of the population living in slums in poverty and the 1% living the highlife.
Anyone who says that lots of jobs won't be automated is frankly talking out of their arse.
Yes it has been promised for years but the technology hasn't been there.
We are now on the cusp of the next technological revolution with both AI and the hardware side.
One of the biggest problems currently is the power supply but again it's on the way, a couple more breakthroughs in battery technology could be all it takes.

At the moment even if the technology was there it's still cheaper to employ low cost workers for menial jobs but as we get pushed further and further in to higher minimum wages, shorter working hours and more holiday, sick and parental rights employing people will get more and more expensive.
At the same time the cost of technology will decrease as it has always done.
There will be a tipping point there is no doubt in my mind about that.

The question to me is at what end of the wage scale will it be?

Shopping will be done by online delivery, places like Amazon already have automated warehouses, once we have driverless deliveries that takes humans out.
I think fast food will be one of the first to automate.
Rather than your burger being flipped and served by a 17 year old it will be cooked and dispensed by a machine.

AI routines could probably replace stockbrokers.
Bankers already use computer programs to decide if you are a good risk to lend to.

Fit bits etc already monitor our heart and breathing rates, there are systems out there that monitor blood sugar levels for diabetics.
Again its only a matter of time where we have a personal wellness device that monitors all aspects of our health and maybe dispensing booths for the medicines that the device says we need.

Ultimately there are very few jobs that can't and won't be automated as technology and cost move in the right direction.

I think I have said this before on here, I can fully forsee the comic 2000 ad getting it right with their portrayal of the future with the judge Dredd strip.
Millions of poor and bored people living in mega cities with little to no prospects of improving their lot in life.

In reply to The Ice Doctor:


Microsoft now owned by Google. One half of every screen now mandated to host nothing but adverts. Microsoft Operating Systems reach a lifecycle period of 3 months, with each progressive release becoming more complex and less usable than the last, whilst requiring the latest hardware spec every 12 months.

Microproccessors are billion’s of times faster, have massively more internal memory, peripherals for every possible connection and use almost no power but are still basically the same dumb bit’s of silicon as their ancestors back in the 1970’s.

AI continues to make significant breakthroughs and massively powerful and complex computer systems now routinely win at all board games, and has now officially reached the intelligence of an ant.

The BBC robot newsreaders continue predicting that AI/robots will take all our jobs in the next few years (and still manage to mangle relevant details in the newsfeeds and time-checks).

OK, perhaps there is hope. Now that the Chinese state owns most of the leading edge computer technology companies, they may succeed where short term consumerism hasn’t.
But in that case it won’t be for OUR benefit.

In reply to The Ice Doctor:

I can envisage a lot of what you say but I think it is worth remembering when we look at these technologically determined visions that technology is rarely adopted in its optimum form. Think, the QWERTY keyboard, VHS, Windows (if your a Mac user) its always patchy and I think the same will be the case with a lot of what your talking about.

Industries like commercial driving could go fairly rapidly, the stagecoach network did once rail travel took off yet, in contrast, rail has remained pretty resilient in the face of car travel.

Another poster mentioned energy and population with as yet no clear solution to the former unless we are able to convince ourselves to do without a lot of the consumption goods that we seem pretty attached to. At the same time there is no reason why we shouldn't covet things that don't have the catastrophic environmental impact of smartphones or SUVs (or even work out how to produce these things without such a big environmental footprint).

Population is a better story with numbers set to peak and education, better status for women pretty clear means of solving the problem once we get over the peak we are nearing. Longevity of life could be a game changer here.

As to whether the more Utopian aspects are realised its our choice and also humans have a way of confounding things. The big decisions that will decide whether we get dystopia are probably being made now with our choices about regulating companies like Google and Uber. More than this though I think it will come down to trying to establish some decent basic standards of life. The trends in this direction are actually quite good in some respects, lifespans are often increasing levels of violence. Inequality seems to be going backwards in the West at least but there is also a political backlash against that so who knows - its up to us really isn't it.

In reply to The Ice Doctor:

Sounds like the Post Industrial society that I've been waiting for for about 30 years

In reply to Andy Hardy:


Robots will only take over whilst they're cheaper/better than humans. At some point humans' costs will reduce to match robots and humans will remain in work. Unfortunately that probably means a drop in standards of living for humans.

In reply to The Ice Doctor:

Regarding accounting, law and medicine being automated, a lot of these roles are about relating to people at an emotional level. Do we think computers will be able to do that by 2040? if not, will they not just change so the focus is on these aspects, with robots/computers doing the other bits?

In reply to Toerag:

Which will still reduce demand.

In reply to MG:

Why do we still have accountants anyway? You put one set of numbers in , you get another set of numbers out. That's been the primary function of computers for over 70 years now.
If accountancy is too complicated to be managed by computers, surely it is high time for the system to be simplified. Massive cost benefits for small and medium businesses and less scope for large businesses to find and exploit loopholes. Surely a boon for the exchequer with little negative political impact?

In reply to The Ice Doctor:

I agree with humans will rarely drive cars. I think self driving tech will become as ubiquitous as seat belts or ABS, and our childrens children or their children will hardly believe grandad used to actually drive everywhere himself. I think it will be gradual but over decades the person in the car will have no legal responsibility so you could, e.g. sleep on the way to scotland from London or be driven home intoxicated after a nightout, or work on the way to work in the car. This may decrease car ownership and inner city parking facilities and generate more green space and the advent of things like Uber-style subscriptions (perhaps linked to your calendar/email so the car ride share company can forecast demand etc. and have on/off peak charges.)

I think what we see as PCs/laptops and computers will eventually cease to exist. I think the main bottle necks at the moment are battery tech and wireless bandwidth. Once these two things are sufficiently advanced you can have a touch screen a few mm thick that does no processing, and all of that can be handled by your cloud account with google or whoever at the time, this means that you will essentially have one operating system across your watch, phone, "main screen (PC equivalent)", TV, toothbrush etc. We are very nearly there already I think there are just latency issues with things like high end graphics gamings with cloud processing at the moment.

I think, as others have said, some of the more transactional/operational aspects of finance and management could be handled by software, and AI *might* be sufficiently advanced to provide advice on complex organic/ethical issues, but that in 25 years it will still be humans making the strategic decisions. Perhaps, maybe, maybe in 100-200 years you will have an AI that you could actually have a conversation with. then in 500-1000 years we'll have Iain M Banks Culture Minds hopefully and we'll all just be hedonists or Special Circumstances agents. haha

This was rushed.

In reply to DD72:

- its up to us really isn't it.

This is the point I am making. Will people be active in making the decisions or not?

In reply to Stichtplate:


But you don't. Even the simplest accounts require decisions to be made about what goes where. Some of that is just following rules, but other aspects require human judgement.



I am sure a lot could be done to simplify things. But, as one example, what value do I put on my
house? Any value would be an estimate until I actually sell it. In reality it depends on what people are prepared to pay, which depends on the wider economy and other things. All human factors that are very difficult to simplify.

In reply to MG:

Accountancy is one of many things I know very little about, but I was referring more to the traditional roles of accountants. Preparing company accounts , tax returns etc.
Honk Kong tax code is 276 pages long. Uk tax code is 17000 pages and has trebled in size since 1997. Surely the only people benefiting from this are accountants and rich tax avoiders and everyone else is paying the price.

In reply to Stichtplate:



That's a very simplistic view. The complexity of the code hasn't come about in order to create loopholes, it's a result of continual piecemeal development over many centuries. Hong Kong is a relatively new state with a different approach, but I'll wager the same proportion of accountants per head of population. Happy to be proven wrong however.

I think there's a misapprehension as to what accountants do. They certainly don't sit there doing sums all day. They have machines for that. It's more about interpreting the law and steering their customers' financial strategies, be that with regard to M&A, tax planning, preparation of accounts, audit. My software tells me what my profit is, my accountant ratifies my numbers and tells me how to report them.

In reply to BnB:

As I said, I know little about accountancy, but the tax code has trebled in size over the last 20 years. This isn't piecemeal growth over centuries, this is a massive expansion. Who benefits? Certainly not tax collectors or small businesses.

In reply to The Ice Doctor:

I'd give it a cautious yes to that.

We have been through a fairly depoliticised phase where either the big worrying issues have been played out on the periphery (of our world at least, its a bit more central if you happen to live in the Middle East) despite some blowback. Either that or they have been 'technical' and outside of the mainstream political debates. i.e. Only the real headbangers have until recently not been signed up to doing something about climate change (I'm not saying rhetoric lives up to reality though). But the big debates on this have been in big international forums like those run by the UN and only occasionally intrude on national politics.

Inequality seems to have repoliticised a younger generation and maybe from this and also as some of the adverse impacts of the way we have been living, particularly in the last 40-50 years become harder to avoid some of the more technical issues will also start to become politicised.

In reply to The Ice Doctor:

It will be made by those running businesses because they will always do what's best for the bottom line. Unfortunately that's not you or me, it's the self-serving wealthy people.

In reply to Toerag:

I would agree, but despite the complaints business is increasingly regulated and much less able to get away with the sort of stuff they did in the past. I mean we don't send kids down coalmines anymore (or up chimneys as we do still clean them in this country).

I know there has been some steps backwards (the cladding industry being the obvious current example) and in terms of environmental impact it still doesn't nearly go far enough but the push in the other direction is pretty strong.

I doubt we will ever get rid of self-serving wealthy people but we can make them much less wealthy relative to the rest of us and greatly reduce the impact of their self-serving behaviour.

In reply to Stichtplate:


If it's grown in order to capture more taxpayers then tax collectors are certainly the beneficiaries.

In the last 20 years the growth of multinational trade has made the whole business considerably more complicated. And the recent government has had more success cutting tax avoidance than several before it. Why is it a problem that the complicated nature of finance creates work for clever people? Heaven knows they suffered in the school playground for it, let them have their day

In reply to Toerag:


I mean seriously. Do you really think it's a walk in the park building successful businesses? If you believe business owners are so contemptible, if you think they haven't made sacrifices or shown vision to get to their rarified status, why don't you have a go yourself instead of carping on about their "self-serving greed".

You might find out just how much it involves caring for hundreds or thousands of people who rely on you completely to put bread on their table and for direction in their professional life and whom you can never let down, not once, or the whole house of cards comes down.

Yes there are bad apples but the vast majority of entrepreneurs care deeply about their company, their product, their reputation and above all, their people. Frankly comments like that reveal plenty about your prejudices.

In reply to BnB:


Would have thought you'd be a bit more of a free marketeer regarding increased regulation. As for multinationals , it seems the larger you are , the more paying tax seems to be entirely optional.

In reply to Stichtplate:



Hence the need for ever greater sophistication in tax law-making.

In reply to BnB:

The point you're studiously ignoring is that an increasingly complicated tax code seems to equate with increasingly avoidable tax.
Have you got shares in PWC ?

In reply to Stichtplate:


You did point out that you don't know much about accountancy and I'm happy to take that claim at face value so there's no need to carry on and prove it.

In reply to BnB:

If your going to stop people talking bull on here it will be a very empty forum.


Edit: I'll take that as a yes on the PWC shares!

In reply to Stichtplate:


Very true



It's a private company. You can't buy shares although you could in theory take it over. UKC crowdfund?

In reply to BnB:

Oh dear... lucky I'd already highlighted my general ignorance. KPMG ?

In reply to Stichtplate:


A Swiss cooperative. I expect you get clubcard points with every audit.

In reply to BnB:

I maintain that I will wallow in my ignorance and not google my 'facts' (unless arguing with Rom. Grrr).

In reply to Stichtplate:

The UK tax code is incredibly light touch and simple compared to most countries, starting with the US which is a nightmare of epic proportion, in most European countries it is also pretty daunting in comparison.

To a large extent it doesn't really matter much how "big" it is, what matters mostly are the processes and tools in place to audit and collect taxes correctly, and enforce the law properly, and crucially, the professional skills available to deal with it. In the UK frankly these aspects are pretty solid, relatively speaking.

In reply to RomTheBear:

I'd have more faith in the uk tax system if there weren't quite so many instances of huge multinationals making huge profits in this country , yet paying bugger all tax.
Surely the size of the tax code has a bearing on this? There is a reason various companies make their terms and conditions so long winded and complicated and it isn't to comprehensively protect the consumer.

In reply to Stichtplate:


The issue of tax avoidance is not really the result of the complexity of the tax system in the UK, it's mostly the result of multinationals being able to take advantage of disparate tax systems across the world.
What would be needed is not necessarily a simplification, but rather regulatory harmonisation within, and between the major trading blocs, starting with the EU. Ho wait...


And similarly to your analogy, the uk tax system which you say is too complex is not necessarily there to comprehensively protect the multinationals.

In reply to RomTheBear:



Exactly my thoughts. It was Juncker who turned Luxembourg into a multi nationals favourite tax haven.

In reply to summo:


Oi, I was picking up that as well
The Dutch are quite good at moving large amounts of cash around also ...
https://www.forbes.com/sites/robertwood/2016/12/22/how-google-saved-3-6-bil...

In reply to RomTheBear:

The failure to collect tax in uk jurisdiction by uk tax authorities on transactions carried out in the uk is someone else's fault?
Rom I am truly gob smacked ,the one time you could lay the blame fairly and squarely on Great Britain you choose to look elsewhere.

You really are the most contrary man I have ever come across and my life is all the richer for having made your acquaintance.

In reply to The Ice Doctor:

Of all the things that scare me - absolute scare the crap out of me, is when rich people will have access to technology that will drastically increase their lifespan (close to 200 years) and tailor their genetics for health/strength/beauty/intelligence(?). This is far away from us now, but when/if it happens, I don't see how it will end well.

In reply to Stichtplate:

for the most part, yes. However you could blame the uk for systematically blocking any kind of multilateral regulatory convergence aimed at cracking down on tax havens and tax avoidance.


Maybe you're the one who choses to not lay the blame on GB when you should, and choses to not lay the blame when you shouldn't.


No I'm not being" contrary" I'm just speaking from my own experience working many years for one of the "big four" accountancy firm you seem to despise.
They suck as a place to work for all sorts of reasons mostly because it's populated with arseholes cutting at each other's throats all day long, but my own experience is that they are dead set on making sure everything they and their customer do is compliant with whatever regulatory framework they operate in, and they throw significant amounts of money at it. Moreover it seems to me that the UK regulatory framework is one of the simplest to navigate, or rather, is one of the less "absurd".

In reply to RomTheBear:

I honestly couldn't sum up the energy to despise something both as nebulous and mundane as an accountancy firm, though the idea does make me chuckle.
In the matter of the intricacies of international accountancy (and much else besides) I find I must bow down before your superior knowledge.

In reply to Stichtplate:

As you always should indeed. There there.

In reply to BnB:


You're talking about single owners, not corporates who ultimately screw over everyone to appease the shareholders. Make less profit or sack people? make less profit or decimate your employees pensions? make less profit or pollute the environment? Profit (& performance bonus) always wins. I did steer you into your comment by saying self-serving business owners though, I should have been more specific.

In reply to Toerag:

This may seem counter intuitive but bigger companies usually behave much better than the small ones simply because they can afford to pay all the lawyers and consultant to make sure everything is in order, and they are under intense scrutiny from the regulators and the public. As soon as you go into small and medium businesses dodgy practices are often not the exception, but the norm.

But I'm sorry you can't really blame them for taking advantage of all the perfectly legal gaps in between different tax systems, they simply do not have a choice, it's f*cking war out there, if they don't tax optimise everything to death a competitor who does will supplant them. As simple as that.

The responsibility lies primarily with the regulators, and ultimately, the politicians.

In reply to RomTheBear:

Not quite that clear cut Rom . Quite famously big car companies will perform a cost benefit analysis of fatal flaws in their cars. Say a certain model with a poorly designed fuel tank is prone to turn into a fireball after a rear end shunt, bean counters estimate liability payouts as $100 million against a recall cost of $150 million, guess which option the company goes for. Occasionally adverse publicity means this strategy backfires as in the recent Ford ignition key scandal.
Small and medium sized firms can't afford to adopt such strategies as they don't have the cash reserves or the high end law firms.

In reply to Stichtplate:


I used the word "usually"
I do not know about the situation or industry you describe or whether it's realistic, but there again, as I said, the fault here lies largely in the regulator. If the benefit of cheating is greater than the cost if you get caught ( I suspect that it usually isn't) then cheating becomes a rational, in fact almost inevitable, option. The risk department will just give the green light as they will have it all worked out.

In reply to RomTheBear:


Only if you have allowed yourself to become a morally bankrupt corporate drone, devoid of both soul and conscience.
Maybe you spent too long working with those cut throat assholes you described Rom?

In reply to Stichtplate:


Well personally I've always been in favour of expanding section 92 and make it more enforceable. The responsibility of a company and its director should be a bit more than simply do what's best for its member, it should also be for the benefit the wider society.



Probably...

In reply to Toerag:


Thanks for acknowledging you used the wrong formulation of words. I do think you need to bone up on your understanding of the UK's employment trends however. SMEs (small and medium sized businesses) make up 60% of the private sector job market.

https://www.fsb.org.uk/media-centre/small-business-statistics

This is bigger than the corporate sector by a factor of more than 150% and absolutely dwarfs the public sector.

In reply to SenzuBean:


As per usual, thread on UKC goes tangential.

Look at how far technology has come since in the 1950's. It is exponential in its abilities. There are already computers that can think. Take FB. Not around a decade ago. Now universally accepted and powerful. Voice recognition in call centres, that's a computer interpreting your voice - yes it was explained how complex and faulty it currently is, give it time, I'm sure it will be perfect.

It wouldn't take much for a trend to start with AI and robotics and take off on an exponential scale, at which point, it becomes uncontrollable. I don't think it is Sci fi. People watch Sci and create reality. That really is concerning. So people on here are no scared of computers that may be more more powerful than their own brains? Come on, pull the other one, its got bells on it.

Let me ask you a simple question. Why would you employ someone, if a robot can do it cheaper?

In reply to BnB:

SMEs might make up a large percentage of employers, but they still have to compete with corporates. What will they do when the corporates they supply put the squeeze on them? As the ice doctor said above, when push comes to shove it's always the little man that loses out.

In reply to The Ice Doctor:

You rather over-estimate the speed of progress. Facebook *was* very definitely around, one decade ago and voice-recognition technology, while vastly improved, has been around for a surprisingly long time -- Just a few months ago, I was drinking beer with a German professor who built an automated call-in system way back in the day.

Ultimately, the progress in technology is fast but it is not growing exponentially. Machine learning and AI break-throughs like those exhibited by DeepMind are still exceedingly rare.

Secondly, there's the certification problem. Deep Learning faces a HUGE barrier to the medical and automotive worlds, for example, simply because deep learning is completely opaque. Unlike old-fashioned engineering techniques such as control-theory, learning algorithms cannot be explained or validated by theory. We know they've learned *something* and can demonstrate their performance, empirically, but nobody can prove they won't go hysterical, on paper, like you can with control-theory. They're also free of morals so nobody can claim they will act in the best interests of a medical patient or car passenger for philosophical reasons.

There's also a data problem.

Just look at the outrage directed at DeepMind for trying to exploit NHS data if you doubt that red-tape is going to slow the speed of progress. How, exactly, do you think AI will revolutionise our lives if we don't provide it with our data?

Conversely, who, exactly, is happy to provide an AI with their data knowing that the AI is not necessarily controlled by a benevolent entity? (Personally, I'd trust DeepMind but I wouldn't trust Google themselves, or Microsoft, Facebook, Twitter or the rest.)

In reply to Xharlie:

Thank you for your contribution. I hope you are right and Mr Chace is wrong. Look at the current DUP bribe though, when it comes to morales, politicially there is somewhat of a void. Since when did multi nationals have consciences?

In reply to The Ice Doctor:



We are getting pretty good at machine learning, which is very useful for image recognition, data analysis, speech and so on.
To a large extent the algorithms and concepts have existed for a long time it's just that now we have huge amounts of data to train those algorithms with, and more computing power than ever to do so.

But "true" AI that could systematically replace humans, and "take off on an exponential scale" is very far away. You'd need to create consciousness. We don't even know shit about how our brains works, let alone program it into a computer. In fact we don't even know if it's even possible !

Yes many boring jobs will be replaced by computers, and that's absolutely fine, it will just free us up to do all the things that only humans are good at, and that we tend to enjoy doing more. It doesn't scare me at all.

In reply to RomTheBear:


Agree


Agree


Agree


Disagree. There is nothing to suggest the human brain is beyond our eventual comprehension.

Well sort of disagree. There is a theoretical argument that says consciousness is non computable - i.e. can not emerge from or be hosted by a Universal Turing Machine. We can build other sorts of machine however. However a sufficiently large classical UTM can simulate any such quantum system, although it may need a non classical source of entropy.

In reply to The Ice Doctor:

The future is always oversold and under imagined.

In reply to wintertree:





I didn't say it was impossible, I'm simply saying we don't know whether it is.


No, I agree.

In reply to RomTheBear:

Just to put an additional perspective on this. My thanks go to Andrew Haldene, chief economist to the BOE, who states 5% of UK companies are chasing and investing in technology, but the majority of firms as he put it were 'long tailed and tied to labour.'

In terms of Robotisation it seems as if there will be more polarisation and total market differentiation.

Nevertheless, the whole AI subject is interesting, concerning, perhaps comfortable dependant on your age, occupation, income level, intelligence.

In reply to Toerag:


That may certainly be true of supermarkets and their milk suppliers but in other sectors SMEs dance around the dinosaurs laughing at their cumbersome inefficiency and wasteful arrogance.

We were talking about how companies treat their employees however, not their suppliers or competitors.