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All robots are busy. A world without work: what will people live on in the era of total robotization? Requirements for employees will change

15.03.2024

The future of humanity has imperceptibly moved from the beautiful distance to the foreseeable tomorrow. Robots and software have moved so far forward that significant changes in the world order will be visible in just 5 years. The main thing is not to learn about the achievements of scientists and engineers from the document about your own dismissal. You need to prepare for the upcoming changes in advance and choose a profession that will definitely require the hands and brain of a person, writes"Knife".

In all seriousness? Is it time to be afraid of robots?

Actually yes. Report reports that by 2020, according to conservative estimates, robots will take 5 million jobs in 15 developed countries. Futurologists In 2013, an Oxford study put forward a theory that in the next 20 years in the United States, artificial intelligence will fill up to 47% of job vacancies. Robots will enter everyday life: people will meet them on the streets and even in their own apartments. According to research Cisco company, this will happen in the 2020s, because already now the number of home robots in cities is doubling every 9 months.

And in Russia too?

The trends will certainly reach Russia. The BBC Russian service, citing Bank of America, believes that in our country 60% will be occupied by robots, and this is the smallest figure among developing countries. Another rough estimate is that one in four will be unemployed due to artificial intelligence (AI). While Russia consumes less than half a percent of the global market for industrial robots, because Russian business is still reluctant to invest in automation - people are cheaper.

In addition, technological changes require a significant increase in spending on science.

Robots will replace wipers, why should others be afraid?

In fact, this is not entirely true; the replacement of humans with artificial intelligence starts from the position of an average skill level. This is an activity of those employees that has many template components and is easy to automate. Moreover, this must be very costly work - the business owner must come to the conclusion that it is more profitable to replace people with hardware. Inviting an expensive robot to lower positions and asking it to sweep the yard from time to time is not yet profitable.

There is fresh proof of this: Sberbank reduced 450 lawyers who prepared claims for the company. Analysts at Superjob predict that by 2020 the job market for entry-level accountants and office clerks will shrink threefold. It's all about electronic document management.

Who else is at risk?

Also, skilled workers at industrial enterprises may well lose their jobs. A new generation of robotic systems are now being introduced there, which are capable of learning as they work and do not disdain routine tasks. Factories are already appearing around the world that are 90% or more automated.

Up to 98% of taxi drivers in the world will be replaced by driverless programs. Truckers may also be laid off. Tesla has already presented an all-electric truck that can travel 500 miles without recharging. At the same time, it is equipped with lane keeping and automatic braking functions. So far, the spread of drones is being contained, but it’s a matter of time. Traffic police officers will also likely be replaced by smart road safety monitoring systems.

Also, judging by the Oxford results, 98% of salespeople will say goodbye to their jobs. In some fast food chains, orders are no longer taken by a person, but by a touch screen.

Junior staff positions in laboratories may disappear, about 50% of dental technicians will disappear, even 11% of journalists will remain unemployed due to AI. Farmers, postmen, seamstresses, laborers, carpenters, bartenders, cleaners, secretaries - all these professions may simply disappear.

What will remain?

Therefore, today it is worth thinking not about production and office professions, but about those where personal contact is necessary. It will be very difficult for robots to replace teachers and psychologists. Health care and social care are here to stay, too. Moreover, in the future, care for older people will be needed more than ever. Tourism and art are also not afraid of robotization. These areas are related to recreation, but what else can a person do in a robotic world?

The image of familiar professions can change greatly. For example, to be a journalist or writer, it is no longer enough just to write well. The Associated Press's robot-journalist Wordsmith churns out more than 1 billion articles a year, and Japanese scientists used AI to write a novel that was shortlisted for a literary award.

Serious changes will happen in medicine. Instead of putting a spoon in the client’s mouth, the local pediatrician will just look at the client’s diagnostic biosensors and immediately recommend a special genetically engineered medicine, taking into account the wishes of your patient.

Engineers will be updated

New engineering professions are likely to emerge in the future. You can safely start learning robotics and everything related to. Judging by the international analytical report IDC FutureScape: Worldwide Robotics 2017, by 2020 the robotics sector will increase by at least 60%, but more than a third of vacancies in this area will be relevant due to a lack of trained personnel.

There will soon be a need for smart environment technicians in the IT industry. Convergent and nanotechnologies will come to industry, and even if technical systems of microrobots are in full swing, engineers who understand such things will be worth their weight in gold. There will also be a need for urbanists - ecologists, eco-analysts in the extractive industries, specialists in renewable energy sources and waste management.

Researchers predict a new space age for humanity and the construction of a new generation of orbital stations.

Requirements for employees will change

Report, voiced at the World Economic Forum in 2016, reports that the skills that will be decisive in hiring tomorrow do not play a special role today. Social skills will become important: emotional intelligence, the ability to be inspired and inspired, to convince and train others, the ability to work in a team without causing irritation to others. At the same time, since there will be maximum robotization around, knowledge of the basics of programming and algorithmization will become necessary. In the future, declaring “I am a programmer” will be like today declaring “I can count to one hundred.”

Among the professions for which demand has now appeared and will continue to grow for a long time are mobile and web developers, cybersecurity specialists and Big Data analysts.

What should humanists do?

In 2015, more than two dozen Japanese universities announced cuts or complete closures in the humanities and social sciences. Knowledge of a foreign language will finally cease to be an advantage in employment: in recent years, significant progress has been made in voice recognition and translation accuracy. In October, Google announced the release of wireless headphones with built-in software that can translate 40 foreign languages by ear.

However, it is not worth saying goodbye to the philology department forever. The position of digital linguist will likely become widespread, as there will be a constant need to develop semantic translation systems, and in general, someone will have to manage the communication between humanity and machines in natural languages.

There will be many jobs available for humanities majors in media and entertainment. Research 2016 shows: the greater the value of leisure, the less time a person tends to work. With the development of computer games and social networks, employment levels are falling and people are ready to read articles and watch strange videos on the Internet even more often.

In addition, humanity will face a lot of ethical problems related to questions like “is it good to seat a robot nanny at a separate table for servants?” Philosophical understanding and knowledge of sociology will be required.

How to stay in demand?

The word “profession” will probably be forgotten, and will be replaced by a “set of competencies”, the list of which will grow for every working person, according to the modern concept of life-long learning - lifelong learning.

Robots will take over your jobs in the next 40 years.

It doesn't matter who you work for. Are you digging trenches? The robot will dig them better. Do you write articles for a magazine? The robot will write better than you. If you're a doctor, IBM's Watson will no longer help you find the right diagnosis in its database of millions of case reports and journal articles. He will simply treat better than you.

Are you the CEO of a company? I'm sorry, but robots will run companies better than you. People of creative professions? Robots will draw, write and sculpt better than you. Think your social skills are beyond the reach of robots? Very affordable. Within 20 years, about half of you will be out of work. In another couple of decades, the same fate awaits the majority of those remaining.

In some ways it sounds great. Let the robots work! You no longer have to drag yourself out of bed at six in the morning or spend the entire day on your feet. We will be able to calmly read, write poetry, play video games and generally do anything. And in a century, most likely, this will be the case. Humanity will enter a golden age.

But what will happen in 20 years? Or 30? Many will have lost their jobs by then. Believe me, it won't be like a golden age. Until we figure out how to fairly distribute the fruits of robot labor, we will face an era of mass unemployment and poverty. Working class unemployment played a large role in the 2016 US elections.

If we don't want to see demagogues replace each other in power because machines are robbing people of their livelihoods, this needs to end as soon as possible. Along with global warming, a future without work is the main problem facing progressive politicians, not to mention humanity as a whole. But now this problem barely comes into our field of vision.

That's boring, right? Fortunately, articles on a complex or highly specialized topic traditionally begin with some funny or unusual incident. This helps the reader slowly become immersed in the daunting complexity of the material. I will also tell you about one such case.

Last Christmas I was at my mother's house. There I mentioned that I recently read about Google Translate. It turned out that a few weeks earlier, without telling anyone, Google switched to a new machine learning algorithm. The quality of translations has skyrocketed. I myself noticed improvements, but chalked them up to normal progressive progress. I didn't realize that this was due to a leap in algorithms.

But if Google's translation algorithm has gotten better, does that mean voice recognition has gotten better too? And the ability to answer questions? How can we check this? We decided to unwrap gifts instead of thinking about it.

Then we somehow switched to the topic of erasers. Which erasers are best? Light ones? Black? Traditional pink? Come to think of it, why are they usually pink in the first place? “I’ll ask Google!” - I said. Then he took out his phone and asked the question: “Why are erasers pink?” Within half a second, Google responded to me.

Artist Roberto Parada

Not impressed? And there should be. We all know that phones are pretty good at recognizing voices. And we know they can find the nearest café or popular chicken wine recipe. But what about a completely random question? And not an easy “who”, “where” or “when”?

I asked the question "why" and it wasn't about why the singer Pink uses erasers, for example. Google should realize that I said “pink,” that I was interested in the historical reasons for the color of the rubber bands, not their condition or shape. And he did it. In less than a second. Having at your disposal a cheap microprocessor and a slow Internet connection.

If you're interested, Google took the answer from Design*Sponge: "Eberhard Faber began producing erasers... The erasers contained pumice - volcanic ash from Italy, which gave them abrasive properties, as well as a characteristic color and smell."

Still not impressed? Back when Watson won a round of Jeopardy against two of the best players of all time, he would have needed a bedroom-sized computer to answer such a question. This was just seven years ago.

What do pink erasers have to do with the fact that we will all be out of work in a couple of decades? I'm telling you. Last October, freight service Otto (a subsidiary of Uber) transported two thousand cases of Budweiser 120 miles from Fort Collins, Colorado, to Colorado Springs - without a driver at the wheel.

In just a few years, this technology will go from prototype to deployment, meaning millions of truck drivers will be out of work.

Automated freight transport does not rely on newfangled machines the way the 19th century Industrial Revolution relied on the power loom and steam shovel. Like Google's ability to recognize speech and answer questions, self-driving trucks, as well as cars, buses and ships, rely on software that replicates human intelligence.

By now, everyone has heard the predictions that driverless cars could lead to the loss of 5 million jobs. But few realize that once AI algorithms are ready for driving, they will be ready for much more. It's not millions of people who will lose their jobs - tens of millions.

This is what we mean when we say robots. We're talking about cognitive abilities, not creatures that are made of metal and powered by electricity, not chicken nuggets.

In other words, we need to look not at the progress in robotics, but at the speed with which we are rushing towards artificial intelligence. While we may not yet be anywhere near AI at the level of human intelligence, the progress over the past couple of decades has been amazing.

For many years, technology has stood still, and suddenly robots play chess better than grandmasters. They play Jeopardy better than the record holders. They can drive cars in San Francisco and get better at it every year.

They are so good at recognizing faces that Welsh police recently made the first arrest in the UK using facial recognition software. After years of slow progress in speech recognition, Google announced that it had reduced its recognition error rate from 8.5% to 4.9% in ten months.

All of this is to say that AI is growing exponentially thanks to improvements in both computer hardware and algorithms. According to Moore's law, the power and performance of processors doubles every two years. Recent algorithm improvements have been even more rapid. For a long time, these advances seemed insignificant.

The transition from bacterial intelligence to nematode intelligence is technically a huge leap, but in practice it does not bring us any closer to true artificial intelligence. However, if the doubling continues, one of the doubling cycles will lead to a transition from lizard intelligence to mouse intelligence, and then to monkey intelligence. Once this happens, it will be a small step away from human-level AI.

This may be hard for some to imagine, so here's a graph that shows the exponential doubling curve in petaflops (quadrillions of calculations per second). During the first 70 years of the digital era, computer power doubled every couple of years, giving rise to accounting programs, airline reservation systems, weather forecasts, Spotify, and so on.

Exponential Compute Curve (in petaflops): You are here; one tenth of the human brain; full AI

But on the scale of the human brain, which is estimated to have a power of 10 to 50 petaflops, this increase is so tiny that no changes are visible. By 2025, we will finally begin to see visible progress towards artificial intelligence.

In ten years, we will reach about a tenth of the power of the human brain, and in another ten years we will have full-fledged human-level AI. It may seem like it happened overnight, but in reality it is the result of hundreds of years of constant but imperceptible progress.

Are we really this close to creating true AI? Think about this. Despite all this doubling, until recently IT experts believed that it would be decades before a machine could beat the ancient game of Go, considered the most difficult human game in existence.

But last year the computer defeated a Korean grandmaster, considered one of the best players, and this year, a Go player who tops the world rankings. The progress of artificial intelligence development is not only not slowing down - it is ahead of the wildest dreams of dedicated AI fans.

Unfortunately for those worried about being left out of work by robots, these changes mean mass unemployment is much closer than we feared. Perhaps it is already starting. But you will not learn about this from politicians who pass over the issue in silence.

We are on the verge of an AI revolution. Many of those who work in IT - people like Bill Gates and Elon Musk - they beat This is not the first year that I have been worried. But they are ignored by politicians and, until recently, often ridiculed by writers on technology and economics. Let's take a look at some of the most popular arguments from AI skeptics.

“We'll never get true AI because computing power won't double forever. We will reach the limits of physics long before then."

There are several good reasons to discount these claims. For starters, experts will invent faster, specialized microprocessors. Google, for example, announced the creation of a “tensor processor” last spring. This microprocessor is up to 30 times faster and up to 80 times more energy efficient for machine learning tasks than an Intel processor.

Tensor Processors are now available to researchers using Google cloud services. Other processors tailored for specific aspects of AI (image recognition, neural networks, text processing, etc.) either already exist or will appear soon.

These technologies are increasingly copying the functioning of the human brain. The brain does not have a super-powerful computing device. It consists of about 100 billion neurons, which simultaneously support human mental work and consciousness.

At a lower level, neurons act in parallel, creating small clusters that carry out semi-autonomous actions, such as responding to a specific external stimulus. At the next level, dozens of these clusters work together in each of the brain's about 100 subordinate regions—separate centers that specialize in specific functions, such as speech, visual processing and balance.

Finally, all these subordinate parts of the brain also work in parallel. The result of this work, the general state, is monitored and controlled by higher brain functions, which allow us to perceive the world and give us a sense of conscious control of our actions.

AI takes over

Researchers from Oxford and Yale asked 352 AI experts when machines would surpass humans at certain tasks. Here's what the experts said.

AI can do better than humans:

2022 - fold laundry.
2024 - make a translation from a foreign language.
2026 - write an essay for a high school student.
2027 - drive a truck.
2049 - write a bestseller.
2053 - work as a surgeon.
2059 - complete a mathematical study.
2060 - solve any other problem.

Modern computers also combine many microprocessors in their operation. As of 2017, the fastest computer in the world uses approximately 40 thousand processors with 260 cores each. This is more than 10 million processor cores working simultaneously. Each of these cores has less power than the Intel processor in your computer, but the machine has about the same power as the human brain.

This does not mean that we have already created AI. This is still a long way off. This architecture is massive and still incredibly difficult to program. But the better we use this architecture, the more likely there will be frequent breakthroughs in the operation of the algorithms.

In other words, even if Moore's Law breaks down or stops working altogether, overall power will likely continue to grow for many years to come.

“Suppose computer power continues to double. But this has been happening for decades! You guys keep predicting the coming of full AI, but it will never happen."

At the beginning of the computer age, there was an optimistic idea that we would quickly be able to build smart machines. The end of the dream came in the 1970s, when experts realized that even the fastest computers of the day produced only about one billionth of the computing power of the human brain. The realization tempered the ardor of industry workers; since then they have looked at its progress even too realistically.

For now, these are all pilot projects, the goal of which is to learn more about how best to implement a basic income program and how well it works. But once large-scale unemployment due to automation becomes a reality, we can expect the idea to spread rapidly.

Robot Tax

This proposal was contained in a draft report to the European Parliament. He was supported by Bill Gates, who proposes to make robots pay income taxes and payroll taxes like people. This will make people more competitive.

Unfortunately, this idea has a flaw. Ultimately, the cost of hiring robots will artificially increase, and with it the cost of goods that robots produce. Unless every country imposes the same tax, robots will simply work in other countries.

We will be in a more difficult position than if we simply allowed robots to take our jobs. However, a tax on robots could still have value as a way to slow down unemployment a bit.

In 10-15 years, artificial intelligence will leave millions of people unemployed, experts warn

From an employer’s point of view, computers are more profitable than people: they cost less and work more efficiently, photo: Robohunter
Computers can already do some tasks much better than people. Experts say: in just 10-15 years, artificial intelligence will displace humans from many professions and leave millions of people unemployed.

“Strana” looked into what professions are in danger of extinction, whether the power of computers is inevitable and how this threatens humanity.

Robot vs Human

Monopolization by artificial intelligence (AI) (the scientifically correct name is “deep neural networks”) of all spheres of human life is no longer a futurological idea, but an economic calculation. Leading scientific research warns that the world will face unemployment of appalling proportions in the coming decades. This can provoke riots and worsen social inequality, poverty and other social problems.

Thus, according to Oxford University, over the next 20 years in the United States, every second job will be automated - 47% of workers will be replaced by machines. In China – 77%.

The Youth Advocacy Group Australia (FYA) warns that about 70% of young people in Australia are now employed in occupations where the impact of automation will be "radical". That is, in fact, in twenty years their knowledge and professional skills will no longer be needed by anyone - computers will perform the same functions for them. The only difference is that the employer will not have to pay wages to the machines, and taxes from it to the state.

From an employer’s point of view, a robot is more profitable than a human: it does everything faster and cheaper. Moreover, modern AI can also learn. Moreover, while a person may take years to master a new skill, a computer spends seconds on it. The person cannot stand the competition.

“We are approaching a time when machines will surpass humans in almost every activity,” Moshe Vardi, a professor of computer engineering and director of the Institute of Information Technology, said in his report. “I believe that society needs to face this problem before it arises.” "If machines are able to do almost everything that people can do, what will they be left to do?"

Vardy predicts that in 30 years, robots will be able to do almost everything that people can do. And this will lead to more than 50% of the planet’s inhabitants becoming unemployed, and society will plunge into total procrastination.

According to the International Federation of Robotics, the leader in automation is South Korea, where there are 531 robots per 10 thousand workers. China is still lagging behind: there are only 49 robots per 10 thousand, but the country ranks first in the rate of increase in robotics units.

Ukraine, however, will not be embraced by the automation trend as quickly as the West, experts say, due to relatively cheap labor. In general, in relation to Europe, Ukraine will begin to feel the invasion of computers with a delay of about 10 years. According to experts, the higher the average salary in Ukraine becomes, the more often employers will give preference to robots over people.

Experts reassure: automation is a historically natural process, and humanity has already experienced something similar before. In the 18th and 19th centuries, with the beginning of the industrial revolution, for example, cars first displaced horses from the sphere of transport, but now they can also replace people. ATMs, self-service centers, and, more recently, online banking have already replaced an entire army of bank employees. And you need to take this calmly.

“There was once such a profession - human calculators who counted on adding machines. Some scientists believe that artificial intelligence appeared when people invented a calculator that could solve the same mathematical problems much faster and better than a person,” says Artem Chernodub, PhD, AI researcher at Clikque Technology.

The power of neural networks is that their teacher is the limitless Internet space. Robots can no longer do only what they were originally programmed to do.

“Recently, a neural system developed its own encryption system and taught this system to another neural network. AI today already works in such a way that even the architect of this network no longer understands how it does it. It changes itself from the inside. It works on the principle of the human brain - that’s why it it’s called neural,” notes reputation management expert Boris Tizenhausen.

It is Deep Learning ("Deep learning" - algorithms that allow AI to learn and improve itself without human intervention - Ed.) that has reduced the cost of computing, and therefore the cost of the computers themselves. This is now leading to mass automation of professions.

“One gigaflops (a measure of computer performance - the number of mathematical operations that a computing system performs per second, Ed.) - now costs about 6 cents, in 2008 it cost about $50, and in 1997 - about 40 thousand dollars,” leads example Artem Chernodub - Computers have become more powerful and, accordingly, cheaper. A modern mobile phone is more powerful than the most advanced computer was 10 years ago, and it is now accessible to most people, while a computer 30 years ago was a luxury. train deep neural networks on large amounts of data, even just 1 terabyte of images, and get from them behavior similar to human behavior, and sometimes even beyond human capabilities, this seemed fantastic 10 years ago.”

The capabilities of neural networks are truly impressive. Their influence is especially noticeable in the direction of chatbots. Take the startup Luka, which generates dialogues with characters from various works: after the death of singer Prince, they created a chat with the musician, analyzing interviews with him in publicly available sources.

Two design options for the same product. The left one is human. The right one is suggested by the computer (Within Enhance program). The most incredible thing is that the design of the computer is more natural and pleasing to the eye. Although the AI did not rely on personal experience - it only strived for maximum efficiency.

Another impressive example is when the artificial intelligence AlphaGo, created by a division of Google, beat the European champion in the game of checkers Go. Go surpasses even chess in complexity, with millions of unpredictable moves.

“At Google, they trained the neural network this way: they loaded it with data from all the games that could be found, and the system gave priority to those moves that made the computer win, and eventually learned to play at the level of the average player,” says Boris Tizenhausen. “Then Google forced this AI to play with another AI. They made millions of moves per second, and in the end no one won. But by playing with each other, they improved in the end, AlphaGo beat the European champion in checkers Go with a score of 5:0. The champion was upset."

Martin Ford, author of the book "Rise of the Robots", is sure that automation can no longer be stopped. "It's part of capitalism to constantly strive for higher productivity," he says. Robotization of production benefits almost everyone except workers without advanced degrees, and it is they who will be most affected by mass robotization.

Dying professions

According to experts, today almost any profession that is associated with a repeatable algorithm of actions is under threat of extinction. Roughly speaking, if you do the same routine work every day from morning to evening, connected with the constant collection, processing and analysis of data, it makes sense to think about changing your profession.

Some positions will disappear altogether, while others will be forced to modernize to meet the new realities of the technological world. “Strana”, together with experts, has compiled a list of 25 professions that are at risk.

1. Drivers

The development of AI will inevitably affect taxi drivers, and indeed all carriers. In the United States, it is predicted that in 15 years all transport will become automated. Self-propelled vehicles will replace taxi and public transport drivers, excavator operators, truck drivers, and chauffeurs.

Tesla and Google have been testing self-driving cars in the US for a year now. In Pittsburgh (Pennsylvania), as well as in Singapore, unmanned vehicles have already begun to be used as taxis. And the Russian Federation and Finland are even negotiating to create infrastructure for unmanned communication between the countries.

By 2025, American automakers plan to mass produce self-driving cars for a wide range of customers. They will not have a steering wheel or pedals. For what?

Intelligent transport systems (ITS) will help avoid accidents: cars will read information from each other, know about oncoming traffic, and change the trajectory and speed depending on this data. There won’t even be a need for a traffic light - the cars themselves will see that another car is crossing their road and avoid collisions.

Flying car design project. Photo: 3DNews

The only thing that is currently hindering the widespread adoption of self-driving cars is the poor condition of the roads. But this obstacle is temporary. It is possible that soon there will be no need for roads for cars - they will fly through the air. Terrafugia has been working on such a flying car since 2013, and it is currently undergoing testing. The flight in it will also be controlled by a computer system - the user only needs to indicate the destination.

2. Conductors and controllers

Following the drivers, conductors will disappear. In some cities, trains already run on their own, and fares are automatically read from bank cards using phones.

3. Conveyor workers

Robots are replacing manual labor in manufacturing. Thus, Adidas is building a fully automated plant in Germany, where everything - from clothing design to sewing - is done by robots. The process of producing a pair of sneakers from start to finish takes about five hours. By comparison, in Adidas' current supply chain in Asia, a similar process could take several weeks. Robots will also be able to quickly create shoes to order for a specific client - a significant competitive advantage.

4. Security guards

The security services sector is also being computerized. Concierges, security guards, and watchmen will be replaced by person identification systems, which, due to the increasing frequency of terrorist threats, are already being introduced everywhere in places with large crowds of people. This is convenient and effective: the computer recognizes a person’s face and immediately determines whether he has a criminal record, is potentially dangerous or not, and whether he has been seen in contact with criminals. By the way, in this regard, AI will significantly complicate the work of burglars: the computer will instantly determine whether a neighbor or a stranger has entered the entrance.

“Now in Britain, the facial recognition system in the subway also connects to a person’s social media accounts, determines whether he is a member of terrorist groups - and if several suspicious people enter the subway at the same time, the system immediately sends a signal to the police,” Boris gives an example. Tiesenhausen.

5. Salespeople and cashiers

In Seattle, Amazon opened the world's first store without cash registers, sales assistants and queues. Scanning devices automatically scan the goods at the exit and withdraw money from the account. This is a real revolution in shopping.

It is based on Just Walk Out technology. It automatically detects when products are removed from the shelves and returned to their place, and creates a virtual basket. Based on this, immediately after the buyer leaves the store, he receives an invoice.

“All mass professions - such as cashiers, salespeople, resellers, merchandisers, warehouse workers, even waiters - can be automated, which means they will be automated. Go to McDonald's near the Louvre in Paris - very few people work there. Because social the standards are too high, and it’s expensive to hire a person even at McDonald’s, because he has to pay at least 1,600 euros. That’s why everything is being robotized,” says Chernodub.

6. Consultants

Today in the virtual world they are successfully replaced by chatbots. They provide online purchasing advice and help customers resolve product problems. Experts do not rule out that special robots will soon appear in stores that will present company products, greet visitors, tell them about the characteristics of the product, showing its images on the screen. Based on facial expressions and body language, robots will recognize human emotions and respond accordingly to them.

7. Accountants

With the introduction of electronic document management, the need for a huge layer of people who did paperwork, transferred documents from place to place and entered data into databases disappears. In fact, any person himself will be able to submit declarations, draw up basic documents for opening his own enterprise, for example. Just a few years ago, companies hired an accountant specifically for this purpose.

8. Financial staff

Here we are talking not only about the banal rearrangement of papers. The software effectively replaces brokers and traders.

Thus, since 2000, the number of financial employees on Wall Street has decreased by about one-third. The computer instead conducts hundreds of thousands of transactions, making decisions on purchase and sale within a split second based on data that is automatically collected on the market and exchange services. During this time, a person will only have time to sip coffee.

“Already on the American stock exchange, 40% of decisions on buying or selling shares are taken by AI. Traders have many special programs that determine trends, analyze quotes on several exchanges at once and build a mathematical model of how they will move forward. I’m not capable of this,” says Boris Tizenhausen.

9. Translators

In fact, each of us unwittingly contributes to the extinction of this profession: every time you enter text into an online translator, you are teaching it. If you indicate that a word in a sentence is translated incorrectly, the computer remembers this. With each such correction, it learns, and machine translation becomes more and more advanced. Google began using neural networks for translation at the end of 2016 - the number of errors in text translations decreased by 60%.

Now the search giants Yandex and Google are testing neural systems with in-depth morphological analysis, which take a radically new approach to text translation. Here's an example: a "translator" was taught to translate from Japanese to English and from Korean to English. Suddenly it turned out that the AI was able to translate directly from Japanese to Korean, although it was not taught to do so. The neural network itself created its own translation algorithm, in which an intermediary language (English) was not needed.

Experts assure: over time, the vocabulary of a smartphone will become equal to that of a human. AI will even be able to create its own language. Humanity will forget what language barriers are: there will no longer be a need to spend years learning a foreign language - your smartphone will easily and competently provide simultaneous translation into any language on the planet.

10. Call center operators

Many companies have already replaced call center operators with automated programs that respond to customer complaints and offer them appropriate solutions. If the robot cannot cope with the problem itself, it automatically switches the subscriber to a “live” employee.

11. Programmers and web designers

In the near future, specialties that are now considered intellectual will be recognized as “workers”: programming, web design, 3D design. Today a machine can easily do all this for a person.

For example, in order to model and make a denture, now a dental specialist must study for many years and obtain the appropriate qualifications, and the manufacture of such a prosthesis itself is very expensive. But today, 3D printers can print dentures quickly and cheaply. And soon such specialists will not be needed.

As for website development, according to experts, neural networks will soon learn to independently develop both the layout and design of websites, applications and programs. A person will simply set the parameters he needs.

“Already, programmers write code differently than programmers did twenty years ago, when they had to remember all the commands by heart. Now the program itself offers the programmer codes, and he selects the ones he needs. This will continue to be automated. I think it will get to the point where that a person will say: “Siri, write me such and such a program.” And Siri will write it,” says Artem Chernodub.

12. Guides

Even today, AI can easily determine where we are, provide historical information, and show photographs and virtual overviews of the area.

"A neural network can provide much more information and adapt to your interests. Targeted content is now coming first - Facebook works using this algorithm, showing what you are interested in, Google, etc. The system understands what you are interested in and presents this is exactly the way in which it will be interesting for you to see it. It is clear that “live” guides will remain, but they will become more exotic,” predicts Boris Tizenhausen.

13. Soldiers

Unmanned aerial vehicles, drones, security robots, and monitoring systems already cope with many tasks much better than humans and even make decisions whether to open fire or not, identifying the enemy by their shape and weapons. In the near future, experts say, they will begin to replace live soldiers in ground missions. Soon a person will remotely control tanks and planes without participating in battles himself.

Here we cannot help but recall the autonomous tracked vehicle MAARS (Modular Advanced Armed Robotic System) - this is a robot. His arsenal includes a machine gun, as well as tear, fragmentation, high-explosive and smoke grenades. At the same time, MAARS is capable of not only killing, but also saving – defusing mines and pulling wounded people from the battlefield.

14. Builders

Construction is already partially automated. It is no longer necessary to build a house - it can be printed on a special construction 3D printer. A person chooses the house design he likes, presses one button and a giant 3D printer prints the necessary blocks from concrete or other material.

The WinSun company in China has been developing such houses since 2014. And a Shanghai 3D house printer can create ten buildings from construction and industrial waste. The cost of producing one such house is no more than 5 thousand dollars.

15. Food producers

3D printers may also soon take over the mass production of human food. By and large, you can load any materials into them, and why not do the same with edible products. Natural Machines has already presented a similar development. The Foodini 3D printer allows you to load up to five different ingredients into it - you can set the necessary program, and the dish will be quickly “printed”. The result is still more like fast food, so high-end restaurant chefs don’t have to worry for now.

16. Travel agents

“Even five years ago there were travel agency offices on every corner, but now travel agents have virtually disappeared: they have been replaced by automatic platforms for booking and ordering tickets and places to stay. Those who remain on the market now are focused mainly on older people who are not trust electronic payment systems, but like their clients, they are already reaching their end of life,” notes Boris Tizenhausen.

17. Astronauts

There is a place for robotics in space. Robots are already doing menial work at the station. And the Robonaut2 (R2) robot from NASA and General Motors is already navigating the expanses of the earth’s orbit. R2 is capable of operating both inside the ISS and in outer space. And he doesn’t need a bulky spacesuit for this. Subsequently, R2 is planned to land on the Moon - it is safe and inexpensive.

18. Postmen and couriers

Delivery services are already gradually being taken over by drones and other similar devices. From the warehouse – directly to your home, conveniently and quickly.

Medicine, along with defense, are leaders in investments in AI development.

Thus, at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, they implemented an automatic medical diagnostic system using the Watson supercomputer. He determines the diagnosis more accurately than doctors and selects the optimal treatment method for each individual case. The accuracy of Watson's diagnoses is due to the fact that he studied 600,000 medical studies (about 2 million pages of text).

Less complex diseases will soon be able to be diagnosed using a mobile phone. London-based startup Your.MD is developing an app for iOS and Android devices that can listen to a person's complaints via text or voice and determine their illness.

Robot surgeons are already performing operations and stitching tissue together at the micro level. Instead of suturing, doctors now use robotic staplers. There are also robotic anesthesiologists; since 2013, these systems have been approved in the United States. Their use instead of the services of a professional anesthesiologist in the American market can save from $450 to $1850 per patient.

20. Pharmacists

Robots have already begun distributing medications to patients. In San Francisco, the UCSF Medical Center installed experimental machines in two hospitals that, after receiving an electronic prescription from a doctor, weigh out the required doses of medications, package them into pills and give them to the patient.

Robots can replace nannies and caregivers. The Japanese company NEC has developed a robot called PaPeRo that can entertain people and care for children and the disabled, helping them develop communication skills. The robot can conduct a dialogue in a natural and pleasant voice, tell jokes, tell fortunes, make riddles, remind you to take medications, and transmit voice messages from a person to other people, whom PaPeRo recognizes by their faces.

22. Fitness trainers

This profession, according to experts, is facing a serious transformation. Training is already conducted in many mobile applications by a robot - it’s cheaper, and online broadcasting can reach an unlimited number of users.

23. Teachers

Now you can get a diploma from any university remotely. One teacher can teach not ten people, as many fit in the classroom, but thousands of people at the same time. Experts believe that a kind of natural selection will begin in the industry, and truly highly qualified minds who are truly valued in the professional environment and have exceptional knowledge will remain teaching.

24. Journalists

Yes, the person who writes this article may also be unemployed in a dozen or two years.

Electronic media workers are at risk. The Los Angeles Times, Associated Press, Forbes and other well-known media outlets are already actively using robots - they create operational financial reports, results of sports matches and provide weather information. Robots will collect information much faster than journalists, find out “who, what, when, where, how and why,” even interview experts and draw up the final information material. Narrative Science predicts that in 15 years, 90% of news reports will be generated automatically.

Of course, we are not talking about columnism and the genre of artistic reporting, bordering on literature - here a computer cannot surpass a person in the subtlety of observations, the skill of conveying living emotions and the beauty of style. At least for now.

25. Priests

Don't rush to be indignant. Of course, robots will not be able to fully replace clergy, but partly AI is already being introduced into the church. You don’t have to look far for examples: last year in Lviv they created a service for ordering prayers via the Internet. In addition, for several years now, in order to put a note in the Western Wall, it is not at all necessary to go to Jerusalem - you just need to leave your message on the online representation of the shrine.

All hope for creativity

Experts insist: only professions associated with monotonous manual labor will disappear, in which there is no creative, intellectual, creative component, and most importantly, the need for purely human empathy.

“Indeed, some professions will disappear, but only those that can be fully automated. Human resources will still be in demand, for example, in the “Love and Care” industry - those areas where a machine simply cannot replace the component of human warmth and participation. This and the work that volunteers do today – caring for the elderly and sick, supporting victims, helping people with disabilities,” says HR specialist Larisa Bruver.

Bruver does not believe that in 15 years we will all be looking for a new job en masse. “The work landscape will certainly change, but it will shift towards intellectual and creative work - areas where even self-learning algorithms will either not be able to show the same productivity, or robotization will be artificially limited due to the risk of losing control over the process,” says expert.

The more complex and creative a profession is, the less it is threatened by automation. Artists, presenters, designers, actors, showmen, artists - there will continue to be demand for them.

However, today robots have already learned to create works of art. Andrey Karpaty from Stanford University has created a program into which you can load certain texts, say Shakespeare's sonnets, and it itself will begin to generate texts in the same style. Using the same principle, neural networks can already draw paintings in the style of Van Gogh and Picasso, and generate music a la Bach. There is even a music album “Neural Defense”, the lyrics for which were written by a robot.

How valuable and high-quality such “creativity” is is another question. For those who are inclined towards primitive consumption, there will not be much difference between the work of Mozart and a robot. But can this be considered art?

“Here the question is more for art historians. But I will say from myself: sometimes you come to the PinchukArtCentre, look at a piece of asphalt displayed there and think - what kind of nonsense? And then a modern art critic will come up to you and explain that this is actually art “,” says Artem Chernodub. “But seriously, I think that if people start buying paintings by artificial intelligence, it can be considered, if not art, then at least a product.”

It is reassuring that a robot can repeat, calculate, copy - but cannot create anything radically new. So far, computer creativity is just an imitation.

This is why the demand for human strangeness and genius will remain. Scientists, inventors, researchers, creators of art - people who do not create, but create - without them, the development of society, even with total automation of labor, is impossible. In addition, the ubiquity of robots has a significant advantage: against their background, the uniqueness and exclusivity inherent only in humans will be increasingly valued.

“No highly developed artificial intelligence can completely replace a person,” says Michio Kaku, an American physicist of Japanese origin. “We actually have much more advantages over machines than we can imagine. Robots do not have imaginative thinking, they do not have consciousness, intuition."

Therefore, the scientist advises: in order to succeed, you need to develop those abilities that are not available to robots: creativity, imagination, initiative, leadership qualities. Those countries that can balance commodity markets and cognitive-creative potential have a much greater chance of success.

But even if you don’t know how to draw, sing, write music, and didn’t get a PhD from Harvard, there’s no need to panic. Technological progress both kills some professions and creates new ones.

According to the forecasts of scientists from Utrecht University, labor automation, although it will reduce the number of jobs, will allow companies to reduce production costs, and at the same time the prices of goods - which will increase the purchasing power of citizens and create new jobs in other industries.

In addition, robots will still require human supervision for a long time. There will be a need for the profession of roboethicist - a professional who will train robots and ensure that they do not harm humans.

In any case, we need to learn to interact with AI. Modern children have it easier in this regard - they learn to handle a tablet before they speak. For older people, of course, it will be more difficult to relearn. But now is the time to think about whether you want to do what you are doing now for the rest of your life. The main thing is to navigate and adapt to the new technological reality in time. Progress can no longer be stopped.

Ecology of life: Robots will take your jobs in the next 40 years. It doesn't matter who you work for. Are you digging trenches? The robot will dig them better. Do you write articles for a magazine? The robot will write better than you. If you're a doctor, IBM's Watson will no longer help you find the right diagnosis in its database of millions of case reports and journal articles. He will simply treat better than you.

About a future in which people in the labor market will be replaced by artificial intelligence

Automation helped usher in the Trump era. What does AI have in store for us?

Robots will take over your jobs in the next 40 years.

In some ways it sounds great. Let the robots work! You no longer have to drag yourself out of bed at six in the morning or spend the entire day on your feet. We will be able to calmly read, write poetry, play video games and generally do anything. And in a century, most likely, this will be the case. Humanity will enter a golden age.

But what will happen in 20 years? Or 30? Many will have lost their jobs by then. Believe me, it won't be like a golden age. Until we figure out how to fairly distribute the fruits of robot labor, we will face an era of mass unemployment and poverty. Working class unemployment played a large role in the 2016 US elections.

That's boring, right? Fortunately, articles on a complex or highly specialized topic traditionally begin with some funny or unusual incident. This helps the reader slowly become immersed in the daunting complexity of the material. I will also tell you about one such case.

Last Christmas I was at my mother's house. There I mentioned that I recently read an article about Google Translate. It turned out that a few weeks earlier, without telling anyone, Google switched to a new machine learning algorithm. The quality of translations has skyrocketed. I myself noticed improvements, but chalked them up to normal progressive progress. I didn't realize that this was due to a leap in algorithms.

Artist Roberto Parada

What do pink erasers have to do with the fact that we will all be out of work in a couple of decades? I'm telling you. Last October, trucking service Otto (a subsidiary of Uber) transported two thousand cases of Budweiser 120 miles from Fort Collins, Colorado, to Colorado Springs - without a driver at the wheel.

In just a few years, this technology will go from prototype to deployment, meaning millions of truck drivers will be out of work.

Now everyone has already heard forecasts that self-driving cars could lead to the loss of 5 million jobs. But few realize that once AI algorithms are ready for driving, they will be ready for much more. It's not millions of people who will lose their jobs - tens of millions.

This is what we mean when we say robots. We're talking about cognitive abilities, not creatures that are made of metal and powered by electricity, not chicken nuggets.

In other words, we need to look not at progress in robotics, but at the speed with which we are rushing towards artificial intelligence. While we may not yet be anywhere near AI at the level of human intelligence, the progress over the past couple of decades has been amazing.

All of this is to say that AI is advancing exponentially, thanks to improvements in both computer hardware and algorithms. According to Moore's law, the power and performance of processors doubles every two years. Recent algorithm improvements have been even more rapid. For a long time, these advances seemed insignificant.

The transition from the intelligence of a bacterium to the intelligence of a nematode is technically a huge leap, but in practice it does not bring us any closer to true artificial intelligence. However, if the doubling continues, one of the doubling cycles will lead to a transition from lizard intelligence to mouse intelligence, and then to monkey intelligence. Once this happens, it will be a small step away from human-level AI.

Exponential Compute Curve (in petaflops): You are here; one tenth of the human brain; full AI

In ten years, we will reach about a tenth of the power of the human brain, and in another ten years we will get full-fledged human-level AI. It may seem like it happened overnight, but in reality it is the result of hundreds of years of constant but imperceptible progress.

Are we really this close to creating true AI? Think about this. Despite all this doubling, until recently IT experts believed that it would be decades before a machine could beat the ancient game of Go, considered the most difficult human game in existence.

We are on the verge of an AI revolution. Many who work in IT - people like Bill Gates and Elon Musk - have been sounding the alarm for years. But they are ignored by politicians and, until recently, often ridiculed by writers on technology and economics. Let's take a look at some of the most popular arguments from AI skeptics.

“We'll never get true AI because computing power won't double forever. We will reach the limits of physics long before then."

These technologies are increasingly copying the functioning of the human brain. The brain does not have a super-powerful computing device. It consists of about 100 billion neurons, which simultaneously support human mental work and consciousness.

AI takes over

Researchers from Oxford and Yale asked 352 AI experts when machines would surpass humans at certain tasks. Here's what the experts said.

AI can do better than humans:

2022 - fold laundry.

2024 - make a translation from a foreign language.

2026 - write an essay for a high school student.

2027 - drive a truck.

2049 - write a bestseller.

2053 - work as a surgeon.

2059 - complete a mathematical study.

2060 - solve any other problem.

This does not mean that we have already created AI. This is still a long way off. This architecture is massive and still incredibly difficult to program. But the better we use this architecture, the more likely there will be frequent breakthroughs in the operation of the algorithms.

In other words, even if Moore's Law breaks down or stops working altogether, overall power will likely continue to grow for many years to come.

“Suppose computer power continues to double. But this has been happening for decades! You guys keep predicting the coming of full AI, but it will never happen."

We have finally created computers that almost match the raw processing power of the human brain, although they cost over $100 million. And it is unknown whether the internal architecture of this supercomputer is capable of rivaling the human brain or not.

But in ten years, this level of power will likely be available for less than $1 million, and thousands of teams will be testing AI algorithms on a platform that can truly compete with humans.

“Perhaps we will get full-fledged AI. This only means that robots will behave intelligently, not that they will actually be “smart.”

This is just a topic for a tedious philosophical discussion. The employer doesn’t care whether the “smart” computer has a soul, whether it can love, feel pain, or whether it knows what loyalty is. The only thing that matters is whether he is similar enough to a person to repeat his actions.

When AI can copy humans, we will all lose our jobs, even if the computers that take our place are not intelligent.

“Each wave of automation (steam engine, electricity, computer) generated predictions of mass unemployment. Instead, we simply became more efficient. The same thing will happen with the AI revolution.”

Popular argument. But catastrophically wrong.

The Industrial Revolution was about mechanical power: Trains were more powerful than horses, and mechanical looms were more efficient than human muscles. And at first it really put people out of work. The Yorkshire weavers, the first Luddites, who smashed their looms, actually lost their livelihood.

This led to massive social upheaval that lasted for decades until the entire economy adapted to the machine age. When this finally happened, there was as much work to maintain the new machines as there had been in the days of manual labor. Ultimately, this resulted in a huge increase in productivity: one person could produce much more fabric than before.

The number of people employed remained the same, they were busy servicing machines that produced far more products than anyone could have imagined 100 years before. Once the unions demanded their share, everyone benefited.

The AI revolution will be nothing like this. When robots become as smart and capable as humans, we will have nothing to do because machines will be both stronger and smarter. Even if AI creates new professions, it will not help people. Name any job - robots can do it. They will produce themselves, program, repair and manage themselves. If you don't understand this, then you don't understand what's coming at us.

In fact, it's even worse. Intelligent robots will not only do our jobs as well as we do - they will be cheaper, faster and much more reliable than humans.

And they can work 168 hours a week, not 40. No capitalist in his right mind would continue to employ people. People are expensive, late, complain about any changes and spend half their working time gossiping. Let's admit it: we're lousy workers.

Until we reach the Star Trek future, the rich will get richer (after all, they own robots) and the rest will get poorer.

If we don't figure out what to do about it, workers' problems over the next few decades will be much worse than the consequences of the Industrial Revolution.

“Wait, wait,” the skeptics will say. “If all this is happening right now, why aren’t people already losing their jobs?” This has been pointed out by several astute observers, including James Surowiecki in a recent issue of Wired. “If automation is truly transforming the U.S. economy,” he writes, “two things should happen: aggregate productivity rises sharply, and jobs become harder to get.” But neither one nor the other happens.

Productivity has actually stagnated since 2000, and work has gradually increased since the end of the Great Recession. Surowiecki also notes that turnover is low, the average length of service has remained virtually unchanged in decades, and wages are rising. Although Surowiecki admits that wage growth is “modest by historical standards.”

As I wrote four years ago, the share of the employed population has declined since 2000; middle class wages have become lower; corporations are hoarding money and investing less in new products and new industries. As a result, labor's share of national income decreased. These trends are consistent with job losses due to traditional automation. As automation evolves into AI, they will accelerate. At the same time, the fact that AI is already influencing work is difficult to recognize as obvious for one simple reason.

: AI doesn't exist yet, so we're not losing jobs to it yet. So far we have only seen isolated glimpses of intelligence in automation, but it is not even close to real AI. Remember: artificial intelligence is progressing exponentially.

This means that as long as computer power doubles from a trillionth of the human brain's power to a billionth to a millionth, it will have little effect on employment levels.

Next, several final doublings will occur, and robots will make the transition from one thousandth the power of a human brain to full-fledged human intelligence. Don't be fooled by the fact that nothing much has happened so far. Another ten years and it will happen. Let's talk about which professions will be the first to be threatened. This divides the work into four main categories:

routine physical: digger, truck driver;

routine mental: assistant accountant, telemarketer;

non-routine physical: cook, junior nurse;

not routine mental: teacher, doctor, director.

Routine tasks will come first. Thanks to advances in robotics, this will affect both physical and mental work.

A team from Oxford and Yale asked machine learning experts when computers could take over various human activities. Two-thirds said progress in machine learning had accelerated in recent years, with Asian researchers even more optimistic than their North American counterparts about the possibility of full-fledged AI in the next 40 years.

But a number of things don’t require full-fledged AI. The professions of text transcriber, translator, driver, salesman and the like may be fully automated already in 2020 years. Within a decade, all routine professions will disappear.

More difficult professions will follow.: surgeon, writer, builder, policeman and so on. They may turn out to be fully automated 2040 years. TO 2060 year AI will be able to perform any task that is currently performed by humans. j. This does not mean that every person on the planet will be unemployed by that time.

Researchers suggest that in reality it will be at least another hundred years before this happens, but this is unlikely to be any consolation. TO 2060 In the next year or so, we will have AI that can do everything a normal human can do. This means that almost all ordinary professions will disappear. And a regular job is something that almost all of us have.

2060 now seems a long way off, but if the Oxford-Yale survey is true, we will be facing an unemployment apocalypse much sooner: all routine jobs will disappear by the mid-2030s. That's about half the US workforce.

PricewaterhouseCoopers recently released a study saying much the same thing: 38% of all US jobs are “at risk of automation” by the start of 2030, mostly in routine occupations.

And even closer to today: The World Economic Forum predicts that the developed world will lose 5 million jobs to robots by 2020, while a group of AI experts writing for Scientific American found that 40% of the top 500 companies will disappear within ten years.

Still not afraid? Kai Fu Lee, a former Microsoft and Google executive who is now a major investor in Chinese AI startups, believes that artificial intelligence will “replace 50% of human jobs.” When? In the next ten years. Ten years! Perhaps it's time to think seriously.

And give up hope of putting the genie back in the bottle. AI is coming, whether you like it or not. The benefits are too great. Even if America suddenly stops AI research, it only means that the Chinese, or the French, or the Brazilians will be the first to do so.

And Russian President Vladimir Putin agrees: “Artificial intelligence is the future not only of Russia, it is the future of all humanity,” Putin said in September. “Whoever becomes a leader in this area will be the ruler of the world.” This is irreversible: most professions will gradually come to an end between 2025 and 2060.

So who will win? The answer is obvious: capital owners who will control most of the robots. Who will get hurt? This is also obvious: everyone who now does work for money. No work - no money.

But not everything is so gloomy. As a result, fully automated farms and factories b They will be able to produce much cheaper goods, then competition will force prices to decrease. Basic material comfort will cost almost nothing.

But it still won't be free. And capitalists can only make money if they have someone to sell their goods to. Consequently, even entrepreneurs eventually realize that widespread automation is not actually beneficial to them. They need buyers with money if they want to be rich themselves.

Then the answer to mass unemployment resulting from the AI revolution must include some kind of massive income redistribution that separates them from work. Or a radical rethinking of the concept of “work”. Or a radical rethinking of the concept of “income”. Let's consider several possibilities.

Extended version of the welfare state

In general, this is what we have now, but broader. Unemployment benefits will be more generous and unlimited in duration. National healthcare will be free for everyone. Every unemployed person is guaranteed basic needs for food and housing. Increased taxes compensate for these expenses, but it is still assumed that any able-bodied citizen must work and earn.

In general, this is an “ostrich” policy. We refuse to accept that it's time to say goodbye to jobs, so we continue to punish those who don't have them. Unemployment benefits remain meager, people want to find work, but there is little of it. We continue to believe that the economy will find a way to return to equilibrium.

This cannot last, and millions of people will suffer for years while we continue to deceive ourselves. But it will protect the rich for a while.

Unconditional basic income. First option

The state guarantees everyone a certain modest level of income - we still want people to work. Unemployment will not be as stigmatized as in a modern welfare state, but at the same time, widespread unemployment will not be perceived as the norm. Some European countries are moving towards a welfare state with a basic income for all.

Unconditional basic income. Second option

A basic income is available to everyone, and the amount of income can provide a satisfactory standard of living. We get this if we recognize that mass unemployment is not a sign of laziness of workers and social decline, but an inevitable result of the development of technology.

Unemployment will not be a stigma for a person and there will be no particular reason to allow the rich to single-handedly reap the benefits of artificial intelligence; there is no point in keeping the basic income at a low level. At the end of the day, we're not trying to get people back to work.

There will probably come a time when we actively desire the exact opposite: so that the amount of income motivates people to leave the ranks of workers and let robots do their jobs better.

Silicon Valley is quickly becoming a hotbed of widespread enthusiasm for basic income. IT business leaders understand what's coming and that their business faces a backlash if its victims are not taken care of.

Uber shows interest in unconditional income e. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg supports this idea. The same goes for Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Slack CEO Stuart Butterfield. Startup incubator Y Combinator launched a pilot program to see what would happen if you gave people a guaranteed income.

Some countries are already trying to bring this idea to life. Switzerland rejected a proposal to introduce a basic income in 2016, but Finland is experimenting with a small income and paying unemployed people about $700 a month even after they find work. Basic income is also undergoing limited trials in cities in Italy and Canada.

Robot Tax

We will be in a more difficult position than if we simply allowed robots to take our jobs. However, a tax on robots could still have value as a way to slow down unemployment a bit.

Economist Robert Shiller suggests considering “moderate taxes on robots while we transition to a new world of work.” Where will the money go? “Profits can be redirected to payroll insurance,” he says. In other words, an unconditional basic income.

Nationalization of robots

Private ownership of AI robots will be prohibited. The market economy will continue to exist in its modern form with one exception: the government will own all AI robots and auction their services to the private sector. The proceeds will be divided among everyone. This scenario will require radical changes in the country's political climate.

Large-scale progressive taxation

Let the robots take over the work, but the profits are taxed at 90%. The rich would still have an incentive to run businesses and make more money, but labor would be considered a public good, like infrastructure, rather than a product of individual initiative.

Wealth tax

Intelligent robots will be able to produce material goods and services cheaply, but shortages will remain. It doesn't matter how many robots you have, what matters is the amount of oceanfront property in Southern California, original Rembrandts, penthouses. Only such things will remain real luxury, and the rich will still want them.

If robots make the rich even richer, the cost of these luxury goods will rise commensurately, all that remains is to impose heavy taxes on them. The rich will get their toys, and the rest will get whatever they want. Well, except for the view of the sunset over the Pacific Ocean.

In a hundred years

All this will be irrelevant. Society will find ways to adapt that we cannot foresee now. The life of each of us will be richer, safer and more comfortable than today - unless, of course, robots destroy us all in the spirit of Skynet from the Terminator.

But someone needs to get serious about preparing for what comes before then. Last year, for example, the Obama White House released a 48-page report entitled “Preparing for the Future of Artificial Intelligence.”

It sounds promising. But it devotes less than a page to the economic implications, concluding only that the policy questions raised by AI automation “are important but would be better answered by a separate White House task force.”

The coming crisis due to lack of work so far remains only predictions of futurologists, professors and heads of IT companies. Eric Schmidt, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Google, believes that the arrival of AI is waiting for us sooner than we think, and we must provide jobs for everyone during the transition. “The goal of the state should be full, permanent employment at all costs.”, he says.

Another person who thinks insightfully about our future without work is Martin Ford, author of Rise of the Robots. He warns that mass unemployment will not only affect low-skilled workers. It cannot be combated by investing in better education. AI will ruin every job that can be “predicted”, - that is, almost any one.

Many people hate to hear this, but this is not sentimentality; Ford is serious about work. He notes that “very few” are paid “to do truly creative, thought-provoking work.”

Artist Roberto Parada

Income inequality has been increasing for decades. "The frightening reality," says Ford, "is that we could be facing a 'perfect storm' where the effects of soaring inequality, technological unemployment and climate change happen almost simultaneously, complementing and reinforcing each other." It is not surprising that he considers the only adequate solution to be a form of unconditional basic income.

So how do you bring these ideas into the political mainstream? One thing is clear: the monumental task of dealing with the AI revolution will fall almost entirely on the shoulders of the “left.” When automation of human labor begins in earnest, corporations and the rich will benefit first.

Because of this, conservatives will view every human-robot replacement as an isolated incident, just as they now view every drought, wildfire, and hurricane. They refuse to see that global warming is behind changing weather patterns, because trying to deal with climate change would require environmental regulations that hurt businesses and wealthy people.

Similarly, trying to deal with the AI revolution will require new ways of distributing income. In the long run, this will benefit even the rich, but for the foreseeable future, this prospect is scary for those with money. Capitalists will struggle with income distribution. As long as conservatives have a choice, they simply won't acknowledge change, let alone retaliate. This is not their style.

Other candidates are no better suited. The military thinks of automation primarily as a way to kill people more efficiently, rather than as a threat to the economy. The business community is busy with quarterly reports and is too fragmented to be helpful. Trade unions have reasons to be active, but today they are too weak to exert the necessary influence on politicians.

There will be little benefit from governments, which, by and large, do not even understand what is happening. Schmidt speaks without hint: “The government, when it comes to understanding computers, let alone AI, is so far behind us that there is no hope,” he said at a conference in 2017.

The Trump administration is especially far from the threat of AI. When asked about the threat to jobs, US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin dismissed the issue as not relevant for another 50 or 100 years. “I think we are so far away from that,” Mnuchin said. “I don’t even consider this problem.”

That prompted a sharp response from former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers: “I don’t understand how anyone could come to the conclusion that we’re still half a century away from interacting with technology,” Summers said. “Artificial intelligence is already transforming everything: from retail and banking to healthcare.”

Who's left? Like it or not, the only ones outside the tech community who can sound the alarm are the Democratic Party, with its galaxy of unions, think tanks and activists. Despite the party's shortcomings (and dependence on wealthy donors is a significant shortcoming), it is the only organization in the United States whose principles and scale are suitable for this.

Unfortunately, political parties by their nature do not know how to think long term. They have no time to seriously think about the fact that their work will soon come to an end.

It would be better if someone from the “left” with numbers, connections, power and organizational energy began to act. Conventional wisdom holds that Trump's victory last year was fueled by dissatisfaction with working-class voters in the Upper Midwest who were out of work.

When blue collar workers start losing their jobs in droves, we will see discontent that will make 2016 seem like a breeze. Either liberals will start looking for a solution right now, or voters will support an even more dangerous demagogue than Trump.

Despite the media focus on robots and AI in recent years, it is difficult to get people to take technology seriously.

But if you look a little closer, you will see examples of real AI work right now. The Uber car drives itself. The computer writes simple notes about sports. Softbank's Pepper robot operates in more than 140 cell phone stores in Japan and is being tested in America. All these are harbingers of change. A drop in the barometer signals an impending storm—not the likelihood of a storm, but an imminent reality. The two most important challenges facing humanity today are:

expand the use of renewable energy and figure out what to do about the end of the era of work. Everything else pales in comparison. Renewable energy is already getting enough attention, even if half the country still denies it is needed. It’s time to start paying no less attention to the problem of work that will soon come to an end. published

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From the beautiful distant future has moved to the foreseeable tomorrow. Robots and software have come so far forward that we will see changes in the next 5 years. The main thing is not to learn about a breakthrough in science from a paper about your own abbreviation. This means that you need to be prepared for these changes without making a mistake with your choice of profession.

Are you seriously? Are the robots really coming right now?

The IT industry is developing with giant strides. There will soon be a need for smart environment techniques. Convergent and nanotechnologies will come to industry, and even if technical systems of microrobots are in full swing, engineers who understand such things will be worth their weight in gold. Urban ecologists, eco-analysts in extractive industries, and specialists in renewable energy sources and waste management will also be needed. Researchers predict a new space age and the construction of a new generation of orbital stations.

Does this mean that different requirements will be placed on employees?

What if I'm a humanitarian?

In Japan you would not be congratulated on this. In 2015, more than two dozen Japanese universities announced cuts or complete closures in the humanities and social sciences.

Knowledge of a foreign language will finally cease to be an advantage in employment: electronic systems have made significant progress in voice recognition and translation accuracy in recent years. In October, Google announced the release of wireless headphones with built-in software that can translate 40 foreign languages by ear.

However, there is no reason to say goodbye to the philology department. At a minimum, the position of digital linguist will be widespread: it will be necessary to develop new semantic translation systems and generally manage communication between humanity and machines in natural languages.

The future also holds a lot of jobs for humanitarians in the entertainment and media industries. Research from 2016 shows that the greater the value of leisure, the less time a person tends to work. With the development of computer games and social networks, employment levels are falling. This means that people are ready to read articles and watch strange videos on the Internet even more often.

In addition, we will soon face a host of ethical issues related to genetic engineering and questions like “is it good to seat a robot nanny at a separate table for servants?” They will require philosophical understanding and knowledge of sociology from humanists.

How will my work routine and my relationship with my boss change?

Most likely, the boss will see you much less often: the trend of reducing the number of working hours is becoming increasingly popular. In some places, people will even devote themselves to hobbies, receiving an unconditional income from the state. A similar experiment was launched in Finland, where 2,000 people simply paid 560 euros per month.

You won’t have to sit at work from ten to six as a result of the widespread use of and. Employers are trying to find people for a specific task, rather than keeping their staff on alert in the next office.

The better developed technologies are, the fewer hours a person spends on solving work problems. Futurologists consider a 15-hour work week a reality of the future.

What should I do to remain in demand as a specialist?

The only reliable way to be in demand in the 21st century is to follow Ilyich’s behest: “Study, study and study again.” The ability to quickly master new skills, relearn, without the frustration of “doing everything again” will be one of your strengths. The very word “profession” will slowly go out of use, leaving room for a “set of competencies.” The list of them for every working person will grow, according to the modern concept of life-long learning - lifelong learning. Your own educational trajectory will be decorated with especially significant milestones, such as participation in scientific competitions or prestigious olympiads, such as, for example, “I am a professional.”

What exactly do I need to do now?

To better navigate the flow of offers and not miss when mastering a doomed specialty, you will need to study university rankings, competitions for new specialties, and the labor market. The easiest way would be to use expert cases, which are compiled from time to time by specialists from large companies and reputable universities. For example, such recommendations are sometimes collected by experts in the humanities, technical and natural sciences for students participating in Olympiads. By the way, winning such an event promises not only the highest score in your profile when entering a master’s or graduate school, but also getting into the database of young professionals (where recruiters from reputable companies look), or even an internship in a dream company.

All robots are busy. A world without work: what will people live on in the era of total robotization? Requirements for employees will change

In all seriousness? Is it time to be afraid of robots?

And in Russia too?

Robots will replace wipers, why should others be afraid?

Who else is at risk?

What will remain?

Engineers will be updated

Requirements for employees will change

What should humanists do?

How to stay in demand?

“We'll never get true AI because computing power won't double forever. We will reach the limits of physics long before then."

AI takes over

“Suppose computer power continues to double. But this has been happening for decades! You guys keep predicting the coming of full AI, but it will never happen."

Robot Tax

Are you seriously? Are the robots really coming right now?

Does this mean that different requirements will be placed on employees?

What if I'm a humanitarian?

How will my work routine and my relationship with my boss change?

What should I do to remain in demand as a specialist?

What exactly do I need to do now?

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