A leading thinktank has urged the government to spend billions of pounds helping poorly skilled workers in the less prosperous parts of the UK cope with the threat of the looming robot revolution.
The left-leaning Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) said in a new report that those most at risk from automation were concentrated in low-skill sectors of the economy and were least able to adapt to change.
More than 10m jobs in the UK – a third of the total – are thought to be at risk from automation within the next two decades and the IPPR said the scale of the challenge required urgent action.
Some 10% of all jobs are destroyed every year and then recreated. There#s a technology shift in each such change.
10 million gone in 20 years is is less than the 60 million change we expect anyway.
Stop increasing the low-skilled population via unwanted imports would be a nice start.
Robot scaffolders, robot plumbers, robot coppers, I can see it all now (rolls eyes.)
Electricity so cheap it’s not worth metering, HAL9000 by 2001, fusion by 2020, lead into gold by next Tuesday at the latest etc. etc. etc.
Anyway, what help did they have in mind? Courses in sweeping up? Pushing a wheelbarrow? Hey, I know, robot regulators for the council!
“three in four workers do not have a degree-level qualification and may lack adaptability”
How the fuck does a degree help adaptability?
Which degrees help adaptability?
Does a masters in materials science/engineering guarantee alternative work of that gets mechanised?
What about a bachelors in millinery?
So how much skill does it take to produce an IPPR report ?
The next wave of automation is directed at middle and senior management as that is now the largest cost area.
@BobRocket
That’s a very sound prediction. Better comms technology (virtual meetings, IM etc) should reduce the entire management overhead – you just don’t need as many people to oversee others if you can effectively supervise and them via tools like Skype etc.
This should mean you can grow the proportion of value creating staff without having to stump up for managers.
This is fundamentally what’s happened with me in the last few years: I’ve been able to ditch a huge chunk of my management hours from my week and focus on revenue generation and cost savings.
@RlJ
Bricklaying robots are here
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQ2PdpLEAG0&app=desktop
I can imagine scaffolding isnt far away.
Robots milk cows already.
This 10% figure, does it include churn of identical jobs between firms? As that isn’t really destruction due to technical advancement.
Off topic, but this is the kind of value to our society that studying for a Masters in Philosophy can deliver?
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.za/shelley-garland/could-it-be-time-to-deny-white-men-the-franchise_a_22036640/
Never mind robots, it looks like it’s white males that are the real problem.
Doesn’t the Huffington Post regard itself as a serious mainstream publication? Good job it was only white males eh?
A few snips:
I can claim to identify as female for, what, and hour each of four or five days a decade?
I won’t be female, but we’re told that doesn’t matter. I might be lying, but I have to be believed because requiring evidence is patriarchal supremacism.
‘A leading thinktank has urged the government to spend billions of pounds helping poorly skilled workers in the less prosperous parts of the UK cope with the threat of the looming robot revolution.’
Teach them to quit complaining about working conditions and demanding higher pay. Get them to vote conservative and tell government to leave business alone.
Business will replace workers when it makes financial sense. You get no drama from robots.*
What does ‘cope with the threat’ even mean? Buy them alcohol and drugs?
*Though it could be programmed in if desired. Shift managers could use a little of it to make them feel like they are actually needed.
That HuffPo post has been taken down, with an apology from the editors.
The left-leaning Institute
Has the Guardian ever described a group as “left-wing”?
That HuffPo post has been taken down, with an apology from the editors.
Shame. We really need more articles like that, particularly in mainstream media outlets. Let’s flush the crazies out into the open air where everyone can see them.
Robert
Shucks – I should have copied / kept the fully text..:) Though I’m sure others have.
“Never mind robots, it looks like it’s white males that are the real problem”
We are a problem because we are successful.
Expect in years to come, as demographics move against us, for Europe to beome more like South Africa, then Zimbabwe
There is simply no other way for it to go, unless we make sure that we remain a majority within our own geographical territory into the future. Israel and Japan have it right on this issue. Europe way wrong.
In fact it is likely to be much worse in Europe than in South Africa because Blacks only barbaric, whereas Musilms both barbaric and motivated by fascist dogma based upon eradication of any alternative viewpoint.
White people need to act asap or will be too late in a generation due to demographics. We are currently funding the replacement and eventual genocide of our kids/grandkids. Hard to see who wants that?
The idiocy of importing massive amounts of 3rd world demographic when robots are poised to replace unskilled labour is plain to see and removes any honest justification from such actions.
I suppose at least the urgency and blatancy of this stage of the operation might arouse some people from their slumber.
Demographics are pretty much irrelevant in a world full of robots. We needed lots of people to operate machines in factories, bigger factories were more efficient, and the country with the most productive power was the most economically and politically powerful. So that gave strong incentives to increase the population.
Today the need for low-skilled workers is vanishing, and an army of a million men with AK47s will be little match for my army of a million robots.
And, besides, if it is actually necessary, demographics can turn around in a generation, if the motivation is there. Right now, working people have few kids because they can’t afford to. Make kids a financial benefit again–as we’ve done for chavs and other low-lives–and people will start having them.
Well, no. There’d be civil war instead, and the luvvies would be fighting in the streets over tins of dog food.
It is amusing, though, to see the left openly admit that they’re the racist, sexist party of everyone-except-white-males.
Demographics are irrelevant if people are acculturated. Blacks can be acculturated. Most are.
Muslims cannot. They should only be allowed in the West on temporary visas. Public practice of Islam should be a felony, equivalent of inciting terrorism. They all have a book that says they should kill you. The book shouldn’t be allowed in the West, either.
I don’t much care who’s living next door if I have a million-robot army and they don’t. If they pick a fight, they die.
We’re on the verge of a change as radical as the early decades of the Industrial Revolution. The human population will probably be under a hundred million by the time it’s complete, because industrial-sized populations are no longer required, or beneficial.
As much as the West would benefit from not importing people whose opinions are diametrically opposed to ours, the demographics fifty years from now will bear little resemblance to today’s, no matter what we do right now.