Thursday, April 13, 2017

Can you be replaced?

Our great American schools are producing great engineers every year. They all have jobs helping to make our country an automated nation full of robotic devices to replace every job in manufacturing and labor. There is even a machine that makes perfect pizza every time. Do you mean the guy with the cigarette and the sauce stains on his shirt who spreads the pizza dough perfectly can be replaced too? What is this nation turning into? How are these advancements going to help give the poor slob a new well- paying job when just about everyone can be replaced by an automated machine?
20,000 pounds of freight loaded in a large truck can now be driven on our highways without a driver. Ouch! The thought of that scares you yet it is already a reality. I thought pizza makers and truck drivers would be the last guys to be replaced by automation. There are self- driving robotic trucks now. Who is going to pull the air horns for kids to delight in the sound anymore? Starsky Robotics was founded just in 2016 and have trucks without a driver on the road now. There are many other companies like Otto following their lead. Otto is owned by Uber who is also testing driverless cabdrivers. Who will you talk to in a cab anymore? Well, I might not miss those conversations. They already exist in Texas and Arizona so don’t wait for a driver to get into your cab.
What will the people do that have those jobs?  In the United States alone that is 180,000 taxi drivers, 600,000 Uber drivers and 3.5 million truck drivers. Even installing the vehicles with self-driving equipment can be done by a machine! I say just give people money to live from all the cash these machines will generate but you know that will never happen.  Martin Ford wrote the book called The Rise of the Robots and he said that driverless cars and trucks are just the beginning in the rise of automation in this country. Millions of jobs in every industry at once will and can be replaced by a robotic device; even a machine to pour the perfect ice cream cone!  
America employs nearly 5 million store workers to pack out goods and be cashiers. Shoppers in Seattle are now able to walk into a store, take what they want and simply walk out of the door with the items and you will find a bill for each item on your cell phone and pay directly from your bank account. The cashiers are totally gone. At Zume Pizza in Silicon Valley pizzas are made only by machines. I guess computer geeks like that. It is clear that robots replace repetitive blue collar jobs. Computers are analyzing tumors in the medical field with more accuracy than the human eye. Algorithms are finding their way into journalism. Every 30 seconds there are new stories published on some website and only computers can sort them out quickly for accuracy and truth.
BlackRock is the world’s largest money manager and now they are laying off humans and shifting to machines to pick their Wall Street stocks. The machines are rising over managers to pick stocks. Blackrock favors computers over humans in judging what stock to pick. By 2025 across the financial industry artificial intelligence is expected to replace 230,000 human workers. How are you going to fix that job problem Mr. Trump? If anywhere automation should have taken over what is left of the coal industry and save some humans from danger and black lung disease. At Goldman Sachs, they hire nearly as many computer engineers as humans. No more screaming guys on the stock exchange floor? Now the experts are called coders. Is any job safe? Can we replace Trump?
47% of American jobs can be lost to automation within 20 years. It is time to think about what to do with all the unneeded humans in the workforce. A prosperous modern society should give every human say 10 grand per year just for being alive. It is not just a dream. Experts are thinking about adding such a stipend to our nation’s economy. Do I have to wait 20 years for that? Besides just money, we all need a meaning and a purpose in our lives. A reason to get out of bed. I am sure we all can find something to do.


  

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