/sci/ - Science & Math

[Anonymous No.6569015]

What career tracks are relatively automation-proof? Which jobs will get easier to do because of developments of stronger AI, instead of disappearing completely and rendering one's education useless?

Thread inspired by that one about incoming automation of anesthesiology.

[Anonymous No.6569017]

>>6569015
Automation mechanics?

[Anonymous No.6569018]

The only career tracks that are automation proof are things that require human interaction (lawyer, administrator) and things in innovation sectors (researching).

[Anonymous No.6569027]

>>6569018
>lawyer

But the demand for lawyers has fallen greatly after improved software had become capable of doing lots of law-related grunt work, like contract drafting or evidence discovery.

>E-discovery software has been similarly revolutionary. These systems can mine huge volumes of material (like all the email correspondence in a civil suit) for damning evidence. The simplest software looks for specific keywords, but more sophisticated systems can detect patterns of behavior that might interest lawyers. This was the sort of work that once consumed the lives of first-year associates; now computers do it faster, at lower cost, and with about as much success as humans. - slate.com/articles/technology/robot_invasion/2011/09/will_robots_steal_your_job_5.html

[Anonymous No.6569060]

Medicine

[Anonymous No.6569071]

Jobs that already could be done by machine, but aren't for cultural reasons. Like bartender.

[Anonymous No.6569250]

Until much much later on, programmer.

[Anonymous No.6569251]

>>6569250
>programmer

Right, then you just get replaced by someone 5 years younger than you.

[Anonymous No.6569266]

>>6569015
physicist

[Anonymous No.6569308]

>>6569251
Not if you're good, it's almost the opposite effect, if you're good you'll continue to get better and better pay. There are 60 year old COBOL programmers than make 200k a year easily.

[Anonymous No.6569331]

>>6569308
>There are 60 year old COBOL programmers than make 200k a year easily.
Only because they stopped being programmers and moved into management. Good programmers don't stay programming, it's very much an up-or-out mentality throughout the industry and to go up you need management/sales/marketing skills. Pure programmers can job hop into their 60's and make entry level wages throughout if they don't "snap" (bitch about the long unpaid hours) and get themselves blacklisted (as often happens within the first 3 years).
captch: titjcid wingate

[Anonymous No.6569336]

>>6569331
>start out as programmer
>move into security
>less work and more pay
>still get to program for fun

[Anonymous No.6569339]

>>6569336
That's the way to do it. Programming stops being fun when it's for someone else anyway.

[Anonymous No.6569341]

>>6569339
Yeah, and it wasn't fun having to program to accomplish a set in stone and rigid task. I mean I still enjoyed doing it but it wasn't as fun as programming as a hobby. Kind of like doing art on commission.

[Anonymous No.6569357]

>>6569331
do you have any clue what you're talking about?

[Anonymous No.6569396]

>>6569018
funny how few of the things we think of as requiring human interaction really do.

>lawyers
will be among the first to fall, in fact they're already hanging on by a thread. actual courtroom litigators will hang on awhile longer, but that's like <1% of all lawyers.

>administrators
the top 10% of administrators maybe, but even that much is purely due to nepotism, and won't last forever. mid-level managers are fucked within our lifetime, mark my words

Remember, they used to think pumping gas and pushing buttons in an elevator required human interaction

[Anonymous No.6569401]

>>6569357
Apparently more than you do.

[Anonymous No.6569409]

>>6569331
I'm not that dude but there are a lot of devs who get stuck maintaining legacy code because no one else knows how. Those dudes get paid bank.

[Anonymous No.6569411]

>>6569071
I personally can't wait to shoot the shit with my robot bartender.

[Anonymous No.6569412]

>>6569060
as long as the AMA keeps its talons in the halls of power. but that can't last forever, and the more superfluous human doctors become, the harder a time AMA lobbyists will have. writing's on the wall and it ain't a medical bill

>>6569071
these will disappear as minimum wages increase.
>yfw you realize the point of minimum wages was never about goody-two-shoes hippy share-the-wealth bs. it has always been about encouraging automation

>>6569266
when the education gig is automated (all that's stopping that is momentum now), 90% of physicists will be unemployed. the remaining 10% will endure until strong AI

>>6569250
this is the only true answer

[Anonymous No.6569419]

Anything in the fine arts, like music and graphic design... teaching, especially student-apprentice type of relationships... anything requiring genuine interhuman interaction, perhaps psychiatry or social work

[Anonymous No.6569429]

>>6569409
>I'm not that dude but there are a lot of devs who get stuck maintaining legacy code because no one else knows how. Those dudes get paid bank.
Protip: those dudes study this text as their bible:
https://www.thc.org/root/phun/unmaintain.html

[Anonymous No.6569458]

Research. You can't program something to thing abstractly in a meaningful way.

[Anonymous No.6569500]

>>6569412
>when the education gig is automated (all that's stopping that is momentum now), 90% of physicists will be unemployed. the remaining 10% will endure until strong AI

Are you claiming that 90% of working physicists are simply hired as educators?

[Anonymous No.6569523]

>>6569500
In high school/community college, yes. In university, they're hired for their research, but it's only economically feasible because it's subsidized by teaching

>>6569458
Check out this guy, he actually believes that more than 10 papers per year are anything other than mindless envelope-pushing and buzzwords!

[Anonymous No.6569531]

>>6569015
>stronger AI

HAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHA

Leave and never come back here

[Anonymous No.6569537]

>>6569401
No you don't.

[Anonymous No.6569546]

[Anonymous No.6569555]

>>6569546
>dentists
>not near the top of the chopping block
Houston, we've lost credibility. I repeat, we've lost credibility

[Anonymous No.6569558]

>>6569429
Actually what happens is that it costs companies a lot more money to modernize their software than to overpay a bunch of devs to maintain their ancient code and keep it running with all the new shit being added. There aren't really many people becoming proficient in old ass languages like COBOL anymore so it's not like they have to make their code unmaintainable to have a job.

[Anonymous No.6569567]

Stuff that requires human, not because of the efficiency but because of culture, habit or tradition.
Sports, some service jobs, mental health, religious jobs, high management, some art related jobs etc etc
Naturally more complex jobs are slower to get replaced.
Jobs that are more protected by the employees of that particular field also will stay for longer e.g. corporate leader wont fire himself to use a management robot but will fire those below him.

[Anonymous No.6569570]

>>6569546
>Technical writers

Enjineares can't fucking bes expecting to right there's documants. Huw dee fuck will dat be automated?

>Commercial Pilots

Yeah, no.

>Firefighters

Far to diverse to be really automated

>Chemical Engineers

Stop smoking crack

[Anonymous No.6569573]

>>6569546
>clergy

Where's my robot preaching salvation?

[Anonymous No.6569579]

What is the hardest to automate? That which requires the highest level of human intelligence.

Basically all STEM degrees.

[Anonymous No.6569587]

>>6569546
> Rec. Therapy
Quack jobs/scams don't count as actual jobs you asshole

> Dentists
Place your head in a very nice looking vice and the automated diagnostic locates teeth, takes 3D xrays, etc, can basically deal with everything for you in a day.

> Athletic trainers
A recording of someone saying "Get in shape fatty" which is on a loop.

> Clergy
A robot accepts jesus as it's personal lord and saviour, becomes a priest, and runs molest.exe

> Chem engineers
Manufacturing jobs can always be done by a computer. Unless there's some degree of intuitive invention going on, you're fucked.

> Editors
Spellcheck.exe

> Fire fighters
When the fire fighters begin to use remotely-operated bodies so they don't put themselves at risk... Then a computer learns how to do the job and augments their numbers.

> Actors
... Ok, you got that one right. Human actors will always exist.

The rest of the list is basically on deathbed, waiting for the machines to be made to handle it.
> Telemarketing
Didn't know it was populated by humans in the first place.

[Anonymous No.6569599]

>>6569027
>Giving your documents as scanable text
>Not giving your document as massive resolution images, randomly rotated, out of order, using multiple date formats, in triplicate, and in no less than 3 different difficult languages

It's like you <span class="math">want[/spoiler] your exsuccubus to take all your cash.

[Anonymous No.6569607]

>>6569579
not that cut and dried im afraid.
go back 60 years and ask which requires more intelligence: the dude who loads boxes onto a ship, or the dude who adds up numbers all day long with pen and paper?

the latter has already been automated, the former still exists at least in niche positions

[Anonymous No.6569664]

>>6569607
adding up numbers barely requires any intelligence, and it only takes up a few neurons.

loading boxes onto a ship however takes a shitload of neurons for motor control.

but all neurons that are required for any motor activity are still way less complex than those required complex thinking like physics and math.

I'm afraid it does work quite that way, it's a computational law. We just have different definitions of "intelligence".

[Anonymous No.6569678]

>>6569664
>We just have different definitions of "intelligence"
yeah, because existence of technology changes the definition for us. when computers are replacing physicists and mathematicians, nobody's going to go, "gee these computers sure are smart!" they're going to go "gee it's amazing that just a few decades ago people were actually doing physics and math by hand, what a dark age that was!"

[Anonymous No.6569711]

>>6569664
>adding up numbers barely requires any intelligence, and it only takes up a few neurons

Not true at all.

[Anonymous No.6569714]

>>6569015
I feel like many areas of medicine and patient care in general will increase as long as our population is increasing and people are getting older.
This may not be true for many of the complex areas of medicine like drug/treatment production, and will mainly be consistent for lower level jobs like primary care attendants, where all you do is wipe shit all day.

[Anonymous No.6569764]

>>6569015
>>What career tracks are relatively automation-proof?
prostitute

>> Which jobs will get easier to do because of developments of stronger AI,
prostitute, ever hear of the the sci-fi term meat puppet?

[Anonymous No.6569771]

>>6569764
Sex bots will probably be the first thing we make
Although human prostitutes probably won't never die out completely because some people might prefer them still.

[Anonymous No.6569814]

>>6569714
You are really wrong. Medical robots will be the first to be widely implemented in the coming ages, likely before driverless cars become common. Look up medical robots.

[Anonymous No.6569872]

>>6569714
Actually, wiping shitty butts and giving sponge baths is probably one of the last things that a machine could do.

I recently brought a friend to the ER, and these are the "tasks" I saw the humans at the ER undertake:

>collect billing information
First things first in burger land
>ask questions about pain level/detail that could be interpreted by SIRI or Google Now equivalent
--the nurse even stopped my friend to ask her to re-answer a question because "the system needs you to answer on a scale of one to ten" or something like that
>refer details to physician, who buzzed in for about five minutes to recommend a battery of standard tests
>transport to testing machinery
>interpret test results (which could have been done remotely, or by extremely advanced/specialized pattern recognition software)
A human can't compare your scan with every image of every CAT scan ever taken.
>prescribe treatment, recommend followup appointments

Granted, "bedside manner" is sort of an intangible commodity--I could imagine an ER where a caretaker with the skills of a social worker and LPN could help guide the scared/wounded/crazy patient through all the probing and diagnostics, and make them feel safe and welcome.

"don't worry anon, these computers were designed by google!!!!! Now tell me more about your new kitty, what was her name again???"

[Anonymous No.6570912]

>>6569579
>What is the hardest to automate? That which requires the highest level of human intelligence.

Nope. Many things that require incredible human intelligence are also very easy to automate.

[Anonymous No.6570951]

This thread evidence. Science is about carriers. Explains global warming theory.

[Anonymous No.6571269]

>>6570951
crackpots pls go

[Anonymous No.6572048]

>>6569409
My computer science professor always said to comment your code if you want to make it understandable, but don't comment it if you want job security.

[Anonymous No.6572682]

>>6569015
Artisinal stuff that appeals to hipsters who hated automation before it was cool.

>>6569412
>these will disappear as minimum wages increase.
That's why you run your own business, by yourself or as a worker's cooperative that pays worker-owners via shares. Minimum wage is for when you're paying other people with no stake in the business. On the other hand, this is why I figure the minimum wage for a company should be based on things like the wage of whoever gets paid most and overall profit margin, that way smaller businesses can pay what they can afford and administrators of larger ones have an interest in offering better wadges so they can keep their own higher. Can be avoided with franchising, but licensing out more means having less direct oversight.