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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Whizbang Dustyboots" data-source="post: 9843128" data-attributes="member: 11760">I think any repetitive task that workers have quietly thought a trained monkey could do is ripe for automation. The white collar world has been immune to that for a long time, but that time is ending.The folks I see trying to get into narrating audiobooks, for instance, are probably 10 years too late.The stuff that only humans can currently do is the stuff we should be focusing on. The hard part is knowing what machines will be able to do two, five, 10 years from now.I do think the AI boosters are right in that not every job in every field will be gobbled up. The kernel of "only humans can currently do this" jobs will remain, while automated tasks will either be supervised by humans or in some cases completely off-loaded. But the amount of manhours that leaves is pretty small, in many cases, which will mean fewer humans employed.It will be a nice moment for a lot of us when the c-suite people realize that they're expensive and doing something that AI management software can do cheaper and without sexual harassment lawsuits. I expect we'll see a bunch of think pieces about "has AI gone too far?!" when this moment finally comes for the millionaires.The challenge with blue collar work is that automation is still getting cheaper and better and the day will come when many plumbing jobs can be done by one guy supervising a handful of robots he pulls out of the back of his truck to, say, snake a drain or fix a broken septic line. Any shockingly pricy work, as plumbing is, for instance, is ripe for someone at Silicon Valley looking to "disrupt" it. So even blue collar jobs aren't safe.</blockquote>

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