Similarly, I think it's important to think of jobs in terms of behavior requirement rather than income levels.

For instance, it's well documented that radiologists are going to be one of the first jobs that suffer as a result of ML, due to it being image recognition.

He didn't reference income levels. But that of education level. Education level isn't always correlated with income. Just look at a lot of PhD that don't make a ton compared to less "formally" educated

I was surprised to see that ECG test results are still analyzed/summarized manually[0]. I have seen ECG machines at hospitals try to summarize the test automatically but doctors don't seem to trust them and still manually analyze the result using measuring compass and specially graduated rulers.

It seems to me that the companies manufacturing these machines used pure signal processing techniques which don't give the results doctors are expecting.

0: http://www.ecglibrary.com/ecgs/norm.png

Yes but it will be fought.. also radiology is also outsourced.

I disagree- The last humans to be jobless will be those that specialize in massaging data to feed it to computers.

You sure about that? I assumed it would be celebrities, fine dining chefs, sommeliers, brew masters, etc... Basically, people who are recognized just as much for their notoriety as much as the products they produce.

My humidor after all, has not a single machine made cigar despite one every so often being improperly rolled and unsmokable.

On a general level I agree, the less quantitative-based is the job, the more chances there are that it won't be done by machines.

However let's not forget that we have (and we have had for some time now) algorithmic composition[1] and more recently we have seen style transfer through neural networks[2] and if artificial intelligence is able to produce visual art and music, that makes me think that there are very few human activities that may not be automated.

What will "save" some human activities is either technological shortcomings, which are probably temporary (e.g. the hand made cigars in your humidor: the difficulty is that machines are currently not very good at rolling cigars with a whole leaf filler, but I think eventually we will get there) or consumer's preference, which is arbitrary (e.g. you may think "OK so now, in 2025, machines are able to roll as well as the best Cuban rollers, but I choose to buy only human made cigars, just because I can").

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algorithmic_composition

[2] https://research.googleblog.com/2016/10/supercharging-style-...

I don't think it really matters, humans can still innovate radical new art works anyway. That's all this stuff is based on, existing master works, it's just an augmentation.

Besides, a LOT of the music people listen to is already heavily computer generated.

Yes it is true that style transfer just applies a known style to an existing picture so it could be considered as not producing original work (I should have chosen a better example), however there are examples of completely algorithmic generated art e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algorithmic_art

> a LOT of the music people listen to is already heavily computer generated

source?

Is this something you need a source for?

People have been "producing" music using computer assited software for decades. I know people who have produced whole albums without ever touching an instrument and who know nothing about musical theory, the product? Pretty good.

Music production software can correct melodies, autotune voices,setup chord progressions, lay down rhythms etc. You could probably argue that knowing advanced musical theory hasn't really been important for a long time because so many people love "simple" music. Pop, dance etc.

This combined with the already practically endless amount of good already available practically makes the need for machine generated music redundant, the automation of musicians, photographers and painters happened a long time ago.

I think music is largely about "discovery" now, there is just such an abundance of great stuff already available, you could never hear it all in a lifetime.

But hey, people still manage to make great stuff and live music is still the life blood of it all ;)

I did not downvote you but I think you are being downvoted because computer-aided music production and algorithmic music composition are two very different things; when using a DAW program, musicians still need to enter notes using some sort of GUI (nowadays the most common interface is called "piano roll")[1].

Algorithmic composition, on the other hand, is less common, and mostly relegated to avant-garde or art music, although there are examples in popular music such as Brian Eno[2].

[1] http://www.image-line.com/support/FLHelp/html/pianoroll.htm

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generative_music

Cheers, this is a good point!

We'll end up with "human made!" labels on some products...

Perhaps. Maybe we'll even see an anti tech trend of sorts. Who knows. I just think when everything is the same as generic stuff you buy at Walmart, people will value the things that have a human touch more.

Reminds me of "The Diamond Age" by Neil Stephenson

...or may contain human inputs :)

I assumed it would be customer service and technical support - the human interface to computers, the ones who tell others how to make the machine do what they want.

> technical support

Isn't that already very formatted and automation-friendly? I feel a dedicated machine could very well be the one that explains to a human how to make another machine do what he wants. The simple cases have been replaced with automated helplines already.

Data sommelier? Catchy.

May not be true as unsupervised learning improves.

Not a single truck driver has yet lost his job to ML. Just a side note.

Your statement is true with regards to long-haul trucks, but not in other cases e.g. the port of Rotterdam has had driverless container trucks for some years now https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhZBalESrXU

Also confirmed by this article https://www.naiop.org/en/Magazine/2015/Summer-2015/Business-...

Mining, shipping, and human transport driver jobs have all been lost to robots. There's giant trucks in WA Australia, the ports (again in Aus), and trains in airports. The big new train line in Sydney also has no drivers. (Not just these, and not just in Australia -- these are just used as examples you can look up).

Driver jobs have been lost to autonomous container movers at shipping ports. Not expecting ML to have been integral to that, but driver jobs were indeed lost due to automation.

You must be thinking of longshoremen, not drivers.

I don't know if it's "ML" but ore trucks at all the new Western Australian iron ore mines are autonomous. Instead of a driver per truck, you have a couple of operators in the control room giving orders to the fleet.

Literally no one hires data scientists/ML engineers only to make a basic feedforward ConvNet.