Re:Robots are not very good at picking strawberries yet
by fredley on Wednesday March 21, 2018 @08:03AM
(#16637259)
It's true that white collar jobs are under threat too, I'm in the UK so less aware of how the US labour market operates, but in both countries we have issues with people for whom there simply are not jobs.
Globally, this situation is pretty worrying. How do we share resources when input is not even required from most people? How do we keep people occupied and give them purpose in life? People without purpose in life are the ones who will happily vote/act to trash the system after all.
I've thought for a while that if you really want to change the world, find a way to profit from unskilled labour in the Western world (where minimum wages, welfare systems exist) in a distributable and scalable way, that can't be replaced by robots.
In the general sense, this might not work since white collar jobs are also subject to automation. For example, we don't need as many lawyers combing through legal documents when search algorithms can do the job. If anything, it's easier for computer systems to manipulate digitalized information than work in the physical domain.
In a more specific sense, if for example USA invested more in education, it would do little to help those who would be replaced by farm automation. The majority of farm workers are immigrants on temporary H2A visas or undocumented: http://nfwm.org/education-center/farm-worker-issues/farm-wor...