The Fourth Industrial Revolution

[quasimodo]

Well, manual jobs are disappearing

Well, we are 'disappearing' them. Sure, innovation and technology are great things, they can free us up from drudgery and toil. But free to do what exactly? There aren't enough jobs for all of us to work in the professions or service industries. Where is the vision here? What kind of a world are we creating where people never have to get off their increasingly fat backsides to do any actual work? It is all very well making refuse collectors obsolete by designing automated versions of them; but what are the people made redundant by this supposed to do with themselves?

Amber you are so right new vision is required.

An Authors look into the future

A friend sent this interesting article to me on whats app and I passed it onto my friends.Most people do not see the fourth industrial revolution and its future impact.

This German author offers a peek into the future . . .(It was on the Tesla website).

"Into the future
By Udo Gollub at Messe Berlin, Germany

I just went to the Singularity University summit. Here are the key points I gathered.

Rise and Fall:

In 1998, Kodak had 170,000 employees and sold 85% of all photo paper worldwide. Within just a few years, their business model disappeared and they were bankrupt. What happened to Kodak will happen in a lot of industries in the next 10 years – and most people don’t see it coming. Did you think in 1998 that 3 years later you would never take pictures on paper film again?

Yet digital cameras were invented in 1975. The first ones only had 10,000 pixels, but followed Moore’s law. So as with all exponential technologies, it was a disappointment for a long time, before it became superior and mainstream in only a few short years. This will now happen with Artificial Intelligence, health, self-driving and electric cars, education, 3D printing, agriculture and jobs.

Welcome to the 4th Industrial Revolution. Welcome to the Exponential Age. Software and operating platforms will disrupt most traditional industries in the next 5-10 years.

Uber is just a software tool. They don’t own any cars, but they are now the biggest taxi company in the world. Airbnb is the biggest hotel company in the world, although they don’t own any properties.
Artificial Intelligence:Computers become exponentially better in understanding the world. This year, a computer beat the best Go player in the world, 10 years earlier than expected. In the US, young lawyers already don’t get jobs. Because of IBM Watson, you can get legal advice, (so far for more or less basic stuff), within seconds. With 90% accuracy, compared with 70% accuracy when done by humans. So if you are studying law, stop immediately. There will be 90% fewer generalist lawyers in the future; only specialists will be needed.

‘Watson’ already helps nurses diagnose cancer, four times more accurately than doctors. Facebook now has pattern recognition software that can recognize faces better than humans. By 2030, computers will have become ‘more intelligent’ than humans.

Cars: In 2018 the first self driving cars will be offered to the public. Around 2020, the complete industry will start to be disrupted. You don’t want to own a car anymore. You will call a car on your phone; it will show up at your location and drive you to your destination. You will not need to park it, you only pay for the driven distance and you can be productive whilst driving. Our kids will never get a driver’s licence and will never own a car. It will change the cities, because we will need 90-95% fewer cars for our future needs. We can transform former parking spaces into parks. At present,1.2 million people die each year in car accidents worldwide. We now have one accident every 100,000 kms. With autonomous driving, that will drop to one accident in 10 million km. That will save a million lives each year.

Electric cars will become mainstream around and after 2020. Cities will be cleaner and much less noisy because all cars will run on electricity, which will become much cheaper.

Most traditional car companies may become bankrupt by tacking the evolutionary approach and just building better cars; while tech companies (Tesla, Apple, Google) will take the revolutionary approach and build a computer on wheels. I spoke to a lot of engineers from Volkswagen and Audi. They are terrified of Tesla.
Insurance companies will have massive trouble, because without accidents, the insurance will become 100 times cheaper. Their car insurance business model will disappear.

Real estate values based on proximities to work-places, schools, etc. will change, because if you can work effectively from anywhere or be productive while you commute, people will move out of cities to live in a more rural surroundings.

Solar energy production has been on an exponential curve for 30 years, but only now is having a big impact. Last year, more solar energy was installed worldwide than fossil. The price for solar will drop so much that almost all coal mining companies will be out of business by 2025.

Water for all: With cheap electricity comes cheap and abundant water. Desalination now only needs 2kWh per cubic meter. We don’t have scarce water in most places; we only have scarce drinking water. Imagine what will be possible if everyone can have as much clean water as they want, for virtually no cost.

Health: The Tricorder X price will be announced this year - a medical device (called the “Tricorder” from Star Trek) that works with your phone, which takes your retina scan, your blood sample and your breath. It then analyses 54 biomarkers that will identify nearly any diseases. It will be cheap, so in a few years, everyone on this planet will have access to world class, low cost, medicine.

3D printing: The price of the cheapest 3D printer came down from 18,000$ to 400$ within 10 years. In the same time, it became 100 times faster. All major shoe companies started printing 3D shoes. Spare airplane parts are already 3D-printed in remote airports. The space station now has a printer that eliminates the need for the large amount of spare parts they used to need in the past.

At the end of this year, new smart phones will have 3D scanning possibilities. You can then 3D scan your feet and print your perfect shoe at home. In China, they have already 3D-printed a complete 6-storey office building. By 2027, 10% of everything that’s being produced will be 3D-printed.

Business opportunities: If you think of a niche you want to enter, ask yourself: “in the future, do you think we will have that?” And if the answer is yes, then work on how you can make that happen sooner. If it doesn’t work via your phone, forget the idea. And any idea that was designed for success in the 20th century is probably doomed to fail in the 21st century.

Work: 70-80% of jobs will disappear in the next 20 years. There will be a lot of new jobs, but it is not clear that there will be enough new jobs in such a short time.

Agriculture: There will be a 100$ agricultural robot in the future. Farmers in 3rd world countries can then become managers of their fields instead of working in them all day. Aeroponics will need much less water. The first veal produced in a petri dish is now available. It will be cheaper than cow- produced veal in 2018. Right now, 30% of all agricultural surfaces are used for rearing cattle. Imagine if we don’t need that space anymore. There are several start-ups which will bring insect protein to the market shortly. It contains more protein than meat. It will be labelled as “alternative protein source” (because most people still reject the idea of eating insects).

Apps: There is already an app called “moodies” which can tell the mood you are in. By 2020 there will be apps that can tell by your facial expressions if you are lying. Imagine a political debate where we know whether the participants are telling the truth and when not!

Currencies: Many currencies will be abandoned. Bitcoin will become mainstream this year and might even become the future default reserve currency.

Longevity: Right now, the average life span increases by 3 months per year. Four years ago, the life span was 79 years, now it is 80 years. The increase itself is increasing and by 2036, there will be more than a one-year increase per year. So we all might live for a long, long time, probably way beyond 100.

Education: The cheapest smartphones already sell at 10$ in Africa and Asia. By 2020, 70% of all humans will own a smartphone. That means everyone will have much the same access to world class education. Every child can use Khan Academy for everything he needs to learn at schools in First World countries. Further afield, the software has been launched in Indonesia and will be released in Arabic, Swahili and Chinese this summer. The English app will be offered free, so that children in Africa can become fluent in English within half a year."

An opinion from someone I see as the next Labour leader in waiting once Labour moves back to the centre away from its lurch to the far left under its present leadership.

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/the ... 30971.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Amber]

Germany is in the process of dismantling its three tier education system, slowly but surely, in light of incontrovertible evidence that selection leads to inequality. And unlike England, Germany cares a lot about inequality.

It is argued that the march of technology is unstoppable, as though it were some kind of force with a will of its own. We need to remember that people design technology and those designing it are unlikely to put the needs of human beings for interaction, communication with others and the need to feel useful at the heart of their design projects. I heard someone talking with evangelical zeal the other day about the idea of robot post deliverers and not one thought was given to the fact that for some lonely and elderly people, the postman might be their only human contact all week.

There is no coherence between on the one hand the dreadful 'care' offered in our care homes and hospitals because of lack of resources, and the increasingly dominant idea that machines can do what humans can do. Entrenching the idea of selection into our education system even more is only going to widen the gulf between the 'designers' who have a stake in society, and the 'others' who are somehow supposed to fill their days when all their traditional jobs have been squeezed. In my opinion it would be far better to look at the role of technology in our society than to turn all xenophobic and start blaming migrants for taking 'our' jobs. The combination of a generation who all have degrees and don't want to do the dirty work, and technology replacing many lower-intellect but still skilled positions will combine to cause a big social crisis, which will not in any way be helped by further disenfranchising the less academic by excluding them from a new generation of elitist schools.

These are dark days, people. And I don't see anyone visionary enough to take them on.

[PerpetualStudent]

Having just spent an hour on a detailed discussion on the implications of automation for our future I find the ether has swallowed my post! Oh well.

On the possibility of tutored students struggling: some will be learning the merits of application and hard work in achieving aspirations (whatever automation leaves). I know many very bright people who underachieved because they never found the right goal for them or figured out how to keep going when things got tough.

On automation: people need people even so e.g. Babies turn out to learn from human interaction and ignore screens burbling language at them.

People like luxury and originals. Therefore there will be some market as long as there is aspiration.

Some people will opt out e.g. The Amish. Or rebel e.g. Luddites, saboteurs, hackers...

Do we have the raw materials for a fully automated future? If not how are we going to get them?

Automated driving may encourage driving as sport and safer cycling for health and pleasure.

My own early career was fairly traditional. I was told I would soon be obsolete while people got what they needed directly using their tech. I have since found there is room for those with greater aptitude and expertise for that particular task. I moved to a new career and use my obsolete skills for my own benefit.

Before I get logged out again I'll stop there! ETA examples

[Surferfish]

Wow, what an interesting discussion this is turning into! And I only came on here to get advice about GCSE options!

That article posted by quasimodo makes some very interesting (and slightly scary!) predictions for the future. Its something which fascinates me and I'll try and post something when I've got a minute. Maybe we need a separate thread to avoid derailing this one which looks like it started off talking about tutoring!

[Eccentric]

Yes Quasi what an interesting post. I am going to copy it and send it to my girls if you don't mind. What the world is going to be like in the next 20 years is a frequent visitor at our supper table. One that comes up often is that nobody will have cars in a few years time but will be picked up by automated vehicles. Both my DD's interestingly adamantly disagree with this and say they want their own cars and that they cannot see themselves without one, whilst I on the other hand cannot wait for reduced polution, less traffic and safer roads so that I can get on my bike safely.
DD2 who wants to be a surgeon won't have it that it will be a robot's job in a few years time and that she might be better off thinking of a different career in surgical robotics. DD1 doesn't know what she wants to do yet and has just applied for a job as a post person
On the education front there was an interesting speaker (can't remember his name) on a radio programme about a year ago that referred to the web as the 21st century version of the calculator - it allows you to find out anything. I think one skill that schools don't spend enough time teaching is internet research. Both my girls will often tell me that they can't find information about something and I spend a few seconds and find it immediately. I have not quite got to the bottom of what they do wrong.
On the note of Elon Must/Tesla. I really want some of his new roof tiles. Each one is a solar panel.

[PerpetualStudent]

On the education front there was an interesting speaker (can't remember his name) on a radio programme about a year ago that referred to the web as the 21st century version of the calculator - it allows you to find out anything. I think one skill that schools don't spend enough time teaching is internet research. Both my girls will often tell me that they can't find information about something and I spend a few seconds and find it immediately. I have not quite got to the bottom of what they do wrong.

+1
I believe there may be a couple of issues here. Well-known search engines have a tendency to give you answers that accord with things you have asked about before. So it is very easy for two searchers to put in the same terms and get different results. This is one reason some prefer to stick to untailored services and Boolean logic. Another common issue is looking too specifically or without considering alternative terms for the same thing.

I have also found many students have a poor understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of their online sources or commercial databases. Few I encounter understand jstor is an archive and therefore does not hold recent material.

[Catseye]

The computers scientist will be the new masters of the universe and rest of us will have to make do with the crumps off their tables.

Read that recently in The Times.

The problem is- even they will be come redundant in the future when computers/robots achieve level 4 AI.

[Surferfish]

Also - side issue - why are we trying to phase people out? Apparently drones and robots will be able to do the job of postal workers and delivery drivers, and the self checkouts at the supermarket are meant to replace staff (but we all know they don't). Why?

Well I guess from the point of view of the businesses and corporations who control our world I think the answer is simple. Cost, profit, money. Robots and automated AI are cheaper, more reliable and more productive than us humans so from that point of view it would seem to be a "no-brainer".

It is argued that the march of technology is unstoppable, as though it were some kind of force with a will of its own

I think in a way it is effectively unstoppable, for the same reasons given above. Whichever company or nation is at the forefront of the latest technology they will have the greatest wealth and power. No nation or business is going to agree to just put a stop to future development and put themselves at a disadvantage.

Well, we are 'disappearing' them. Sure, innovation and technology are great things, they can free us up from drudgery and toil. But free to do what exactly? There aren't enough jobs for all of us to work in the professions or service industries. Where is the vision here? What kind of a world are we creating where people never have to get off their increasingly fat backsides to do any actual work? It is all very well making refuse collectors obsolete by designing automated versions of them; but what are the people made redundant by this supposed to do with themselves?

I think its worth noting as mentioned in quasimodo's fascinating post, that it isn't just unskilled jobs like delivery drivers and checkout operators that will be affected. Those might be the first to go, but eventually it could be ALL jobs including traditional professions like doctor, lawyer and accountant. In fact I think skilled trades like plumber and hairdresser would actually be less at risk initially than say lawyer or accountant because it would probably be far more technically difficult to design a robot AI to fix a dripping tap or cut someone's hair than a software package to audit a company's accounts or process a house purchase.

In the most optimistic, best possible scenario it could result in a utopia where everyone has more leisure time to enjoy life. Instead of having to work emptying dustbins, stacking shelves, auditing accounts or diagnosing illnesses people could instead spend their days reading poetry, playing the piano, baking cakes, playing with their children, playing golf etc and leave the robots to get on with the business of boring old work.

I think that might be an overly optimistic future though, because it relies on those who own the technology being willing to spread the wealth generated back into society by giving everyone a decent basic income and that doesn't tend to be what happens in practice unfortunately.

Alternatively, the new technology might provide new jobs that would replace the redundant traditional ones. Just as in the 18th century the industrial revolution removed the need for everyone to work farming the fields and created new jobs that didn't exist before.

[Catseye]

We are all doomed , doomed I tell you.

We are panicking now and we still at level 1 of AI- just wait until we get to level 4 in about 20-50 years times(mind you it is always about 20 yrs away ) when AI/robots will be designing/improving/ building, themselves and cracking Einstein field equations and M-theory.............. who knows they may even crack the simple phenomena of turbulence and fluid dynamics.

Welcome to the new, bright and shiny future.

Here's a thought could we/the frankenstein machines even simulate a whole universe with living sentinels with all their respective- fears, insecurities, hopes.......

Are living in a simulation now ???

[Surferfish]

Yes, AI robots taking people's jobs could just be the start.

Are people familiar with the idea of the "Singularity" or "Intelligence explosion"?

It seems to be a fact of life that technology improves and gets more powerful as time goes on. That's basically been true ever since the first cavemen rubbed two sticks together to make fire and its been particularly apparent in recent decades since the development of the electronic computer.

So if this continues and humans keep building and designing smarter and smarter computers, they will eventually build a computer as intelligent as a human being. Most experts think this will happen sometime within the next 50 years (well within our DC's lifetimes). And that computer, being as intelligent as a human, will be able to analyse itself and make improvements to itself, which will make it more intelligent and capable of making even further improvements to itself, which will make it even more intelligent, and..., you get the idea. So you get an "intelligence explosion" which results in something vastly more intelligent than a human developing in what could be a very short space of time, and once that happens there's likely to be very little anyone could do to stop it.

So we would effectively have created a "god", which might be very good as it could cure cancer, solve climate change, end starvation and suffering, or it could be VERY bad as it could potentially decide to destroy humanity if its interests aren't properly aligned with our own!

It all sounds like something out of a sci-fi movie which is hard to take seriously, but when I think about it I can't actually come up with a convincing argument that it wouldn't happen at some point in the future. The debate seems to be more about how long until it happens rather than whether or not its theoretically possible.

This TED talk by Sam Harris gives a good summary of all this.

http://www.ted.com/talks/sam_harris_can ... anguage=en" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;