Automation taking away jobs?

[OldFeller]

All the years I worked before retirement I heard countless comments about various forms of automation doing away with jobs. We all remember the fears about Y2K and the rumbles about business grinding to a halt. No telling how much money was spent preparing for disaster. I remember an audit partner telling me that unless I could show him our company Y2K plan we would not get a favorable audit report. I showed a yellow legal pad and a #2 pencil.

After the false alarm past I suggested that their firm should not bill the company for the hours his staff spent in reference to a prediction wrapped in a scare tactic. MY POINT - most of the noise made in the press about AI is perhaps the red-headed step child of Y2K fear mongering. I tend to think that the actual effect will be expanded forms of business we have yet to envision. Just sayin.

The hype about AI is to make sure it's perceived as the game changer of all time which tells me that it's not anything more than the next step in automation that computers have always had the capacity to perform. In order to sell it they need people to talk about it. The key word in AI is artificial which to me means it emulates intelligence but is not in itself more intelligent than the problem it's been programmed to solve. It's a way of gathering information, sorting it and presenting a result.

 

[Rider77]

The hype about AI is to make sure it's perceived as the game changer of all time which tells me that it's not anything more than the next step in automation that computers have always had the capacity to perform. In order to sell it they need people to talk about it. The key word in AI is artificial which to me means it emulates intelligence but is not in itself more intelligent than the problem it's been programmed to solve. It's a way of gathering information, sorting it and presenting a result.

I agree. That is why I chose the Y2K fiasco as my example. I find it hard to believe that a computer will create thought, maybe I just don't understand the power of algorythms well enough.

 

[outlander]

Interesting. We had to use a local repair shop recently and it was busy with lots of staff. While the kids may use smart phones for personal use, they still use computers or PCs at work. I’m glad it worked out for you and you’ve made the most of working for automated delivery services.

Less than two years later the people we sold the business to closed down

We offered same day or next day service. A busy day was 20+ repairs done by myself and my ex-wife, sometimes my daughter helped.

PC's were very universal then, power supplies, cpus, memory, hard drives, PCI devices, video cards, even motherboards were mostly inter changeable. Keeping an adequate stock was easy. Never wanted to repair tablets or phones, the parts are all proprietary. No way to sustain our quick turn around, which was one of the key reasons for our loyal customer support. In those days almost all computers were ATX or Micro ATX format, but now there are very many various small form factors that are popular.

Never wanted to charge extreme labor charges or have a long turn around time. Not sure how that could even work today, as a decent mini computer can easily be purchased for less than $150 from Amazon arriving in just a couple of days.

The last mini pc I bought (typing this on it) was an Intel Jasper Lake quad core with 16GB of memory and a 512GB ssd, $109.

I can only guess, but most modern PC repairs are most likely higher than that. So if one saves important files and data as recommended, it makes financial sense to skip the repair and buy a new one for daily use. Obviously if one is a AAA gamer or doing heavy video editing or scientific computations, maybe a repair is an option. Even so, more powerful PCs can still be bought for a few hundred dollars.

 

[Trade]

I was watching a video about self driving trucks and what it means to the truck driver work force.

Self driving trucks. What could go wrong?

 

[JustDave]

We all remember the fears about Y2K and the rumbles about business grinding to a halt. No telling how much money was spent preparing for disaster. I remember an audit partner telling me that unless I could show him our company Y2K plan we would not get a favorable audit report.

From what I understood at the time, it was something about Microsoft not including a provision for it's system's calendar to accommodate switching to the 21st Century. I've always been skeptical of that, as it sounded like a simple fix for the programmers to update. If indeed that was a problem and not just some internet misinformation or alternative fact that was dreamed up by the people who make $hit up.

At any rate, I was interested to see if my computer would switch to the blue screen of death on New Years Eve at Midnight. I expected at least some minimal disturbance, but nothing happened, nothing at all. It almost felt like a gyp. No New World Order, nothing.

 

[Grampa Don]

From what I understood at the time, it was something about Microsoft not including a provision for it's system's calendar to accommodate switching to the 21st Century. I've always been skeptical of that, as it sounded like a simple fix for the programmers to update. If indeed that was a problem and not just some internet misinformation or alternative fact that was dreamed up by the people who make $hit up.

At any rate, I was interested to see if my computer would switch to the blue screen of death on New Years Eve at Midnight. I expected at least some minimal disturbance, but nothing happened, nothing at all. It almost felt like a gyp. No New World Order, nothing.

I believe it was a simple limitation of Unix not allowing for dates after 1999. I don't think it was a problem for Microsoft. Unix is a very old operating system developed in the 60's and no one at the time thought about what would happen in 2000. But, the problem was blown out of proportion and fixes were in the works in plenty of time. I remember my wife being worried about it and I reassured her we would be alright.

Unix was and still is used in many commercial applications.