Career That Can’t be Replaced by Technology

tbeltrans said:
That time is coming. The way cars are designed will likely change to accommodate that technology, but we are already seeing diagnostics being done by the computers in cars, talking to computers outside the cars. I have a handheld device that I can plug in under the steering wheel of either of our vehicles and read out what exactly the engine warning light is telling us. I can elect to reset that event to turn off the engine check light. It only cost me about $100 a number of years ago. It has saved me much more than it cost me. It is useful to know whether a mechanic is being honest with me as well as not having to pay a garage to read that code for me.

Tony
Click to expand...
Without a doubt, but what millennium are you talking about? :)
 

hollydolly said:
My o/h has an engine diagnostic machine which is bluetoothed, so it shows up on his phone whatever the problem is with the engines on our cars , and also he can clear temporary faults or warning lights using his phone which show up on the dashboard
Click to expand...
Yes, there is that. We don't have smart phones and I purchased my handheld (which I keep in my trunk) before smart phones were common. But yes, you described the increasing sophistication with which these tools are being developed.

I see from this thread that some (many??) people don't recognize how much automation has become a part of our every day lives. Also realize that technological development builds on itself so it has been rapidly gaining momentum. Research and development goes on every day all over the world and many of the jobs people currently think are irreplaceable, aren't. It is only a matter of time. I was somewhat surprised at how quickly people in our condo association embraced those robotic vacuum cleaners, but now am beginning to realize that people will welcome all these conveniences into their lives without thought of what is being replaced.

Tony
 
Aunt Marg said:
Without a doubt, but what millennium are you talking about? :)
Click to expand...
It is likely that we will be seeing at least some of it in our lifetimes, considering our relative age in this group. People here have already been discussing all the computers and conveniences there are in new cars. That has rolled up on us rather quickly and continues to escalate. It seems quite conceivable to me that mechanical engineers will be designing cars such that they can be worked on by robots. I can't think of a practical reason why that wouldn't be the case at some point in the not too distant future.

Tony
 

tbeltrans said:
Yes, there is that. We don't have smart phones and I purchased my handheld (which I keep in my trunk) before smart phones were common. But yes, you described the increasing sophistication with which these tools are being developed.

I see from this thread that some (many??) people don't recognize how much automation has become a part of our every day lives. Also realize that technological development builds on itself so it has been rapidly gaining momentum. Research and development goes on every day all over the world and many of the jobs people currently think are irreplaceable, aren't. It is only a matter of time. I was somewhat surprised at how quickly people in our condo association embraced those robotic vacuum cleaners, but now am beginning to realize that people will welcome all these conveniences into their lives without thought of what is being replaced.

Tony
Click to expand...
yes this is something that's discussed in this household often, but while for example..mechanics and car repair shops charge so much, then people will embrace the much more affordable technology that allows them to do it themselves.. sadly if that's putting people out of work, it's due to the horrific repair or diagnostic prices , so we can't blame the technology for that.. unfortunately
 
tbeltrans said:
It is likely that we will be seeing at least some of it in our lifetimes, considering our relative age in this group. People here have already been discussing all the computers and conveniences there are in new cars. That has rolled up on us rather quickly and continues to escalate. It seems quite conceivable to me that mechanical engineers will be designing cars such that they can be worked on by robots. I can't think of a practical reason why that wouldn't be the case at some point in the not too distant future.

Tony
Click to expand...
Oh yes, I see it, too, Tony, but not from the standpoint of rolling a vehicle into a shop with no humans around, and presto-magico, you exit a time later with your vehicle repaired by robots.
 
When considering replacing humans with robots of one form or another, consider what drives business decisions - margins. If the return on investment (ROI for you MBA types) is such that the savings in labor become significant by replacing people with robots, businesses will do that. If that weren't true, we would not be seeing it in factory assembly lines already. This has been going on for years and there are careers for technicians maintaining these robots and engineers developing them. One tech can keep a large number of robots running smoothly. That is certainly a better ratio than a one to one ratio of worker to assembly line position, from a business owner's standpoint.

When economic forces demand, or at least are willing to accept, replacing people with machines, it does, and will continue to, happen. As technology continues to evolve forward, the areas in which these replacements can happen continues to increase at a rapid rate. We have been seeing this trend for many years and I see no reason that it would suddenly stop.

Tony
 
Aunt Marg said:
Oh yes, I see it, too, Tony, but not from the standpoint of rolling a vehicle into a shop with no humans around, and presto-magico, you exit a time later with your vehicle repaired by robots.
Click to expand...
I do, but then I am probably much closer to that technology than you are. I am not saying it will happen tomorrow, but we are increasingly seeing the movement toward that.

Tony
 
RadishRose said:
Lawyers?
Click to expand...
What do you call 20,000 lawyers under the sea?

A good start!! :ROFLMAO:

There will probably always be lawyers, but increasingly the "grunt work" is being done by computers. I could see computers replacing legal aides and paralegals at some point.

Tony
 
Aunt Marg said:
Nothing wrong with being a dreamer, Tony. :)
Click to expand...
Not at all. I am seeing a lot of technological developments that are probably not particularly visible, or at least recognizable in the general public yet. In my medical contract work, I routinely work on products that won't see the commercial market for another 10 years due to FDA testing processes.

When I worked full time, I routinely worked on projects that the general public didn't see for several years after I was done with it and had moved on to the next project.

Such projects included the internet (early-mid 1980s) and the cloud (early 1990s), smart TVs (early 2000s) as but three examples. So I can easily understand people here being skeptical of what I am talking about in this thread. I got that in spades with all three examples I listed here and several more. Now, all three of these are commonplace as if people always had them.

Tony
 
Mike said:
I have been in the middle of a river changing the
starter motor on a Caterpillar Bulldozer, you won't
get any robot doing that I reckon.

Mike
Click to expand...
Maybe, maybe not (at least in our lifetime). I still think there is a very real possibility that many of these vehicles will be constructed so as to facilitate such activity by robots. Remember that many things we see today, people would have either never considered or have considered as not probably (even if possible).

Tony
 
tbeltrans said:
That time is coming. The way cars are designed will likely change to accommodate that technology, but we are already seeing diagnostics being done by the computers in cars, talking to computers outside the cars. I have a handheld device that I can plug in under the steering wheel of either of our vehicles and read out what exactly the engine warning light is telling us. I can elect to reset that event to turn off the engine check light. It only cost me about $100 a number of years ago. It has saved me much more than it cost me. It is useful to know whether a mechanic is being honest with me as well as not having to pay a garage to read that code for me.

Tony
Click to expand...
Sounds good that technology can diagnose a problem. But how do you envision technology replacing faulty fuel injectors should that be the problem? Or a burnt piston due to a faulty fuel injector. A burnt piston might be replaceable if the cylinder walls aren't scored. Of course removing the head & dropping the oil pan to be able to unbolt the rod & piston from the crank shaft would be another task for a tech savvy robot.
 
Mike said:
I have been in the middle of a river changing the
starter motor on a Caterpillar Bulldozer, you won't
get any robot doing that I reckon.

Mike
Click to expand...
Was that a pony motor or the newer electric starters. I can say for sure replacing a pony motor using a 30 ton grove crane as the lift can be fun. Better be good with hand signals to the crane operator.

Just so folks know an electric starter for a dozer isn't like a car starter that you can use one hand to hold in place while putting the bolts in. It's heavy and awkward but doable. I've used a cable come along as an extra set of hands.
 
Knight said:
Sounds good that technology can diagnose a problem. But how do you envision technology replacing faulty fuel injectors should that be the problem? Or a burnt piston due to a faulty fuel injector. A burnt piston might be replaceable if the cylinder walls aren't scored. Of course removing the head & dropping the oil pan to be able to unbolt the rod & piston from the crank shaft would be another task for a tech savvy robot.
Click to expand...
I envision cars being designed and built differently to facilitate the ways that robots would be able to work. With the push to all electric cars, we may no longer have traditional gas engines in the future anyway. I don't have a specific vision in mind. I just know that robotics is developing rapidly as are car designs and the pressures on auto manufacturers to look to totally new designs.

This isn't some sort of far flung science fiction "magic", but simply looking at what has been happening in several related fields.

Tony
 
tbeltrans said:
I envision cars being designed and built differently to facilitate the ways that robots would be able to work. With the push to all electric cars, we may no longer have traditional gas engines in the future anyway. I don't have a specific vision in mind. I just know that robotics is developing rapidly as are car designs and the pressures on auto manufacturers to look to totally new designs.

Tony
Click to expand...
I see your point about development but like the technology used in surgery I don't envision a robot with the manual dexterity to remove & or reassemble fine detailed parts.
 
Knight said:
I see your point about development but like the technology used in surgery I don't envision a robot with the manual dexterity to remove & or reassemble fine detailed parts.
Click to expand...
I do, because I don't see future robots being relatively "clunky" like the robots we have today. How many objects have we seen that were clunky, say, 50 years ago (within our lifetimes if you are around the same age group as many of us - I am 67), that are now much smaller and with far smaller components? Why couldn't robot technology similarly develop?

This conversation reminds me of a time when I was attending a night school program in computer programming on mainframes. My future wife sat in front of me and still laughs about it today. I built my first micro computer from scratch using a Z80 microprocessor, and brought it to school one night. The instructor, a died-in-the-wool mainframe career person, spent the first 15 or 20 minutes of class telling us how stupid I was for fooling around with microprocessors because there was no future beyond the pong-type game in these things. Enough said, as far as I am concerned.

Though at the time, I didn't know much about computers (and I still am familiar with a relatively small portion of all that technology), I could easily see that there really was something in those microprocessors and that they were something I needed to continue to work with. Some people get stuck in what they see around them now, thinking that this is how things will always be. What will always be is change. Looking back over technology of the past 50 or so years, it is not that difficult to extrapolate a number of developments in process even today to see where it is headed.

Tony
 
If I were to enter the jobs market years from now, I would want to be a robot "mechanic". No matter how sophisticated these machines might become, one thing will remain a certainty....they will require maintenance and repair.
 
Don M. said:
If I were to enter the jobs market years from now, I would want to be a robot "mechanic". No matter how sophisticated these machines might become, one thing will remain a certainty....they will require maintenance and repair.
Click to expand...
Yes! That is a realistic view of things. Certain types of jobs go away when being replaced by technology, but the technology itself usually creates new jobs. People who see, understand, and prepare for that, typically fare rather well.

One trend that has been building for some time in the software engineering field as well as with programmers at the user level, is increasing use of libraries replacing custom written code for a specific project. This results in shorter times to market and, if the libraries are well tested and trusted, short test cycles. The skillset to address these changes would be to be able to quickly determine which libraries to utilize for a given project and being a quick study in the use of such libraries. Such a person will be far more productive, and therefore valuable, to an employer than that software engineer who still wants to roll all his or her own code from scratch.

Hardware (EE) engineers have been increasingly become programmers using FPGAs and ASICs with coded processor core packages and associated library packages and VHDL Verilog in the programming, rather than completely designing circuits from scratch using individual components. Also, silicon design packaging has long been becoming increasingly dense, lowering parts count while increasing functionality. SOCs (system on a chip) are often the heart of an embedded design. That has been going on for years now.

So even in technology fields where one is already a technology worker, looking to the future and recognizing technology trends is of utmost importance. The things I am mentioning here are pretty much "old hat" these days and just the tip of the iceberg, but they serve to greatly accelerate further technological developments. All these developments eventually ripple throughout our everyday lives eventually. So thinking that the way things are today is the way things will always be, is just shortsighted.

Tony
 
Knight said:
Was that a pony motor or the newer electric starters. I can say for sure replacing a pony motor using a 30 ton grove crane as the lift can be fun. Better be good with hand signals to the crane operator.

Just so folks know an electric starter for a dozer isn't like a car starter that you can use one hand to hold in place while putting the bolts in. It's heavy and awkward but doable. I've used a cable come along as an extra set of hands.
Click to expand...
It was the electric version Knight, but as you
say heavy enough to make the job long and
awkward.

Mike.
 
HoneyNut said:
Oh that is the best idea, I already have some of those job-skills!
Click to expand...
Imagine going to school to REALLY learn how to want: Bachelor of Wants degree.

Then, one could conceivably get stuck in an endless loop from which there is no breaking out:

I want a Bachelor of Wants degree.

Tony
 
Human-Robot Cooperation!
iu
 

You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top