Anyone Else Flying to UK on Friday

[milanbenes]

Hi Nick,

thanks for the info, double checked and you are right.

Yes it helps but to be honest I wanted to the strike to go ahead I don't think the customers or the employer should allow themselves to be blackmailed by the union.

If we give in this time they will just do it again and again in future - and won't change their behavior.

Milan.

[DimPrawn]

Its not just getting bags off, its getting them on in the most efficient configuration to maximise space and balance the load. Humans are still inherently better at it than machines.

You mean a Constraint Satisfaction Problem? No, computers can't do that....

[OwlHoot]

Unless there is a fundamental shift in society's views on work and benefits I fear this will make things worse, not better. Not unlike the demise of the mining industry, this time whole swathes of job types will become obsolete in short order, leaving vast numbers of people unemployed and without specialist skills. The NE is still badly wounded decades later and a real automation revolution could be far more serious and happen faster.

The point of automation is often supposed to be to free people from the drudgery of menial work. But while society keeps the view that people 'should' work, this raises problems. We're simultaneously trying to get rid of jobs while criticising those who are unemployed.

You can say the point is to leave only skilled jobs and we simply educate people to be able to do them but even if it's possible to educate all our kids to such a level, those who grew up without that education are left in the lurch for several decades until they die out. Plus of course, maybe there aren't enough highly skilled jobs that need doing.

Bottom line, unless you can find something for those doing the menial jobs to do (and in fact lots of automatable jobs are actually not menial), and a way to give them money that doesn't anger everyone else "they're getting a free ride that's not fair" it's just going to be a huge problem.
Science fiction often portray a society where work is no longer the norm due to automation, only highly skilled people or those who want to work have to... but it rarely explains how we get there from where we are now.

As someone said it's driven by markets. That means there is no noble aim to free people of hard labour behind this. Purely the aim to avoid paying people to do the hard labour. It's going to be hard for governments of the developed world to regulate this transformation if/when it comes.

Credit where it's due, although some of us give doohgy a hard time every now and then, the above is spot on!

[OwlHoot]

2016-12-22 Federal report: AI could threaten up to 47 percent of jobs in two decades

This week, scientists and economic advisers to President Obama released a report on artificial intelligence, including the effects of automation on the US job market and economy. While the report notes the significant potential for wealth gains from increased productivity due to AI, it also warns of threats to existing jobs and an exacerbation of the wage inequality between lower-skilled, less-educated workers and those with higher skills.