[01-24-2017] WTAG – Craig Peterson
Joined Jim Polito to talk about how soon robots and automated services may take over jobs today. Not too soon as some may fear, but what are the types of jobs that would be first on the list in case it does.
And with the jobs such as delivery of packages now being done by Amazon and 7-Eleven, we now have majority of services being done by robots.
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Related articles:
Robots Will Take Jobs, but Not as Fast as Some Fear, New Report Says
Amazon patented a highway network that controls self-driving cars and trucks
7-Eleven delivers 77 packages via drone in first month of routine service
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Transcript
WTAG – 2017-01-24_ We-Wont-Be-Losing-Jobs-To-Robots-As-Quickly-As-We-Thought
Below is a rush transcript of this segment, it might contain errors.
Airing Date: January 24, 2017
We Won’t Be Losing Jobs To Robots As Quickly As We Thought – Jim Polito and I Talk About Why and the Scary Future
Craig Peterson: Every Tuesday morning, I’m on the number one morning show throughout the state of Massachusetts, The Jim Polito Show. We talked about the latest in technology, how it impacts you, me, and of course it impacts Jim.
Jim Polito: Yeah, weird science. How about this? How about you turn on the Jim Polito one morning and you hear a robot? Good morning.
Matt: That’s funny.
Jim: Not really. Joining us now, our Tech Talk guru, Craig Peterson. Craig, I got this email from you, you know, Craig always gets me a heads up as to what we’re gonna be talking about. And by the way, at the end of this segment, he’ll give you a number so you can be privy to all that information too. Uh, Craig, I heard this, and said Jim, don’t worry. You’re not gonna be replaced by a robot… and then it was, yet. So, it’s like when the doctor says, yeah, I looked at your x-ray. You got about 6 months. You might wanna start making arrangements, you know, getting your things in order, right?
Craig: Well you know, the sports pages that everybody loves are almost all written by robots. Did you know that?
Jim: No. What are you talking?
Craig: 90% of all sports articles published in the United States of America never see a human eye.
Jim: Come on.
Craig: No, absolutely. You know, when you think about it, it’s actually pretty easy to automate. Because you’ve got two teams who are playing each other. Someone obviously at the field is giving them basically a little stream of, you know, so and so just hit this to first base. So the computer goes through, and it has a whole bunch of different phrases it can use. So it says, John stood up at the base. The sun was in his eyes and you know, whatever. And the computer literally writes the article. If you’re reading an article about a real, real small town, you know, your high school team, that’s probably a human. If you’re reading about a team that’s more of a regional team, that’s actually, probably a computer. If you’re reading about Super Bowl or the Patriots, what couple of amazing games Sunday by the way, those are likely written by a human. But 90% of all of these now are written by computers. Who would have thought?
Jim: Wow. That’s freaking me out. You know what? I’m gonna cut myself just to make sure I bleed. Maybe I become a machine, Matt. Maybe I don’t even know it. You know they become self-aware.
Matt: Yeah.
Jim: This is… Ok, so, which industries, which job categories? I know manufacturing, but which job categories are most, well shall I say, susceptible to replacement by a robot?
Craig: Well, right now, if your job is repetitive, basically that’s likely to be replaced.
Jim: Well, I repeat myself a lot.
Craig: Yeah. So, you know we talked about cars and trucks before, right? If you’re a taxi driver, forget about it. If you’re an Uber driver, don’t get a long term lease on that car. But you know, going further than that, obviously, we’ve got people who are working in fast food, right? Those jobs are going. We’ve already got, I don’t know if you saw this, last week, Amazon bought a fleet of trailers, tractor trailers.
Jim: Amazon did? Ok. Well, I know they’ve been doing a little bit of that stuff, you know, on their own.
Craig: Yeah. Well they now, apparently what they’re gonna do is all of their intra-shipping. So in other words, between their warehouses, is all going to be done by robots. And Amazon’s got that ready. So, you know, we were thinking short-haul truck drivers were probably ok for the time being. I don’t think so. Amazon already has tens of thousands of robots working in its warehouses. We have 7-11 last week delivering, I don’t know if you saw this, but 77 packages, wait a minute. 7 times 11, ok, packages. 7-11’s gonna deliver your, I don’t know if they’re gonna deliver beer, but your chips and pretzels, via drone that lowers it down via tether for you. So, your pizza delivery guys are gonna be gone. The pizza makers. Computers make better pizzas than human beings do.
Jim: My God.
Craig: It goes on and on. Now your job, Jim, coz I know that’s kind of a key concern here.
Jim: Yes. You know it is.
Craig: You got the family, you got the wife, you got the support people now. Your job is probably quite safe, in fact, for the time being, because as long as you have a couple of brain cells to rub together, you could be a talk host.
Jim: It’s about all I’ve got left. I got two of them up there. A little bit of a synapse, and that’s it.
Craig: I need to have my own little drum roll and, what you call it, with a snare drum.
Jim: Oh, you mean you need a rim shot.
Craig: Rim shot, yes.
(RIM SHOT)
Jim: There you go.
Craig: Yeah, there you go.
Jim: There you go.
Craig: That should have come right after the two brain cells.
Jim: That’s alright. It is. If I had two, I’d be lucky.
Craig: And that’s true for really any kind of job where there’s a lot of thought involved. But, there’s exceptions. And the exceptions are, if you’re a writer right now, computers are already writing books. And they’re doing a decent job. If you’re a composer, computers are already composing music that people love. You that so many artists today cannot carry a tune in a bucket.
Jim: Oh no, no, no. They got, you know, if you ask them to sing a capella in a room with no amplifications, you’d think, is someone strangling a cat? Because they’ve got all those effects put in. You can even correct your tone if they’re tone deaf.
Craig: Exactly. Exactly. We got auto tune. So even the music we listen to will be generated by computers. So here’s the big, big problem, ultimately. This report that was released last week by the McKinsey Global Institute, and I’ve got it up on my site, says that 10 to 20 years from now, worldwide, we would have lost 1.1 trillion jobs to automation.
Jim: Wow.
Craig: You think Trump has problems today?
Jim: Yeah.
Craig: Think what’ll happen if he’s in office for two terms, in 8 years, how many jobs will be gone? What are we gonna do as a society? How are we gonna live? How are we gonna survive? And we already know California and Oregon and Washington have lost these entry level jobs because of high minimum wages in so many areas. A business like, you know, flipping burgers, how ultimately then if that’s the case? How are kids gonna learn how to work and show up on time and please the boss?
Jim: Yeah.
Craig: Whoa. I’m really concerned.
Jim: Well, here’s the thing, I mean they’re going to make our lives easier. They already do.
Craig: And cheaper.
Jim: And cheaper. But at what cost? I mean, really, if it’s repetition. I mean, think about this. I go to the doctor now. They take my blood pressure. They don’t even do it anymore. I mean my doctor does when he comes in coz he’s old-fashioned. He doesn’t trust the machines. They put a machine in your arm. Turn it on, takes your blood pressure.
Craig: Well you know, there’s already watches you can wear that monitor you 24/7.
Jim: Yeah.
Craig: So you don’t have to stay in the hospital if you have some fairly serious thing going on. So we’re gonna see more and more of that. Less human interaction which I think ultimately is going to be a real big problem for all of us because we need that. And yeah, ok, you know IBM’s computer can figure out better than Watson’s can figure out better than in most doctors how to diagnose something. But that human element. That little bit of curiosity. That, whoa, wait a minute, this doesn’t fit together.
Jim: Yeah.
Craig: Watson doesn’t have that. And I don’t know ultimately where we’re gonna end up with all of these, Jim.
Jim: This is just freaky stuff too.
Craig: This is suicidal. This is massive suicidal change. You know… but let’s talk about the other side of this right?
Jim: Yeah.
Craig: It’s going to take a lot longer. Roll out all of these automation than people were initially estimating. Partially because of what you said. It’s gonna impact society so much it’s gonna be pushed back.
Jim: And who’s gonna pay? The thing is eventually, who’s gonna pay for it? You know what I mean?
Craig: Yeah.
Jim: Yeah. Listen, advertisers, you know, like pay my salary, ok? Then I take that money and I spend it with the advertisers and I spend it elsewhere and I do this with… you know what I mean. It’s symbiotic. When you have the robot coming in, it’s through, ok?
Craig: Well the theory is when the robots come in here, they’re going to make our lives better in a lot of ways. Cost of living is gonna be way lower because things will be cheaper, cheaper. Therefore this experiment that’s happening over in Finland, I think it is right now, where they said we’re not gonna do welfare anymore like we’ve done it all these years. We’re just going to issue, and this is just a controlled experiment, right?
Jim: I know what you’re talking about.
Craig: We’re giving you checks, right? So if our cost of living is dramatically lower, our standard of living rises somewhat. What the theories are right now is that basically, the robot manufacturers, almost all of our income taxes are gonna go away. They’re gonna go to zero. The taxes are gonna be coming from the manufacturers of the robots. The people who are running the various companies and, you know, the companies themselves, obviously that are providing all the stuff for us. And then we are all going to get a check from the government every month.
Jim: I’m not looking forward to that coz as far as I’m concerned, it’s servitude. But, you know. And then I try to explain to people in Finland what I think is gonna really fail there is that you’re gonna devalue the currency so that you’ll have inflation. Because everybody’s got the minimum amount of money. So increased prices.
Craig: Yeah. It happens every time. If everyone’s trying to buy a loaf of bread.
Jim: Yeah. Yeah. It’s the same thing. We didn’t even scratch the surface here but you’ve got a lot of great stuff like Google building a highway for self-driving cars. So look folks. Here’s what you do. I had to get that robot story out. Here’s what you do. You text my name Jim to this number.
Craig: 855 385 5553.
Jim: And you will receive from Craig Peterson this story and a bunch of other stories. Plus, he will periodically send other information but he will not clog your inbox and he will not annoy. Don’t forget, standard data and text rates apply. Craig, great segment. Appreciate it. I look forward to talking with you next week.
Craig: Take care Jim. Thanks.
Jim: Alrighty.
Craig: Hey, I hope you are aware but I’m doing a new daily podcast. Been doing it for a few weeks now. Every day, I discuss the latest in technology and how it affects us. And I’m calling it our TechSanity Check because nobody else seems to be sane out there. That’s our TechSanity Check, of course, you’ll find it online. http://CraigPeterson.com/itunes. If you subscribe to my regular Tech Talk feed you’ll get Daily TechSanity Check as well. Take care and we’ll talk a little bit later on this morning or this afternoon or tonight or tomorrow morning. Depending on where you are. People all over the world this is great. I love it. Thanks everybody. And I’d love to hear from you as well. Make sure you send me a little text. Let me know you’re listening. What you like about the show. Or fill out a feedback form. Direct text number’s 855 385 5553. Or if you’re outside the US, the easiest way is just go to http://CraigPeterson.com, fill out the little feedback form. I love to hear from everybody. Take care. Bye.
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