<p>I came across an interesting piece today.</p>
<p>[Are</a> jobs obsolete? - CNN.com](<a href=“Are jobs obsolete? - CNN.com”>Are jobs obsolete? - CNN.com)</p>
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<p>As a nation we are experiencng high unemployment and underemployment while at the same time people can’t afford to retire. Have we become too productive to function under our traditional model?</p>
<p>hmm time to reread Player Piano.</p>
<p>I like this way of thinking. After all, suppose that all production one day becomes so automated that only a few human beings are required to keep things running. What are we going to do, let the other 99.999% of people starve to death because there aren’t enough jobs for them?</p>
<p>I don’t see any way human technological advancement can continue without eventually guaranteeing every person a certain, minimum standard of living, regardless of their employment status. I say this as a libertarian (both lower-case and capital L). I simply can not believe that allowing a tiny minority to hoard wealth without limit is sustainable.</p>
<p>The point of view of many macroeconomists, is that is a good thing(post 3) in that if only a few Americans are doing manufacturing, then that frees up many Americans to do some form of computer technology. That generally pays more money and offers what they call a “competitive advantage”.
Their academic view doesn’t quite take into account that not all Americans are well-suited to computer work, for a variety of reasons. Those that believe this way believe it is a good idea to buy foreign products to spur American unemployment, thereby hastening our push forward into the computer age.</p>
<p>I think we have too much computer technology already, so I’m voting for door #3. We need to find more creative ways to keep folks out of mischief without having to pretend that we need to have them “producing” more stuff.</p>
<p>I don’t understand this.</p>
<p>There are still many types of jobs that need to be done by people – service jobs, creative jobs, research jobs, and supervisory jobs, for example. A lot of us earn a living by doing things other than producing stuff.</p>
<p>Yes, Marian, but even most of those jobs are completed in fewer man-hours than before. Think of the time required to produce a video ad in 1971 vs. 2011, the time needed to perform pretty much any type of research, etc. And the number of supervisors is shrinking as the number of people required to complete tasks shrinks, and more and more stuff is performed by one person with the assistance of various devices. In my field - law - the ratio of lawyers to legal secretaries in a typical office used to be about 1:2. Now it’s about 3:1. The “extra” jobs have been taken over by word processing software.</p>
<p>There’s just less work left to go around when one person can do the work that used to take 10 people - or more - to perform. Pretty much just leaves maids and busboys…</p>
<p>Greatshort novel is called the Great Stagnation…to quickly paraphrase, all the ‘low hanging fruit’ has been grabbed…most,if not all, inventions,ideas produced in the last generation can’t hold a candle to what those in their 70’s experienced…We ,as a nation, have become extremely productive with the latest and greatest innovations,but it has not created jobs,it has cost jobs…and honestly, i don’t believe there is any turning back</p>
<p>Yes. EVERYTHING is becoming automated, it’s only a matter of time before almost every job is obsolete. Hell, even highly regarded professions, such as physicians, will become automated in the future. Entire pathology lab work has already been reduced down to a microchip that is currently in Phase III clinical trials and on the FDA’s fast track. If doctors will one day be obsolete, you can bet your ace that most other jobs will be too. The last invention mankind will ever make will be artificial intelligence—and we are extremely close to doing it. Once machines and computers become smarter than any person that could ever exist, computers will be able to fix themselves (no programmers needed anymore) and will solve almost any scientific question imaginable. Humans will become obsolete.</p>
<p>“Humans will become obsolete.”</p>
<p>But, wait, if we can develop machines to be even more intelligent then we are, maybe they will ‘save our souls’ – something we sorely need – instead of discarding us, you know, in gratitude for raising them to the top of the material world heap, as it were, and wouldn’t begrudge us any as they lack souls of their own…hmm.</p>
<p>Maybe there is hope for us after all…</p>
<p>“Entire pathology lab work has already been reduced down to a microchip that is currently in Phase III clinical trials and on the FDA’s fast track”</p>
<p>The statement makes no sense because a diagnostic product is a medical device and not a drug, so there are no “fast track Phase III clinical trials” involved.</p>
<p>[Medical</a> device](<a href=“http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_device]Medical”>Medical device - Wikipedia)</p>
<p>As someone with a bit of experience in the biotech industry, I can tell you that we are still long ways from the day when microfluidic chips will replace doctors. :)</p>
<p>Human brain simulation with exaflop supercomputers.</p>
<p>“It may be possible to simulate a human brain down to the cellular level by 2023, according to Henry Markram, the director of the Brain Mind Institute at the Ecole Polytechnic Federale De Lausanne.”</p>
<p><a href=“News and Advice on the World's Latest Innovations”>News and Advice on the World's Latest Innovations;
<p>From an AI perspective, computers may exceed human brains wholesale in several more decades.</p>
<p>“Greatest moments of computer history are speeding up ----- Omega Point expected around 2040”</p>
<p>[Greatest</a> moments of computer history are speeding up - Schmidhuber’s law - Omega Point 2040](<a href=“http://www.idsia.ch/~juergen/computerhistory.html]Greatest”>http://www.idsia.ch/~juergen/computerhistory.html)</p>
<p>“This list seems to suggest that each major breakthrough tends to come roughly twice as fast as the previous one. Extrapolating the trend, optimists should expect the next radical change to manifest itself one quarter of a century after the most recent one, that is, by 2015, which happens to coincide with the date when the fastest computers will match brains in terms of raw computing power, according to frequent estimates based on Moore’s law. The author is confident that the coming 2015 upheaval (if any) will involve universal learning algorithms and Gödel machine-like, optimal, incremental search in algorithm space [56]–possibly laying a foundation for the remaining series of faster and faster additional revolutions culminating in an ``Omega point’’ expected around 2040.”</p>
<p>[The</a> New AI: General & Sound & Relevant for Physics Technical Report IDSIA-04-03, Version 2.0, Nov 2003 (based on Version 1.0 , Feb 2003). In B. Goertzel and C. Pennachin, eds.: , Artificial General Intelligence (p. 177-200, 2006)](<a href=“http://www.idsia.ch/~juergen/newai/newai.html]The”>http://www.idsia.ch/~juergen/newai/newai.html)</p>
<p>From Isaac Asimov’s perspective, The Three Laws of Robotics and the creation of R. Daneel Olivaw, would guide humans into the far future. :-)</p>
<p>[Three</a> Laws of Robotics - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Laws_of_Robotics]Three”>Three Laws of Robotics - Wikipedia)</p>
<p>“Entire pathology lab work has already been reduced down to a microchip that is currently in Phase III clinical trials and on the FDA’s fast track”</p>
<p>[Heart</a> valve replacement without opening the chest gives new option for non-operable patients](<a href=“http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2011-06/rumc-hvr062411.php]Heart”>http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2011-06/rumc-hvr062411.php)</p>
<p>This is a “medical device” someone I know has worked on for a few years and it has gone through multiple trials abroad and in the US. Lots of FDA involvement.</p>
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<p>Huh?</p>
<p>[Programmable</a> Bio-Nano-Chips: First Viable Medical Lab on a Chip? | Singularity Hub](<a href="Programmable Bio-Nano-Chips: First Viable Medical Lab on a Chip?)</p>
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<p>I don’t think you know what you are talking about.</p>
<p>…Our problem is not that we don’t have enough stuff – it’s that we don’t have enough ways for people to work and prove that they deserve this stuff.</p>
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<p>Maybe if we actually made the “stuff” ourselves we would have more ways for people to work. Instead, we parcel it out to other countries where the standard of living is lower than ours (at least for now …).</p>
<p>As for this: “America is productive enough that it could probably shelter, feed, educate, and even provide health care for its entire population with just a fraction of us actually working…” Yikes. So the worker bees should be sharing our wages and taking care of all the non-working people, eh? </p>
<p>I vote for jobs and workers. It’s best all around.</p>
<p>First of all, thank you for finally citing the source and providing a link. Otherwise, your first post on this subject could be classified as plagiarism.</p>
<p>“For those unfamiliar with the FDA approval process, Phase III is one of the last steps before drugs or medical devices are allowed to be marketed.”</p>
<p>^^ 
I’ve seen even more dramatic statements made by academia. Like “we obtained a world patent covering our technology” when all the researchers did was to file a PCT application (there is no such thing as a “world patent”). Microfluidic chips and arrays are cool technology, but the writer of that piece needs to do some more research on the differences in the approval process of medical devices and pharmaceuticals. A clinical trial is required for certain medical devices to be considered for approval by the FDA, however, it is very unlikely that a biochip used for diagnosis will have to undergo 3 phases of clinical trials. That would be a total overkill. Either there is more to the story, or the author is somewhat clueless. Here is a good article that summarizes the medical device approval proces:</p>
<p>[Medical</a> Device Development](<a href=“http://circ.ahajournals.org/content/109/25/3068.full#sec-3]Medical”>http://circ.ahajournals.org/content/109/25/3068.full#sec-3)</p>
<p>I assume you are involved in this type of research, which is great. Educate yourself in the regulatory side of the business, and youi will be ahead of your peers.</p>
<p>There are microfluidic chip-based, *approved by the FDA *clinical tests. Look up Nanosphere, Cepheid, Luminex, Illumina and other similar companies. But these tests are far from replacing a doctor.</p>
<p>And if you want to read more about the biochip in question, here is a publication from Rice:</p>
<p>[A</a> new bio-nanochip sensor aids oral cancer detection](<a href=“A new bio-nanochip sensor aids oral cancer detection - PMC”>A new bio-nanochip sensor aids oral cancer detection - PMC)</p>
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<p>Your question misrepresents the comment you quoted. We are supposing that there simply aren’t enough jobs for everyone to have one, not that some people simply want to avoid work while still being supported financially.</p>
<p>Again, I say this as a card-carrying Libertarian: If there comes a point at which the modern economy has only a fraction as many jobs as there are able-bodied people willing to work, society will have to adjust in order to make making a living possible. This adjustment may come naturally, without government interference (I hope), but how? How will our institutions and behaviors change to accommodate the new reality?</p>
<p>Personally, I imagine two plausible scenarios:</p>
<p>(1) We will evolve toward having a single primary breadwinner in each household, effectively reducing the labor pool and therefore driving wages up.</p>
<p>(2) We will evolve toward having multiple low-wage earners living communally, effectively keeping total household income steady, or increasing it. (I see this in some immigrant southeast Asian families in my town. The amount of money they save puts me to shame.) At the same time, our idea of entertainment will revolve around family and leisure as opposed to eating out, traveling, and other costly activities.</p>
<p>In my field, public health, there is terrible need and few resources. I don’t see the need for direct services (people interacting with folks who have medical needs) going away any time soon. Computers CAN assist some of the functions but are not really a substitute for human interaction. Our non-profit provides some health services and are thinking of and planning to expand what we offer. It will be an interesting process. We try to stay small and keep a small “footprint” so we don’t have to worry about whether we maintain enough funding to keep operating, just pay people hourly as we need and can use them. Healthcare prevention and maintenance can save A LOT of hospital & ER $$$.</p>
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Libertarian??! Um…I don’t think so.</p>
<p>Acquiring wealth…It is NOT a zero sum game.</p>
<p>If society gets to the point where everybody enjoys a basic minimum standard of living in which people are comfortable and want for nothing - in the worst case - then the luxury/sin industries would expand to match increased demand, until achieving equilibrium. If we become productive enough so that everybody gets $1,000,000 a day, believe me, most people will be employed selling $250,000 cheeseburgers with nanotech in them to make them more delicious.</p>