The General Election Thread

[smudgedj]

To be fair the same thing has been said (in different ways) for many years, we are now meant to have more leisure time than ever before as well as power to cheap to metre not to mention holidays on Mars and hover boards (all predicted), the way I see it all economies need consumers, if the consumers can not earn money through work then there can be no economy henceforth no need for robots

This is different. These things were said when you had crap robots on Tomorrow's World and the average computer had 16 megabytes of RAM.

Now we have self driving cars, computers that write computer programs quicker than humans do, computers that can scan terabytes of data and make correlations that no human could possibly do and computers that can essentially remember and cross reference an almost limitless amount of data in seconds.

Computers are now writing symphonies, painting pictures, giving excellent economic forecasts, diagnosing patients and performing operations, building houses and landing planes. Most of the time they do this quicker, better and cheaper than workers do it. They've achieved this in around 30 years. In 30 years time they'll be ubiquitous.

Let's take a single example there and look at the new self driving cars. These are legal on British roads in 10 weeks time. They have already driven hundreds of thousands of miles and shown to be safer than normal people driving by a huge amount. They are quicker to react to developing conditions, they never break the speed limit, always know whether or not they can make it to the next petrol station and can see and react to a crash in 100 times the rate of humans. They need no breaks and no wages. Give this technology 30 years and tell me where that leaves the long haul trucking industry or even the short carrier service? We've already shipped out workers from the warehouses due to automated systems, the ones in the cabins are the next to go.

Where will the bus and coach driver go? What about the average white van man?

Due to a single new technology that is here RIGHT NOW, that is a source of employment that will no longer exist in a decade or two.

Think who we would have replaced in 30 years.

Is there a computer to paint and wallpaper my house? Change the fuel filter on my car? Rip up wooden flooring and lay tiles? Or do you think they will be available with a handful of years?

 

[another generation]

Is there a computer to paint and wallpaper my house? Change the fuel filter on my car? Rip up wooden flooring and lay tiles? Or do you think they will be available with a handful of years?

Maybe not now, but farm workers in the forties would never have envisaged the technology that is now used to harvest huge fields of crops. Why not develop a machine to paint a house? The grass clipper and vacuum cleaner are already found in robot form, so why not something that has to work in vertical planes?

 

[smudgedj]

Is there a computer to paint and wallpaper my house? Change the fuel filter on my car? Rip up wooden flooring and lay tiles? Or do you think they will be available with a handful of years?

Maybe not now, but farm workers in the forties would never have envisaged the technology that is now used to harvest huge fields of crops. Why not develop a machine to paint a house? The grass clipper and vacuum cleaner are already found in robot form, so why not something that has to work in vertical planes?

It was tongue in cheek really as they were jobs I've done last week and would rather not do. In fact the quicker they get a computer to move furniture and do the cutting in the better.

 

[another generation]

It was tongue in cheek really as they were jobs I've done last week and would rather not do. In fact the quicker they get a computer to move furniture and do the cutting in the better.

And therein lies the root of the problem. :-) Many (if not most) people would rather do less work, although presumably for the same income. We do, however, complain when others come along to take the jobs we can't be bothered to do any more, whether those jobs are taken by machines or the dreaded-and-unspoken 'immigrants' (of which I am officially one).

 

[TangerineSteve17]

Is there a computer to paint and wallpaper my house? Change the fuel filter on my car? Rip up wooden flooring and lay tiles? Or do you think they will be available with a handful of years?

Maybe not now, but farm workers in the forties would never have envisaged the technology that is now used to harvest huge fields of crops. Why not develop a machine to paint a house? The grass clipper and vacuum cleaner are already found in robot form, so why not something that has to work in vertical planes?

It was tongue in cheek really as they were jobs I've done last week and would rather not do. In fact the quicker they get a computer to move furniture and do the cutting in the better.

So as a Painter and Decorator, who are you saying I should vote for? :/

 

[smudgedj]

It was tongue in cheek really as they were jobs I've done last week and would rather not do. In fact the quicker they get a computer to move furniture and do the cutting in the better.

And therein lies the root of the problem. :-) Many (if not most) people would rather do less work, although presumably for the same income. We do, however, complain when others come along to take the jobs we can't be bothered to do any more, whether those jobs are taken by machines or the dreaded-and-unspoken 'immigrants' (of which I am officially one).

I'm returning to the UK in November I too will be an immigrant!

 

[smudgedj]

Maybe not now, but farm workers in the forties would never have envisaged the technology that is now used to harvest huge fields of crops. Why not develop a machine to paint a house? The grass clipper and vacuum cleaner are already found in robot form, so why not something that has to work in vertical planes?

It was tongue in cheek really as they were jobs I've done last week and would rather not do. In fact the quicker they get a computer to move furniture and do the cutting in the better.

So as a Painter and Decorator, who are you saying I should vote for? :/

You should, as I did, vote for Evo Morales

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-29588002

 

[Ducado]

I think we have veered well and truly off topic and interesting diversion perhaps thread worthy in it's own right

 

[another generation]

I think we have veered well and truly off topic and interesting diversion perhaps thread worthy in it's own right

I wouldn't have thought that a discussion on work/machines was so far removed from the thread. After all, both a worker and a redundant worker (replaced by a machine) have a vote.

 

[gordondaviesmoustache]

I think we have veered well and truly off topic and interesting diversion perhaps thread worthy in it's own right

Careful tiger.