Summary: We have little confidence in journalists, although they have warned us well of past perils. Now a new challenge arrives, the 3rd industrial revolution. We refuse to prepare for its dangers. Here we review some of the many news articles about what’s happening, so we cannot say we weren’t warned.
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Contents
- Journalists report, but we don’t listen
- Journalists report: long-form analysis
- The daily news tells the story, in chapters
- For More Information
- The Robot bedmate is coming
(1) Journalists report, but we don’t listen
We have low confidence in the news media (see Gallup’s Confidence in Institutions Poll), but perhaps the fault lies in the audience as much as the journalists. Nothing demonstrates our broken OODA loop (observation-orientation-decision-action process) as vividly as our inability to see what journalists tell us.
Our invasion and occupation of Iraq began with lies; it ended with our ignominious eviction — having accomplished nothing of value to the US. Journalists reported each step of our folly (amidst much chaff from the hawks). Yet three years later many American remain unaware of these — often belligerently holding to their lies and myths.
So it also goes with climate change. The pause in warming of the atmosphere since roughly 2000 has been reported by journalists (fitfully, amidst much chaff from alarmists), telling us about its recognition by climate scientists (followed by their research into its causes and likely duration).
In both cases journalists reported both the key information, and the chaff by activists seeking to conceal this information. As citizens, consumers of news, we have a responsibility to sort the news to see the facts, not just whine that we were misled. Now this information cycle begins again with the start of a third industrial, widespread automation of white-collar jobs.
(2) Journalists report: long-form analysis
Here are articles about the great changes about to come, reshaping America. Everybody will be affected, even professionals who smirk at job losses in the lower class. Astonishing changes. But not so amazing as our blindness to them, even as the clock already runs.
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(a) “The Rise of the Machines“, Gavin Mueller, Jacobin, April 2013 — “Automation isn’t freeing us from work — it’s keeping us under capitalist control.”
(b) “The Future of Employment: How Susceptible are Jobs to Computerisation?“, Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael A. Osborne, Oxford, 16 August 2013 — This sparked scores of news articles.
(c) “Delusions of the Tech Bro Intelligentsia“, Peter Frase (Ph.D. student in sociology), Jacobin, October 2013 — “The fight at the heart of the BART strike isn’t over whether or not to innovate – it’s about innovation that improves transit service without degrading and disempowering workers.”
(d) “The Office of the Future“, Jay Monaco, Jacobin, January 2014 — “A view inside C&S Wholesale Grocers, America’s secret corporate empire, home to the future of white-collar exploitation”
(e) “Most of what your doctor does, a robot can do better“, Gina Siddiqui, Quartz, 1 April 2014 — “Gina Siddiqui is a medical student at the University of Pennsylvania. Her company, Remedy, builds wearable technology for health providers.”
(f) The rise of MOOCs will make this oversupply far worse: “Report of the Task Force on Doctoral Study in Modern Language and Literature“, Modern Language Association (2014). For a summary and analysis of their findings see “Self-Delusion Spreads from Professional to Graduate Education; Consternation Curiously Absent“, Bernie Burk (Prof Law, U NC), The Faculty Lounge, 20 June 2014 — More education is no panacea. Excerpt:
{T}he tenure-track academic appointments for which a doctoral degree is the traditional and necessary preparation are available for only about 60% of the recipients of doctorates in language or literature (a number chillingly reminiscent of the 56%-57% of the last two law-school graduating classes who managed to find a full-time, long-term job requiring a law license within 9-10 months of graduation, though when you exclude school-funded and self-employed positions as well as a few other confounders and irrelevancies, that number is closer to 53%).
(3) The daily news tells the story, in chapters
Here is a stream of the daily news. These report the march of progress, unfortunately trampling people underfoot. Unless we see the big theme, these individual stories can easily get lost in the clutter. Note how many of these deal with automation of the professional classes, the people unconcerned by the previous waves of automation that hit the unskilled and blue collar classes.
- “Armies of Expensive Lawyers, Replaced by Cheaper Software“, New York Times, 4 March 2011
- “In Case You Wondered, a Real Human Wrote This Column“, New York Times, 10 September 2011 — “In five years a computer program will win a Pulitzer Prize”
- “Clothing Giant H&M Defends ‘Perfect’ Virtual Models“, ABC News, 6 December 2011
- “A Robot Stole My Pulitzer!“, Evgeny Morozov, Slate, 19 March 2012 — “How automated journalism and loss of reading privacy may hurt civil discourse”
- “Can the Computers at Narrative Science Replace Paid Writers?“, Joe Fassler, The Atlantic, 12 April 2012
- “The new reporter on the US media scene takes no coffee breaks, churns out articles at lightning speed, and has no pension plan”, Wired, 24 April 2012
- “The Robo-Doctor Will See You Now“, American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), May 2012
- “New reporter? Call him Al, for algorithm“, AFP, July 2012
- “Robot Professors Come With Singularity U’s Massive Upgrade“, Wired, 22 August 2012 — this will be big!
- “Coming soon: Robots that help build buildings“, Los Angeles Times, 13 November 2012
- “High-School Video Gamers Match Physicians at Robotic-Surgery Simulation“, Slate, 21 November 2012
- “Robots are taking your job and mine: deal with it“, Cory Doctorow, Boing Boing, 1 January 2013
- “The robots are coming. Will they bring wealth or a divided society?“, Gavin Kelly, The Guardian, 4 January 2013 — “Driverless cars, robo-ships and delivery drones are likely to become commonplace in the decades to come. One labour market expert argues that a ‘second machine age’ will test our ability to spread the rewards fairly.”
- “Practically human: Can smart machines do your job?“, AP, 25 January 2013
- Bad news for creators: “As Music Streaming Grows, Royalties Slow to a Trickle“, New York Times, 28 January 2013
- “Raging (Again) Against the Robots“, New York Times, 2 February 2013 — “The robots are coming! Word is they want your job, your life and probably your little dog, too.”
- “Obama must face the rise of the robots“, Edward Luce, Financial Times, 3 February 2013 — “Technology will leave a large chunk of the US labour force in the lurch”
- “How to Freak Out Responsibly About the Rise of the Robots“, Derek Thompson, The Atlantic, 5 February 2013 — “It’s fun to imagine an economy where machines are smarter than humans. But we don’t need an artificial crisis over artificial intelligence.” Typical contrarian pretending not to see the future.
- “The robots are coming and will terminate your jobs“, Tim Harford, Financial Times, 27 September 2013 — “In future, there may be people who – despite being fit to work – have no economic value.”
- “The Tipping Point (E-Commerce Version)“, Jeff Jordan (Partner, Andreessen Horowitz), 14 January 2014
- “The onrushing wave“, The Economist, 18 January 2014 — “Previous technological innovation has always delivered more long-run employment, not less. But things can change.”
- “Could robots be the journalists of the future?“, The Guardian, 16 March 2014 — “In this digital age, even journalism is being automated. Now over to GUARBOT for the news …”
- “The First News Report on the L.A. Earthquake Was Written by a Robot“, Slate, 17 March 2014
- “Most of what your doctor does, a robot can do better“, Gina Siddiqui, Quartz, 1 April 2014
- “Robot doctors, online lawyers and automated architects: the future of the professions?“, The Guardian, 15 June 2014 — “Advances in technology have long been recognised as a threat to manual labour. Now highly skilled, knowledge-based jobs that were once regarded as safe could be at risk. How will they adapt to the digital age?”
- “This Artificial Intelligence Company Could ‘Eradicate The Spreadsheet’ And Do The Work Of A $250,000 Consultant“, Business Insider, 7 July 2014 — More about Quill, discussed in the articles above about automated journalism.
- “When will robots do to football what computers did to chess?“, The Economist, 19 July 2014
- “Last Call: The end of the printed newspaper“, Clay Shirky, Medium, 19 August 2014
(4) For More Information about the 3rd Industrial Revolution
These posts link to a wealth of information and speculation, helping you to prepare for what is to come.
(a) See all posts about the Third Industrial Revolution — now in progress.
(b) Dynamics of the robot revolution
- The coming big increase in structural unemployment, August 2010
- The coming Robotic Nation, 28 August 2010
- The coming of the robots, reshaping our society in ways difficult to foresee, 22 September 2010
- Economists grapple with the first stage of the robot revolution, September 2012
- The coming big inequality. Was Marx just early?, 27 November 2012
(5) The Robot bedmate is coming
New tech is often applied first to satisfy primal urges.
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