Your future as a worker looks bleak.

[Jon Q.]

Technology's impact will not be an immediate end of jobs, but an increasing stress on wages and work environment.  You will continue to be paid less for doing more.

Owning income-producing assets (real estate, businesses, IP, etc) is key.

Your future as a worker looks bleak!

http://www.theepochtimes.com/n3/2176159-technology...

Agree? Disagree? 

[Bill R.]

Okay, 25+ year veteran of the tech industry.  Was in before the first website existed and have done the bubble and burst.  

If I wanted to take the time, I could probably find you this same scare story written in the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s.  The AI and robots are going to take our jobs theme has been around a long time but in 40 years . . . the impacts has been rather subdued.  

And while AI has many practical applications, the predictions of the mass extinction of need for humans  tends to forget we still have so few actual needs for AI at the moment.  I mean, look at this story citing a single example of the burger bot over and over again to stress how easy it is to kill 3 million jobs.  But the number of people who cook only burgers is not 3 million.  It's not an article written to give one a realistic look at the potential impact of AI and bots, rather it's purpose is to scare you.  

There really are a lot of holes in this story.  Like noting that there was an economic shift in the 1970s but back in the 1970s computing was a negligible blip in terms to contributing to that change.  Yet it then quickly forgets all of the other economic factors which lead to wages being flat vs. productivity and somehow attributes nearly everything to technology after that.  

Not that I'm saying that AI won't change our lives or that many jobs will be automated.  But someone here suggested we're not that far away from computers being able to write sophisticated applications . . . I don't see that.  Right now, AI can barely write very structured copy like stock market reports and sports scores where it's mostly MadLib style plugging in of data.  "The market [rose] today [75 points] on [strength in industrials]."  Writing quality consumer oriented software would be like extrapolating this neat little copywriting trick into writing a novel.  That, I'm fairly confident, won't happen in my lifetime.  

But should computers take the job of somebody who was writing market recap reports like a mindless machine anyway?  I don't see any harm in that for the job market other than we really should be taking a very close look at how we educate people for the future.  Probably 60% of college majors should be done away with or at the very least, no public funds (student loans) should be put towards funding educational paths that will lead to people with skills that have near zero value to society.  

I've hired hundreds of college grads over my career and it's so sad to see someone dump tens of thousands of dollars and four years of their life into a degree that makes them less qualified for an entry level job than someone who at least has held a job at McDonald's for four years.  

In the past just having a piece of paper from a four year university was enough to guarantee middle class membership.  But that's not true anymore.  Train people to move up the value ladder so they can get jobs that aren't easily replaced by AI or robots.  

One of the causes of income inequality (but far from the only cause) is that there's a shortage of labor in the highest paying fields (which is why they're the highest paying fields).  We keep graduating people with degrees, and charging them tens of thousands of dollars, that are over saturating the market with college educated people who aren't prepared for a career path that will lead to middle class incomes.  Those that actually get a degree in a field with high demand end up making magnitudes more income than everyone else.  

I also find it amusing that the theme of this post was that jobs are going away so invest in RE.  Except, evaluating deals is a pretty automatable job.  Even property management can be highly automated.  Why can't you have a self-serve, totally automated system to place ads, screen tenants, collect rents, and file eviction notices?  

If the OP's thesis is correct then the ultra wealthy will simply employ an army of AI bots to scour the market for deals 24/7 and purchase it the same way that bots trade the stock market with little human input.  The market will become highly efficient and spreads will become so thin that you'll be lucky to be making $1 a door.  

Sorry, you can't have it both ways.  If bots are going to automate us all out of jobs your job is just as automatable as everyone else's.