Is the much talked about artificial intelligence revolution going to kill more male jobs more than female ones? They say jobs which use emotionally related skills are safer Like therapists, but not soldiers etc. This could potentially be a further huge blow to male empowerment. Thoughts, comments?

Clockw0rk · 2017-10-23T00:35:36+00:00

Ultimately, all the jobs will go as another poster said.

However, let's break this down a bit.

Arguably several waves of automation have already hit, taking away jobs and raising productivity per worker (though pay stagnates). From looms to typewriters to remote workers, this trend of jobs going away as technology progresses isn't exactly new.

The next foreseeable wave of automation is going to be logistics. Automated warehouses, self-driving semis, air drone delivery systems; a shit ton of predominantly male jobs are going to be replaced. But technology continues to advance on the software side as well, so as mechanical jobs evaporate, clerical jobs also get scripted and replaced by a cloud solution. Many female oriented office work positions will disappear as well, though likely not as many women impacted as men overall.

The next wave after that will likely be the advanced robotics wave. This will replace most of the predominantly male hazard jobs. From soldier robots to advanced fire response units, to underwater welding bots and line workers. Almost all manufacturing and agriculture are going to be taken over in this wave as robot labor becomes even cheaper and more productive than illegal workers. Around this time, our personal digital assistants (Siri, Alexa, Cortana, etc) will be advanced enough that transcriptionists, general receptionists, and call center workers may all be on the chopping block. Again, it looks like traditionally male jobs may be hit the hardest.

I'll pause here to say, quite frankly, if we don't fix our economic system, corporate culture, and government by this time, I'm not sure the following wave will happen and instead we might veer towards a distinctly Elysium style fractured society of space nirvana haves and wageslave have-nots. It's truly imperative that we re-evaluate our social systems and the possibility of UBI so we don't have mass starvation and riots.

The "final" wave is the android/cyborg wave. AI will have developed far enough that it's been proven they are better teachers, doctors, police, and even lawyers. Life-like humanoid robots will take over most human interaction work, devastating the female oriented job markets. All jobs are now effectively able to be automated. The advances in cybernetic technology will allow humans and androids to be competitive in some fields, but robots are generally cheaper and more reliable in all but the creative fields.

Past that is the singularity: a point in which the foreseeable future becomes so radical it's impossible to know what comes after. AIs develop sentience? Androids demand equal rights? Could people have relationships with androids? Will we ever figure out if it's possible to copy a human mind into an android brain and give us virtual immortality? And what does all of that mean for the economy?

It's a lot to think about. But in my opinion, it's going to be ten to twenty years between waves (at least), for better or worse. The logistics wave is just starting, but the advanced robotics wave is still a few years off. 40 to 60 years before we see androids, assuming we don't find a way to destroy ourselves by then.

As for what all this means about men's rights and male empowerment, I think you're going to find that there's more people pushing for long term economic stability once they're unemployed. A lot of guys are going to be laid off and replaced by robots and software solutions, and once they come to grips with the fact they're replaceable, they're going to have to start looking out for themselves (and each other) far more than they had been. It may be a blow to male economic standing, but it could be a boon for building a better community for everyone.

spy9911 · 2017-10-22T21:46:10+00:00

I disagree- men who get technical or trade degrees are in very high demand- all the "soft skill" degree's are pouring coffee. Your feelings won't install a furnace.

ThePigmanAgain · 2017-10-22T22:33:27+00:00

Men will adapt to do the few available jobs. Hell, twenty years ago people working cashiers at Coles were called "checkout chicks." Can't do that any more because almost half of them are men! Like i said, men adapt.

paracog · 2017-10-23T01:49:43+00:00

I'm guessing that when most of the jobs are gone, men will find interesting, stimulating, competitive and rewarding activities for women to complain about. The pro gaming leagues are an early example of this.

Ted8367 · 2017-10-22T22:47:22+00:00

Seems to me that therapists jobs are more likely to be replaced by AI. For a start, they can just sit there and talk. Then they have the possibility of true impartiality, not being human and all.

The__Tren__Train · 2017-10-23T03:11:55+00:00

like therapists

yeah, I doubt too many people will be willing to pay someone $2 a minute to listen to their problems when everyone is tightening their belts, financially speaking.

mikesteane · 2017-10-23T06:23:00+00:00

I'll believe it when I see my paperless office. Idle chatter from the mouths of people who don't have real work to do.

vonthe · 2017-10-23T14:04:51+00:00

We will see this in the next few years as there is a revolution in transportation. Self-driving vehicles are coming, and they are going to eliminate millions of jobs, the vast majority of which are male, largely because they are dangerous (cab driver) or unpleasant (long haul truck driver). Self-driving vehicles will probably all but eliminate private car ownership - why incur the capital expense of a car when you can just call one up from the car service whenever you want one? This has wider implications as well - when the vast majority of vehicles are fleet owned (and electric!), repair shops disappear. Fleet owners will maintain their own repair facilities. Gas stations? Gone. Autobody shops? Again, gone. The car insurance industry? Completely transformed - robot cars are much safer drivers, and if most are fleet owned, there is simply no reason for an ordinary person to carry their own insurance.

It doesn't end there. Robot trucks can move in off hours, relieving stress on traffic infrastructure. They can also stop more or less where they are if there is nothing for them to carry - there's no human driver who has to get back to his home. Many fewer empty miles as a result.

Further, the economies of scale that you get with large fleets will offer big economic benefits. Small operators will be squeezed out pretty quickly, so even more jobs are lost within infrastructure.

No one really knows what is going to happen, but we WILL have a large number of unemployed people, mostly men who were at the low end of the socioeconomic scale. Such men typically have few options. They'll be unemployed, and probably largely unemployable. And thus they will be single.

Young, single, unemployable, male. What does that sound like a recipe for?

DavidByron2 · 2017-10-22T21:53:57+00:00

All the jobs will go.

JimmyLongnWider · 2017-10-22T23:52:59+00:00

Jobs across the spectrum of human effort will be replaced eventually. And it is not like all the soft positions all of sudden are held by women. Come on. Anyway, I welcome jobs being taken by machines and AI as long as regulations are in place to transition humans to jobs that only (for the time being) humans can do.

aussietoads · 2017-10-23T04:23:50+00:00

We already have beings with artificial intelligence : Feminists. I'm not too worried about that particular variety of intelligence supplanting the need for men. Robots on the other hand .....

UNLIKELYME · 2017-10-23T05:07:47+00:00

Most jobs where the expertise is the key skill will be gone.

What will be left are creative jobs (if the AI can't grasp the human experience deeply enough because they haven't lived and don't have the human "subconscious" whose workings have been a mystery so far). That means jobs from planning in general to creating entertainment and programming (or the creative part of it).

Then there are those jobs that have to do with connections between people, like customer service, therapy or nursing - or prostitution. There women have the upper hand, because people like women more and have less suspicions when encountering them.

Men are better at taking risks than women - or computers. That will probably mean that criminals will be mostly men. But there are honorable jobs where risk assessment and the ability to stand the stress are the key skills. Leaders will be mostly men, not women or robots.

perplexedm · 2017-10-23T10:43:53+00:00

I bet AI is going to be a big misogynist.

Dembara · 2017-10-23T11:18:24+00:00

We really have no idea. The immediate affects are going to be primarily male (given that work driving is the largest employment for young males and that will be the first to go with self driving cars, to give just one example). But after that, they are likely to recover and who knows what will happen.

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