Too Many People?

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, we’ve got too many people. Have you seen the robot video?

This robot wasn’t designed to do the work of other robots. He’s our competition.

Ditto Elon Musk’s announcement of a new electric semi-truck. It will be able to drive semi-autonomously in convoys. They’re our competition.

Recently a convolutional neural network (just think computer) was trained on 100,000+ diagnosed and annotated chest x-rays. Now it does a better job spotting diseases than a radiologist. It’s our competition.

I run my own TV studio. I do a half dozen jobs, maybe more. I’m your competition.

We’ve lost elevator and switchboard operators, receptionists, three person flight crews and more. Fewer people are needed for nearly everything we do.

Have we become too efficient? Efficiency is a nice way to say “fewer people.”

Do we benefit as shopping continues to move online and retail jobs disappear?

We are about to have too many people. Maybe we’re already there.

How do we handle that? Will we be a nation of poverty and wealth with no in between. We seem to be on that road.

3 thoughts on “Too Many People?”

  1. I agree Geoff! It all started with the “self check out” lines in the grocery store….thereby taking someone’s job…..we’ve always refused to use them! People need jobs on every level, not to be replaced!

  2. I remember years ago when they introduced computers to the office and said “This will make your job easier”. It made it so easy they started laying of typists stenographer writers and managers had to type their own letters and answer their own phones. No one took phone calls and voice mail was the receptionist. Just trIed calling my doctor today and got caught in a circle of push this number for this and push this one for that. I never got to talk to a person and hung up. Guess i’ll find a doctor that has someone answer the phone.

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