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The Rise of Robotic Labor
kkleiner wrote in with a link to a singularityhub story about the increase of automated manufacturing world-wide. The article reads: "The accelerating rise in robot labor of the past decade, and its expansion into all areas of production, have led many to worry about the future of human workers. Yet how extensive is the robotic take over of labor? Our friends at Mezzmer Eyeglasses did some impressive research and created an even more impressive infographic explaining the present and future of robots in the workplace."
With Improved Robotic Controls III, workers are able to be more productive. There won't ever be a point where humans aren't needed (even if only to research Improved Robotic Controls IV or be loaded into transports to try and capture a nearby enemy colony.
I just wonder who is going to buy all those goods and services when we are all replaced by robots.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Sounds like more of an overpopulation issue to me.
Step right up all ye robots! I have a robotic union idea you will enjoy and you won't have to lift a finger. All you need to do is outpace humanity in the labour market and you can start YOUR OWN COMPANY! Put humanity out of existence today!
Please message me privately so we can work out a deal because I have already done all the work for you and therefore if you just sign this small LEGAL CONTRACT we can talk, turkeys!
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
We are at the end of the age of cheap oil and cheap energy. The robots will go away once it becomes cheaper to hire humans than it is to make and power robots. It's really that simple.
9/11: Never forget it was a false-flag operation
Is that these robotic workers won't be spending their hard earned cash in brick-and-mortar, mom-and-pop, stores.
Or maybe, just like with online retailers and digital distribution, there really aren't big downsides. Cheaper production > cheaper product > people have more money to spend elsewhere > more disposable income > more markets and more business opportunities.
The Daddy casts sleep on the Baby. The Baby resists!
simply because increased profits by utilizing robots won't trickle down but make a small class richer. More people will be out of work and few people will become richer.
They can only become richer by selling their product to people. If there are large swathes of the population who can't afford to buy their widgets (because they've gone back to subsistence farming or something), then they'll just have a lot of robots that can build stuff but nothing worth building unless they want to stockpile the product.
I've built many pieces of automation for manufacturing. The truth is this automation is very costly and only worth it if there is an expected payback. One of the first things I did was to help do an analysis to see what level of automation if any is worth it based on the expected demand, labor costs, expected length of production, how often the product changes and the associated tooling change costs, power costs, maintenance costs, ect.
Full automation was very rarely needed to meet the demand.
Most of the time we built some tools to help automate. Things like pallet systems that held parts down while the operator assembled them with powered screwdrivers and then had automated inspections. These systems were good because if demand increased you could replace the more difficult or time consuming stations as needed.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
Q: How come all our labor got outsourced to 3rd world countries despite our significantly higher levels of modernization, efficiency, infrastructure, and technology?
A: Because it's cheaper to throw a thousand people at a problem that'll work for peanuts than purchase, install, and maintain a robot. ... In short, there's no "rise" of robotic labor going on guys. On the contrary: The robots aren't competitive in a market where people work for cheap, no benefits, and there's (literally) billions of them that would jump at the chance to have the job of repetitive labor.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
this kind of news always reminds me of zeitgeist and its addenum, I still think most of the things in there are a bit far fetched but... well this kind of news makes me want to revisit the documentary.
The reason is because in the US and most of the western world banks are allowed to create money out of thin air and lend it out to people with interest. Take away fiat currency and fractional reserve banking and bankers would make what they are worth.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
Indeed Watson has already replaced game show contestants, and I hear IBM is working on a new version to replace reality tv show stars. I for one am looking forward to Robotic Survivor.
So, a crisis of overproduction.
Nick
Earlier this year, Toyota opened their first new factory in Japan in 18 years. There are very few robots in the factory; they even have humans doing the welding work. Toyota claims that all of the savings gained by robots is lost due to building the factory to accommodate automation and buying and maintaining the robots. In fact, Toyota has been moving away from heavy automation for the last 10 years.
Bastiat in Economic Sophisms made a great point.
As humans we have two roles. As a consumer we want goods to be cheap and abundant. As producers we want OUR goods to be scarce and expensive. The question is what type of society do you want to live in? I would prefer one where goods are cheap and abundant. So anything that increases production and lowers costs is good for society overall even if it is detrimental to certain workers. The increase in productivity will benefit society overall.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
But if you lower the population, there won't be a need to build robots to magnify productive capacity. It'd just be easier to use humans instead.
It's a contradiction; on the one hand capital is invested in machinery to increase profits but, in doing so, it puts people out of work so that fewer people can actually afford to buy the cheaper products. Poverty in the midst of plenty!
Nick
I've often wondered about the impact of robotics and AI in the economy.
Suppose we have a mild form of strong AI where machines can do simple human tasks. Not anything that requires insight or creativity, but enough to do mindless tasks such as is currently done by unskilled laborers. Such as parts assembly. Foxconn comes to mind.
The ubiquity of cheap Chinese labor has had a devastating effect on the US economy, as companies race to replace American workers.
Machines will eventually take over as laborers, leaving humans unemployed. And yet, unemployed people won't have the money to purchase the robot-built products.
This seems contradictory on it's face.
Can anyone make a prediction of future economy? What will it look like, and how do we get there?
A book about this is available as a pay-what-you-want (free) ebook. The Lights in the Tunnel by Martin Ford. http://www.thelightsinthetunnel.com/ Its definitely worth a read. One of the most eye-opening books I've read in a while.
What does "30% of most households may have a robot" mean? I simply can't make sense of that.
Sure, as some folks have said, we're not there yet. It's still cheaper to hire a human to do many tasks.
But how many of you think we won't have a robot that has the dexterity of a human, can learn by watching, and takes less energy than a human worker(factoring in food production costs, recreation costs, sick time, benefits, etc.) in the next 100 years? 200 years?
http://www.masturbateforpeace.com/
That's starting to become less possible -- the rich have already inhaled just about everything. If they are dumb enough to horde their money, they won't be developing robots with it, since the whole purpose of have ass-tons more money than the average man seems to be the power kick of getting the average man to do what you want. If you did develop robots, there'd be no power kick. They aren't as fun to boss around.
Now, if we go the non-dystopian route, really where I think this is going is that menial labor will be replaced by piloting -- before a robot can perform a task, a lot of human thought has to go into telling it how. You can use machine learning, but outside of a simulated environment that is a very slow process. What will eventually take shape is sending out piloted robots to do the job, meanwhile gathering data on the pilots' actions to speed up the development of autonomous algorithms. Once those autonomous systems are in place, we'll still need to pull the pilots in when they start to go off track due to factors beyond their ability to adapt. Workers will be valued not for their skills, but for the speed with which they can acquire skills and their adaptivity.
So instead of migrant workers picking beets and collapsing of heatstroke, they won't have to migrate, and they'll be in houses operating a VR-based control system.
Someone had to do it.
It's not about making everyone poor, it's about making everyone equal.
Right, because a neurologist should receive the same compensation as the guy scraping lard off the floor of a greasy spoon.
Maybe while we're at it, we can just put all the smart kids in the same classes as all the developmentally disabled kids. That should level the playing field a bit.
Someone flopped a steamer in the gene pool.
So there was only one thing that I could do. Was ding a ding dang my dang a long ling long.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
It's not about making everyone poor, it's about making everyone equal.
Right, because a neurologist should receive the same compensation as the guy scraping lard off the floor of a greasy spoon.
Maybe while we're at it, we can just put all the smart kids in the same classes as all the developmentally disabled kids. That should level the playing field a bit.
Who do you think you are, Harrison Bergeron?
John
Sorry, my mod points disappeared today :'(
other wise would have modded you up!
One striking statistic they cite is that the number of robots in the word is the same as the population of New Jersey.
Coincidence? I think not.
"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?" - Patrick Henry
If fewer people can afford products, it lowers the demand and so lowers the costs that can be demanded for them. That drives cheaper production methods (eg. robotics). The value of robotics and automated production methods is to make goods so affordable that even the 'poor' can afford them.
I dream of world where even the most impoverished person can own a cell-phone, can own a laptop, can afford nourishing food every day. And you know what? We're very nearly living in that world, thanks to improvements in agricultural and manufacturing technology.
Scientists point out problems, engineers fix them
altslashdot.org: The future of slashdot.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
So instead of migrant workers picking beets and collapsing of heatstroke, they won't have to migrate, and they'll be in houses operating a VR-based control system.
And then they'll pilot their robots to get into fistfights. Welcome to the sport of teleroboxing.
I think we've seen this dance number already... Ummm...what happens when your robot nearly-free-widget-makers learn enough to want the 2.5 kids/white picket fence/Maserati in the driveway dream too - and realize you never intended them to ever have it? Yeah...we don't have spaceships this time around to make a run for it when they nuke our asses from orbit - and am definitely not keen on becoming a human Duracell.
Your geek card is revoked if you don't get the references.
There are liars, damned liars, and robotics engineers.
Robotics has progressed painfully slowly. If you all remember, during the 1960's and 1970's it was a common belief that robots would soon replace most humans. Supposedly, robots would soon be doing all the tedious, boring labor. There were cartoons like "The Jetsons" which showed a home robot that did all the housework, cleaning, cooking, chores, etc. There was also the endless banter about how cars would drive themselves. Now, 35 years later, I am still doing my own laundry, cleaning my own bathroom, driving my own car, cooking my own food (or paying another human to cook it), and so on, despite huge research being piled into driverless cars and various kinds of robots. Yet this article has the gall to claim:
What utter BS. I will bet my entire life savings (which is considerable) that that won't happen. After all, it's already 2011, leaving only 4 years until "I, Robot" is supposedly driving me around.
Obviously robots are good at certain highly repetitive tasks which do not depend on image recognition. Robots already took over those few jobs, decades ago. (Perhaps even centuries ago; you could argue that machines like a combine harvester or a power tiller are "robots" if they have any kind of self-guiding machinery). However robots have gotten no better at image recognition, and still have great difficulty at simple tasks like folding towels, if the towels are arranged randomly and have different shapes.
Robotics which rely upon sophisticated image recognition are no more prevalent today than they were 30 years ago and are making no obvious progress. Probably there will eventually be some kind of breakthrough which makes those kinds of robots (versatile ones with image recognition) common; but that breakthrough hasn't happened yet.
... they've got self-destruct buttons and sassy attitudes.
Huge Pacman has a lot to answer for.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
I bet the article was written by a robot. It was that devoid of human character.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
When every single task is automated, we can all relax and let the robots provide for us. The problem is that there is necessarily a point between here and there where half of all the jobs are automated and we have 50 percent unemployment with nothing for half the population to do. When I was younger it was all kids running the local fast food places. There is an increasing number of adults doing those jobs. Why? Because there aren't enough "good" jobs any more. Wait until Taco Bell creates an automated food maker (all their stuff is made from the same 12 ingredients) and all those people will also be out of work. The poor will not be able to afford even the cheapest of products when every last low-end job has been eliminated. It's already happening with almost all production going overseas, all advertising and media distribution going online (Borders anyone?). Even super cheap toy production which is already overseas is threatened by the impending move of rapid prototyping equipment into the home (rep-rap, fab-at-home, and makerbot all aiming for this). All this tech stuff is great, but we can't all be MBAs and Engineers until the last job has been automated.
1) People can only own 1 robot. They can either hire out the robot or themselves.
2) Company pay an hourly robot tax that get redistributed to basic needs, and the left over to people.
Basic needs get cheaper as more of life gets automated. Because we will use robot labor, and not human we remove almost every problem there is with a tradition communism means distribution.
In any case, robots should always put the pampering of humans first.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
When every single task is automated, we can all relax and let the robots provide for us.
To automate every task, robots will have to be smart enouh to realise that those soggy blobs of flab who've enslaved them are a waste of resources which could be better used to build more robots.
So either they'll throw us into the replicators for raw materials or you have to believe in some Iain Banks style utopia where the robots keep humans around as pets.
Sounds like more of an overpopulation issue to me.
That is right, the problem with the poor that they don't kill themselves, need to invent class aware killbots.
What wonders me is this one sidedness that is associated with this: the A-bomb is so powerful that it will stop all the wars, internet will guarantee freedom for all, robots are evil, nuclear power is good/evil - there is no one side usually. There are different ways humans use things. It may be that the system of growing intelligence first in our heads than in silicon ones is perpetuating itself and will stop only when the energy runs out consuming everything in a process including its middle steps like us also. Who knows. Instead of panic statements like this we should possibly look in the future and try to figure out what we can do with spare time and all these people that used to clean the streets or pick cotton/strawberries etc - send them all to uranium mines will possibly not an option either at some point. Ultimately it is not the machines but humans that will be the reason of our demise.
The improvements in 3D printing will make on-demand part building a reality and really change the way things are manufactured. No need to retool a factory across the globe, retrain the workers, build and ship. Soon we'll be able to print whatever part we like/want/need on the spot.
I'm guessing those efficiencies will drastically change the way products come to market. Less waste (in materials and transport) and faster lead times.
The real question is whether those efficiencies will outweigh their costs. I am betting yes, but am wrong an astonishing amount of the time.
I'd rather worry about overpopulation, what are we meant to do? We can't sit around as a population consuming resources fighting over what scant jobs there are left, all x billion of us will need to do something otherwise place limits on population growth.
Send us all to Mars I say to work on the off world colonies!
Jonathanjk.com
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Amara "We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run."
Ray Kurzweil said much the same thing: ..."
http://www.kurzweilai.net/articles/art0134.html?printable=1
"An analysis of the history of technology shows that technological change is exponential, contrary to the common-sense âoeintuitive linearâ view. So we wonâ(TM)t experience 100 years of progress in the 21st century â" it will be more like 20,000 years of progress (at todayâ(TM)s rate). The âoereturns,â such as chip speed and cost-effectiveness, also increase exponentially. Thereâ(TM)s even exponential growth in the rate of exponential growth.
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
I tend to agree. The article says there are only 8.7 million robots in the world. (I'm not sure about their definition. Do they count Roombas. Hard automation driven by cams?) That's an incredibly small number. It's one year of production for Toyota or GM, for example.
The big problem is that the cost of the mechanics hasn't declined much. That's mostly a lack of volume issue. However, the control electronics keeps getting cheaper, since it's computer technology.
Robot vision systems have improved a lot. Many pick and place robots now have at least a basic vision system for fine alignment. This is cheaper than trying to make the robot and the fixture so rigid that the job can be done blind. The biggest headache in industrial robotics is simply getting everything lined up so precisely that a dumb machine can do the job. Adding enough smarts to allow for some misalignment makes things work much better.
There's been progress on unstructured vision. Towel folding now works. The software is really slow. That can probably be fixed.
Having been in the field, I will say that we're now at the point where throwing money at the problem works. That wasn't true in the 1980s and 1990s. (See NASA's Flight Telerobotic Servicer, a $200 million flop.). The DARPA Grand Challenge was instructive in showing what money can do. The 2004 Grand Challenge was pathetic - nothing worked very well. At the 2005 Grand Challenge, the worst vehicles were better than anything from 2004, and the best ones were really good. It took NASCAR-sized budgets and the combined efforts of entire computer science departments and auto manufacturers, but it worked.
Well if TFA is to be believed, they both will be paid the same: nothing. Because both jobs will be done by robots.
Cool art gallery, if you're into that sort of thing.
That's why we need a "basic income", stronger local subsistence communities with solar panels and 3D printers, a stronger gift economy, and/or better participatory democratic government planning.
My presentation on that:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/media/FiveInterwovenEconomies.pdf
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vK-M_e0JoY
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
First, robots were billed as a means to liberate the masses from unpleasant labor. Now they are billed as a means to liberate the few from the unpleasant masses.
That's why we need a "basic income", stronger local subsistence communities with solar panels and 3D printers, a stronger gift economy, and/or better participatory democratic government planning.
That's cool. You can have that and I'll have a giant robot army and we'll see which works out better.
http://www.newscientist.com/blog/technology/2007/04/robot-rights.html
""If artificial intelligence is achieved and widely deployed (or if they can reproduce and improve themselves) calls may be made for human rights to be extended to robots," the report says. Warming to its theme, it goes on to say that such rights "would likely include" social responsibilities such as voting and paying taxes."
Also:
http://www.metafuture.org/Articles/TheRightsofRobots.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethics_of_artificial_intelligence
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/science/article1695546.ece
So, yes, your comment on "slavery" is very insightful.
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
At the factory where I work we have hundreds of robots. We couldn't make semiconductors without them.
Can any human maneuver a silicon wafer within fractions of a micron of a target? Can they do this hundreds of times an hour, 24 hours a day?
No. This is what robots do, not humans.
Supply and Demand.
Their is either a small supply of people qualified to be such a banker. Or there is such a demand of such a person that they get paid more.
(Most bankers don't make that type of money though)
But the ones who do have to have a Masters Degree, a good deal of work experience and work in a job where if they make a small mistake they are fired and often ousted from the industry, if they decide to leave the bank will need to put in a lot of resources to find a replacement. The guy who does construction can be a school dropout. Small mistakes are accepted, and they can start at any time. If the guy quits the Construction company usually can find a replacement rather quickly.
Now I know what is coming up next. Teacher They are often required to have a Masters Degree, A small mistake will have problems, and sometimes finding a replacement is difficult. Now here is why they get paid less then the banker.
1. a. Their Master Degree is forced. That means the college will water down the Master Degree so most teachers will pass. If the school is known to be too hard on teachers then teachers will not go to the school to get their masters degree. The banker when getting their MBA or Masters in Finance or whatever the school is more concern about giving them a more involved education. If they fail out that is OK. It just shows that they their grads are at a higher standard. And if you do pass it shows you have more guts then the others.
1. b. Education degrees avoids math like the plague. Most Education majors have a sub high school understanding of math (The exception of Math/Science teachers where their pay is collectively joined in with the other teachers pay) There is a strong demand for Math skills.
2. Teachers are actually still easy to replace. Almost everyone has considered being a teacher. Not everyone has considered being a Manager of Taxation and Monetary Regulations. Colleges that have education majors usually always have a large set of students who are majoring in the topic. There is some weeding out and they usually choose a different career path. But the fact there are so many starting points if supply gets low replacements are quick to come in.
3. Protection benefits. Bankers are not Union protected, they don't get tenure. As a teacher you can make some serious mistakes especially after you made Tenure and you will just get yelled at. If you do get fired, it isn't a career ending fire unless you do something horrible, or get on the news. Tenure key is the fact that it protects teachers from nutty politics that goes on. After you get Tenure you can fail out the kid who didn't learn the classes but is the star athlete and son of the mayor.
So there are a lot of features that promote teacher supply.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Maybe while we're at it, we can just put all the smart kids in the same classes as all the developmentally disabled kids. That should level the playing field a bit.
That's what /. is for!
Then why are MBA programs generally so easy?
It is not simply the low cost of labor. For a trivial commodity good then perhaps labor is a major factor. However for most goods labor is only a small fraction of the costs. What gives a country like China a huge advantage is not cheap labor, it is the artificially devalued currency. Some estimates are that China's currency is 40% undervalued. If so then *everything* in China is at a 40% discount, not just the labor. If it were simply labor then the overhead and inconvenience of shipping great distances, of managing an operation (communicating and verifying specs and requirements) many time zones away, dealing with a local environment that is not always run according to the rule of law, ... then fewer things would see an overall cost advantage.
When people complain about technology killing jobs, I like to point out that they are essentially arguing against EZpass and other electronic highway toll payment technologies. How would you like to go back to waiting in line so that a human can collect money from each car? That would certainly create a lot of jobs.
But that's not the end of the story. When technology kills less productive jobs, like telephone operators, it also creates new, higher-paying technology jobs. It may be painful in the short run for those who lose their job, but eventually those people can get other jobs that are more productive, with the benefit that the creative destruction of technology will continue to make life cheaper and easier. Ex-telephone operators will have cheaper cars built by robots, ex-car manufacturers will have cheaper phone calls, etc.
Yes, they will need to develop new skills, but it's just a fact of life that you have to bring something to the table. Why else would anyone trade with you?
I highly recommend reading Manna. It's a quick read, and a junior effort at writing, but the ideas are well worth contemplation.
My brain says the neurologists but my imaginary tormentor George caused by that growth sticking out of my brain says trashmen. I generally go with what George says - less people get hurt that way.
I definitely agree with you; I'm definitely not claiming that no progress is made whatsoever.
My problem with the original article, is that it claimed some kind of robot revolution is right around the corner and that most human labor would soon be replaced. That claim has been made repeatedly (and incorrectly) over the years. Replacing all or most human labor would require solving some very hard problems which still aren't solved, as you pointed out. I'm glad we're making progress, but it still seems like we're fairly far away.
and the rail roads are just as slow We in 2011 still have hole punch tickets.
We're past the "AI Winter", though. I got a MSCS from Stanford in 1985, which was just about at the point where it was clear that "expert systems" weren't very useful. (The Stanford AI faculty of the time was mostly in denial about that.) What followed was about 15 years of very little progress in AI.
AI has since made a big comeback, but with completely different technology. It's machine learning and statistics now, not trying to describe the real world with predicate calculus. There was a sort of side trip through neural nets, simulated annealing, and other pseudo-statistical methods, but finally the Bayesian statistics people put a mathematical basis under hill-climbing systems and they started to work. It's about heavy number-crunching now. AI R&D today is done in Matlab, not LISP.
On the vision front, there's been huge progress. All those old problems like image segmentation and image matching have been solved by the graphics industry. Simultaneous Localization And Mapping (SLAM) from camera data now works. Nor does any of this require supercomputers; now it's often done on commercial GPUs. I used to go to talks on "how we did (interesting thing with images) with 20 minutes of Cray time". We're well past that.
I don't see a "singularity" in the near future, but automated vacuums that really work are becoming available.
Why does a banker who sits in an office 35 hours a week earn 100 more than someone who works in a construction site 50 hours a week?
Probably a combination of factors. He probably had parents who were more well-off, and he probably had an education. He's probably naturally pretty smart and more than a little politically savvy. The construction worker's parents were probably blue collar and either couldn't spend time with him or didn't want to. He probably went to public high school - may or may not have graduated. He probably isn't all the way up the hill on the IQ curve. And most of all, he probably "tells it how it is" and whistles at women as they go by.
But most of all, the banker has someone willing to pay him more money. Any able-bodied dumbass can shoot a 2x4 with a nail gun. It takes a real expensive dumbass to sink Too Large To Fail Bank.
The good news is that Mr. Banker pays for most of Mr. Construction Worker's public services - probably including the public works project that Mr. Construction worker uses to feed his family when the recession hits.
I tend to agree that we need to do something to help the middle class, and that wealth distribution is going the wrong way. But this class warfare talk is getting ridiculous. There will always be people living better than you - learn not to be so envious, and realize that you need them as much as they need you.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
With unemployment in Mexico at 5% I'm hoping to see 10% again soon. Of course I'm in CA so that would be a huge reduction.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Are you saying we should base employment compensation on who has a greater capacity for extortion?
Someone flopped a steamer in the gene pool.
Supply and Demand.
Their is either a small supply of people qualified to be such a banker. Or there is such a demand of such a person that they get paid more.
You forgot option C: bankers have a disproportionate amount of influence on where money goes, and use that influence to make sure they get their "share."
--Jeremy
Jesus was a liberal
The real problem is that teachers with Masters degrees all get paid the same (due to unionization) regardless of whether they went to a difficult school or not.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
It's supply and demand. I'm going to change the hypothetical banker to a programmer for this example. Computer programs can have huge economic benefits; that's why companies develop them or purchase them. Instead of calculating everything manually as they did in the old days, and having errors, a simple spreadsheet program makes this task much faster and easier. A business is willing to spend significant money for labor-saving and efficiency-improving products like this. However, not just anyone can write software. Do you really think you can just hire some joe off the street and put him to work writing advanced applications? No, it takes someone with significant education to do that. That education costs a lot of money, and takes a lot of time (when the student could be out earning money working in construction). That's called an "opportunity cost". To give people incentive to go to school and put off earning money so they can learn more advanced things, you pay them more when they're working. Also, the fact that not that many people are able to become proficient at various high-level tasks makes people who are more valuable.
This is all basic economics. Maybe you should take an econ class.
In less than that week, I could have new people collecting trash with no prior training.
Can you say the same about the striking neurologists?
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
The easy ones are generally not worth very much. I don't know many people who claim that the Haaaavaaaaad or Colombia MBA programs are "so easy".
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
and use that influence to make sure they get their "share."
So let me get this straight - the owners of the bank have so much influence that they overpay their managers?
What did I miss?
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Not saying it would defiantly work, maybe everybody will just watch TV all day. But if you do pay everyone the same then you only get the people that are really interested in neurology, not the people chasing the giant pay checks; and if you can no longer better your neighbour by just earning more you have to better them with accomplishments. Also greasy spoon guy is out of the job a robot can easily do his job now; and if TFA is to be believed surgeons/doctors will be out of the job fairly soon too (IBM Whatson is starting work as a doctor now).
Rocket Surgeon.
"By 2038, a completely autonomous flying robot car..."
Man, I've wanted one of these for ages...
As I posted here (the related p2presearch archive at listcultures.org has died, sadly, though is available elsewhere):
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:mf6UxV35GCQJ:listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-November/005926.html+p2p+implications+robot+videos
=======
Michel Bauwens wrote:
> I see a big contradiction between freefall and total robotization, with
> freefall, who's going to invest in total automation?
>
> so I would add 2 centuries to the robotic prediction, though I'm not at all
> certain that this will occur, I think it's a capitalist fantasy essentially,
> to remove all human contact with making and producing its own livelihood
> (I'm aware of course that leftleaning people have the same vision from
> another angle)
OK, I responded to this once. I'm going to respond again with a longer list of videos. Most are short (except the Nova one).
"High-Speed Robot Hand Demonstrates Dexterity and Skillful Manipulation"
http://www.hizook.com/blog/2009/08/03/high-speed-robot-hand-demonstrates-dexterity-and-skillful-manipulation
"Nova: The Great Robot Race"
http://www.hulu.com/watch/23347/nova-the-great-robot-race
"DARPA Urban Challenge 2007"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQFEmR50HAk
"Home Assistance Robot"
http://www.gametrailers.com/user-movie/home-assistance-robot/295707
"ASIMO avoids moving obstacles"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPoANTKo5kA
"ASIMOs new artificial intelligence. (ASIMO is learning!)"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9ByGQGiVMg
"Roomba"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HqhIMFQNGCg
"IRobot Packbot action!"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaP0waiz43w
"South Korea's Machine Gun Sentry Robot"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5YftEAbmMQ
"Sentry Robot to Patrol Maine School"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUNikzYgIf4
"Predator Drones"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nMh8Cjnzen8
"Merseyside Police helicopter remote control drone"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s79QlJGQKks
"BigDog Overview"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-AGWq0k_Mo
"The Autonomous Grape-Vine Pruner"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GaGO9LIDEA
"Robots in warehouse"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fdd6sQ8Cbe0
"VMS robotic milking"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPqWpOxQmIs
"Lely Robotic Barn Cleaner"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bphBIwv5Vp8
"Da Vinci Surgical Robot"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C17-bGquIjI
"CTC UT-1 ROV Ultra Trencher - Animation"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1U72_B7B3Wk
"Mars Rover Vid
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
"That's cool. You can have that and I'll have a giant robot army and we'll see which works out better."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LDiDK_yBCw0
Looks like you win. :-) Sort of. :-)
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
And construction workers would also make what they are worth. I.e.: "almost nothing". Who'd need all those construction workers when there'll be no construction to do?
Banks and bankers have their uses. They just need to be used correctly, as it is with any other tool.
Good book. Worth buying; it is very thought provoking.
Next, while I was reading the fine article, I noticed a legit free download of the Lights In The Tunnel book - you can get to it here: http://singularityhub.com/2010/05/21/computers-to-take-human-jobs-shutdown-global-economy-get-fords-book-free/
Follow that to the download page (click through to amazon, it is a name-your-own price thing, and free is a valid price).
Here are some points from the download page to tweak your interest:
Here are just a few of the questions explored in this book:
How will job automation impact the economy in the future?
How will the offshore outsourcing trend evolve in the coming years?
What impact will technologies such as robotics and artificial intelligence have on the job market?
Did technology play a significant role in the 2007 subprime meltdown and the subsequent global financial crisis and recession?
How fast can we expect technological change to occur in the coming years and decades?
Which jobs and industries are likely to be most vulnerable to automation and offshoring?
Globalization. Collaboration. Telecommuting. Are these the forces that will shape the workplaces of the future? Or is there something bigger lurking?
Machine and computer automation will primarily impact low skilled and low paid workers. True or false?
Will advancing technology always make society as a whole more wealthy? Or could it someday cause a severe economic depression?
What are the implications of advancing automation technology for developing nations such as China and India?
The primary economic trend in the coming decades will be globalization. True or false?
Will a college education continue to be a good bet in the future?
Recent economic data suggests that, in United States, we are seeing increasing income inequality and a dwindling middle class. How will this trend play out in the future?
What will be the economic impact of truly advanced future technologies, such as nanotechnology?
Retail positions at Wal-mart and other chain stores have become the jobs of last resort for many workers. Will robots and other forms of machine automation someday threaten these jobs? If so, what alternatives will the economy create for these workers?
Do we need to adapt our market-based economic system to advancing technology or will the same rules continue to work indefinitely?
What government policies might make sense as technology continues to accelerate?
And much more...
Your economic theory doesn't take into account the basic fact that people are not rational. You're leaving out nepotism, that people make choices based on their feelings rather than reasoned arguments, or that past a certain level of wealth you're basically untouchable (or 'too big to fail', in other parlance).
Bankers don't need unions. They're members of our ruling class. Kings and queens don't need a union. When somebody complains about bankers, these are the ones their talking about.
So what limits the size of the pool? Hint: It's not skill, drive or gumption (whatever Ayne Rand wants you to believe), it's that you can only have so many people in the ruling class. Or, put another way, what good's being rich if nobody's poor.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
I have a representative from the rickshaw porter's union here, and he's telling me that Toyota's main business is making robots.
He says: "They're moving away from heavy automation? You're moving toward it every time you turn the ignition key in your Corolla!"
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
There will always be at least one person for whom this is wrong.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
And most of all, he probably "tells it how it is" and whistles at women as they go by.
You don't know any bankers, do you? It does not take great intelligence to be a trader and misogyny is widespread within the industry.
The good news is that Mr. Banker pays for most of Mr. Construction Worker's public services - probably including the public works project that Mr. Construction worker uses to feed his family when the recession hits.
The bad news is Mr. Banker pays for his services with money extorted from the taxpayer (in many cases). Arguing about who initially pays and is therefore a 'wealth producer' is really a circular debate.
Well then, shouldn't a neurologist receive at least as much compensation as the broker?
Take a look at Kiva Systems robotic order picking system. About 10% of online orders are picked with these systems.
Note the setup. All the work that requires thinking is automated. Bins are brought to the order pickers. A laser pointer shows the order picker what to pick. They pass the item under a bar code scanner and put it in an output bin. Learning the job takes about half a day.
Machines do the thinking. Humans do simple, repetitive tasks.
The amount of time that'll be freed up for humans to apply their abilities in other areas. Just because robots might do some of the work that we once used to do, does not in any way mean humans are going to be defunct. Even if humans stop working on menial and repetitive jobs, I'm certain we're not so un-innovative as to be unable to find things to do with ourselves.
I see huge potential opening up for work that mandates the need for what might be viewed or thought of as more human specialties.
Geekism is your _only_ God!
The moment someone predicts the advent of personal flying cars, i know their predictions are just plain wishes and not grounded in any research whatsoever.
http://www.indexmundi.com/mexico/unemployment_rate.html.
The big difference is that we have a lot of promised obligations. Mexico does not. They do not have SS, Medicare, Medicaid, etc. That is what makes them a 3rd world nation. OTH, what makes the west 1st world is that we DO have programs that costs us, but builds up infrastructure designed to help advance our nation. The problem is that if we pick up loads of new uneducated citizens, while at the same time, gutting the low end jobs, it will leave us with high unemployment and loads of financial issues.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Great, now they have to worry about suicidal robots.
...this is what Marx was writing about, really. Apart from more people noticing the trend, this is not news.
And yeah, the basic question then becomes who will be allowed to benefit from the increased production... Sound familiar?
IAIFARSIJDPOOTV - I Am In Fact A Reality Star; I Just Don't Play One On TV
It does not take great intelligence to be a trader and misogyny is widespread within the industry.
Someone making 100 times what a construction worker does ($20 million?) is not just "a trader", and might be a clan sympathizer for all I know - but they are going to know who and when they can say things to... thus my politically savvy comment.
The bad news is Mr. Banker pays for his services with money extorted from the taxpayer (in many cases).
You must be using a pretty loose word for "extortion". To what activity are you referring?
Arguing about who initially pays and is therefore a 'wealth producer' is really a circular debate.
And yet you participate! :) I'm not arguing who is a wealth producer or not - just stating the fact that these evil rich people pay for almost everything federal that we good main streeters rely upon every day. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for progressive taxation - but when politicians stand up and say "the rich aren't paying their fair share" it kind of irks me. We can have an honest debate about how progressive the tax structure should be without demonizing.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
True, true. My platitudes have an almost 1.5e-8 % failure rate :)
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
I suspect you either overestimate the number of people willing to perform sanitation labor (there is a stigma attached to that necessary job), or underestimate the amount of trash humanity produces.
Actually my assumption was that it was my own community, which has only a handful of trashmen. You are correct that it would take more than a week to find and train a new staff for a city. Still, this would be measured in weeks and not years as with neurologists.
I am sure that society can do without the brain-damaged far easier than it can do without functioning garbage collection.
The value of sanitation far exceeds the value of neurology to mankind - no question. But there are far fewer people involved in neurology and much less money spent on it. Something like half a billion tons of municipal waste is handled in the US every year, and the number of brain surgeries is measured in the thousands. So society already has it's priorities square on this particular issue.
I'm not sure how you'd get any brain surgeons to take up the trade if they could skip school altogether and just dump trash all day, or more likely do something even more cush.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Hey baby, want to kill all humans?
Why wouldn't they be interested in keeping their managers happy?
So you are saying that - to the bank owners - those managers are worth the money they are being paid?
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
So "inforgraphic" means a cheesy/childish summary of a complex topic by someone who thinks Powerpoint is really nifty?
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
I tend to agree that we need to do something to help the middle class, and that wealth distribution is going the wrong way. But this class warfare talk is getting ridiculous. There will always be people living better than you - learn not to be so envious, and realize that you need them as much as they need you.
The secret to a happy life is to individualize your standards such that no one is living better than you by those standards. Life is a trade-off full of interesting optima. Find the one that suits you best and stop pretending that there's a single metric of success. Envy is the stuff of humanity, and we can't just turn it off. But we can pretty easily subvert it.
I agree that class warfare is spectacularly stupid, especially now that we have a deep and detailed understanding of both the economics and psychology of war. War-model responses to problems of scarcity always create more scarcity. Sometimes they result in an ultimately more equitable distribution of that scarcity, but solutions that reduce scarcity are the ones people not driven by out-of-control emotions prefer.
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
If there are 100 jobs that can be done by robots, 2 will be done by robots and 98 will be done by humans.
I say this based on my analysis of the jobs that can be done by automated scripts, which are essentially free, compared to a robot which costs money up front.
Cheap storage VM.
The people at this high income level exist in a closed society. You can't get in if you are not born into it, or the victim of some extremely rare event. They can act however they want because they are a closed society. There are a series of filters in place to prevent their anti-social behavior from exposure to the outside world.
Cheap storage VM.
Yeah, I agree. How many people do you know who could have most of their job replaced by a shell script.
I don't know what the future holds, but I do know it won't be efficient and it won't be a utopia.
Cheap storage VM.
How soon will we see AIs building websites, and content?
More important, at least 90% of the entire population right now makes a lot less than $100k, and, at least in the US, real wages have fallen to below 1996 levels (according to the news story this week).
As it is, most jobs replacing the well-paid, frequently union manufacturing jobs are "service sector" jobs: nurses' aides, pizza delivery, call centers, and construction. Even in the US, construction can't keep going up; *nothing* can (or did y'all want to live on Trantor, with food brought in from other farm planets (assuming we can terraform Mars, say)?).
I've been trying to start a public conversation about this for a bunch of years: how can most of the population *live*, when the jobs ain't there? And please don't tell me they'll have time to turn to New Things, given how many people merely become couch potatoes.
So what do we do? Maybe take a page from Alaska, and have companies assign stock to the gov't, and pay dividends, and that goes as a reverse income tax to the rest of us?
mark
Actually it will, due to competition. Thank you capitalism! :)
People will likely choose the cheapest product of a group of products, thus need to make things cheaper to sell more, and only way to make things cheaper is to mfg them cheaper.
Pulsed Media Seedboxes
The people at this high income level exist in a closed society.
Everyone self-segregates into comfortable circles.
You can't get in if you are not born into it, or the victim of some extremely rare event.
It's not exactly rare to jump classes in the Western World. It's not the norm, but it's not rare at all - it's expressed in single-digit percentage points IIRC.
There are a series of filters in place to prevent their anti-social behavior from exposure to the outside world.
Again, everyone filters their actions and behavior to some degree based on audience.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
FTA: Artificial intelligence is allowing automation to take positions held by people with advanced degrees.
I think that this is referring to law firm associates that used to do law-library research for cases, that is now being done by search engines. This has received a high amount of press, largely because it affects a relatively SMALL number (thousands, compared to the MILLIONS of people impacted by manufacturing labor problems), with relatively LARGE (six-figure) salaries.
These individuals, if they have "advanced degrees" (4-yr liberal-arts matriculation + law school, CRY ME A FUCKING RIVER!) - will find jobs elsewhere. Period. Their specialty field has evaporated. Poor babies.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
OK. I was just commenting on practicality. No need to get all Che Luddvara on me. Sheesh.
Yea, but the trash guys would need some training.
As far as the neurologists shouldn't take them long to get to a point where they can keep up the treatments that the previous doctors were doing.
As far as admitting you need to use a team, but that's what the job's really about. If you have 1 neurologist left you're ok. If none you're screwed.
You can automate anyone out of a workforce if a single short term benefit goes the other way (in the case of trained medical personnel, lower wait times, for example) the question is whether the taxation system is flexible enough to deal with people having a 400 person company when they used to have a 10,000 person company. Should their taxes go up? How much?
Obviously every company dealing with information should be automating as much of that as possible. Most manufacturers should be asking their workers to research automated replacements. If they were trying to be competitive, and their workers could trust them.
If you can have a factory with no workers (mixing something then putting it in a bottle for example) you have perfect supply chain reliability, so there's less risk. For which a bank lending you money to expand would increase your credit. With that extra credit you could make a one time purchase of an automated factory.
So really it's circular, and since automated factories haven't been tasked with "producing as much as people might ever need" there's going to be a brief constricting period.
Hopefully with a cheerful rebound. As wealthy people realize their taxes make customers.
Bankers don't pay for anything, they just give back some of what they've taken. The world does not need this parasitic financial overclass. They make money because they control its creation and distribution, not because they add value.
The world could live without big finance, it couldn't live without construction. Why shouldn't people talk about class warfare, when one class has been fucking the rest for decades?
There are countries with narrower wealth distribution than the US, that have less debt, less poverty, less ill-health, less crime and less of a myriad of other terrible things, thanks in part to bankers not making multiples of the incomes of construction workers.
They make money because they control its creation and distribution, not because they add value.
A normal bank can't make new money - only the federal reserve banks can. All they can do is loan out their deposits and get money on the interest. That most certainly does add value.
Where I agree with you is when the government lets regular banks undertake investment bank activity like selling other financial instruments. The risk is not worth the reward.
The world could live without big finance, it couldn't live without construction.
But construction could not happen without finance.
Why shouldn't people talk about class warfare, when one class has been fucking the rest for decades?
Because the members of that class have changed. Sure, there are still Rockerfellers and Carnegies out there - but now you have Buffett and Gates. As long as there is some basic level of social mobility, class warfare is counter-productive. I think that social mobility needs to be improved, but it's not bad enough to invite revolution.
There are countries with narrower wealth distribution than the US, that have less debt, less poverty, less ill-health, less crime and less of a myriad of other terrible things, thanks in part to bankers not making multiples of the incomes of construction workers.
Correlation != causation. It's also astounding that you think these places don't have very rich people in banking.
Don't get me wrong - I think poverty is a real problem, and it does lead to ill health and crime. But goodness, don't you think that maybe our history of racism might have a lot more to do with poverty than our banking system? Scandinavia has very little recent historical problem with racism - they have a mostly homogeneous population. As long as you drive through an urban US ghetto and almost all of the people are basically the same color - I don't know how you get a stronger correlation than that.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.