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Construction Firm Balfour Beatty Considers Drone Workers
cagraham writes "International engineering and construction firm Balfour Beatty is considering using drones in order to construct walls and monitor work sites, among other things. Beatty CIO Danny Reeves, speaking at the Fujitsu Forum, said drones could improve efficiency and safety on sites. He also talked of implementing sensors that would monitor worker's stress levels and bodily functions, and notify management when they became less effective, or mistake-prone, on the job."
Boss: Can't be, your bladder is only 85% filled, you must give 120% !!
Brave new Odity
As long as these drones pay their union dues.
If $ value of increased 'productivity' by using sensors minus 20% above market wage increase awarded to all workers is a net positive number,
and 'shareholder return' is a stadium-filling point-increase,
Implement drones/sensors strategy.
What we envisioned: Man overseeing the construction robots doing their elaborate dance.
What we got: robotic sensors collect every bit of observable data, so that the man can be put into good use with highest efficiency.
the latter part sounds like the beginning on "manna" - computer system in a short story somebody linked to in ./ recently.
http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm
creepy.
Rich
Because in every employee survey about why morale is down, and turnover high, the answer is consistently "because the boss isn't watching me enough." :-P
In addition to adding drones to its workforce, Balfour Beatty is exploring the possibility of incorporating “body area networks” into its work-sites. Such networks consist of wearable tech devices that monitor various bodily functions such as heart rate, stress levels, and hydration. For companies, the idea is that such networks could alert management when individual workers stress or fatigue levels make them ineffective on the job, or even a danger to themselves and others.
If anything, it'd be more likely to be used to get rid of soueone that is hard to fire(e.g. whistleblower, minority, union support) while maintaining a clean excuse. They'd just point to the sensors and fire/not renew the contract of the worker.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
This is all well and good and inevitable but society really needs to think hard and fast about what we are going to do with a future where there are only so many jobs available for people with a shovel or a wrench. It used to be something like 30% of the nation was involved with food production. Thanks to industrialization that's now 1-2%. Even the last bastions of farm work -- fruit picking -- is being inched into by robotics. The farm hands who left the fields and went into the factories are now finding themselves being replaced en masse by sophisticated machines.
In the utopian fantasy the rise of the bots means the people have more leisure time and devote themselves to intellectual pursuits. In the reality playing out they go on disability and other "safety net" programs and lead meager lives of not-so-quiet desperation. As it is there are now more people going on disability than entering the work force. The economics of all this is just disastrous. From the government deficit on down to the generation of kids being raised in food stamp households the situation is untenable. One can only hope we find a path forward that does not involve increasing social decay and civil unrest.
It's a brave new world alright.
what about a basic income CEO / EX pay caps / taxes and a OT limes can all help in that.
Why should some be on the disability bench while others are pulling 60-80 hour weeks?
what about a basic income CEO / EX pay caps / taxes and a OT limes can all help in that.
Say what?
He also talked of implementing sensors that would monitor worker's stress levels and bodily functions, and notify management when they became less effective, or mistake-prone, on the job.
What could possibly go wrong? Seriously, this sounds like the beginning of a cookie cutter dystopian sci-fi book/movie/television series.
"and notify management when they became less effective, or mistake-prone, on the job"
We don't trust our employees in any way, and would rather spend money on better ways to catch and punish them than on making it worth wanting to work for us as usual.
Because our HR department is ungodly huge and happy long-term workers don't need that many people interviewing their replacements.
I just think the author didn't want to end on a dystopian downer...
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All technology rests in eliminating human effort. We have now hit the tipping point where entire industries will be replaced with new technologies. Drones building walls is just the tip of an iceberg larger than our entire planet. 3D printing is about to take over manufacturing as well as the construction industry. Your next car may be entirely built by a 3D printer with bots used to assemble parts made by the printers. Considering that a Colt 1911A was recently printed in appropriate metals and is fully functional printing a car engine should be a breeze.
I am aware that the unwashed will scream out to stop these job ending tools. But in fact our entire social and legal system faces a total rewrite. Imagine one guy in your neighborhood printing bicycles and handing them out for free or for only the cost of the powders used in the printing. The first totally printed bicycle has already been demonstrated. Everything from a pair of shoes to a fishing reel could flow from these machines. Even ideas such as import and export could be severely crushed by these new techs. This is already rapidly occurring.
You wouldn't download your neighbors house would you?
This is all well and good and inevitable but society really needs to think hard and fast about what we are going to do with a future where there are only so many jobs available for people with a shovel or a wrench.
This is a recurring fallacy that you are not remotely the first person to point out. Your argument is predicated on the assumption that someone that works with a wrench or a shovel will be unable to do anything else valuable to society in the future. So far every time this argument has been made it has later been proven false by future events. We are tool builders and over time we have built more and more effective tools. These tools eliminate some jobs and help us create new ones. Furthermore labor costs act as a brake against implementation of automation everywhere. I'm a cost accountant professionally and it is trivial to show examples of how it is economically impossible to automate many tasks. Arguments that the robots are going to take all the jobs are basically unfounded paranoia based on ignorance of economics.
It used to be something like 30% of the nation was involved with food production. Thanks to industrialization that's now 1-2%.
In 1870 the number was more like 70%-80%. You seem to be implying that somehow that is a bad thing. Those people who no longer had to work on a farm were then able to participate in other valuable tasks. The very fact that you are able to type on a computer is probably due in large part to the fact that some very smart people didn't have to spend their brain cells trying to grow food.
Even the last bastions of farm work -- fruit picking -- is being inched into by robotics.
Probably not as fast as you seem to be implying since there are literally millions of migrant farm workers employed and there is no automation that is going to replace most of them in the immediate future. Automation only makes sense in certain economic circumstances. If labor is cheap enough it doesn't make much economic sense to automate certain jobs. Companies that spend unnecessarily on automation will go out of business because cheap labor will undercut them. Happens all the time. The US is highly automated in manufacturing but cheap labor from China and other places has out competed automation for many products.
The farm hands who left the fields and went into the factories are now finding themselves being replaced en masse by sophisticated machines.
Those farm hands did a lot more than just go into manufacturing. While manufacturing (like agriculture) is still a huge business in the US and Europe, the majority of the economy hasn't been in either of those two sectors for some time now. People have ALWAYS obsoleted some jobs with machines and created new ones at the same time. We're tool makers. That's what we do. It's a bizarre argument that somehow we should stop doing what we are best at.
Drones have many useful traits for the workforce.
They have bigger eyes than normal working bees, so they see jobs to do that others won't, they have bigger body size and if they ever develop a union there's another useful trait:
They don't sting.
With all due respect why do we need to change anything. If you don't work you don't eat, because you haven't earned the right to eat (what's that old line? Coffee is for closers?).
To do otherwise is to rob Peter to pay Paul. How can you morally and legally justify taking money from group A to give to group B? I don't think you can safely say: because it's in the best interests of both groups, because if it's in the interest of group A then they'll do it on their own (Enlightened Self-Interest) and if it's not you're going to be forcing them to, usually at the barrel of a gun...
The trouble is everything above makes perfect sense and feels 'right' on a gut level. The only "rational" reason I can find for the sort of wealth redistribution that you're getting at as necessary is as insurance. If you're one of the haves you want it so you never have to fear becoming one of the have-nots. But people are, by their nature, egotistical. And if you're one of the haves you've probably already convinced yourself that will never happen. Heck, several studies show that by considering it as possible you increase the likelihood of it happening (e.g. people tend to take actions that reinforce their personal self image)...
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In future revisions to this, they may have their entire work crews living underground with shaved heads and all white clothing, enforce drug usage, and forbid sexual activity. "What's wrong?"
This sig no verb.
because you're ignoring the core problem he's discussing because he didn't name it: idle capacity. The wealthiest Americans have 40% of their net worth in cash. They're not investing. They're grabbing all the wealth and grinding the US economy to a halt. If anyone calls them on this and suggests we use the gov't to address the idle economy they're shouted down with cries of "Theif!" and "Deficits!".
Basically, we have enormous idle capacity in our economy and it's getting worse because we're racing to give ownership of everything to an increasingly small number of people, and these people can't possible use that idle capacity. No matter how greedy you are there's only so many hours in the day to buy stuff with...
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Mmmmmm, maybe we should impose some regulations and expenses for hiring humans, to make humans even less competitive against machines? Labor has a price, and as that price goes up, and the price of capital (machines) comes down, humans will be less and less competitive. But, hey, let's just assume people DON"T react to new regulations and costs, and just impose them. After all, "if you like your job, you will be able to keep it." (That's a poke at Obama's Obamacare promise.)
what about a basic income CEO / EX pay caps / taxes and a OT limes can all help in that.
Why should some be on the disability bench while others are pulling 60-80 hour weeks?
I'm going to take a lot of heat here, but the fact is, people have different talents. Unless your job is exceedingly simple, you aren't going to just plug another person into it. Not everyone is cut out to be the CEO, and not everyone is cut out to work on construction or work on the highway.
The Disability issue is an extremely interesting one. Many of the recipients are 50 plus year olds who have been displaced from local factory jobs. While they usually want to work, they have essentially no options. Training that they might have is in a field that doesn't exist any more, and where they are at, there are no where near enough jobs available. And packing up and moving somewhere else is a bad option, their best hope would be to gat a jobe at a fast food place making near minimum wage. Even if they were to do that, fast food is becoming the new province of college graduates, while once upon a time it was entry level work for the young. Now the average age of a McDonald's woeker is 30. Fast food has become a career option. But it is a career option that qualifies you for food stamps and other subsidized living.
So these thousands of virtually unemployable people need some option. So enter disability. Most people in their 50's have some physical issues. But like other 50 year olds, most are capable of working. But of what use is packing up your life, moving to another city, still not getting a job, or if you are lucky enough, you'll still be on the federal or state dole?
Alternatives are letting these people starve, or perhaps churches can open soup kitchens ala the Great depression. Then they can go live under bridges or something.
There really aren't many good alternatives.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
I'm sick and tired of hearing "what about unemployment" when every new piece of technology is developed. They will have to find something else to do, that's what. Do we need millions of blacksmiths making horseshoes today? Where are millions of unemployed blacksmiths? Do we need millions of cotton pickers? Do we need millions of farmers with scythes?
Long term, developing technology and improving efficiency and reducing labour is always beneficial.
There are slightly different problems. One is availability of said technology to people (only industrialists can afford robots, plus technology can be proprietary, patented and restricted). And another problem is that only few people (ones providing capital) often benefit from the fruits of technology. First can be mitigated with different legislation (although unlikely to happen since industry interests control most governments). The former? I don't know... I believe this is where cracks start showing in capitalism as a system...
--Coder
Read Manna if you want a likely idea of how this will end up. But probably without the upside of The Australia Project.
You are in a twisty maze of processor lines, all alike.
There is a lot of hype here.
As human labor gets automated, more and more people will be left up the creek without a paddle, so they will turn to crime. Then, they will get arrested. You can expect to see even more expansion of the prison industry, as most of the country will wind up there.
In prison, they will be given menial work to do, or just a TV. But, most importantly, they will not be allowed to breed.
Eventually, they will die off. The population will go down to numbers that better match the need for human labor, and things will truck along merrily.
That, at least, is the middle-road option.
The high-road option goes more like this:
The government offers people a full-ride (free food, clothing, shelter, and medical for your entire life). In order to accept the offer, you must first be surgically sterilized. Thus, those who cannot contribute can still live out their lives in relative happiness, and die off naturally. This is more-or-less sustainable, so it is how things progress until the singularity hits.
The low-road option goes more like this:
The teeming masses of indigents rise up in a bloody revolution that, ultimately, sets us back technologically by hundreds of years. Repeat as necessary.
With all the drones at a human construction site, wouldn't the Queen Bee notice the drop in honey production?
The "Drone Thingy" is going Beyond sanity and must be stopped.
Beatty CIO Danny Reeves should be killed, his body burn to ash and the ash launched in a delta rocket to the Sun for atomic incineration.
QED
Pay people more and make them work less hours. Then more people get to work, and we get to enjoy that leisure time.
"He also talked of implementing sensors that would monitor worker's stress levels and bodily functions, and notify management when they became less effective, or mistake-prone, on the job."
Holy fucking shit, how about telling THE WORKERS when they become less effective, or mistake-prone, on the job?
Doesn't anyone get reminded of those scenes from Terminator3 movie where robots monitor human workers and the hero gets depressed ?
Damn it, after getting trapped in Balfour's rad-chambers, I only have five days to get to Elysium!
Cylons!!
Aren't those things called "Boomers"?
Anyone has the phone number for Nene? The older one with pink hairs not the young blonde one.
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
Which way do you think the us would go on that situation?
Link: http://lyrics.wikia.com/Dead_Kennedys:Soup_Is_Good_Food. You'll need it, because Jello Biafra sings very unclearly even at the best of times.
To be, or not to be: isn't that quite logical, Slashdot Beta?
Just wanted to correct you on one thing. While everyone isn't cut out to be a CEO, it isn't a job only one in a million could do, not even one in a thousand.
It is one of them jobs where maybe one in fifty could do it, maybe more. You have a harder time finding someone capable of programming a computer or managing your network connections than you do actually being a CEO. The CEO job is more about your social skills and social networking ability more than any level of actual technical skills or knowledge. You could teach someone to be a capable CEO in less than a year of training to a passable level, within 4 years they would be as capable as most others so long as they have the basics of common sense and people skills. By comparison many other professions you are taking over 4 years just to get enough to be passable at it.
CEO isn't a job of skills, it is one of responsibilities and how well you handle responsibility (which most CEOs suck at evidently). The thing is you can't rotate them or anything as you can't have multiple leaders trying to pull the company in different directions and trying to undercut or subvert each other due to differing opinions. While tens of millions of Americans could be passable CEOs, in a company, just like in The Highlander there can be only one. But nothing justifies their pay scale.
Have Rioters Nerve Stapled (Atrocity)?
... welcome our new robotic overlords.
Sorry, couldn't resist.
"What we envisioned: Man overseeing the construction robots doing their elaborate dance. What we got: robotic sensors collect every bit of observable data, so that the man can be put into good use with highest efficiency."
Good to see people starting to think about this. To generalize along those lines, see my essay here: http://www.pdfernhout.net/recognizing-irony-is-a-key-to-transcending-militarism.html ... There is a fundamental mismatch between 21st century reality and 20th century security thinking. Those "security" agencies are using those tools of abundance, cooperation, and sharing mainly from a mindset of scarcity, competition, and secrecy. Given the power of 21st century technology as an amplifier (including as weapons of mass destruction), a scarcity-based approach to using such technology ultimately is just making us all insecure. Such powerful technologies of abundance, designed, organized, and used from a mindset of scarcity could well ironically doom us all whether through military robots, nukes, plagues, propaganda, or whatever else... Or alternatively, as Bucky Fuller and others have suggested, we could use such technologies to build a world that is abundant and secure for all."
"Military robots like drones are ironic because they are created essentially to force humans to work like robots in an industrialized social order. Why not just create industrial robots to do the work instead?
In that sense, I'm glad to see this article about the construction use of drones. The movie "Silent Running" showed me the potential of "drones" for construction, maintenance, surgery, agriculture, and more. It helped inspire my own early efforts in robotics and AI.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silent_Running
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
A "basic income" is one way to deal with this, and is also described in Marshall Brain's "Manna" novel. So, you get a set number of ration units every month as a human right or right of citizenship (or in Manna, from stock holdership).
Excellent example related to rationing with the conflict over who gets the starship. Currency can be useful for rationing. See C.H. Douglas on Social Credit in Wikipedia on why money is better to signal demand than as a store of value. However, there are multiple ways to signal demand. See also the "Kanban" idea used in factory control, where a Kanban token to signal demand can be anything from a ball to a card to an empty box.
Still, as I explain on my website, there are at least five types of transactions in an economy (subsistence, gift, exchange, panned, and theft), typically interwoven, and any real society has some balance of all five of them according to its history and resources and technology and mythology. As an alternative, we could perhaps allocate starships on part through persuasive IRC chat messages and emails the same way a free software project like Debian allocates it resources, as a bit more of a "gift economy" mixed with some level of planning (but still with some subsistence and exchange in the mix).
One thing to consider is there are different levels of needs and wants, and society will change as they can be fulfilled. Everyone getting enough food and water and shelter is one level of abundance. Everyone living like a typical US America is another. Everyone living like Bill Gates is another. Everyone living like Jean-Luc Picard is another. Everyone living like "Q" is another. Enough abundance to live like a current typical US American without having to "work", managed through a basic income of say US$2000 per person per month, would be an enormous change in our society, even if nobody was getting a starship. There is a law of diminishing returns perhaps, too.It is likely a bigger leap from today's rat race to a basic income of US$2000 a month for all where nobody *has* to work, than from everyone gets US$2000 a month to everyone gets US$200,000 a month (in today's equivalents).
Imagine a world where anyone can 3D print a sandwich and a laptop computer at a local municipal town hall building as easily and without notice as you can get a drink of water from a public water fountain in such places. Yes, somewhere some system accounts for such things, but maybe they would be like how public water fountain use today is just taken for granted and not charged for specially. Yet, 1000 years ago, access to clean chilled water on-demand indoors would have been a great luxury for most.
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.