Robot Workers' Real Draw: Reducing Dependence on Human Workers

HughPickens.com writes: Zeynep Tufekci writes in an op-ed at the NY Times that machines are getting better than humans at figuring out who to hire, who's in a mood to pay a little more for that sweater, and who needs a coupon to nudge them toward a sale. It turns out most of what we think of as expertise, knowledge and intuition is being deconstructed and recreated as an algorithmic competency, fueled by big data. "Machines aren't used because they perform some tasks that much better than humans, but because, in many cases, they do a "good enough" job while also being cheaper, more predictable and easier to control than quirky, pesky humans," writes Tufekci. "Technology in the workplace is as much about power and control as it is about productivity and efficiency."

According to Tufekci technology is being used in many workplaces: to reduce the power of humans, and employers' dependency on them, whether by replacing, displacing or surveilling them. Optimists insist that we've been here before, during the Industrial Revolution, when machinery replaced manual labor, and all we need is a little more education and better skills. Tufekci points out that one historical example is no guarantee of future events. "Confronting the threat posed by machines, and the way in which the great data harvest has made them ever more able to compete with human workers, must be about our priorities," concludes Tufekci. "This problem is not us versus the machines, but between us, as humans, and how we value one another."

Comments

what is there left to buy?

[nimbius]

As an automotive engineer, we "employ" hundreds of robots at different points of assembly to replace people but the cost of anything hasnt really gone down. A car used to take 12 years to design from scratch, then 7, now 5, because we simulate most of what we're doing and machines are just so much faster than humans when it comes to manufacturing things. We use palletizer robots to stack things, transport bots to send parts from one department to another, painter bots that simulate their own paint path and are self-optimizing, and of course armies of welders that never get tired, or sick, or bored, or angry. the result is a better product and our average vehicle can routinely last 500k or more miles without any problems that would constitute buying a new car. Heck, our door lock motors will outlast the owner.

so for me, robots mean the death of not just work, but commerce and capitalism as well. our rework and repair department is one guy. What is there left to buy? who is buying it? if endless consumption just leaves peole feeling hollow and everything we have works just fine, then gains from efficiency aside you're still faced with rampant unemployment and a nonexistent place to sell a product that isnt needed. Sure, we sex up our products all the time with girls in skirts and some deadpan guy mumbling neurotic platitudes in the rain, but does anyone really buy into the idea that a sixty grand car is going to get them laid? We've become desparately predatory such that selling an SUV pushes so many unconscious buttons for ones safety and security that we're practically insisting anything less is suicide when all our vehicles are nearly identical in crash ratings.

Re:the endgame is ironic here

[circletimessquare]

capitalism is about increasing profits by any means possible

if people could be worked 16 hours a day, 7 days a week, for no pay, capitalism would be very happy. just look at the cruelties of the gilded age before the labor movement shut down most of the viciousness

the ideal society is capitalism with social safety nets and market protections. otherwise capitalism will lead to worker abuse and monopolies/ oligopolies where consumers are ripped off and smaller competitors squashed

you need to protect society from capitalism's extremes. if some of those protections and regulations have problems, those problems are tiny compared to no protections or regulations. protections and regulations can be cleaned up and refined, but never removed. to not understand why less protections and regulations is far worse is to not understand the topic

capitalism is like a great beast. properly harnessed and controlled it can plow your fields and give you great riches. allowed to run roughshod, it will knock down your barn and eat your crops. and what capitalism is most certainly not is some sort of fundamentalist religion, the end-all be-all of existence as some assholes conceive it to be. such fools represent our destruction

Or Just Sell To The Upper Class

[ranton]

As part of the past not being an indication of future results, I think people need to stop looking at the mid-20th century as the only model for an economy.

The 20th century saw the creation of the middle class as we think of it today. The wealthy needed a more skilled workforce to produce the products new technologies had made possible. The middle class was simply a byproduct of this need. Industrious people found a way to benefit from this more affluent working class and an entire new class of consumer was born.

The late 20th century saw the creation of the upper middle class. Additional advances in technology now meant the wealthy needed an even more skilled workforce. The upper middle class was simply a byproduct of this need. This upper middle class has much more disposable income than the middle class, so you start to see a shift in the type of products that exist in the economy. Instead of bargain food and bargain products, you see more fancy restaurants, Whole Foods, iPads, etc. It appears that an entire new class of consumer has been born again.

I see no reason why the economy cannot keep humming along selling its products to the upper middle class. The most profitable company in the world (Apple) sells almost exclusively to the upper middle class. The buzz created by selling to this market also makes the middle class stretch their dollars more to buy these expensive goods and services to "keep up with the Jones-es" (households with $60k income probably shouldn't spend money on iPhones, but they still do). The shrinking of the middle class hasn't seemed to hurt companies at all because they have this new more affluent market to sell to.

Over the next 20 years I expect the top 10% of households to have even more wealth than they do today, and the range of luxury products sold to them will be remarkable even by today's standards. The rest of the population will likely take on service related jobs for very low pay relative to the upper middle class, and will probably be very dependent on society for covering basic living expenses. I don't see this as a utopian world by any means, but it is what I expect to happen.