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Mines May Eliminate More Than Half Their Human Workers Within 10 Years (computerworld.com)
An anonymous Slashdot reader quotes ComputerWorld:
In the next decade, the mining industry may lose more than half of its jobs to automation, according to a new report... This industry is adopting self-driving trucks, automated loaders and automated drilling and tunnel-boring systems. It is also testing fully autonomous long-distance trains, which carry materials from the mine to a port...
A broader question is whether mining is a bellwether for other industries. There's no clear answer, but what Aaron Cosbey, a development economist and a report author, can say is this: "Where you can find robotic replacements for human labor you tend to do it." Cosbey estimates that automation will replace 40% to 80% of the workers at a mine...
Driverless technology can increase output up to 20%, while decreasing fuel consumption up to 15%, according to the article. "This will increase demand for people with IT skills who can set up and operate the automation systems -- but at far smaller numbers than the people automation displaces."
A broader question is whether mining is a bellwether for other industries. There's no clear answer, but what Aaron Cosbey, a development economist and a report author, can say is this: "Where you can find robotic replacements for human labor you tend to do it." Cosbey estimates that automation will replace 40% to 80% of the workers at a mine...
Driverless technology can increase output up to 20%, while decreasing fuel consumption up to 15%, according to the article. "This will increase demand for people with IT skills who can set up and operate the automation systems -- but at far smaller numbers than the people automation displaces."
A broader question is whether mining is a bellwether for other industries.
Yes, it is, but we talk about that all the time and it's boring. Let's mine this topic for some other nuggets of value. Ore do you really want to take this opportunity for granite? Let's not cave in to the pressure to rehash that argument, and start with a clean slate. A boulder question would be weather the technology will translate to outer space. That other kind of thread hits rock bottom in a hurry.
Schist, I'm out of gneiss rock puns.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
... it's not going to be a good day for people. Less safety and environmental requirements for non-people, and if they get crushed/buried there's no real negative press. Designed correctly, they can be rebuilt/repaired/dusted off and the work continued.
buddy of mine (pun not intended) is a part runner who sometimes delivers on the mines and they already control the roads so tightly that automation would be cake. Plus robots work around the clock, don't unionize and you don't go to jail for ignoring their safety.
The real question is, given that mines are natural resources why the *bleep* do we let so few people claim ownership of them? I suppose we could just tax the end product on the way out too, but we don't even do much of that. We just sorta give away something that's the birthright of all mankind without batting an eye. Not saying we go full on commie ( the wars and violence that come out of that would just shift the ownership ) but there ought to be a better way.
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we just finished prosecuting a mine exec for ignoring safety. It was a big deal because he'll do some jail time, which has almost never happened. The saddest thing is that somewhere is somebody who'll argue we shouldn't have prosecuted that guy because this is what will happen. E.g. it's better to have a job you get killed at than no job at all. Even when there's no good reason for that job to exist anymore. People just can't get over the idea that if you don't work you don't eat.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
If you increase people's wages to try and counter the effect of goods,, then all you do is make automation more attractive, so in the end, I don't think Trump can actually change it or stop it.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Are you serious? Mining is and always has been the POSTER CHILD for worker exploitation. Your notion that the government is somehow trampling on the poor put-upon mine owners is laughable on its face. Are you choosing to forget that hundreds of workers were killed (less than 100 years ago) by company goons for trying to unionize? Are you choosing to forget the thousands of miners who have died due to the incredibly lax and callous safety practices of mine owners, both from cave-ins and from firedamp?
When I read the title I first thought mines as in land mines, and then I thought, "Yeah... that's kind of the point..."
The biggest change to labour -- probably -- has been the early 20th century creation of the tractor and its attendant grain handling machines to agriculture. It wiped out the largest employee type in the world - agricultural labour. Of course there are plenty of people picking produce today but it's a fraction of the population compared to our grandparents' era.
That mines have become automated with pneumatic diggers happened in a generation ago and those of us who are old enough to remember the miner's strikes of the 1970s and 1980s watched entire communities vanish from the map. (Watch the film Brassed Off as an example with the amazing Pete Posthewait.) That digitization and robotics have now matured enough to finish the job is really an end game, not anything new.
I was up north when GPSs came in and guides were an ancient and honoured profession that got wiped out in ten years at the lumber camps.
---- The above post was generated by the Turing Institute. Maybe.
Regardless of the humanitarian merits of high wages, good benefits, and better safety regulations (which I'd hope everyone agrees is a good thing), the simple fact is that those all increase the cost of labor, which in turn provides a greater incentive to automate production as much as possible, reducing production costs.
Automation of labor-intensive tasks is a difficult thing. A high degree of automation tends to benefit the economy as a whole by producing more consumer goods for less cost, increasing the purchasing power of the common citizen. Unfortunately, it also has an immediate detrimental effect on the directly affected workers. I think this is why most people agree that it's critical to provide a safety net with unemployment and retraining, to help minimize the human impact of disruptive change like this.
For the most part, I think societies have been reasonably adept at finding other employment for workers as old industries scale down and other industries ramp up or spring into existence. For instance, my job (a videogame programmer) simply didn't exist a generation ago, and is largely possible because many people now have a bit of extra money to spend on a PC, videogame console, and the occasional $60 videogame. We just have to hope that trend continues - that these sort of advancements and transitions occur, but not so fast as to be too disruptive to society as a whole.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
Mimes? Robot mimes are going to eliminate human workers?
Well, JFC. There goes white-glove service...
What?
Oh, mines. I can dig that. I saw Zoolander. I know about the black lung, you bet.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.