Slashdot Mirror
Robots Ride To the Rescue Where Workers Can't Be Found (nytimes.com)
Fast-growing economies in Eastern Europe have led to severe labor shortages, so companies are calling in the machines [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled]. From a report: In many major economies, companies are experimenting with replacing factory workers, truck drivers and even lawyers with artificial intelligence, raising the specter of a mass displacement of jobs. But in Eastern Europe, robots are being enlisted as the solution for a shortage of workers. Often they are helping to create new types of jobs as businesses in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia and Poland try to stay agile and competitive. Growth in these countries, which became low-cost manufacturing hubs for Europe after the fall of Communism, has averaged 5 percent in recent years, buoyed by the global recovery.
Few are riding higher than the Czech Republic, where plants roll out cars for the likes of Toyota and consumer electronics for Dell, while smaller companies produce specialty goods to sell around the world. A roaring economy has slashed the jobless rate to just 2.4 percent, the lowest in the European Union. The dearth of manpower, however, has limited the ability of Czech companies to expand. Nearly a third of them have started to turn away orders, according to the Czech Confederation of Industry, a trade group.
Few are riding higher than the Czech Republic, where plants roll out cars for the likes of Toyota and consumer electronics for Dell, while smaller companies produce specialty goods to sell around the world. A roaring economy has slashed the jobless rate to just 2.4 percent, the lowest in the European Union. The dearth of manpower, however, has limited the ability of Czech companies to expand. Nearly a third of them have started to turn away orders, according to the Czech Confederation of Industry, a trade group.
Is this is an article about workers who are lost? No. Is this an article about robots transporting people? No. Is this an article about search and rescue? No.
We are statistically due and perhaps over-due for a global recession based on the usual "business cycle" patterns. They usually keep the bots and fire the humans during slumps.
Table-ized A.I.
"economies in Eastern Europe have led to severe labor shortages"
Aren't these the same countries that are refusing to accept refugees? I'm missing the logic here. Or maybe they feel that keeping a 'pure' ethnic environment is more important than a good economy.
...omphaloskepsis often...
As in employers can't legally hire laborers at any price? (This is the definition of an economic shortage.)
Or as in employers just don't want to pay market rates for labor?
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
I suppose it would be highly rude to suggest they hire Syrian, Libyan, and other refugees... AC
Would you rather have a robot for a co-worker, or a Syrian? Personally, I would pick the Syrian so we could share falafels and tahini for lunch, but most Eastern Europeans feel differently. Non-white immigration is deeply unpopular there, even more so than in Western Europe where immigration has created a major political backlash.
I have nothing against their culture. However, I have something against them forcing it onto me.
Bullcrap. Nobody is being "forced" to adopt immigrant culture. I live in San Jose, California, one of the most diverse cities in the world. Never, not once in 20 years, has anyone "forced" their culture on me.
Within walking distance of my house, there is a mosque, a synagogue, a buddhist temple, and the largest gurdwara in North America. Number of times I have been "forced" to go to any of them: 0.
Well it's better that we reach a sustainable demographic rather than depending on an ever increasing pyramid of young outnumbering the old because eventually you run out of expansion room as these people need land to grow food, sources of water, use non-renewable fuel and minerals, create trash and pollution and so on. And they grow old too, leading to an exponential need for more young. Sure, it could be nice for our generation if they kept building that bridge to nowhere until we're dead and buried, but it wouldn't get easier with twenty or thirty billion people instead of ten.
I mean the Chicken Littles are saying the sky is falling because the robots will take the jobs so there'll be no work. The other Chicken Littles are saying the sky is falling because the wave of elderly will overwhelm the working class. But there can't both be too much work and too little work at the same time. You could argue the economy wouldn't support it, but the 1%'er really got nothing to gain by setting off a re-surge of socialist ideas. With automated tractors, trucks, factories and stores the cost of keeping a couch potato fed and clothed is not that big a deal and in modern countries they only get 1.x kids.
On a global level most people are still better off, extreme poverty is on the way down, literacy is on the way up. Access to electricity, cell phones, the Internet etc. is on the way up. Both China and India are well past the hump where they'll modernize the rest of the country. It's mostly Africa and the Middle East that remain fucked up, but there's 5+ billion people not living there while the "first world" used to be half of Europe, the US, Canada and Australia so like a billion tops. The bulk of humanity has seen a huge improvement in their standard of living, even if that slows the world won't collapse.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
That's because the American Melting Pot works a lot better than the European Immigrant Acceptance ideology or whatever the fuck it's called.
There's enormous differences between the two. Also, the number of uneducated Syrian, Afghan, Pakistani,etc. immigrants in the USA is orders of magnitude smaller then the European one. You can't compare the two either.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)