Meet "Baxter" the Robot Out to Get Your Minimum-Wage

[flintlock]

Re: Can any worker be trained to do any job?

The first issue is whether those who are displaced by automation can successfully be educated and/or retrained to handle those higher-level jobs. The notion of "nature vs. nurture" with respect to intelligence is an ongoing debate among researchers, but I have taught electronics in an evening trade school and I can attest that there are some students (of various races and ethnicity) that, no matter how hard they or their instructors try, can not master the subject, period. It could be some innate wiring in their neurons, or a poor early childhood experience, but by adulthood, it's persistent. People like them could, if we aren't careful, form a permanent underclass, on the government dole.

The second issue is that (and I believe there have been studies to verify this) there aren't a corresponding number of high-skill jobs to replace the low-skill jobs. Here's an example. I was the in-house engineering manager at a major newspaper. Our press room (thanks to union rules, but that's another story) had a crew of about a hundred people per shift. During a stike, we ran that press room with two managers because of automation. Also, we used to hand-stuff the inserts into the newspapers, with a staff of about a hundred and fifty low-skill staff (we used to joke about "work release" from the nearby prison). After the production facility moved to another location, and that process automated, the same operation was run with about a dozen skilled workers who fed the hoppers of the automated inserting machines.

In all of my experience, it has been the same - the higher the skills, the smaller the proportion of the workforce required. For example, it used to be one engineer to three technicians to five board assemblers, back before surface mount technology made robotic "pick and place" assembly standard practice.

This automation, by the way, doesn't look at all like "Baxter." A robotic pick and place machine looks like a big metal box. Pressroom automation looks a lot like non-automated equipment, but with additional arms and motors hidden inside or in the floor beneath. Automated inserting machines look like a row of metal cabinets with a conveyor running through it. CNC milling machines look like manual machines, but with additional motors.

Do I see, for example, the possibility of fast food preparation being automated? A possibility, but via some metal cabinet into which beef patties and buns are loaded into hoppers, and condiments sloshed into canisters. As soon as it's less expensive than the crew of workers, it could happen.

A team of maybe ten engineers would design such a machine, an automated process involving maybe 50 people would buy the parts, build the machines, do the order taking, and the shipping, but the product would displace thousands of workers. Maybe if the machine sold well, the company would double in size, but the net loss to the economy in number of jobs would still be overwhelming.

Very well put. My observations mirror your experience.

Some arguments for all these wonderful new jobs of the future borders on the Pollyanna-ish at best, and a "let them eat cake" attitude at worst. Almost always brought up by people who almost certainly will not be the ones personally facing these job options.

I just don't see why we have to use the same employment model we've used in the past. Clawing our way to the top may appeal to us, but when things reach critical mass and enough people are on the losing end, things will get ugly.

[EJ]

Re: Meet "Baxter" the Robot Out to Get Your Minimum-Wage

Re the fastest growing occupations list, I can't help but notice that so many of these are, relative to cost of living, essentially poverty jobs, at least here in So Cal. Housing, energy, transportation, food, health & car insurance, & other necessities at those salaries? Forget it. As far as the better paying jobs go, the expense of achieving the needed degrees and designations, plus the living expenses put out during the years of study, I believe will be multiples of these better annual salaries. How can most Americans realistically afford this (without becoming debt serfs which is yet another problem)? I'm having a difficult time envisioning optimistic scenarios out of this. Thinking more along the lines of "Eastern Europe with American characteristics".

The median wage for all occupations is $33,840, of the fastest growing occupations $34,435, and of the fastest declining occupations $35,974. The median wage of the fastest growing occupations is higher than the median wage for all occupations but not as high as the median wage of the occupations that are going away.

[reggie]

Re: Meet "Baxter" the Robot Out to Get Your Minimum-Wage

It is my habit to approach every technology as a potential investor, that is, the way an investor performs due diligence on a business idea. Let's ask a few of the more rudimentary questions. .

Is there a moral component to your evaluation as well? If so, how does that enter the picture?

Father of Cybernetics Norbert Wiener's 1949 Letter to UAW President Walter Reuther, warning him about new technology and the negative impact it would have on manufacturing workers.Grounded still upon an improverished view of human beings and a systematic denial of their potential, the search for total control consists in an ever more elaborate and costly effort to construct a profitable, militaryily effective, and technically elegant apparaturs that is not dependent upon the cooperation and resources of the mass of the population.
http://libcom.org/history/father-cyb...walter-reuther

[see original post in this thread to read Wiener's full letter to UAW president]

Okay, so I'll give everyone ONE guess what the Industrialists did with Prof Weiner's information?

Hmmm, so no one here is willing to guess what happened next... after the founder of the science that lead to robotics turned-down consulting engagements with military and elite-industrialists, and warned the UAW president of what was to come?

[c1ue]

Re: Meet "Baxter" the Robot Out to Get Your Minimum-Wage

Okay, so I'll give everyone ONE guess what the Industrialists did with Prof Weiner's information?

No one guessed, because no one cares.

Equally the industrialists spend far more money offshoring than roboticizing.

[reggie]

Re: Meet "Baxter" the Robot Out to Get Your Minimum-Wage

No one guessed, because no one cares

Well, how very duplicitous of you.

I certainly hope you're not speaking for the rest of the members of this forum, because this clearly would expose these members as false contrarians and socially conscious humans. To not care about the well documented historical efforts to develop roboticism, but to feign concern about mfg job loss now, is quite revealing.

I'll wait to see if anyone breaks the silence.

Equally the industrialists spend far more money offshoring than roboticizing.

Ahh, so we should ignore the historical investment in mfg roboticism... is that your logic today? Wait, I thought this thread was about "roboticism", not "offshoring"? But you still had to go out of your way to get a dig in. Nice. Feeling a little insecure about your highly reductionistic worldview, are we?

[FRED]

Re: Meet "Baxter" the Robot Out to Get Your Minimum-Wage

Well, how very duplicitous of you.

I certainly hope you're not speaking for the rest of the members of this forum, because this clearly would expose these members as false contrarians and socially conscious humans. To not care about the well documented historical efforts to develop roboticism, but to feign concern about mfg job loss now, is quite revealing.

I'll wait to see if anyone breaks the silence.

Ahh, so we should ignore the historical investment in mfg roboticism... is that your logic today? Wait, I thought this thread was about "roboticism", not "offshoring"? But you still had to go out of your way to get a dig in. Nice. Feeling a little insecure about your highly reductionistic worldview, are we?

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As a general rule, don't say anything here to another member that you cannot imagine saying to their face in person.

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Thank you!

[BadJuju]

Re: Meet "Baxter" the Robot Out to Get Your Minimum-Wage

http://www.nature.com/news/how-to-tu...puters-1.12406

"Synthetic biologists have developed DNA modules that perform logic operations in living cells. These ‘genetic circuits’ could be used to track key moments in a cell’s life or, at the flick of a chemical switch, change a cell’s fate, the researchers say."

[c1ue]

Re: Meet "Baxter" the Robot Out to Get Your Minimum-Wage

More GPS accuracy commentary.

original publication:

http://e-archivo.uc3m.es/bitstream/1...NSORS_2012.pdf

popularized version:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/02/14/gps_boffins/

Boffins at Madrid's Carlos III University have used cheap accelerometers and gyroscopes - and expensive mathematics - to improve the accuracy of GPS* by as much as 90 per cent.
The team compared their results to differential GPS - which is about as good as satellite systems get - and found that with detailed analysis of the data coming from three cheapish accelerometers and three gyroscopes they could get reliable accuracy down to below 2 metres, and critically they could do so without calibrating their kit to match the vehicle in which it was fitted.
Satellite navigation systems, including GPS, are normally accurate to 10 metres or so, but that accuracy falls off rapidly as one enters an urban environment where buildings block, and reflect, signals. In an urban setting, the boffins say, "the determination of a vehicle’s position can be off by more than 50 metres". Differential GPS, which uses a known location to monitor drift caused by atmospheric changes, is more accurate, but still can't account for passing buildings, so navigation systems fall to guessing.
The Spanish boffins aren't doing much more than that, but their guesses are very well-informed and made using accumulated data.
Comparable systems, such as those deployed in autonomous vehicles which really need to be quite accurate, use hugely expensive gyroscopes that cost over $30,000, according to the research paper (PDF, one-third interesting, two-thirds impenetrable, your mileage may vary), while the Spaniards used cheap kit which calibrates while driving - constantly guessing on its location by measuring changes in velocity and maneouvres performed by the vehicle, then checking the GPS and refining the process to improve accuracy.
It was soon after this point the paper descended into mathematical formula

Not only was the team able to accurately monitor progress, despite the inconsistency of a vehicle's motion down a normal road - weeding out the bumps, stops and starts, to accurately record motion, but it was also able to demonstrate how the system could use knowledge of the terrain to improve accuracy further - by knowing when one is driving up a hill, for example.
But even without that the team managed an improvement between 50 and 90 per cent, compared to GPS, outperforming differential GPS by a significant margin. That's probably still not good enough for an autonomous car (two meters to the left still kills a lot of pedestrians) but demonstrates how clever processing can get a lot of mileage out of cheap sensors.
Now the team is going to see how its algorithms might be applied to the sensors in a mobile phone, which is an order of magnitude more complicated but raises some interesting possibilities. ®

Note, however, the cheaper hardware in question is vs. military grade gyroscopes; the processing power required for this solution would drain a cell battery - even assuming the CPU power was there - really quickly.

And of course assuming the big UFO shaped sensor array was pocket portable...

[Jay]

Re: Meet "Baxter" the Robot Out to Get Your Minimum-Wage

You could make similar arguments about the plow putting farmers out of work.

In the long run, it is technology and knowledge gains which increase our standard of living.

[Polish_Silver]

Automation and the Great Depression

You could make similar arguments about the plow putting farmers out of work.

In the long run, it is technology and knowledge gains which increase our standard of living.

Stiglitz is working on the idea that tractors caused the depression. By replacing horses, much fewer farmers could grow all the food. It took many years for the humans and the economy to shift employment into manufacturing, autos, etc. The 1920's bubbles were just the trigger. The persistence of the depression resulted from the mass unemployment caused by the "disruptive technology" called tractors.

Now if you visit my farming relatives in Iowa, their standard of living is way, way higher than my grandfathers, and they are farming about 10X as much land, too.

[reggie]

Re: Meet "Baxter" the Robot Out to Get Your Minimum-Wage

You could make similar arguments about the plow putting farmers out of work.

In the long run, it is technology and knowledge gains which increase our standard of living.

At least before GATT was made into law, and offshoring went hypersonic, the public was notified. But I don't recall anyone ever discussing US Tax dollars being used to invest heavily into military robotic research for the benefit of inudstry's long term dominance over labor.

It seems to me that the notion of equating technology and job loss with "progress" has become oddly ingrained in our cultural consciousness, and therefore accepted as the only option.

[Polish_Silver]

technology policy vs labour

But I don't recall anyone ever discussing US Tax dollars being used to invest heavily into military robotic research for the benefit of inudstry's long term dominance over labor.

It seems to me that the notion of equating technology and job loss with "progress" has become oddly ingrained in our cultural consciousness, and therefore accepted as the only option.

If WWII was the critical time, the unemployment did not show up until about 1971.
Labor did quite well 1945-1971.

Technology is implemented incrementally by many corporations to remain competitive.
If they did not update, they would lose market share. It's hard to stop something like that. If you outlawed a certain technology in one country, it would just lose ground in all the industries related to that technology.

Not that this process really makes people happier or more equitable. It's just hard to stop companies from competing with each other. Much of what engineers do is just trying to unemploy other engineers or workers.

[c1ue]

Re: technology policy vs labour

Stiglitz is working on the idea that tractors caused the depression.

It will be interesting to see that research/analysis once it comes out.

Personally, I have grave doubts. The introduction of the McCormick reaper was a far greater technological innovation than the tractor; the tractor was simply an extension of internal combustion engines into farm work from its previous industry/ transportation beginnings. Post Civil War - there was a recession, but then again it was right on schedule for the 10 to 15 year regular occurrences of bubbles and crashes prior to the Fed. Thus the argument that the unemployment caused by the McCormick reaper was nullified by deaths in the Civil War must also account for the regularity of these events - let's not also forget that the Civil War saw the issuance of fiat currency greenbacks.

[Polish_Silver]

Re: technology policy vs labour

The reaper was certainly a big deal. The 1873 panic was a big deal according to some, and has been linked to increased agricultural output in north america. Could the reaper have played a role in that? If the reaper increased food exports to europe, or resulted in low agricultural commodity prices, it could have a deflationary effect on european land prices.

[reggie]

Re: technology policy vs labour

Technology is implemented incrementally by many corporations to remain competitive. If they did not update, they would lose market share. It's hard to stop something like that. If you outlawed a certain technology in one country, it would just lose ground in all the industries related to that technology.

Not that this process really makes people happier or more equitable. It's just hard to stop companies from competing with each other. Much of what engineers do is just trying to unemploy other engineers or workers.

I'm familiar with the arguments taught at MBA schools, the problem with them is that they don't tell the audience the entire story, namely:

1. Industrialists globally conspired against labor, leveraging public monies to do so under the auspices of defense spending;
2. This is a self-destructive course that no one is immune from. All of humanity are included within this system of rationalization, with no end, as all observers within the system are ultimately observed, and therefore subject to rationalization. This is the double-edge sword of 2nd-order-cybernetics, whch now drives all of society's majjor systems.

"All stable process we shall predict. All unstable processes we shall control"

- John von Neumann
wikipedia.org/wiki/John_von_Neumann