Robots Will Create 'Permanently Unemployable Underclass'

[dcarrigg]

Re: Robots Will Create 'Permanently Unemployable Underclass'

I don't know Fox. Every anthropologist I know says there was more leisure time in the past. More people = more resource consumption is part of the equation. The cost of living doesn't go down if the cost of heat and land stays high. And they're not making new cheap oil or land.

But aside from that, it's partially a choice. Law sets up the work environment. People getting money for nothing but leisure are reviled. So it goes. You're right about TPTB, but not how. Give labor less of the pie; keep more for capital. That's the gameplan. It's as old as the day is long.

[lektrode]

Re: Robots Will Create 'Permanently Unemployable Underclass'

heres the 'new economy' cheerleading section's take on the sitch:

What Today's Economic Gloomsayers Are Missing


Science is enabling invention like never before and in ways that will improve life but isn't captured by GDP statistics.

By Joel Mokyr


Updated Aug. 8, 2014 6:22 p.m. ET
There is nothing like a recession to throw economists into a despondent mood. Much as happened in the late 1930s—when there was a fear of so-called secular stagnation, or the absence of growth due to a dearth of investment opportunities—many of my colleagues these days seem to believe that "sad days are here again." The economic growth experienced through much of the 20th century, they tell us, was fleeting. Our children will be no richer than we are. The entry of millions of married women into the workforce and the huge increase in college graduates that drove post-1945 growth were one-off boons. Slow growth is here to stay.
What is wrong with this story? The one-word answer is "technology." The responsibility of economic historians is to remind the world what things were like before 1800. Growth was imperceptibly slow, and the vast bulk of the population was so poor that a harvest failure would kill millions. Almost half the babies born died before reaching age 5, and those who made it to adulthood were often stunted, ill and illiterate.
What changed this world was technological progress. Starting in the late 18th century, innovations and advances in what was then called "the useful arts" began improving life, first in Britain, then in the rest of Europe, and then in much of the rest of the world.


Why did it happen? In brief: Science advanced. One reason science advanced so rapidly is that technology provided the tools and instruments that allowed "natural philosophers" (as they were known then) to study the physical world. An example is the barometer. Invented by a student of Galileo's named Torricelli in 1643, it showed the existence of atmospheric pressure. That scientific insight spurred the development of the first steam engines (known as atmospheric engines).
In 1800 another Italian, Alessandro Volta, invented the "pile"—the first battery. It served primarily as a tool for chemical research, allowing chemists to map out the newly discovered world of elements and compounds that unleashed the chemical industries of the 19th century.
In that fashion technology pulled itself up by its bootstraps: An invention in one area stimulated progress in another. The germ theory of disease and the subsequent revolution in medical technology might never have occurred without improved microscopes.
Compared with the tools we have today for scientific research, Galileo's look like stone axes. We have far better microscopes and telescopes and barometers today, and the digital codification of information has penetrated every aspect of science. It has led to the reinvention of invention. Words like "IT" or "communications" don't begin to express the scope of the change. Huge searchable databanks, quantum chemistry simulation and highly complex statistical analysis are only some of the tools that the digital age places at science's disposal.
The consequences are everywhere, from molecular genetics to nanoscience to research in Medieval poetry. Quantum computers, though still experimental, promise to increase this power by orders of magnitude. As science moves into new areas and solves problems that were not even imagined, inventors, engineers and entrepreneurs are waiting in the wings to design new gizmos and processes based on the new discoveries that will continue to improve our lives.
In the speculation on what the new technologies will look like and do, robots and artificial intelligence remain front and center, at once wished for (who likes making beds?) and feared as job-killers. We haven't seen a fraction of what is possible in information and communication technology. But the most unexpected advances may come from less glamorous corners, such as material science.
Materials are the core of our production. The terms Bronze and Iron Ages signify their importance; the great era of technological progress between 1870 and 1914 was wholly dependent on cheap and ever-better steel. But what is happening to materials now is a leap far beyond any of the past, with new resins, ceramics and entirely new solids designed in silico, (that is, on a computer) developed at the nanotechnological level. These promise materials that nature never dreamed of and that deliver custom-ordered properties in hardness, resilience, elasticity and so on.
One example is graphene, a sheet of very thin carbon whose molecules can be arranged to make it either the strongest or the most flexible material on earth. It conducts electricity and heat better than any material ever discovered. In the future graphene is likely to replace silicon in transistors, solar cells and other applications we cannot yet imagine.
Genetic modification is another area of expanding frontiers. Plants will be designed to fix nitrates in the soil or to absorb more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and that can adapt to more extreme temperatures and rainfall. These could be our best defense against environmental degradation, climate change and other nasty side effects of earlier, cruder agricultural techniques. "Nanobombs" that physically penetrate bacterial membranes are the next weapon in mankind's never-ending war on microbes.
The breakthroughs are not "on the horizon." They are here. The economy may be facing some headwinds, but the technological tailwind is more like a tornado. Fasten your seat belts.
So: If everything is so good, why is everything so bad? Why the gloominess of so many of my colleagues? Part of the story is that economists are trained to look at aggregate statistics like GDP per capita and measure for things like "factor productivity." These measures were designed for a steel-and-wheat economy, not one in which information and data are the most dynamic sectors. They mismeasure the contributions of innovation to the economy.
Many new goods and services are expensive to design, but once they work, they can be copied at very low or zero cost. That means they tend to contribute little to measured output even if their impact on consumer welfare is very large. Economic assessment based on aggregates such as gross domestic product will become increasingly misleading, as innovation accelerates. Dealing with altogether new goods and services was not what these numbers were designed for, despite heroic efforts by Bureau of Labor Statistics statisticians.

The aggregate statistics miss most of what is interesting. Here is one example: If telecommuting or driverless cars were to cut the average time Americans spend commuting in half, it would not show up in the national income accounts—but it would make millions of Americans substantially better off.

Technology is not our enemy. It is our best hope. If you think rapid technological change is undesirable, try secular stagnation.

Mr. Mokyr is professor of economics and history at Northwestern University. His most recent book is "The Enlightened Economy: An Economic History of Britain 1700-1850" (Yale, 2012)."

[EJ]

Re: Robots Will Create 'Permanently Unemployable Underclass'

My work has over the past decades placed me on several occasions among experts in robotics and machine vision. The intersection of automation and economics interests me.

While this does not make me an expert by any means, I can say without hesitation that hamburger making robots are not The Next Industrial Revolution, as the Momentum Machines ludicrously claims, nor do these robots present a serious challenge to low-skill physical labor. It is high skill physical labor that has the most to fear from automation.

McDonalds sank millions into similar robots before decided that the humans were cheaper and more flexible to provide the full variety of food items they serve, and frequent changes to the menu to keep up with evolving consumer tastes. Momentum Machines' mission to "democratize access to high quality food by making it available to the masses" is as foolish as the value proposition of an expensive robot that can only create variations on a single food item. Only in California could such an idea get funded. It will fail and be forgotten within a year. Then it will pop up again in five to ten years and get the same breathless coverage all over again as if it never happened before, such is the rigorous standard of research done by the tech media.

The introduction of robots that perform low-skilled or semi-skilled tasks better than humans -- faster, more accurately, and without tiring or getting bored -- has always raised concerns among reasonably sympathetic persons who are inclined to worry that low-skilled labor will eventually be made irrelevant by robots. But building robots that replace people is an expensive proposition. Often letting the humans do it is more economical.

Some apparently semi-skilled tasks turn out to be harder than they look, as many shoppers learned when they first tryied to check themselves out of a store at an self-checkout machine.

Others, such as repetitive assembly line work, lend themselves to automation by robots, and a robotic solution that works at one site can be minimally altered to work well at others; the market for the robots is scalable and so the investment in developing the robotic system is likely to pay off.

But the most promising advances in robotics are arriving from combinations of machine vision, tactile sensing, and high speed motion. The result is robots that can perform tasks as no human can.

Combine the capabilities of the robotic assemblies ertainly within 20 years robots will perform highly complex tasks, such as common surgeries. Consider a robotic system that can perform an appendectomy in 15 minutes versus one or two hours, or a tumor biopsy or a colonoscopy in minutes.

Maybe it isn't the low-wage, low-skill worker who has the most to fear from robots in the long run. The savings that can be achieved by automation at the low end of the skill-set curve is marginal compared to the savings at the high end. It is the ultra-expensive, high-skill worker, such as the surgeon, who along with the rest of the support staff and equipment charge $147 per minute for the service, who is more likely to be replaced by a robot that costs a few dollars per hour in amortized purchase and maintenance costs. That robot will save a lot more money than a hamburger robot, and that's the point of creating a robot in the first place.

[Thailandnotes]

Re: Robots Will Create 'Permanently Unemployable Underclass'

the meme
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU#t=887

[Thailandnotes]

Re: Robots Will Create 'Permanently Unemployable Underclass'

posted twice

[Polish_Silver]

Automating the Operating room

My work has over the past decades placed me on several occasions among experts in robotics and machine vision. The intersection of automation and economics interests me.


Others, such as repetitive assembly line work, lend themselves to automation by robots, and a robotic solution that works at one site can be minimally altered to work well at others;

Maybe it isn't the low-wage, low-skill worker who has the most to fear from robots in the long run. T. It is the ultra-expensive, high-skill worker, such as the surgeon, . . ..

This process is already well along.

However, in electronics, the assembly line paradigm has proved very powerful in eliminating low/medium skill jobs.
The jobs not eliminated have been the high skill ones: circuit design, process engineers, software engineers, test engineers.

The question to ask is, does this task really require human thinking? I suspect that robotic surgery will make each human surgeon more efficient, so that he can do 10 operations/day instead of 2. That could reduce the total number of surgeons needed.

[Shakespear]

Re: Automating the Operating room

Well I am may not see the full fruits of this work (I hope), but this one gives me the shivers.

http://www.eecs.harvard.edu/ssr/proj...A/kilobot.html

In current robotics research there is a vast body of work on algorithms and control methods for groups of decentralized cooperating robots, called a swarm or collective. These algorithms are generally meant to control collectives of hundreds or even thousands of robots; however, for reasons of cost, time, or complexity, they are generally validated in simulation only, or on a group of a few 10s of robots. To address this issue, we designed the Kilobot, a low-cost robot designed to make testing collective algorithms on hundreds or thousands ("kilos") of robots accessible to robotics researchers. Each robot has the basic capabilities required for a swarm robot, but is made with low-cost parts, and is mostly assembled by an automated process. In addition, the system design allows a single user to easily and scalably operate a large Kilobot collective, such as programming, powering on, and charging all robots. systems.

"cooperating robots, called a swarm or collective", like Swarm of Killer Bees or a Commie Collective ala Soviet Union ?

[Southernguy]

Re: Automating the Operating room

"Consider a robotic system that can perform an appendectomy in 15 minutes versus one or two hours, or a tumor biopsy or a colonoscopy in minutes. "
Used to be a general surgeon long time ago. I could perform and appendectomy (provided lean patient with a normal abdominal wall) in about 20 minutes. And I was no exceptional guy by any means.
Surgery is not only about technical skills. Is medicine, and medicine is about human empathy. While the techical aspects of the profession are important there shall always be a need for the human intercourse which is essential part of the game.
Technology is changing much of medical diagnostis and treatment. Laparoscopic surgery is proof of that. But, and maybe I am an old dinosaur, there shall not be a substitution of man by machine here.

[Polish_Silver]

Re: Robots vs secretaries

Hogwash. The robots will take all our jobs future is nonsense propagated by the transhumanist cult.
the "Personal Digital Assistant" that was supposed to get rid of all the secretaries 20 years ago.

Engineering departments employ a small fraction of the clerical staff that they used to. The few remaining are greatly enhanced by word processors, spread sheets, printers. The number of secretaries needed has gone way down.

[Ghent12]

Re: Robots vs secretaries

Engineering departments employ a small fraction of the clerical staff that they used to. The few remaining are greatly enhanced by word processors, spread sheets, printers. The number of secretaries needed has gone way down.

A shift in the labor force of a certain industry due to technological advances doesn't provide strong evidence that technology displaces all jobs of a certain type, leave alone all jobs of a certain skill level. Engineering departments may have shed their administrative payrolls a bit, but I'll wager that dozens of other industries were able to capitalize and bulk up their administrative profiles due to the increased productivity of such laborers thanks to technology. The Jevons Paradox generally applies to labor just as it does to all other resources.

As for the "need" for surgeons decreasing, I doubt that will ever happen. If surgeons are made vastly more productive due to technology, then more patients can be served more cheaply. Additionally, surgeons might have time to expand their specialties and skill sets.

[Polish_Silver]

Re: Automating the Operating room

"Consider a robotic system that can perform an appendectomy in 15 minutes versus one or two hours, or a tumor biopsy or a colonoscopy in minutes. "
Used to be a general surgeon long time ago. I could perform and appendectomy (provided lean patient with a normal abdominal wall) in about 20 minutes. And I was no exceptional guy by any means.
Surgery is not only about technical skills. Is medicine, and medicine is about human empathy. While the techical aspects of the profession are important there shall always be a need for the human intercourse which is essential part of the game.
Technology is changing much of medical diagnostis and treatment. Laparoscopic surgery is proof of that. But, and maybe I am an old dinosaur, there shall not be a substitution of man by machine here.

I think the need for empathy varies greatly with the patient and the medical problem. I also wonder if you need medical school
and exhorbitant fees to offer empathy to the patient.

[seobook]

Re: Robots Will Create 'Permanently Unemployable Underclass'

Some apparently semi-skilled tasks turn out to be harder than they look, as many shoppers learned when they first tryied to check themselves out of a store at an self-checkout machine.
...
Maybe it isn't the low-wage, low-skill worker who has the most to fear from robots in the long run. The savings that can be achieved by automation at the low end of the skill-set curve is marginal compared to the savings at the high end. It is the ultra-expensive, high-skill worker, such as the surgeon, who along with the rest of the support staff and equipment charge $147 per minute for the service, who is more likely to be replaced by a robot that costs a few dollars per hour in amortized purchase and maintenance costs. That robot will save a lot more money than a hamburger robot, and that's the point of creating a robot in the first place.

It seems almost every time you post something counter-meme like this, there's a confirming news headline the following day which I run into without even actively seeking it out
http://online.wsj.com/articles/wal-m...ays-1408112765

In an attempt to lure more customers this holiday season, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is promising to staff each of its cash register from the day after Thanksgiving through the days just before Christmas during peak shopping times.

The move, called the "checkout promise," is aimed at addressing one of the retailer's biggest customer complaints: long waits in checkout lines, which can cause even more frustration when positions aren't fully staffed.

[lektrode]

Re: Robots Will Create 'Permanently Unemployable Underclass'

....
...
McDonalds sank millions into similar robots before decided that the humans were cheaper and more flexible to provide the full variety of food items they serve, and frequent changes to the menu to keep up with evolving consumer tastes. Momentum Machines' mission to "democratize access to high quality food by making it available to the masses" is as foolish as the value proposition of an expensive robot that can only create variations on a single food item. Only in California could such an idea get funded. It will fail and be forgotten within a year......
...
..
Some apparently semi-skilled tasks turn out to be harder than they look, as many shoppers learned when they first tryied to check themselves out of a store at an self-checkout machine.
...

well.. i can think of at least one other state, where even goofier things get showered with taxpayer funding...

but looks like even big bad wallyworld has figured this out:

Wal-Mart Brings Back Human Cashiers

Wal-Mart promised customers that it will bring back human cashiers to all its cash registers for a limited time, to curtail the long waits at its checkout lines

Published: August 16, 2014 at 12:19 pm ESTBy: George Zack
Click Ticker to See live coverage

• WMT
• TGT
• DLTR
• DG

Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. (WMT) said it will reduce customers’ waiting time at checkout lines by staffing all its cash registers. The all-staffing promise, which can vary by store, will generally be applicable in the time after Thanksgiving and before Christmas, and for weekend afternoons only.

Previously, Walmart replaced some of its staffed cash registers with automated checkout systems in an attempt to cut down labour costs. However, the measure led to huge checkout lines at staffed checkout counters, exacerbated by customers who sought to use discount coupons or price matching.

In order to resolve these complaints, the company made the checkout promise, to win back its lost customers by providing them an opportunity to get in and out of its giant stores quickly.

The long wait at Walmart’s super shopping centres has been a major reason for the shift in consumer spending toward smaller stores such as Dollar Tree, Inc. (DLTR) and Dollar General Corp. (DG). These small stores – known as Neighborhood market stores – are more convenient as they allow customers to shop quickly.

For this reason, Walmart opened 22 Neighborhood market stores in the last quarter, and plans to open 180 to 200 more by the end of current fiscal year. The shifting trend is further highlighted by the fact that for the second quarter, the company posted flat growth in comparable store sales (comps) for Sam’s Club and Walmart US. However, comps at its Neighborhood market stores surged 5.6% from the previous quarter.

Furthermore, the company’s checkout promise is another attempt to attract more customer traffic amid declining soft retail sales and lower consumer spending. The retail sales for July were flat month-over-month (MoM), missing analysts’ estimate of 0.2% growth.

Target Corporation (TGT), Walmart’s major competitor, made a similar attempt to increase customer traffic to its stores, extending its closing hours by an hour. Its stores will now remain open till 10 pm or 11 pm on Sundays, while for the rest of the week days, they will remain open till 11 pm or Midnight.

[lektrode]

Re: Robots Will Create 'Permanently Unemployable Underclass'

It seems almost every time you post something counter-meme like this, there's a confirming news headline the following day which I run into without even actively seeking it out
http://online.wsj.com/articles/wal-m...ays-1408112765

+1
;)

[vt]

Re: Robots Will Create 'Permanently Unemployable Underclass'

This is how they will mollify the masses:

http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/1...aling-our-jobs