60,000 slaves replaced by robots

Sh1tbag OToole

peasant wrote: »

Most people actually do want a purpose to their lives, do some work, if not necessarily the mind numbing job they're doing now.

With basic income covered that frees them up to do other things...be creative, be caring, be social.

Call me an optimist, but I would see a guaranteed basic income as a huge opportunity for society rather than its downfall

I'd like to think so but if you look at the daily habits of the unemployed it does not fill me with hope. Maybe the dole just isn't high enough, if it was 4-600 a week maybe they would have a better life

peasant

Sh1tbag OToole wrote: »

I'd like to think so but if you look at the daily habits of the unemployed it does not fill me with hope. Maybe the dole just isn't high enough, if it was 4-600 a week maybe they would have a better life

One of the issues of the dole is that if you do something on the side that gives you an additional income ...you loose it.

So you do nothing (and doing nothing all day isn't exactly good for your state of mind)

briany

Sh1tbag OToole wrote: »

Say the basic wage thing gets sorted, what will people do if they don't have the daily hum-dum-dum-a-drummadum-dum of corporate office life or whatever they used to do before. Do they sit in their Castleknock Semi-D's watching telly all day? Things like drug addiction and alcoholism are almost guaranteed to go up as far as I can see.

Will they turn to VR for escapism and never leave their houses again? Its nice to think that people will spend their free time kayaking and going on leisurely cycles and spending time with their family but I have a hunch that is unlikely to happen

Most people would still go to work, if they have work to go to. As I understand it, the basic income thing is a universal form of social security and a safety net. I'm not saying I think it would work, but I think that's the basic theory. As far as drug addiction, alcoholism and general idleness going up, that is a concern, but that would be where education comes into play as to how to funnel a weekly stipend could be funneled into a positive life approach instead of the nightmare scenario where a dole-for-all turns everyone into a chav. The opposite view would be that the money frees people a bit to go to school, work in fields that interest them, become involved in their community, do community projects, volunteer, work for free, for experience without so much of that used feeling, be creative, work part-time with time left for family. Obviously, a basic income per month wouldn't be very much to live on, solely, so if you want that semi-detached or that swimming pool, you'd still have to do something else to get you there.

As for people who'd sit at home and watch telly instead of going to their former job if they had a basic income, that's a concern I've heard before, but then it also makes me wonder exactly how fulfilling their former job could have been for them if staying at home is the preferable option in this imagined scenario. A lot of people with financial independence working in a job they like will continue to work that job. If you're doing something you enjoy, you keep on doing it until such time as something that gives you more net enjoyment comes along, I suppose.

And I'm not really advocating for a BI, as it could be a load of old claptrap that the Central Bank Communist teens would have been going crazy over, I don't know the specifics of it, but I'm just throwing up the opposite view for the sake of being devil's advocate.

suicide_circus

Ok so robots replace all human workers leaving the majority of world population unemployed....

So these rebots are making products and providing services that no one can afford to pay for as the vast majority of consumers are unemployed....

So all the companies with a robot workforce go out of business...the world economy shrinks and implodes.

Sounds like bad economics to me.

Antar Bolaeisk

Eugene Norman wrote: »

I wondered about that. Maybe people prefer professionally poured pints, maybe some people games the system.

There's likely going to be a niche market for such things. Certainly the super-wealthy are probably going to do such things as maintain a large work-force of human labour as a way of flaunting their cash.

There's no way that it could provide enough jobs for people.

The future is more and more people unemployed, staying at home, having more sex, making more humans leading to a boom in the population and eventual over-crowding of the earth and the depletion of all the remaining resources.

That or we'll all turn in to the people from Wall-E.

Jack Killian

peasant wrote: »

Foxconn, that beacon of high wages and good working conditions has apparently replaced 60.000 of its workers with robots.

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-36376966

For years I used to laugh at the idea that we're all going to be replaced by robots one day ...but if it makes sense for foxconn to replace the lowest of the low paid workers in their Chinese sweatshops with machines, it doesn't look good for our expensive labour over here ..or does it?

It all depends on what "..ism" is in control when it inevitably happens.

If it's hyper-capitalism, then we all lose out; us because we've no jobs and the companies because we've no cash to pay for their products, regardless of how cheap it is.

If it's some sort of unextreme socialism, then we get the leisure time promised in the 80s when such ideas were first mooted.

Unfortunately the 80s version didn't tell us who would pay our bills, and if companies aren't forced to pay tax to pay the resultingly-idle population (see FG's stance on Apple) then there's no spending power.

Wibbs

sheesh wrote: »

I still don't know how economic system is supposed to work though if everything is automated and less people are working who the hell is buying the products that the robots are creating and transporting.

There's truth in that alright.

What the hell is china going to do?

China is already buggered it just hasn't realised it yet. Their demographic crisis is a major problem that will be almost impossible to outrun, they're growing older faster than they're becoming rich and never mind the largest bubble in economic history. Ireland with her ghost estates was in the tupenny hapenny place compared to China with Ghost cities.

Antar Bolaeisk wrote:

The future is more and more people unemployed, staying at home, having more sex, making more humans leading to a boom in the population and eventual over-crowding of the earth and the depletion of all the remaining resources.

I can see a time not so far away where population control will be a requirement. There are simply too many of us. You have economic types flipping out because places like Europe have (slightly) contracting populations. I say good. Since I was born the worlds population has more than doubled. That is unsustainable. Sooner or later we're gonna have to come to terms with too many people and how a) we reduce the numbers* and b) how do we create new social and economic models to deal with the reduction.


*discourage being a parent, with taxes and the like. A requirement for a licensing system for kids. If you don't pass the stress tests, sorry, no kids.

briany

suicide_circus wrote: »

Ok so robots replace all human workers leaving the majority of world population unemployed....

So these rebots are making products and providing services that no one can afford to pay for as the vast majority of consumers are unemployed....

So all the companies with a robot workforce go out of business...the world economy shrinks and implodes.

Sounds like bad economics to me.

This implies that mechanization wouldn't dramatically lower the price of things. In times gone by, the printing press made the process of making books a lot simpler and more economical. The price of books went down and the availability went up. What would have happened if book sellers insisted on selling books for the same fee as when they were painstakingly put together by hand? I would have to imagine a whole lot of unsold books would have been piling up, or demand would not have risen, all because of a book seller's greed, even though their profit margin would have been just fine to sell at an affordable price.

Sh1tbag OToole

briany wrote: »

This implies that mechanization wouldn't dramatically lower the price of things. In times gone by, the printing press made the process of making books a lot simpler and more economical. The price of books went down and the availability went up. What would have happened if book sellers insisted on selling books for the same fee as when they were painstakingly put together by hand? I would have to imagine a whole lot of unsold books would have been piling up, or demand would not have risen, all because of a book seller's greed, even though their profit margin would have been just fine to sell at an affordable price.

The company behind the product might disappear completely and instead people will 3D print open-source goods designed by the newly unemployed who like to spend their day designing things for the craic.

briany

Sh1tbag OToole wrote: »

The company behind the product might disappear completely and instead people will 3D print open-source goods designed by the newly unemployed who like to spend their day designing things for the craic.

Doesn't sound too bad to me. Companies that are no longer useful tend to disappear. People like to say that the world doesn't owe anyone a living (and I wouldn't say a BI would provide most people an adequate one in any case) but on the other hand, does the world owe you something to do for the sake of being occupied?

And I like the idea of what material independence a 3D printer could provide. They're not quite there yet in the home but in years to come they could be used to help a person build all kinds of useful objects. Yeah some people would use them for stupid stuff, but others could be using it to make parts for a little wind-powered generator and so forth. Would that be so bad?

suicide_circus

I'd imagine that all the displaced labour force would be banished to the cruel and arid "badlands" while the rest of the still working population toil in the subterranean robot maintainance caves beneath the 6 megacities that survived the apocalyptic global conflict known as "The Cleansing".

Rjd2

Wibbs wrote: »

There's truth in that alright.

China is already buggered it just hasn't realised it yet. Their demographic crisis is a major problem that will be almost impossible to outrun, they're growing older faster than they're becoming rich and never mind the largest bubble in economic history. Ireland with her ghost estates was in the tupenny hapenny place compared to China with Ghost cities.

I can see a time not so far away where population control will be a requirement. There are simply too many of us. You have economic types flipping out because places like Europe have (slightly) contracting populations. I say good. Since I was born the worlds population has more than doubled. That is unsustainable. Sooner or later we're gonna have to come to terms with too many people and how a) we reduce the numbers* and b) how do we create new social and economic models to deal with the reduction.


*discourage being a parent, with taxes and the like. A requirement for a licensing system for kids. If you don't pass the stress tests, sorry, no kids.

This sort off thing in 20 years time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcx-nf3kH_M

Eugene Norman

Wibbs wrote: »

There's truth in that alright.

China is already buggered it just hasn't realised it yet. Their demographic crisis is a major problem that will be almost impossible to outrun, they're growing older faster than they're becoming rich and never mind the largest bubble in economic history. Ireland with her ghost estates was in the tupenny hapenny place compared to China with Ghost cities.

I can see a time not so far away where population control will be a requirement. There are simply too many of us. You have economic types flipping out because places like Europe have (slightly) contracting populations. I say good. Since I was born the worlds population has more than doubled. That is unsustainable. Sooner or later we're gonna have to come to terms with too many people and how a) we reduce the numbers* and b) how do we create new social and economic models to deal with the reduction.


*discourage being a parent, with taxes and the like. A requirement for a licensing system for kids. If you don't pass the stress tests, sorry, no kids.

Your argument on China's demographic crisis is the exact opposite of the rest of your argument. If China has a crisis it's because of its 1 child policy (the very policy that you want at the *) and it's one child policy is reducing its future working population. That's the crisis.

For many reasons the effect on China is over exaggerated, fewer workers may be a blessing as it could push up wages, something the world needs. The Chinese however don't have much of an old age pension so any effect will be within families.

Eugene Norman

briany wrote: »

Doesn't sound too bad to me. Companies that are no longer useful tend to disappear. People like to say that the world doesn't owe anyone a living (and I wouldn't say a BI would provide most people an adequate one in any case) but on the other hand, does the world owe you something to do for the sake of being occupied?

And I like the idea of what material independence a 3D printer could provide. They're not quite there yet in the home but in years to come they could be used to help a person build all kinds of useful objects. Yeah some people would use them for stupid stuff, but others could be using it to make parts for a little wind-powered generator and so forth. Would that be so bad?

3D printing is a load of old horlicks.

briany

Eugene Norman wrote: »

3D printing is a load of old horlicks.

Right now, it doesn't appear you can do much in the home apart from make some stuff out of plastic and it's more of a novelty for the average person, and an expensive one at that, but in the years to come, who knows? The day may well come where you're able to put together some pretty nifty stuff for no more than the cost of the raw materials bought in bulk and the electricity to run the printer on (blueprints downloaded for free).

scamalert

It makes me laugh when people seem like worried,think theres movement in US already about banning robots since you know they'll gonna take over etc crap.

If 60thousand jobs that are crappy anyway for likes of apple can be replaced with robots the better it is,since you skip a lot of human error,and its not like these robots arent used everyday anyway,car manufacturing would be impossible,and basically any large manufacturing to avoid errors that humans tend to oversee or make not to mention precision and scale in welding,micro/nano soldering etc.

So where its possible to replace person with machine that can do job better dont see issue with that,since were still too far away from such daily occurrence and even when implemented you need basic workers to monitor and service every one of them,not to mention amount of people needed to create and program such machines.

Winterlong

Foxconn will treat the robots better than they treated the humans.

Eugene Norman

briany wrote: »

Right now, it doesn't appear you can do much in the home apart from make some stuff out of plastic and it's more of a novelty for the average person, and an expensive one at that, but in the years to come, who knows? The day may well come where you're able to put together some pretty nifty stuff for no more than the cost of the raw materials bought in bulk and the electricity to run the printer on (blueprints downloaded for free).

Try to look at something complex. A bycycle. Look how many components and materials it has. Now try work out how many printers (or lathes or industrial machinery) you need to build it.

Capt'n Midnight

Wibbs wrote: »

I can see a time not so far away where population control will be a requirement. There are simply too many of us.

Affluent countries , and those with good education and women's rights have lower birth rates. Aren't the peak projections for 11Bn people and then a slight decrease after that ?

Food isn't a problem, unless everyone wants free range steak. We could easily feed maybe 12Bn today if we shared and didn't waste as much. Remember there aren't famines in functioning democracies.

Capt'n Midnight

Eugene Norman wrote: »

Try to look at something complex. A bycycle. Look how many components and materials it has. Now try work out how many printers (or lathes or industrial machinery) you need to build it.

true but didn't spacex or nasa recently 3D print components for a rocket engine and saved something like 100 sub component assemblies in the process ?

briany

Eugene Norman wrote: »

Try to look at something complex. A bycycle. Look how many components and materials it has. Now try work out how many printers (or lathes or industrial machinery) you need to build it.

I was thinking more along the lines of a whisk.

jimgoose

briany wrote: »

Right now, it doesn't appear you can do much in the home apart from make some stuff out of plastic and it's more of a novelty for the average person, and an expensive one at that, but in the years to come, who knows? The day may well come where you're able to put together some pretty nifty stuff for no more than the cost of the raw materials bought in bulk and the electricity to run the printer on (blueprints downloaded for free).

Until such time as the full-fat Star Trek replicator, with full molecular-level control of the work, is available, 3D printing will be a poor imitation of the likes of Foxconn - i.e. inferior plastic tat reinforced with Chinky-Dinky monkey-metal.

Sh1tbag OToole

jimgoose wrote: »

Until such time as the full-fat Star Trek replicator, with full molecular-level control of the work, is available, 3D printing will be a poor imitation of the likes of Foxconn - i.e. inferior plastic tat reinforced with Chinky-Dinky monkey-metal.

Sure Foxconn themselves havn't full molecular-level control. They only assemble electronics from components and whack a bucket of solder at it from a brave long distance, then have a bunch of underpaid serfs (now bots) put it in a plastic case.

jimgoose

Sh1tbag OToole wrote: »

Sure Foxconn themselves havn't full molecular-level control. They only assemble electronics from components and whack a bucket of solder at it from a brave long distance, then have a bunch of underpaid serfs (now bots) put it in a plastic case.

I know all about Foxconn. I should have made it clear, but I mean to imply that a poor imitation of them would be beyond dreadful.

Sh1tbag OToole

jimgoose wrote: »

I know all about Foxconn. I should have made it clear, but I mean to imply that a poor imitation of them would be beyond dreadful.

3D printing is improving faster than Foxconn though, so there is hope for us yet that we may live in a world that survives perfectly well without Foxconn.

I can see some sort of combo of the trusty ould pick and place machine and a 3D printer being developed as a stop-gap for inserting components that can't be printed just yet

jimgoose

Sh1tbag OToole wrote: »

3D printing is improving faster than Foxconn though, so there is hope for us yet that we may live in a world that survives perfectly well without Foxconn.

I can see some sort of combo of the trusty ould pick and place machine and a 3D printer being developed as a stop-gap for inserting components that can't be printed just yet

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lathe

Sh1tbag OToole

jimgoose wrote: »

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lathe

Disgusted there is no Myford 7 on that page

Capt'n Midnight

briany wrote: »

I was thinking more along the lines of a whisk.

Dealz are selling whisks where most of the parts are plastic.
IIRC the only metal bits are rods, which need minimal machining.

wil

My name is URL wrote: »

It's pretty much obligatory to post this video in threads about this subject

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU

Here's what I got from that.
"I am horse"
"Ride me."

The whole social conundrum defined and solved.

mickrock

Any reduction in the amount of work people have to do is good news, especially if it's of mindless, repetitive work.

George Orwell wrote about such work (dishwashers(plongeurs)) in 1920s Paris:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gx_BWSVhz8w

BoatMad

The fear of being displaced by technology , has been around since the industrial revolution. Yet , the size of the employed human workforce has grown since that time, not shrunk

That video is virtually a re-run of the " mighty micro " series broadcast in the late seventies. It again predicted mass " unemployability " due to the advent of widespread computer automation, it equally posed the question of what to do with all the leisure ( ie not working ) time the population would have .

Of course it failed to see the huge numbers employed in the tech industry itself and all those employed as a spinoff of such technology

The problem with future gazing , is that while elements of the prediction are correct , you cannot predict things that aren't presently conceivable ( almost by definition ) , example the Internet etc.

I think we're safe enough

Junkyard Tom

BoatMad wrote: »

The fear of being displaced by technology , has been around since the industrial revolution. Yet , the size of the employed human workforce has grown since that time, not shrunk

Did you deliberately ignore this post?

Wibbs wrote: »

Nope, afraid not. Not this time around. History simply can't inform nearly as well as previously as the fundamentals have changed.

In your example human labour moved from one area(canals), to another(railways). Human labour was still required, it moved in a different direction. In this new era human labour itself is no longer required for an increasing list of jobs. "Well we can repair the machines". Nope, that'll be a) a tiny number of people and b) the machines will repair each other and c) will get better at doing so with each generation, so even the tiny number of robot repair workers will dwindle.

There has already been an element of that with the PC. Back in the 90's livings were to be made just building, servicing and fixing PC's. Today not nearly so much. More and more they're becoming sealed units, non upgradable, reliably use for a few years, throw away, buy new. Apple products a good example of this and they have proven to be very good at reading crystal balls in the past.

Oh well more people will get jobs in the "thinking" rather than "doing" market? That already happened to a large degree in the West, from outsourcing to cheaper labour markets(skin robots) and automation so more people work in offices than on shop floors. Great, but automation is already in play in "thinking" jobs and again is getting better year on year and there will be a point reached in every thinking job where a skin robot will be replaced by an electronic one. This is already happening. It's just a matter of time before whatever career you work in reaches that point.

So no, it's not the same as before. It's as big a shift as the move from agrarian to industrialisation, but with far wider implications for humanity than that shift. That shift created work, this one will decimate it.

BoatMad

Junkyard Tom wrote: »

Did you deliberately ignore this post?

No.

I made two points ,

Firstly, predicting the future , tends to be fundamentally flawed . That flaw is that we cannot predict " discoveries " or unforeseen applications of technology. If we could , by definition , they would not be discoveries or " unforeseen" .

Hence predictions of unemployability, which have been around since the beginnings of the industrial revolution have so far proven to be false, the global workforce has actually increased significantly

I urge you to view " the mighty micro " series ( on you tube ) because we have the advantage of living in the period today , that was supposed to affected by the technology being predicted. You can therefore spot the fallacies

This leads to my second point.

The advent of new technology and associated discoveries in themselves create new industries , new ways of business and interaction. Humans like to make themselves busy and seem to continually find ways to do so.

The example of the railways remains valid. The point was that a ( and very radical ) new way of moving goods and people , spurred social and business changes that in itself employed far more people then displaced by the closure of canals. The " paradigm " shifted.

Equally in the mighty micro , the author did not foresee the huge size of the tech industry , the enormous numbers employed as a result of the Internet , social media etc etc etc . What he foresaw was limited by the perception of the future , a perception formed and limited by the very tine in which he made them.

The advent of more advanced AI, will undoubtably cause job displacement , but I have confidence that unforeseen consequences will in itself keep us gainfully tied to the grindstone for many generations to come.

Junkyard Tom

BoatMad wrote: »

predicting the future , tends to be fundamentally flawed .

Then you contradict yourself by going ahead and predicting the future. Why is your future any more a reliable prediction than Wibbs' future?

The example of the railways remains valid.

Why? Because you said so? It is widely agreed upon that there will be less-and-less employment in many sectors. What sectors of employment are set to absorb the numbers to be made 'redundant'?

What he foresaw was limited by the perception of the future , a perception formed and limited by the very tine in which he made them.

Which is exactly what you're doing.

eeguy

Other revolutions: "Horses/boats/hand ploughs etc are a bit sh1t. Lets replace them with something better. "

This revolution:"People are a bit sh1t. Lets replace them with something better. "

BoatMad

Junkyard Tom wrote: »

Then you contradict yourself by going ahead and predicting the future. Why is your future any more a reliable prediction than Wibbs' future?



Why? Because you said so? It is widely agreed upon that there will be less-and-less employment in many sectors. What sectors of employment are set to absorb the numbers to be made 'redundant'?



Which is exactly what you're doing.

All of us , you , me , wibbs, " the mighty micro " , are predicting the future , that's for sure.

However my predictions are based on the effects of technology changes in the past ( and recent computer past ) and yet , the global workforce has increased despite dire warnings from every generation of the wibbs nature.

Hence I am confident enough to conclude that future technological change will result in similar outcomes, in that the " grindstone" isn't going to be done away with anytime soon.

I at least can point to historical trends that support my view , yours and or wibbs are merely expressions of Luddism , dressed up in pseudo science. , that have no supporting historical evidence.

BoatMad

eeguy wrote: »

Other revolutions: "Horses/boats/hand ploughs etc are a bit sh1t. Lets replace them with something better. "

This revolution:"People are a bit sh1t. Lets replace them with something better. "

No , they are compatible , people use the resulting technology change and societal change to invent new forms of employment.

In the seventies , exactly the same predictions of societal doom were forthcoming from the " prophets " of new technology , the microprocessor and the expectation of ubiquitous computing displacing humans from traditional work patterns. Wibbs is only a continuation of that, what the doom Sayers couldn't see was how the technology brought forth new forms of working . Who would have predicted in the 70s , that the microprocessor , would have spawned an enormous software /web industry or employed 10000s in creating social media businesses

Samaris

Just because it's interesting (to me anyway), but "robot" was a word applied to the serf system; I think it's an Eastern European word originally (much like "slave" came from "Slav" after a few generations of everyone beating up on the Slavs) and was applied to the people that worked the land for the landowners.


So, etymologically, your post reads "60,000 Slavs replaced by Czech (?) serfs" :P

Coming over here, taking our jerbs...

enfant terrible

BoatMad wrote: »

The fear of being displaced by technology , has been around since the industrial revolution. Yet , the size of the employed human workforce has grown since that time, not shrunk

That video is virtually a re-run of the " mighty micro " series broadcast in the late seventies. It again predicted mass " unemployability " due to the advent of widespread computer automation, it equally posed the question of what to do with all the leisure ( ie not working ) time the population would have .

Of course it failed to see the huge numbers employed in the tech industry itself and all those employed as a spinoff of such technology

The problem with future gazing , is that while elements of the prediction are correct , you cannot predict things that aren't presently conceivable ( almost by definition ) , example the Internet etc.

I think we're safe enough

True people having been predicting terrible times ahead since time began, probably human nature.

Doomsday phobia is a broad category that can encompass any fear of the end of the world. Some people fear plague, others nuclear holocaust, while still other people are afraid of Armageddon. Doomsday phobias are surprisingly common, occurring in some form in virtually every corner of the world. These phobias can be loosely categorized in several types. Two of the most common are technology phobias and religious phobias

Wibbs

BoatMad wrote: »

I at least can point to historical trends that support my view , yours and or wibbs are merely expressions of Luddism , dressed up in pseudo science. , that have no supporting historical evidence.

Point----Country mile----You. The lack of supporting historical evidence for what is coming, indeed has already arrived is the point. There is no doubt, unless one is wedded to easy economic rhetoric, that this time is different. Looking to history on this subject is akin to military tacticians enthusing about the historic evidence for the importance of cavalry charges after the Maxim machine gun was invented.

For a start the pace of change is unprecedented. The move away from agrarian to industrial took place over generations, not decades. Sure new people will come into new industries, but there is far less scope for retraining existing people in replaced industries who have already lost their jobs. This is why your canals/railway analogy doesn't fit. Basic labour isn't moving into other areas it is being replaced wholesale and there are contracting numbers of areas where labour can go.

Secondly, in every previous labour revolution the human muscle was replaced or augmented. It's one reason for the so called "knowledge economy". The average person in the west in very simplistic terms went from lifting to thinking, because of technology and/or exporting the lifting elsewhere to cheaper labour markets. This revolution is replacing thinking itself.

The "mighty micro" programme(and book) you reference was certainly wrong. Wrong in approach, wrong in what society actually wanted and most of all wrong in the prediction of the pace of technology. He was predicting sci fi computer brains. Thing is we're nowhere near that level, but the thing also is, we don't need to be. I'm not talking about daftness like the singularity or any of that. I'm not crystal ball gazing future tech like he was, I'm talking about current technology. What we can do and are doing, now, today, this minute.

OK hard example; transportation. The backbone of the world economy and the clothes on your back and beer in your belly. Transport jobs and businesses are pretty much doomed. Truck haulage is fecked the minute driverless artics are up to speed. And before you jump in guns blazing, this is not the horse being replaced by the car. The critical difference is both of those required human drivers. Hansom cab driver gets side tracked over decades by the car and bus and taxi. Yes we lose the background industries of the horse, but new ones are created for the car(many more as the tech needs many more to build and maintain it). He may move to the new tech, he may not, his sons will. His sons can. The human is still required. The same taxi dude or dudess today? The car is still around but won't require them and it won't require them in their lifetime. The factories that make the new cars will be smaller, lighter on their feet and strongly positively selecting for fewer humans in the manufacturing and retail and repair process. No basic wage can ever compete with the price of basic electricity.

This will also affect global manufacturing in a big way. Why pay for skin robots in China or India when you can have an electronic robot, or bot, or program closer to home? The Chinese are well aware of this, hence their heavy duty research into robotics and the subject of this very thread.


TL;DR? previous revolutions in technology replaced jobs, this one is sizing up to be the first to truly replace humans too. This may prove a positive thing, it might prove a negative, or as likely it'll prove a little from column A and a little from column B, but it will prove to be a major change.

BoatMad

OK hard example; transportation. The backbone of the world economy and the clothes on your back and beer in your belly. Transport jobs and businesses are pretty much doomed. Truck haulage is fecked the minute driverless artics are up to speed. And before you jump in guns blazing, this is not the horse being replaced by the car. The critical difference is both of those required human drivers. Hansom cab driver gets side tracked over decades by the car and bus and taxi. Yes we lose the background industries of the horse, but new ones are created for the car(many more as the tech needs many more to build and maintain it). He may move to the new tech, he may not, his sons will. His sons can. The human is still required. The same taxi dude or dudess today? The car is still around but won't require them and it won't require them in their lifetime. The factories that make the new cars will be smaller, lighter on their feet and strongly positively selecting for fewer humans in the manufacturing and retail and repair process. No basic wage can ever compete with the price of basic electricity.

I think its will be decades and possibly a generation or two, before we see truly driverless cars and trucks in real life conditions . After all Fusion power is entirely demonstrable , yet its practical deployment is still decades away , despite 30 years of work. The whole issue of legal accountability in the event of a crash between a human driven vehicle and an autonomous one , will take decades to work through

Look at aircraft , its entirely possible with todays technology to have pilotless automatically guided commercial airliners. I dont see pilots disappearing anyway soon

the fact that humans " may" get displaced by technology simply means that other areas of employment will evolve.


Note Im not arguing that there will not be major change, but the day a robot demonstrates an ability to function in a normal everyday human environment ( one that has no engineering to support robots ) is a long way away

The key failure of the micro micro, is that Evans, mis-read that the future demands of increasingly complex software, would spawn an enormous new industry of computer specialists, nor did he estimate correctly that the complexity of modern software .as it is written by humans, would in itself limit the march towards AI or machine intelligence

To take your taxi analogy, removing the driver, certainly displaces that person ( I would argue that this technology is a generation away ) , but I would postulate that the very existence of new discoveries will in themselves create more opportunities for employment


the thing is we cannot predict the future, so doom-mongering is just that . The historical precedents are that humans are creative and find ways to employ themselves

Junkyard Tom

BoatMad wrote: »

I think its will be decades and possibly a generation or two, before we see truly driverless cars and trucks in real life conditions .

Truly autonomous private cars are thought to be about 15 to 20 years away. That's millions of taxi jobs gone. Trucks will be much sooner with a 'pilot' i.e. a driver could be in the back whittling spoons and then be called to assist the truck in tricky spots.

eeguy

Junkyard Tom wrote: »

Truly autonomous private cars are thought to be about 15 to 20 years away. That's millions of taxi jobs gone. Trucks will be much sooner with a 'pilot' i.e. a driver could be in the back whittling spoons and then be called to assist the truck in tricky spots.

15 years is no time in the grand scheme of things.

15 years ago was 2001. World trade centre and the new Euro coins. This revolution is going to creep up and bite all those affected.

If you're 20 and want to drive for a living, you'll have to find a new living by the time you're 35.

The "pilot" will either be a jobsbridge type worker, or a remote operator monitoring a dozen vehicles.

Wibbs

BoatMad wrote: »

I think its will be decades and possibly a generation or two, before we see truly driverless cars and trucks in real life conditions. After all Fusion power is entirely demonstrable , yet its practical deployment is still decades away , despite 30 years of work.

Because it's barely demonstrable and wildly uneconomical. Driverless roads would work tomorrow using existing tech and existing infrastructure. But let's say it is even two generations away my points still stand.

the fact that humans " may" get displaced by technology simply means that other areas of employment will evolve.

Again you are missing the point, those other areas of employment themselves can be increasingly replaced with technology. And lest we need reminding the world population is still rising ever upward.

Note Im not arguing that there will not be major change, but the day a robot demonstrates an ability to function in a normal everyday human environment ( one that has no engineering to support robots ) is a long way away

It doesn't need to function in a normal human environment. Again that's the point.

the thing is we cannot predict the future, so doom-mongering is just that . The historical precedents are that humans are creative and find ways to employ themselves

For a start I'm not "doom mongering", all this could lead to a fantastic future or a horrific one. Or a mix of both. Who knows. I am suggesting your "history tells us X, therefore you're a luddite afraid of new technology" is built on dodgy foundations.

But let's examine the humans find ways to employ themselves when new tech comes along. Look to America and farm labour in the southern states after more mechanisation came along(the main economic driver for anti slavery stuff). There was a major employment problem among Blacks and poor Whites and large scale migration north. Sure some did well, but many more did not and Black ghettos and the Projects and the trailer parks stand testament to that. Or look at Detroit. Once a powerhouse of the car industry. For many reasons it went rapidly downhill, but mainly because labour elsewhere was more efficient, cheaper and built better cars. Labour itself didn't vanish it moved to Asia. But when "robots" replace the physical and mental labour itself, geography won't matter nearly so much.

In your historical examples you also miss a most salient point, training investment and adaptability. Farm worker who loses out to industrialisation can train very rapidly for most factory work(as we saw most recently in China). The farrier and blacksmith can adapt to working on Ford Model T's. Canal labourer again can repurpose within days to railway labourer. White collar techie work that is more and more in play requires many more years of training and is not nearly so adaptable to retraining for new opportunity. Increasingly jobs need more and more specialisation and education and experience investment, this is great, but it renders them far more vulnerable to obsolescence if and when it comes. Just like in nature specialists work great in niches, but if those niches shift even slightly chances are they're on the extinction bus. Generalists fare much better overall. The problem in today's world career specialists are inhabiting ever narrower niches and generalists are an endangered species.

peasant

Junkyard Tom wrote: »

Truly autonomous private cars are thought to be about 15 to 20 years away. Trucks will be much sooner ...

The truck bit more or less already happened two months ago

http://www.theverge.com/2016/4/7/11383392/self-driving-truck-platooning-europe

ScumLord

peasant wrote: »

For years I used to laugh at the idea that we're all going to be replaced by robots one day ...but if it makes sense for foxconn to replace the lowest of the low paid workers in their Chinese sweatshops with machines, it doesn't look good for our expensive labour over here ..or does it?

The thing is though the machines are probably better at that job. Why would we get people to do a job that a machine can do better? We've bought stuff from China where I work and more than a fifth of it is broken. It's still so cheap that we can take that hit and still break even but it would turn any company off buying there again. Machines increase quality more often than not as well as making more of.

Deleted User wrote: »

Its just capitalism in action really. Slavery was replaced by a 'workforce' because it became cheaper to 'free' slaves (employers didn't have to feed & house people) and 'pay' workers a 'wage' in return for their labour. "You have your own money now, so f**k off and house and feed yourselves." Machines now replace people, to the message to people now is: "f**k off people, period. I dont need you at all to make myself a profit".

Machines killed slavery and brought about the work force. And now the machines will liberate us all from boring production line work and monotonous office labour. We just have to figure out what we're going to do with all the spare time. Find some "jobs" to do while we wait to die? Or get back to large scale social projects like the Egyptians and Mayans used to do? Capitalism is desperately trying to stop our machines from liberating us but they can't stop the landslide at this stage.

At the end of the day machines can do all the things we tell them to do very well, but it doesn't really matter how interconnected they get they still won't have the first clue what's going on. They still need us to tell them what to make and where it goes, otherwise they'll sit there doing nothing. At the moment we have our machines making irelivant tat, I see no reason to protect that setup and look forward to the day we finally realize our current economy is a waste of time and resources and let it collapse.

peasant

ScumLord wrote: »

... look forward to the day we finally realize our current economy is a waste of time and resources and let it collapse.

Me too ...I would however favour one of those famous "soft landings" ..a real soft one this time.

ScumLord

peasant wrote: »

Me too ...I would however favour one of those famous "soft landings" ..a real soft one this time.

that would be great, it would be totally doable too. I don't think our generation has the stomach for revolution, we don't want to risk what we have for uncertainty. But we tend to have to be at the bottom of a barrel before we're forced to change. The people with all the power are great at convincing us we don't really want to be equal, especially under the capitalist system.

peasant

ScumLord wrote: »

...we tend to have to be at the bottom of a barrel before we're forced to change.

Well, the bottom of the barrel is coming into sight.

The next bank bailout (or the one after next at the latest) will have to be paid for by an army of unemployed ex-workers ...that should put things into a rather sharp focus

ScumLord

peasant wrote: »

Well, the bottom of the barrel is coming into sight.

The next bank bailout (or the one after next at the latest) will have to be paid for by an army of unemployed ex-workers ...that should put things into a rather sharp focus

That's nowhere near rock bottom though. We haven't really seen anything all that bad yet. I don't think we'll change until the average person has been pushed to breaking point. It will take starvation and real oppression before the general population will snap and force a violent change.

The last recession was merely an inconvenience compared to how bad it can actually get. The other problem is we're in a global economy so it will have to get horrible on a global scale, if one country rebels against the current global economy they'll be crushed into line again.