The robot that really could take your job.

123shooter

Permabear wrote: »

This post had been deleted.

This is very true and you would be surprised how cheaply you can live just by cutting back on consumerism without affecting your lives and missing out.

eeguy

123shooter wrote: »

This is very true and you would be surprised how cheaply you can live just by cutting back on consumerism without affecting your lives and missing out.

Exactly. Think back to the house of your childhood.
The only "gadget' would be the TV and house phone

professore

eeguy wrote: »

123shooter wrote: »

This is very true and you would be surprised how cheaply you can live just by cutting back on consumerism without affecting your lives and missing out.

Exactly. Think back to the house of your childhood.
The only "gadget' would be the TV and house phone

Phone? Ye were like royalty!

professore

https://youtu.be/kcAaWc0eLvw

Permabear

Permabear wrote: »

This post had been deleted.

You are in fact agreeing with what I said, however it's the consumerism that requires the second income to support it.

People still had cars and holidays in the 1970s all from a single income.

Jayop

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

Should every company that offshores a job have to pay for the social welfare of the person they let go ?

Or alternatively should companies based in this country quoting for government funded contracts be entitled to charge slightly more than foreign companies on the basis that it'll take some one off the dole ?


At present the only back pressure for offshoring jobs is customer changing provider but when they are all doing it ??

I dunno capt tbh. But if all the jobs that are predicted to be lost are lost then who is going to fund the social welfare? There's not going to be enough people working to fund it so it'll have to come from commercial entities. How that's done is really hard to say.

Jayop

Jayop wrote: »

I dunno capt tbh. But if all the jobs that are predicted to be lost are lost then who is going to fund the social welfare? There's not going to be enough people working to fund it so it'll have to come from commercial entities. How that's done is really hard to say.

With so many businesses offshoring their tax affairs, the only way will by increasing VAT on sales. Which means that the consumers pay.

Permabear

This post has been deleted.

Deleted User

Deleted User wrote: »

If robots this agile become mass produced they'll start taking the jobs that only menial workers can do, like loading bins into the bin lorry to be emptied o
They'll be no jobs left, who is going to earn the money to pay for it all?????

Its already happened those jobs are taken too

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

ToddyDoody

Deleted User wrote: »

They'll be no jobs left, who is going to earn the money to pay for it all?????

They took all our jobs, again?

coastwatch

At least this guy is fighting back

doolox

It seems to me that new ways of making an income will be needed. Traditional jobs like retail, manufacturing, and transport will be greatly reduced, just like what happened to agriculture in the last century.

With the presence of nuclear weapons in our society, war as a means of employing surplus population and arbitrating who gets what in the global wealth pile will be undoable as the costs are too great for society to bear. If war solved anything most people could be persuaded to jump on the band wagon and allow it to happen but this will not happen so publically in the west at any rate. It may happen in a smaller scale in less developed countries but as these regions leap-frog over old technologies to adopt and use modern communications wars will become impossible to exploit by the rich people in order to create opportunities to obtain and retain a greater share of wealth from the masses.

There may be an huge increase in security and policing operations worldwide as a larger income gap between rich and poor becomes harder to maintain. These will need a large number of new recruits and technologies which will all need tighter and more transparent regulation....more jobs

There might be a huge increase in Arts, entertainment, sport and other human activities such as high end catering and accommodation provision where the main product is no longer the food or bed etc, which will be provided by robots but the personal service and event-like interaction which goes along with high class hotel experience. This might only be a limited market as most of the people may opt for self service, utilitarian accommodation to cut costs on their travel experiences.

To take a few examples we spend a lot less on food than we used to and we spend a lot less on clothes, these were once large employers in Ireland.

Energy saving strategies like insulation, sustainable energy sources like PV or wind and the advent of passive housing, electric cars etc are cutting costs, in future we may not need to earn as much as people do today for a given level of life. Fuel allowances and having to buy coal, gas or oil just to live may become relics of the past.

Another large area for growth is care of the elderly and children as most middle agers go out to work. A large decrease in available low skilled jobs may see a return to single job families or reduced hours for each partner and a possible displacement of some of the existing childcare jobs. Only the highly skilled high income earners may afford childcare because the lower skilled people will not be able to afford to pay for childcare. The governments may have to increase childrens allowance or come up with some other income support for children as even working families may not be able to afford to support their children in the future. If people opt not to have children societies will collapse or disappear.

Cars of the future may be automated, cutting out the risks entailed with having drivers in cars and a manual road network, this may reduce costs of insurance and also electric cars will last longer, be cheaper to maintain and repair so costs of transport may reduce greatly.

I foresee that being unemployed in the future will not have the same social stigma as it seems to have now. Many different classes and areas will experience periods of unemployment and re assignment to new jobs and new careers many times in their lives. What is traumatic and uncertain now will be come routine in the future but it will need a massive rethink by loan providers, employers, government social welfare and taxation policy makers and politicians which is very lacking in this country.

Housing for many will become more fluid as ownership becomes impossible for most due to lack of a permanent job or ability to compete with gifted professionals for the scarce available houses. Rental will become the new norm but will be difficult for most without a steady and reliable income from which to draw down the necessary rents. Owning a house somewhere even remote from places of work will become a decision for many people as they try to balance the high costs of renting in a job rich area against actually owning a house in a cheap area. People who cannot work for health age or other reasons might be better off moving to cheap areas in order to cut living costs and free up housing for high earning workers. Many jobs may be relocated to cheaper areas if communications and other technologies reduces the costs of distance such as fuel and transport labour costs.

New and previously unthought of things may become items of trade and income generators in the future. There may be a large increase in coaches, trainers and entertainers as the rich get more money and have to spend less on other things such as food and cars which everyone will have in abundance.

Hand made stuff is already making a big comeback and pet care and horse based leisure is taking over many Irish farms previously devoted to beef and dairy enterprises, which are seeing reduced incomes.

In the western world we have seen many economic changes and upheavals in the past, no doubt we will see similar upheavals and changes in the future.

Yes, for unemployment to cease being stigmatized, you would really need to redefine unemployment benefit to being "basic income" which is paid to all, and any additional income earned by working is taxed with the basic income is factored in, then working becomes an option for those that want to have an improved standard of living.

Getting the business leaders to finance this is going to be a challenge though, there will be few others who would be earning enough to be able to pay for this through taxation.

doolox

Employers want to hold on to the coercive power of holding the threat of hunger and homelessness over their workforce and stifle demands for better wages and working conditions. Until a comprehensive substitution of human labour for automated labour is made and at a cheaper rate than human labour we will see resistance to a basic income for all.

Slavery was only abolished when mechanical means became cheaper and more efficient than forced human labour, there was a huge cost in security and vigilance required by all layers of society in a slave state which was often resented by the lower classes who were legally compelled to hunt down and take part in the returning of runaway slaves to the owners, regardless of whether or not they had an economic stake in the labour of that slave. Slavery in the deep south was replaced by sharecropping at the primary producing end of their economy and resulted in no great improvement in the lives of ex slaves, we still live in the shadow of those dark days in terms of the treatment of African Americans in the US today.

A similar process can be seen in modern day resistance to enhanced levels of Social payments and basic income schemes for all people in a country regardless of the employment status or availability for work. In general large corporations and those in the internationally traded sectors do not care how state payments are divided out because they can avoid or reduce tax liability resulting from the existence of such payments and are not competing at the lower end of the labour market. Individual countries cannot move too fast down the road towards a basic income for all without the risk of losing jobs and investments to cheaper locations, such a move needs to be done in a concerted and planned way by all the countries of a region. A start is being made by enforcing tax harmonisation and getting rid of offshore tax havens but a lot more needs to be done, My guess is that a shift from unemployment payments to basic income payments will be gradual and enforcement of job participation will be less coercive and involve less people over time.

Already there exists a provision that JSA people over 62 do not have to engage in a job search and can sign on once a month, a tacit admission that people of that age will find it difficult if not impossible to get a job or retrain in a reasonable time frame before hitting retirement age. One can expect that age to fall as employers reject older applicants for vacant jobs fewer of which will arise as processes and jobs become more automated.

Small, domestic businesses and labour intensive sectors such as cleaners, care providers and child minding services are more vocal in their resistance to a basic income for all because it competes directly with their need for cheap, compliant and cowed labour and increases their costs and reduces their profits in a more direct and visible way than seen by decision makers and profit stakeholders in large multinational corporations.

It will be up to governments and political representatives to provide an alternative means of earning or obtaining a living wage or payment to prevent rising crime lawlessness and desperation in the dark days ahead.

123shooter

doolox wrote: »

It will be up to governments and political representatives to provide an alternative means of earning or obtaining a living wage or payment to prevent rising crime lawlessness and desperation in the dark days ahead.

They have supposed to be doing that ever since they took over from the Kings & Queens................So I wouldn't put too much hope in it. More like they will see it as another chance to feather their own nests and those of their friends..........as usual.

RacoonQueen

That video is awesome. Really incredible what is being done and how quickly robot movements are being advanced...but someone is creating that. Robots being created to do the menial jobs, is not a bad thing. It will force people doing those roles to upskill. They'll take the jobs of the next people up, who will upskill and so on...

Someone still needs to be building technology, it can't and won't ever do it on it's own. Robots don't have free will, I don't think robots will ever have free will...how would you programme them to have free will to the extent that a human has? Can't see it.

Re: care homes. Lots of robots being worked on for these tasks. I mean, they've been using hoists for example in hospitals for years to lift patients. Automating a once manual job. I mean staff have to move the patient into the hoist but the hoist does the lifting. Much safer for everyone involved.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQ0RBLKkZjY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3lxBDc-IUw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3lxBDc-IUw

We already have banks with no staff in them...it's coming but the people who are complaining that robots are taking their jobs, just need to go and learn something new. Mutually beneficial IMO as it will force everyone to improve their education, make everyone smarter.

Someone still needs to monitor the machines in shops, banks etc...someone needs to repair them, empty them, refill them, reprogramme them...for now at least. They are much lower level jobs than the ones where people create these machines/robots. So people who are normally working behind a till...up skill and learn how to do something like that.
Humans will be smarter because robots are doing the jobs that require low skill level. I don't see this as a bad thing.

eeguy

But robots arent doing low skill work.

Robots are doing routine and procedural work. Now that can be assembling a car or examining an MRI.

If you're job is performing a set routine of tasks then it can and probably will be automated. Most office jobs will probably be automated in the next few decades by programs like Watson.

RacoonQueen

eeguy wrote: »

But robots arent doing low skill work.

Robots are doing routine and procedural work. Now that can be assembling a car or examining an MRI.

If you're job is performing a set routine of tasks then it can and probably will be automated. Most office jobs will probably be automated in the next few decades by programs like Watson.

Robots are doing low skill work. Self service checkouts and lodgement machines being the example.
Robots have been assembling cars for yonks now...we've coped ok without many of the jobs robots now do that used to be done by humans, you raise a good example with assembling a car as a lot of factory work, be it food or clothing or otherwise was once, mostly manual...now largely, robots. We'd continue to cope ok when they start replacing other jobs as other work will be created as we evolve.

James May's Man Machine is a few years old now but a pretty good look at what Robots have been doing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tEQlp3qfRlQ

Lots of reasons why an employer would go for a robot over a human too...no dossing for a start. Depending on the robots power source...it may not need a break at all, so can keep going where an human needs to take breaks...go home and sleep. A robot can work straight through. Huge savings could be made by employers there and a robot could prove far more productive.

donegaLroad

I googled 'will robots ever have free-will' and there is some interesting articles about robots will soon have free will, but we will have to program it into them.

I can't get my head around how a robot will ever have this capability. They will never think and feel the same as humans.

Take for example the so called 7 deadly sins, they can't and will never apply to robots.

Lust, anger, greed, sloth, envy and pride.

It will never know love or attraction, it will never feel sorrow.

Also, a robot will never have the capacity to be creative.

Permabear

This post has been deleted.

Plus no need to spend on health & safety equipment, and making the environment human friendly. And no need to pay wages, pension contributions & paid benefits.

donegaLroad

Deleted User wrote: »

Plus no need to spend on health & safety equipment, and making the environment human friendly. And no need to pay wages, pension contributions & paid benefits.

no maternity leave

server down

RacoonQueen wrote: »

Robots are doing low skill work. Self service checkouts and lodgement machines being the example.
Robots have been assembling cars for yonks now...we've coped ok without many of the jobs robots now do that used to be done by humans, you raise a good example with assembling a car as a lot of factory work, be it food or clothing or otherwise was once, mostly manual...now largely, robots. We'd continue to cope ok when they start replacing other jobs as other work will be created as we evolve.

James May's Man Machine is a few years old now but a pretty good look at what Robots have been doing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tEQlp3qfRlQ

Lots of reasons why an employer would go for a robot over a human too...no dossing for a start. Depending on the robots power source...it may not need a break at all, so can keep going where an human needs to take breaks...go home and sleep. A robot can work straight through. Huge savings could be made by employers there and a robot could prove far more productive.

There’s no iron law that says that new jobs will always be created when robots do older jobs. Clearly if they replace people fast enough it won’t happen.

server down

Permabear wrote: »

This post had been deleted.

There is literally no way you can guarantee that.

123shooter

So at the end of the day it looks like there is no more need for people except the elite and what you have is forced birth control and a bit of 'Logans Run'.........and I don't mean a young Jenny Agutter and others running around with hardly any clothes on (although very nice).

Logans Run was where civilization had reached the stage where there was no use for people or people over a certain age.........so you were exterminated on your 35th birthday I think or something like that.

Is your name on that list?

CalamariFritti

donegaLroad wrote: »

I googled 'will robots ever have free-will' and there is some interesting articles about robots will soon have free will, but we will have to program it into them.

I can't get my head around how a robot will ever have this capability. They will never think and feel the same as humans.

Take for example the so called 7 deadly sins, they can't and will never apply to robots.

Lust, anger, greed, sloth, envy and pride.

It will never know love or attraction, it will never feel sorrow.

Also, a robot will never have the capacity to be creative.

With what is today's mainstream knowledge on IT technology, yes, you would think that. But in 20, 30, 50 years from now things may look very different. Unless you believe in a soul the human body including the brain is likely just 'a system'. A very snazzy one and a very complicated one, but it apparently works on mechanical, chemical, physical and electric principles. Which means eventually it can be figured out. Definitely not unthinkable. And who knows what happens then. If it's figured out someone will want to re-create it.

server down

CalamariFritti wrote: »

With what is today's mainstream knowledge on IT technology, yes, you would think that. But in 20, 30, 50 years from now things may look very different. Unless you believe in a soul the human body including the brain is likely just 'a system'. A very snazzy one and a very complicated one, but it apparently works on mechanical, chemical, physical and electric principles. Which means eventually it can be figured out. Definitely not unthinkable. And who knows what happens then. If it's figured out someone will want to re-create it.

It’s probably a system. But doesn’t mean that we can work it out. Consciousness is not really understood.

At least these ones won't be taking your jobs, but they can take your place after a night on the sauce!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g0TaYhjpOfo

donegaLroad

worth the 2 minutes watch, how the education system will have to change quickly because of technological advances in robotics

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHt-5-RyrJk

ChikiChiki

You must be elderly now so. Robotics are here right now. Frightening to think where they will be in 5 years such is the speed of development each day.

Governments really need to create intitiatives ASAP to upskill people instead of reacting to a huge bump in unemployment. Our place has a full E2E proof of concept which will automate 2 huge functions of the business across 150 countries.

ChikiChiki

ChikiChiki wrote: »

You must be elderly now so. Robotics are here right now. Frightening to think where they will be in 5 years such is the speed of development each day.

Governments really need to create intitiatives ASAP to upskill people instead of reacting to a huge bump in unemployment. Our place has a full E2E proof of concept which will automate 2 huge functions of the business across 150 countries.

If you consider that robots are just machines, then we're had them around for about 250 years. What makes the current generation of machines different is the fact that they can replicate human physical movements far better than ever before.

As the video posted before you states, give up on competing with them, just acquire human skills that will never be replaced by robots. But society will needs to change to reflect that "work" is no longer making mass produced items and is all service based.

fxotoole

[Deleted User] wrote: »

They'll be no jobs left, who is going to earn the money to pay for it all?????

Tax the rich robots

Junkyard Tom

fxotoole wrote: »

Tax the rich robots

Own/appropriate the robots, they've been developed largely by use of public money (check out who funds MIT, DARPA/Boston Dynamics) and bring them under democratic control.

diomed

CGI

_Brian

peoole who think robots are coming to take Irish jobs must have been sleeping for the last 30 years.

It’s hapoened and will continue to happen. Jobs particularly manufacturing jobs are prime to be automated and the pesky monkey humans replaced.

As time passes jobs that are less repetitive will become able to be replaced.

Its a simple equation, balance the cost of the human doing the job with all their imperfections and errors, against the cost of an automated system performing the same job. As soon as it’s cheaper in comes the automation, it’s obvious and businesses that don’t do it will fall by the wayside and be swallowed up.

Cheerful Spring

_Brian wrote: »

peoole who think robots are coming to take Irish jobs must have been sleeping for the last 30 years.

It’s hapoened and will continue to happen. Jobs particularly manufacturing jobs are prime to be automated and the pesky monkey humans replaced.

As time passes jobs that are less repetitive will become able to be replaced.

Its a simple equation, balance the cost of the human doing the job with all their imperfections and errors, against the cost of an automated system performing the same job. As soon as it’s cheaper in comes the automation, it’s obvious and businesses that don’t do it will fall by the wayside and be swallowed up.

This country is booming because of multinationals. Soon as Robots are advanced enough to do those jobs its game over. It probably happens in the next 10 to 20 years. Government crackdown will only stop this.

Junkyard Tom

_Brian wrote: »

Its a simple equation

No, it's a complex equation.

What will the robots make/do if there are no disposable incomes for people buy/do stuff with?

_Brian

Cheerful Spring wrote: »

This country is booming because of multinationals. Soon as Robots are advanced enough to do those jobs its game over. It probably happens in the next 10 to 20 years. Government crackdown will only stop this.

What do mean "soon as"
Its already happened....

When I started in a large MN back in 1995 there were 10-12 operators per area, manning maybe 15-20 machines per area..

When I left 13 years later the areas were essentially devoid of operators with robots loading/unloading 20-30 machines per area and 2-3 operators overseeing these remotely.

I've worked maintenance across various industries from acriculture, pharma, semiconductor and robots have already moved into all these areas to displace low end workers..

donegaLroad

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WzmCnzA7hnE

2,100sq ft house can be printed for about $5,000

Mr Meanor

How far away is a call centre being replaced by automation when they are initiating these future projects

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jan/05/japanese-company-replaces-office-workers-artificial-intelligence-ai-fukoku-mutual-life-insurance

https://www.ft.com/content/e07cee0c-3949-11e7-821a-6027b8a20f23

https://www.cnbc.com/2017/11/30/robots-may-replace-up-to-800-million-workers-by-2030.html

Future death of any office worker!
specialisation is the only future job with some sort of security

Mr Meanor

Mr Meanor wrote: »

How far away is a call centre being replaced by automation when they are initiating these future projects

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jan/05/japanese-company-replaces-office-workers-artificial-intelligence-ai-fukoku-mutual-life-insurance

https://www.ft.com/content/e07cee0c-3949-11e7-821a-6027b8a20f23

https://www.cnbc.com/2017/11/30/robots-may-replace-up-to-800-million-workers-by-2030.html

Future death of any office worker!
specialisation is the only future job with some sort of security

Either specialisation to improve the AI's ability or generalisation to be able to fill in the gaps where the robots & AI can't function.

In those call centre type of services, there will always be some people who can't be "scripted" to the right AI server, that's where a human with a broad knowledge of the system can direct the customer to the correct robot.

Servicing and maintenance tasks will probably remain mostly human, simply because the requirements on a robot are too broad to enable one to be built - unless you have an army of single skilled bots that work together to do the task.

For example, a robot could be developed to replace car tyres as such a task is consistent and repetitive. But replacing a module in a piece of industrial equipment that was probably purpose built would have too many variables within it to successfully build robots to replace.

Unless the machinery was designed with robot maintenance built in.

Hans Bricks

I heard that something in the region of another 800 million jobs are set to become automated by 2030. A significant chunk of those will be America. I wonder, given Permabear's point that we moved from Agri-sector in 1973 to Finance, I.T, & other tertiary services jobs today, will western society be able to fill the unemployment gap in such a short space of time ?

Like, what Industry will be able to provide such a steady throughput of jobs for those people at the rate automation replaces them ?

Capt'n Midnight

I know some people who are totally safe.

Because they haven't made a robot yet that does absolutely nothing. :mad:

Lirange

Hans Bricks wrote: »

I heard that something in the region of another 800 million jobs are set to become automated by 2030. A significant chunk of those will be America. I wonder, given Permabear's point that we moved from Agri-sector in 1973 to Finance, I.T, & other tertiary services jobs today, will western society be able to fill the unemployment gap in such a short space of time ?

Like, what Industry will be able to provide such a steady throughput of jobs for those people at the rate automation replaces them ?

Eloi.

Or Morelocks..

http://www.bbc.com/news/av/technology-43292047/burger-flipping-robot-begins-first-shift

Another job successfully automated.

Flippy, a burger-flipping robot, has begun work at a restaurant in Pasadena, Los Angeles.
It is the first of dozens of locations for the system, which is destined to replace human fast-food workers.
The BBC's North America technology reporter Dave Lee saw it in action.

NinetyTwoTeam

if you're interested in this subject it is sort of the theme of the philip k dicks electric dreams episode that's on channel 4 tonight at 10