Robots Will Create 'Permanently Unemployable Underclass'

[Adeptus]

Re: Robots Will Create 'Permanently Unemployable Underclass'

Lots of great comments here. Am enjoying the thread.

There are two great destroyers of jobs in the US, off-shoring and automation. I would argue that off-shoring is largely driven by computerization and is simply a sub-set of the automation issue.

I'd agree with your first statement, but not the second. Off-shoring to china was not driven by computerization, but rather much cheaper labour. Sure, they have all kinds of advanced factories there (i.e. foxconn), but these were created because overall operational costs were cheaper there - most of which are comprised of labour. In other words, it was the cheap labour that allowed for the move and setup of the advanced computerized factories, not the other way around.

Due to bitcoin related research, I've recently learned that PCB (printed circuit board) manufacturing for medium to large volume sales all went to China. I thought it was a near fully automated robotic process, but it turns out (VIDEO) its actually still a very labour intensive process (look at all the humans!) despite a lot of processes having been automated in the past 2 decades. Much if it has to do with the sheer number of options in how it can be made (size, # of layers, types of holes/vias, material type for operational environment/temperature, type and quantity of metalic elements, countless finishing options, countless chemical baths along the way, etc) combined with human inspections required along the way for nearly every step, to say nothing that each robot/machine requires a human standing by to perform some task unique to that PCB - and that's just the bare PCB. The "assembly" of 'doo-dads' (i.e. capacitors, oscillators, chips, resistors, etc) onto the bare PCB is a whole other sector of the industry (VIDEO) with its own complexities and humans (look at all the humans!) required, despite also including massive amounts of automation.

According to this future projection graph which extrapolates a 17%/yr Chinese Wage growth, we get the following result:


At some point before the two lines touch, manufacturing will be offshored to the next cheapest country - Somewhere in Africa or other East Asian countr(ies)? I guess it depends on sector and what is being offshored - telemarketing? design? production? assembly? post-sales support? Either way, my point again is that the decline of many labour related jobs is not due to advancement in robots that can replace humans, but that cheaper 3rd world labour humans continue to replace 1st world humans:




Now, to play devil's advocate, my borrowed theory will break hard in the near (10-40 years?) future once we hit the theorized 'Technological Singularity' of AI. That is, not when machines find their ghost or acquire one, but when their synthetic intelligence achievable by not-yet-existent *real* quantum computers that provide it its immense processing power, allow a machine's 'brain' power to exceed not only that of a human, but that of all humans on Earth combined. At that point, the AI machine(s) create exponential advancements such that in a mere year or two (or less) we enter into a Star Trek Economics situation whereby technological advancements not only replace nearly all hard labour, but also consumption can be endless at no cost and every human is free to do as they wish with their entire live's worth of free time.... or all hell breaks loose!... As per the recent hollywood thriller:

Transcendence Official Trailer #1 (2014) - Johnny Depp Sci-Fi Movie HD

PS. I don't buy for 1 second the idea that consciousness can be transferred to a machine, that aside, the movie is not bad.

[santafe2]

Re: Robots Will Create 'Permanently Unemployable Underclass'

I am genuinely curious to know how disastrously and quickly you predict the technological obsolescence of man will occur.

I disagree with you, but that's because I tend to side with old John Stewart Mill's 1848 observation on this one:

"Hitherto it is questionable if all the mechanical inventions yet made have lightened the day's toil of any human being."

My statement was aimed at the US labor market, not the world market. Their time will come but not as quickly as ours approaches.

This problem, automation happening faster than we can replace jobs, is more troubling today than it was 40 years ago, much less in Mill's time. The rate of change continues to increase and as it does, replacing work which pays a meaningful wage with new work also paying a meaningful wage, will continue to become more difficult.

It was Keynes that observed in 1930-ish the phenomenon of technological unemployment. "This means unemployment due to our discovery of means of economising the use of labour outrunning the pace at which we can find new uses for labour."

In the US we already have a bifurcated system of employment developing where the middle class is being hollowed out and jobs are often low paying service jobs or high paying jobs that require problem solving skills and/or strong social skills. These valued skills are not easily resolved with an algorithm but much more complex machine learning and mobile robotics will make more complex, non repetitive jobs go away as well. Think, truck and taxi drivers, construction workers, tax preparers, accountants, bank tellers, loan officers, real estate brokers/sales people, cashiers, paralegals, etc.

There are two great destroyers of jobs in the US, off-shoring and automation. I would argue that off-shoring is largely driven by computerization and is simply a sub-set of the automation issue. Both will continue to hollow out the US middle class.

We've redefined unemployment from U6 to U3 to hide the current 12.2% unemployment rate and we've classed 2.4MM Americans as criminals and hired another 2MM Americans to catch them, process them and watch them. We also have another 1.5MM people on active military duty. Automation is breaking our social contract in the US and we're grasping at straws to find meaningful employment for people.

I am surprised that this is a controversial issue. The rate of automation is moving too fast today and the pace will continue to pick up over the rest of this century. I can't imagine a scenario where more Americans have employment value in the future than they have today.

[charliebrown]

Re: Robots Will Create 'Permanently Unemployable Underclass'

Many good posts here and things to consider.

I can add this. I work at a fortune 500 company that employs lots of low wage, low skill labor.
I work in the "robot" department trying to either make employees more productive (reducing the labor costs) or replacing them. We have replacements for people but so far, they have been too costly to do the job. You can buy a lot of labor for a 500K robot. And the person is a bit more flexible than the one task robot. However .... the recent push for moving the minimum wage from about 8.00 an hr to 15.00 per hour will re-evaluate uses of automation at our company. Some of these jobs will be eliminated.

[gwynedd1]

Re: Robots Will Create 'Permanently Unemployable Underclass'

I just realized that a paradise with no wants or needs will cause everyone to be part of the permanently unemployable underclass.

[gwynedd1]

Re: Robots Will Create 'Permanently Unemployable Underclass'

I don't know about that. Lack of capital to buy the initial equipment/investment seems to me to be a much larger barrier to such a thing than labor costs you can cover with cash flow - even without robots.

If its so expensive then cheap labor will compete against it.

[dcarrigg]

Re: Robots Will Create 'Permanently Unemployable Underclass'

But what was the employment rate back when Mill made his statement? I imagine it was close to 100% and that would include pretty much everyone 5 and over. And how many hours did they work? The current 64% rate starts at age 15 and includes everyone "economically active". So anyone retired is not included which must already push the numbers down. People on sick are not included etc. I think it's fair to say that hours worked per capita are already way less than half of those worked in 1848 and it is almost exclusively down to technology. And why is the technological obsolescence of man such a disaster anyway?

According to the Historical Statistics of the United States: Millennial Edition, Vol. 2, pp. 2-77 to 2-82; the labor participation rate 2 years later was 51.8%. Of course, the survey back then was Whites only, thanks to slavery. And the split was 88.1% male and 13.1% female. Far more men had jobs. Far fewer women did. Overall, labor participation is higher now than then.

The Amish are not free of economic forces after all.

Never said they were. Just saying that technology does not have to run one's life. We have a choice in the matter. That's all.

[llanlad2]

Re: Robots Will Create 'Permanently Unemployable Underclass'

Well then why not make this prediction a bit more concrete? By which year do you expect world labor participation rates to sink to which level? Use ranges if you so wish. Here's the current World Bank graph on the matter. We're at 63.6% right now. Keep in mind that demographics and other economic forces than just technology will factor in here too.

What is it you predict? 40% by 2040? 10% by 2050? Somewhere between 40 and 50% by 2030? And how much of the drop is directly attributable to technology? Exactly how doom and gloom is the future employment scenario you envision?

I am genuinely curious to know how disastrously and quickly you predict the technological obsolescence of man will occur.

I disagree with you, but that's because I tend to side with old John Stewart Mill's 1848 observation on this one:

"Hitherto it is questionable if all the mechanical inventions yet made have lightened the day's toil of any human being."

And I think that deep down I'm pretty sure that whether we want people working or not is a policy choice. And technology doesn't dictate our policy decisions. Just ask the Amish about that one. In fact, I think I stole that line from Patrick Deneen in the American Conservative.

But what was the employment rate back when Mill made his statement? I imagine it was close to 100% and that would include pretty much everyone 5 and over. And how many hours did they work? The current 64% rate starts at age 15 and includes everyone "economically active". So anyone retired is not included which must already push the numbers down. People on sick are not included etc. I think it's fair to say that hours worked per capita are already way less than half of those worked in 1848 and it is almost exclusively down to technology. And why is the technological obsolescence of man such a disaster anyway?

Having said that I don't see employment or unemployment disappearing any time soon as servants will always be in demand and people will always need to serve to survive until populations stop growing. You mentioned a quote regarding the Amish as avoiding certain technological and economic forces. However their increasing population (having large families is part of the culture) will force cultural change on them. Soon they will not be able to avoid servitude.

Thus, a philosophy that places in the forefront a theory of human liberty arrives at the conclusion that certain historical, technological, and economic forces are inevitable, and it is futile to resist them. One might bother to ask the Amish if this is true, but they didn’t go to Harvard. Clearly, they don’t value human freedom, since they are not on the historical merry-go-round to inevitable human liberty—and degradation.

Traditionally Amish males farmed pretty much exclusively. However the need to buy land for their burgeoning population has forced many men to seek alternative employment outside of their traditional communities. The Amish are not free of economic forces after all.

[DSpencer]

Re: Robots Will Create 'Permanently Unemployable Underclass'

I know the response is that they will employed in "Tech" jobs however I think the idea is limited, most of the forum members here are probably high IQ types and see a tech or STEM job as no problem but to make a point here is that if you think of the average person and then recognize that 50% of the population is below that a tech replacement job is a stretch.

I think this is a key point in the recurring robots vs jobs debate. By no means do I think humans are on the brink of being replaced by robots on the whole. However, the low ability population may face a struggle and personally I think they are already being affected by this problem. If not because of actual humanoid robots, then due to one person with a machine doing the work of 10.

To follow up your point about everyone getting tech jobs. Go to a Walmart store. Ask yourself how many of the customers could work as robot designers. Or more to the point, ask yourself how many of the cashiers could be trained to design/refine/repair the self checkout machines. I'm guessing it's less than 10% and I'm trying to be generous.

For example I recently had a procedure done at local Yale New Haven hospital and in my overnight stay I was walking the floor at 2 am with a bad reaction to some medication. In my little walk over a couple of hours I noted 9/10 employees on duty but only a couple seemed busy the rest were having water cooler discussions and surfing the Internet.

In the hospital's defense, night shift is partially a just-in-case staffing scenario. If your medication reaction had resulted in a code button being pressed, I'm guessing at least some of the internet surfers would have sprung into action.

This year they fooled 30% ten years from now perhaps 50%? thirty years 90%?

http://www.smh.com.au/national/educa...710-zt2h3.html

As discussed in another itulip thread, this story of a chatbot passing the Turing test is, in my opinion, a complete joke. Only by creating a persona as a 13 year old who doesn't speak English fluently was it even remotely believable and even then I can't understand how anyone was fooled at all.

Why not ask someone to distinguish between a computer and a 2 year old with a keyboard? Or a computer and a person pretending to be a computer?

[tastymannatees]

Re: Robots Will Create 'Permanently Unemployable Underclass'

Costs are dropping -Baxter from rethink in boston costs 20K and should last two years

http://www.rethinkrobotics.com/products/baxter/

http://www.rethinkrobotics.com/resources/videos/

[tastymannatees]

Re: Robots Will Create 'Permanently Unemployable Underclass'

And there are

Noodle bots - A couple of grand a robot, they never need a raise and won't sue you for sexual harassment

Robot chefs taking over China's noodle bars

[dcarrigg]

Re: Robots Will Create 'Permanently Unemployable Underclass'

Everyone could open a restaurant .

I don't know about that. Lack of capital to buy the initial equipment/investment seems to me to be a much larger barrier to such a thing than labor costs you can cover with cash flow - even without robots.

[Shakespear]

Re: Robots Will Create 'Permanently Unemployable Underclass'

and there goes another one

Hotel Robots

http://www.cnbc.com/id/101911755

they will need oiling so we have a chance.

Company CEO Steve Cousins told CNBC he sees a huge market for service robots.

[tastymannatees]

Re: Robots Will Create 'Permanently Unemployable Underclass'

and there goes another one

Hotel Robots

http://www.cnbc.com/id/101911755

[gwynedd1]

Re: Robots Will Create 'Permanently Unemployable Underclass'

i'm saying i cannot believe there's anyone on the other side of this argument here.

If no one is willing to take the other side of the position we should make self hating robots that do.

what next, creationism?

On a serious note I actually like creationism because they were pretty good critics of evolution's flaws. It broke the evolutionary monopoly and kept driving the debate. Speaking of robots , we should program them to think they evolved to make them more human.

google search 'burger robot 360' & guess the site that list #3 peddling a fast food kitchen robot as the end of min wage jobs?

did ya guess zerocred?

Meet "Smart Restaurant": The Minimum-Wage-Crushing, Burger-Flipping Robot

http://www.zerocred.com/news/2014-01...flipping-robot

All variations on broken window fallacy, rent etc...

In the US land was so cheap labor was scarce. Everytime someone was hired to work the land they would just go off on their own. Same thing if cheap machines made restaurants require no labor . Everyone could open a restaurant . Many people just can seem to understand that economics tries to manage the problem of scarcity. There is not problem with plenty.

[tastymannatees]

Re: Robots Will Create 'Permanently Unemployable Underclass'

The Bright New Future

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/robots-will...rclass-1460177
You say there will be jobs maintaining the robots? Sure 100 robots taken care by 1 maintenance robot.
Programing? Sure
Building parts and circuits? Suuurrrreeee.

Well we can still flip hamburgers, can't we ? Nope, it appears to be doable by robots as we speak,
http://singularityhub.com/2013/01/22...gers-per-hour/

I am in full agreement here

Like Asimov's robot novels with a whole planet of robot plantations with 1 plantation owner and 5 thousands robots- what's the point a person ? I suppose plenty of time to contemplate your Belly button on the issue.

Of course there are the warehouse robots.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lWsMdN7HMuA

http://money.cnn.com/2014/05/22/tech...amazon-robots/

http://www.wimp.com/kivarobots/

Plenty of jobs are being replaced daily, locally there are no more electric meter readers as it is read remotely and if you have not paid your bill they even disconnect you by remote. In many professions you can see the writing on the wall as in do we even need 90% of the postal employees ? or can the business of mail sorting/delivery be mostly automated as in the warehouse video?

I believe this is the government motivation/drive for socialization of the economy as what do you do with all the employment slack or unemployed people? I know the response is that they will employed in "Tech" jobs however I think the idea is limited, most of the forum members here are probably high IQ types and see a tech or STEM job as no problem but to make a point here is that if you think of the average person and then recognize that 50% of the population is below that a tech replacement job is a stretch.

Additionally in my travels to third world countries with no means of wealth production as in manufacturing, mining or export of raw materials, food production etc. they are minimalist service economies as there is no wealth available to support the services. I think today we are mostly a third world type service economy here in the developed world we just don't recognize it yet I see the signs every where.

For example I recently had a procedure done at local Yale New Haven hospital and in my overnight stay I was walking the floor at 2 am with a bad reaction to some medication. In my little walk over a couple of hours I noted 9/10 employees on duty but only a couple seemed busy the rest were having water cooler discussions and surfing the Internet.

In a recent Zerohedge article it was noted that since about 1980(?) US population increased approx 50% but hospital(&college employment) staffing in the same period increased 80%. So while the private economy had significant productivity increases the slack in labor was at least partially absorbed by government subsidy.

This for me is reminiscent of one experience where I spent 4 hours going through customs in Egypt as I had to processed by about 20 customs agents, not that they truly needed that many but they had a job and a pension but basically it was all make work otherwise they would have no job at all. My waiter at the Hotel was an engineer and as the economy was below the threshold for wealth creation there were no engineering jobs> This is what a service economy looks like.

Minus government subsidy (+deficit spending) there is a natural unemployment rate to all this and I would not be surprised if it was more like a 30% third world rate.



As far as the ghost in the machine it probably does not matter much if you don't know the difference if there is a conscious soul there or not, 20 years ago they fooled nobody This year they fooled 30% ten years from now perhaps 50%? thirty years 90%?

http://www.smh.com.au/national/educa...710-zt2h3.html


You could be talking to one now. Perhaps I am a chatbot

http://www.bbc.com/future/story/2014...e-tricking-you