Better Than Human: Why Robots Will � And Must � Take Our Jobs

[MachineGhost]

First, machines will consolidate their gains in already-automated industries. After robots finish replacing assembly line workers, they will replace the workers in warehouses. Speedy bots able to lift 150 pounds all day long will retrieve boxes, sort them, and load them onto trucks. Fruit and vegetable picking will continue to be robotized until no humans pick outside of specialty farms. Pharmacies will feature a single pill-dispensing robot in the back while the pharmacists focus on patient consulting. Next, the more dexterous chores of cleaning in offices and schools will be taken over by late-night robots, starting with easy-to-do floors and windows and eventually getting to toilets. The highway legs of long-haul trucking routes will be driven by robots embedded in truck cabs.

All the while, robots will continue their migration into white-collar work. We already have artificial intelligence in many of our machines; we just don’t call it that. Witness one piece of software by Narrative Science (profiled in issue 20.05) that can write newspaper stories about sports games directly from the games’ stats or generate a synopsis of a company’s stock performance each day from bits of text around the web. Any job dealing with reams of paperwork will be taken over by bots, including much of medicine. Even those areas of medicine not defined by paperwork, such as surgery, are becoming increasingly robotic. The rote tasks of any information-intensive job can be automated. It doesn’t matter if you are a doctor, lawyer, architect, reporter, or even programmer: The robot takeover will be epic.

And it has already begun.

http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2012/12/ ... -jobs/all/

[RuralEngineer]

A very interesting article.  I do sometimes worry about what we will do once automation replaces the majority of existing jobs.  I'm not sure a significant portion of our population is capable or willing to engage in purely creative jobs finding new work for robots to do.  I'm not sure we could employ 200 million people doing that in this country.

At the same time, however, I'm ready for automation of certain tedious tasks, like long distance driving.  I also look forward to personal assistance robots.  I love gardening, but weeding is a pain.  Robots that allow us to skim the fun parts out of activities and leave them the rest doesn't sound too bad.

[dkalder]

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the reason we need to think about the unconditional basic income ... soon!

The society of labor is ending quickly.

Disclaimer: I am heavily involved - understatement, it is actually my day job and I have a PhD in it - in intelligent service as well as industrial robotics research, mostly complex object manipulation with arm/hand or arm/tool systems. Basically I am researching similar, but more advanced stuff than this Baxter robot can perform. The field is currently moving extremely fast concerning both cheaper and better hardware (robotic lightweight arms, hands, color/depth sensors) and software (machine perception, planning and learning).

I am currently more optimistic than ever before that we will be able to replace nearly all manual human labor with cheaper robotic technology within two (!) decades. While being able will not mean that all manual labor is already replaced in two decades, it will not be competitive anymore. This includes China or Bangladesh. Believe me, Foxconn is not the only company thinking hard about replacing most of its Chinese workers by even cheaper robots.

I also believe that intelligent systems will quickly become so powerful that most people will not have any special skill whatsoever, which cannot be performed better and cheaper by automations.
That is the point where I disagree strongly with the article and where our society centered around paid labor will end.

If it will end in glory or in sorrow - I do not know and it is not my job to look for a solution. Others have to do that.

[Storm]

A very interesting article.  I do sometimes worry about what we will do once automation replaces the majority of existing jobs.  I'm not sure a significant portion of our population is capable or willing to engage in purely creative jobs finding new work for robots to do.  I'm not sure we could employ 200 million people doing that in this country.

At the same time, however, I'm ready for automation of certain tedious tasks, like long distance driving.  I also look forward to personal assistance robots.  I love gardening, but weeding is a pain.  Robots that allow us to skim the fun parts out of activities and leave them the rest doesn't sound too bad.

Speaking of gardening, did you know they have a weed killing robot that uses pattern recognition and has 99% accuracy?  That is an awesome invention.  It just drives through rows of crops and applies an organic herbicide directly to any plant it finds that doesn't match the crop that is supposed to be there.  This will take organic farming to a new level because it will no longer require roundup ready GMO plants and poisoning entire fields to grow healthy crops.

Bring on the robots!

[Storm]

RE brings up a very good point about how our society might not be ready to handle hundreds of millions of unemployed workers.  I've thought a lot about this and I believe we're already seeing the beginning of this with persistent unemployment of blue collar workers - the exact workers already displaced by factory robots.

First of all, I don't think there is any silver bullet solution to the unemployed workers.  People that want to stay employed will have to continually retrain themselves.  Where they once worked on the factory floor, perhaps they need to retrain to learn how to repair and program those robots.  There will be fewer positions like this, however, so this will be very Darwinian and only the smartest will get these new jobs.

The other thing to mention is that ERE might be a much more viable lifestyle for many people.  Automation should drive the cost of many things down so if you can work just 5-10 years of your life, and save appropriately, you might not have to work again.

The end result society should be one where people still work if they want to but the retirement age is silly, like 35 or so, and from that point on you can choose to work or not, and just have the robots take care of you.

[RuralEngineer]

A very interesting article.  I do sometimes worry about what we will do once automation replaces the majority of existing jobs.  I'm not sure a significant portion of our population is capable or willing to engage in purely creative jobs finding new work for robots to do.  I'm not sure we could employ 200 million people doing that in this country.

At the same time, however, I'm ready for automation of certain tedious tasks, like long distance driving.  I also look forward to personal assistance robots.  I love gardening, but weeding is a pain.  Robots that allow us to skim the fun parts out of activities and leave them the rest doesn't sound too bad.

Speaking of gardening, did you know they have a weed killing robot that uses pattern recognition and has 99% accuracy?  That is an awesome invention.  It just drives through rows of crops and applies an organic herbicide directly to any plant it finds that doesn't match the crop that is supposed to be there.  This will take organic farming to a new level because it will no longer require roundup ready GMO plants and poisoning entire fields to grow healthy crops.

Bring on the robots!

That is awesome.  I love this kind of technology.  Now I just need a robot to go around picking off the harmful insects and perhaps keep the birds away from my cherry trees and I'm set.  I'll have a 4 acre garden in no time selling my produce at the farmers market on weekends.

On a serious note though, while I think we should give thought to how we would deal with the problem of mass unemployment due to automation, I think we should not jump the gun on any type of implementation.  Few people could see past the wall from an agrarian to industrialized society and what would happen to the work force.  It's entirely possible that there are entire industries that could employ humans that haven't been created yet and that we can't imagine because pervasive automation is just close, but not quite here yet.

For example, one could imagine that it would be easier to start a small business if the means of production were extremely cheap.  Look at 3D printing.  It's so much simpler than running a CNC machine, anyone can learn the software needed to create the models used to generate the parts.  Who's to say that automation won't mean that anyone could buy a robot and start producing a product in their garage. 

[doodle]

We had a similar discussion thread to this a few months ago concerning Robert Antin Wilsons RICH society or what John Maynard Keynes would have termed the leisure society. As I remember, there wasnt alot of agreement about how to deal with the unemployment that would result from this robot automation. In fact, there was mostly denial that such a thing could happen....in other words that the so called "luddite falacy" was still falacious. It seems like some are starting to come around to the idea that unemployment in the united states might be a longer term structural problem that is compounded by technology replacing the workforce....

http://gyroscopicinvesting.com/forum/ht ... ic.php?t=9

[dualstow]

Remember this?

Why the Future Doesn't Need Us
by Bill Joy (original developer of vi, cofounder of Sun Microsystems)
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.04/joy.html

[Greg]

Ran across this today via PragCap:

http://econfuture.wordpress.com/2013/01 ... he-robots/

I've not yet read the Krugman article the author is responding to, but this author's thesis is:

The point here is that a worker is also a consumer (and may support other consumers). These people drive final demand. When a worker is replaced by a machine, that machine does not go out and consume. The machine may use energy, resources and spare parts, but again, those are business inputs—not final demand. If there is no one to buy what the machine is producing, it will get shut down.  Think of on industrial robot being used by an auto manufacturer. The robot will not continue running if no one is buying cars.*

So if we automate all the jobs, or most of the jobs, or if we drive wages so low that very few people have any discretionary income, then it is difficult to see how a modern mass-market economy can continue to thrive. 

After reading this and some of the comments, it looks like with a robotic-based production society, a citizen's dividend would be potentially a good way to allow citizen's to still function and add value to society in one way or another.

[RuralEngineer]

I'm open to debate on the subject.  I just can't wrap my head around the idea since there is no such thing as post-scarcity.  Quite a bit of the things people concern themselves over can't be made abundant, they are naturally scarce.  We'll always need some mechanism to determine who gets access to these scarce resources as it's not possible to share them equally either.  The most obvious example being land.

[doodle]

I'm open to debate on the subject.  I just can't wrap my head around the idea since there is no such thing as post-scarcity.  Quite a bit of the things people concern themselves over can't be made abundant, they are naturally scarce.  We'll always need some mechanism to determine who gets access to these scarce resources as it's not possible to share them equally either.  The most obvious example being land.

Post-scarcity is somewhat related but in addition to abundant mechanization and automatization, it also includes unlimited resources and energy. The real question that the previous thread that I linked into was trying to address, was how to deal with the unemployment issues that will surely follow if the field of robotics begins to displace great numbers of people from traditional employment options. In the past, increased mechanization led to lower prices, increased demand and a movement of workers into the service sector. Presently increased demand is limited by environmental, energy, and resource constraints....and service sector jobs (in addition to manufacturing jobs) are being increasingly turned over to robots and computers. Economists really havent started talking about this yet, but Im sure it will become a big discussion topic as unemployment numbers continue to remain stubbornly high in the coming years.

[doodle]

No mention of technological unemployment in this article. This is a topic that is still being ignored in favor of other answers to why so many people are out of work.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/100394338

[Benko]

This is a topic that is still being ignored in favor of other answers to why so many people are out of work.

Because it is not possible that liberal policies being implemented have anything to do with unemployment

[doodle]

This is a topic that is still being ignored in favor of other answers to why so many people are out of work.

Because it is not possible that liberal policies being implemented have anything to do with unemployment

How about we drop the political labels for a bit. What liberal policies are you referring to? Are you proposing that austerity will fix unemployment situation? Can you explain how removing money from the economy and an already deleveraging private sector is going to lead to increased demand and more jobs?

I think that raising taxes on the wealthiest is a redistributive measure to rebalance the gross inequality we presently have. It is a fact that money in the hands of the middle and lower classes is more stimulative to economic demand than in the hands of the upper class. Of course, there must be some kind of balance to this policy. Then again, the wealth gap has been increasing rapidly for more than a decade which has larger social stability implications if not addressed.

[Benko]

Perhaps you've heard of the EPA and regulations...

If you want less of something punish people for doing it (taxes).

[doodle]

I like the EPA....and there are studies that indicate that its regulations lead to more jobs in many instances. Other than the EPA, what is stopping corporations from turning this country into a toxic cesspool?

Taxes don't make sense in our present environment other than for redistribution. When  CEO's pay is 600 times that of an average worker because of all the insider boardroom back rubbing this is one way to get the money more fairly distributed. Money does no good concentrated in the hands of the 1%. The economy breaks down when consumers do not have cash to purchase the very items that they have created with their own hands....or that the robots will be producing. The greatest entrepreneur and industrialist is nothing without consumers.

Its kind of like the buddhist idea of dependent origination in which everything arises in dependence upon multiple causes and conditions; nothing exists as a singular, independent entity.

[Pointedstick]

I like the EPA....and there are studies that indicate that its regulations lead to more jobs in many instances. Other than the EPA, what is stopping corporations from turning this country into a toxic cesspool?

Er… local governments ending the practice of allowing corporations to pollute public land? Most pollution happens not on private land, but on public land, precisely because the owners of that land--the local government--have allowed it to happen.

Things get murkier when you're talking about air pollution, because the ownership of the air is sort of unclear and contradictory, and for that matter, a more far-reaching organization makes sense. But for the common case of ACME Sludge co. dumping cyanide into Purestream river as permitted by Purestream city council, there doesn't need to be an EPA to prevent that!

[doodle]

Yes, but the city councils and gov't have conflicting interests at times....regarding tax revenues and jobs. There are incentives for them to not hold corporations accountable for their pollution in order to make their area more business friendly. This could lead to states competing for business by racing to the bottom. I think there needs to be an organization that sets the bar somewhere on what is permissible. At any rate, I don't think the EPA is the chief reason we are having a jobless recovery.

[Pointedstick]

At any rate, I don't think the EPA is the chief reason we are having a jobless recovery.

Nor do I. I agree with many here that it's primarily a monetary problem. But then again, monetary problems are political problems in this system we have. Not to mention the myriad political causes of our current situation.

It's hopelessly wrong-headed for our government to systematically encourage people to indebt themselves, and then when there's a recession and people's balance sheets are terrible, it utterly fails to either offer any meaningful assistance to alleviate the short-term problem, or dismantle the incentives that created the long-term problem in the first place.

[MachineGhost]

After reading this and some of the comments, it looks like with a robotic-based production society, a citizen's dividend would be potentially a good way to allow citizen's to still function and add value to society in one way or another.

+100

[Greg]

After reading this and some of the comments, it looks like with a robotic-based production society, a citizen's dividend would be potentially a good way to allow citizen's to still function and add value to society in one way or another.

+100

I certainly would feel good knowing many things are covered for me with robotics and that if I didn't want to work, I could still live a reasonable life. For those that want more, they can get more by doing tasks that robots can't. I would think this would also alleviate the stress of many people who worry about providing for a family with their jobs, losing your job wouldn't be the worst thing in the world, and you could work on the hobbies you had as a child that had only a slim chance of making you money.

[Pointedstick]

I certainly would feel good knowing many things are covered for me with robotics and that if I didn't want to work, I could still live a reasonable life. For those that want more, they can get more by doing tasks that robots can't. I would think this would also alleviate the stress of many people who worry about providing for a family with their jobs, losing your job wouldn't be the worst thing in the world, and you could work on the hobbies you had as a child that had only a slim chance of making you money.

Certainly you know this better than most, but such a society would need a *lot* of people skilled in all the various fields of robotics to avoid crashing to the ground. The social contract would basically be, "You can live a life of leisure and pursue your passions while the robots take care of the basics, but you need at least a minor in electrical engineering."

[MachineGhost]

I propose that being human is a disability so we are all entitled to receive SSDI.  It's just a question of first converting the program from earnings contribution to a general welfare.

[Greg]

I certainly would feel good knowing many things are covered for me with robotics and that if I didn't want to work, I could still live a reasonable life. For those that want more, they can get more by doing tasks that robots can't. I would think this would also alleviate the stress of many people who worry about providing for a family with their jobs, losing your job wouldn't be the worst thing in the world, and you could work on the hobbies you had as a child that had only a slim chance of making you money.

Certainly you know this better than most, but such a society would need a *lot* of people skilled in all the various fields of robotics to avoid crashing to the ground. The social contract would basically be, "You can live a life of leisure and pursue your passions while the robots take care of the basics, but you need at least a minor in electrical engineering."

Doesn't everybody major/minor in engineering? It's pretty much the best degree ever so I don't see why this would be a problem for everyone to do .

I would agree though, if you had one robot only taking care of 5 humans for example, you need a lot of people that can repair, maintain, parts manufacturers (or 3D printed parts ), etc.

[dualstow]

I thought there would be robots to take care of the robots. Repairs, etc.