The robotic future cometh

[Pointedstick]

http://www.motherjones.com/media/2013/0 ... ion?page=2

Not sure I agree with the recommendations--which of course are highly redistributive given that this is Mother Jones--but I'm coming around to the premise that robotics is increasingly cutting out the floor of the labor market for more and more people.

We've already seen many unskilled manual labor jobs replaced by machines, and I would argue that this is a good thing: those were nasty, awful, dangerous jobs. But we have a bell curve distribution of talents and abilities; if robotics draws a vertical line down that curve that moves inexorably rightward, it's going to be an interesting time to live in for a while.

Is it feasible that robotically-displaced miners, loggers, factory workers, taxi drivers, and farm laborers will really all become massage therapists, musicians, doctors, engineers, and actors?

If not, or even if so during the transitional time, as long as we live in a market-based society, what do we do when a whole lot of people have nothing to offer economically? Are these people going to be public charges? Vagrants? Will they have to be Thoreauean seif-sufficient homesteaders?

I would argue we're already there to a certain extent, and so far our societal answer has been that of putting those affected on the dole.

[melveyr]

I think robotics will allow the pie to grow much faster, but I think the distribution of that pie will become far less equal. However, the political system can redistribute some of the pie if deemed socially necessary, but I think the country is moving in the opposite direction. I doubt these efficiency gains are going to be felt by the middle/lower classes. One more reason to be long stocks.

[moda0306]

One would think that engineers (and the like) would be the financial beneficiaries of the pie growth.

It pains me to see that it's the financial & real estate guys.

[doodle]

Interesting how this topic keeps emerging in our discussions. I haven't looked at the article yet, but I am already a believer that we are going to have to rethink employment as a result of robotic advancements. This is a topic that has been talked about in science fiction novels for a hundred years now and maybe we are now just seeing the beginning stages of it.

Another topic that is closely woven into this is how the productivity enhancements of modern technology create a situation in which if we were to employ 100% of the labor force, we could theoretically cut down every last tree....in other words a modern day Easter Island. I believe that we need to begin to find other employment opportunities for people that don't overstress our planets ecosystem. This is part of the reason why I rail so hard against the material consumerism that for the last 50 years especially has been the dominant paradigm of western culture. Not only does its blind pursuit enslave people and leave them feeling empty, but its emphasis in our modern culture could slowly undermine our natural habitat. 

[Greg]

I see the future slightly pessimistic for various job positions as robots begin to take their jobs, especially for those that are too young to retire and too old to really start learning a new skill. It's one of the reasons I actually got into robotics myself, not just because I enjoy it, but because I think they'll be a market for someone with that particular skill set for at least a little whiles. Always good to do Early Retirement Extreme as well just as a back-up plan.

[Pointedstick]

That's a good plan, 1NV35T0R.

I also think it's worth it to envision the kinds of jobs that robotics will probably never displace: anything where the human touch is important. Things where social-face-to-face interaction matters, or creativity, or faith, or subjective interpretation of ambiguous data. The arts may see a renaissance!

If you really distill it to its essence, I think that robotics is only going to kill off all the sucky jobs like moving heavy or dangerous substances from point A to Point B which if you think about it, describes an awful lot of jobs, from factory work to trucking, and virtually all farming and resource extraction. This is only a problem because it may turn out that a lot of people are really only fit for sucky jobs like those.

[doodle]

That's a good plan, 1NV35T0R.

I also think it's worth it to envision the kinds of jobs that robotics will probably never displace: anything where the human touch is important. Things where social-face-to-face interaction matters, or creativity, or faith, or subjective interpretation of ambiguous data. The arts may see a renaissance!

If you really distill it to its essence, I think that robotics is only going to kill off all the sucky jobs like moving heavy or dangerous substances from point A to Point B which if you think about it, describes an awful lot of jobs, from factory work to trucking, and virtually all farming and resource extraction. This is only a problem because it may turn out that a lot of people are really only fit for sucky jobs like those.

Agreed! Robots will increasingly handle the repetitive boring jobs that suck. However, not every human is born on the right hand side of the intellectual bell curve. Traditionally our labor market was a coordinated effort between the strong and able and the intelligent and creative. Today there seems to be fewer and fewer opportunities for the strong and able. We need to devise an outlet for a large segment of our population where they can maintain their human dignity lest they begin to put their strong and able hands to nefarious ends against a society that has kicked them to the refuse bin.

Frankensteins monster didnt kill until he was so throughly rejected by society as to begin fufilling the role as the demon that was cast for him.

[RuralEngineer]

The reason this keeps coming up in our discussions is because this is a real issue.  I think the forum represents a sample from somewhere to the right side of the curve and the fact that we don't see this discussed more in public speaks to the fact that people are afraid to talk about it or are just too ignorant.

Now I think there are only four possible outcomes of this problem once it goes full blown.

1. We do nothing, the displaced workers collapse our social safety nets because the increased revenue from the robotic economic efficiency can't offset the displaced worker consumption, rampant crime....all that good stuff.

2.  We do nothing, the increased efficiency causes an economic boom that fills the tax coffers enough to offset the increase in the draw against our social programs.  We have a huge portion (well, significantly larger than it is already) of our population who depend fully on the government for the livelihood.  We get to find out what that's like.  Oh joy.

3.  The increased efficiency isn't enough to offset the draw from displaced workers on social programs, but the government institutes massive redistributive policies anyway since the effect of the robotic automation is a widening of the income gap.  The government "level's the playing field" until everyone is paying the "fair share" such that the companies taking advantage of the increases in robotic efficiency move offshore, leaving the economy in even worse shape.

4.  The robotic revolution leads to jobs that we can't even imagine now, much like nobody ever thought there would be so many web designers before the advent of the internet.  These new jobs offset those lost to automation and we don't see a huge spike in displaced workers that have to rely on heavily redistributive government policies.

[doodle]

#4 is always what happened in the past. I believe this time is different. Robots are not enhancing workers productivity this time, they are replacing them entirely. One intelligent group of individuals is now able to create a robot that could displace hundreds of thousands of workers. There is no way that I can see that people can retool quickly enough to keep pace with the rapid pace of change. Government is needed to put a brake on innovation or its effects if need be in order to maintain social stability. You cant build a prosperous technological future if all of your cities are beset by rioting masses of unemployed and displaced workers whose job skills and mental capacity are no longer needed.

[Tortoise]

Instead of thinking about the robotic future in strictly "us vs. them" terms, might the line between robots and humans become a bit more blurry?

It may be hard for a human to compete with a robot, but what about robotically-enhanced humans? Or a human with a computer-enhanced brain? We are starting to see hints of this cybernetic transition already.

As we develop the ability to re-engineer ourselves, I think the controversial idea of eugenics will resurface. For example: Why allow certain undesirable traits or limitations to propagate in the gene pool when humans can be designed to have a variety of desirable traits?

We keep mentioning the large number of people on the "left side of the bell curve." But in a world where human traits can be designed, why would we settle for that situation? If the left side of the bell curve is a net drag on society, why not try to shift the entire bell curve to the right as the ability to do that emerges?

[doodle]

Instead of thinking about the robotic future in strictly "us vs. them" terms, might the line between robots and humans become a bit more blurry?

It may be hard for a human to compete with a robot, but what about robotically-enhanced humans? Or a human with a computer-enhanced brain? We are starting to see hints of this cybernetic transition already.

As we develop the ability to re-engineer ourselves, I think the controversial idea of eugenics will resurface. For example: Why allow certain undesirable traits or limitations to propagate in the gene pool when humans can be designed to have a variety of desirable traits?

We keep mentioning the large number of people on the "left side of the bell curve." But in a world where human traits can be designed, why would we settle for that situation? If the left side of the bell curve is a net drag on society, why not try to shift the entire bell curve to the right as the ability to do that emerges?

I think it is particularly dangerous for an unenlightened society to go down this path. What is the difference? An enlightened society uses atomic power for energy, an unenlightened one uses it to build bombs. We should be smart enough to stop ourselves from doing something that could potentially destroy ourselves. Besides, an enlightened society would probably realize that jumping on this path doesnt take us anywhere anyways....afterall you cannot transcend reality. To put it another way, once the waves and whirlpools and currents in the ocean realize that they are all just water and that in fact they do not constitute seperate entities, the point of trying to  create their way out of this reality seems rather futile and pointless. A wave cannot transcend the ocean, it can only realize that it at the same time part of the ocean and that the ocean is a part of it. What more can humanity really desire than this?

[JonathanH]

Here is Rothbard on technological unemployment:

http://mises.org/rothbard/mes/chap9b.asp

Basically, he says that machines are capital investments that improve the marginal productivity of workers. We can have increased output with cheaper prices and greater leisure.
If prices and wages float properly unemployment will clear away. Also people may have to be less picky and work in areas demanded by consumers.

"    One alleged example of a possible case of involuntary unem­ployment on the free market has been suggested by Professor Hayek.[26] Hayek maintains that when there is a shift from invest­ment to consumption, and therefore a shortening of the produc­tion structure on the market, there will be a necessary temporary unemployment of workmen thrown out of work in the higher stages, lasting until they can be reabsorbed in the shorter proc­esses of the later stages. It is true that there is a loss in income, as well as a loss in capital, from a shift to shorter processes. It is also true that the shortening of the structure means that there is a transition period when, at final wage rates, there will be un­employment of the men displaced from the longer processes. How­ever, during this transition period there is no reason why these workers cannot bid down wage rates until they are low enough to enable the employment of all the workers during the transi­tion. This transition wage rate will be lower than the new equilibrium wage rate. But at no time is there a necessity for unem­ployment."

"    The ever-recurring doctrine of “technological unemployment”?—man displaced by the machine—is hardly worthy of extended analysis. Its absurdity is evident when we look at the advanced economy and compare it with the primitive one. In the former there is an abundance of machines and processes completely un­known to the latter; yet in the former, standards of living are far higher for far greater numbers of people. How many workers have been “displaced”? because of the invention of the shovel? The technological unemployment motif is encouraged by the use of the term “labor-saving devices”? for capital goods, which to some minds conjure up visions of laborers being simply discarded. La­bor needs to be “saved”? because it is the pre-eminently scarce good and because man’s wants for exchangeable goods are far from satisfied. Furthermore, these wants would not be satisfied at all if the capital-goods structure were not maintained. The more labor is “saved,”? the better, for then labor is using more and better capital goods to satisfy more of its wants in a shorter amount of time.

    Of course, there will be “unemployment”? if, as we have stated, workers insist on their own terms for work, and these terms can­not be met. This applies to technological changes as well as any other. The clerk who, for some reason, insists nowadays on work­ing only for a blacksmith or in an old-fashioned general store may well have chosen a large dose of idleness. Any workers who insisted on working in the buggy industry or nothing found them­selves, no doubt, unemployed after the development of the auto­mobile."

Some old examples, but an interesting read.

[doodle]

  The ever-recurring doctrine of “technological unemployment”?—man displaced by the machine—is hardly worthy of extended analysis. Its absurdity is evident when we look at the advanced economy and compare it with the primitive one. In the former there is an abundance of machines and processes completely un­known to the latter; yet in the former, standards of living are far higher for far greater numbers of people. How many workers have been “displaced”? because of the invention of the shovel? The technological unemployment motif is encouraged by the use of the term “labor-saving devices”? for capital goods, which to some minds conjure up visions of laborers being simply discarded. La­bor needs to be “saved”? because it is the pre-eminently scarce good and because man’s wants for exchangeable goods are far from satisfied. Furthermore, these wants would not be satisfied at all if the capital-goods structure were not maintained. The more labor is “saved,”? the better, for then labor is using more and better capital goods to satisfy more of its wants in a shorter amount of time.

Artificial intelligence is not in the same league as the shovel. He makes the assumption that man can compete with or complement machine. This might not be the case anymore. We have a situation where man is being wholly replaced by machine.

Frankly, Hayek and Rothbard and the other Austrians seems to have a mechanistic "cog in the machine" view of mankind that makes me a bit sick. They seem to place the importance of the economy and its creation of material goods above and beyond any affective or emotional issues that make us human to begin with. Humans are not machines and life is not just about the ever more efficient production of capital goods! At a certain point humans need to realize that the purpose of the economy is to serve them....not the other way around. What good is an economic system that leaves us feeling alienated and disaffected? I would rather dig ditches all day in the sun as long as I derived a feeling of self worth from it!

[Benko]

At a certain point humans need to realize that the purpose of the economy is to serve them....not the other way around. What good is an economic system that leaves us feeling alienated and disaffected? I would rather dig ditches all day in the sun as long as I derived a feeling of self worth from it!

Another way to look at it is that the economy is the economy and feelings of self worth are feelings of self worth and the two are unrelated (or don't have to be).

[doodle]

Well...I personally think that Bhutan maybe has a more reasoned approach to all of this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_national_happiness

There is no exact quantitative definition of GNH,[3] but elements that contribute to GNH are subject to quantitative measurement. Low rates of infant mortality, for instance, correlate positively with subjective expressions of well-being or happiness within a country. The practice of social science has long been directed toward transforming subjective expression of large numbers of people into meaningful quantitative data; there is no major difference between asking people "how confident are you in the economy?" and "how satisfied are you with your job?"

GNH, like the Genuine Progress Indicator, refers to the concept of a quantitative measurement of well-being and happiness. The two measures are both motivated by the notion that subjective measures like well-being are more relevant and important than more objective measures like consumption. It is not measured directly, but only the factors which are believed to lead to it.

According to Daniel Kahneman, a Princeton University psychologist, happiness can be measured using the day reconstruction method, which consists in recollecting memories of the previous working day by writing a short diary.[4]

A second-generation GNH concept, treating happiness as a socioeconomic development metric, was proposed in 2006 by Med Jones, the President of International Institute of Management. The metric measures socioeconomic development by tracking seven development areas including the nation's mental and emotional health.[5] GNH value is proposed to be an index function of the total average per capita of the following measures:
1.Economic Wellness: Indicated via direct survey and statistical measurement of economic metrics such as consumer debt, average income to consumer price index ratio and income distribution
2.Environmental Wellness: Indicated via direct survey and statistical measurement of environmental metrics such as pollution, noise and traffic
3.Physical Wellness: Indicated via statistical measurement of physical health metrics such as severe illnesses
4.Mental Wellness: Indicated via direct survey and statistical measurement of mental health metrics such as usage of antidepressants and rise or decline of psychotherapy patients
5.Workplace Wellness: Indicated via direct survey and statistical measurement of labor metrics such as jobless claims, job change, workplace complaints and lawsuits
6.Social Wellness: Indicated via direct survey and statistical measurement of social metrics such as discrimination, safety, divorce rates, complaints of domestic conflicts and family lawsuits, public lawsuits, crime rates
7.Political Wellness: Indicated via direct survey and statistical measurement of political metrics such as the quality of local democracy, individual freedom, and foreign conflicts.

The above seven metrics were incorporated into the first Global GNH Survey.[6]

Ed Diener, a psychologist from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, has developed a scale referred to as subjective well-being, a concept related to happiness and quality of life, which has been used to compare nations to each other on this construct.[7] This study found that "high income, individualism, human rights, and social equality correlated strongly with each other, and with SWB" (p. 851, abstract).

Adam Kramer, a psychologist from the University of Oregon, has developed a behavioral model of "Gross National Happiness" based on the use of positive and negative words in social network status updates, resulting in a quantitative GNH metric.[8]

[JonathanH]

Here is Rothbard on technological unemployment:

http://mises.org/rothbard/mes/chap9b.asp

Basically, he says that machines are capital investments that improve the marginal productivity of workers. We can have increased output with cheaper prices and greater leisure.
If prices and wages float properly unemployment will clear away. Also people may have to be less picky and work in areas demanded by consumers.

Indeed.  As long as those pesky humans obey the economists' models, everything will be OK.

It's really not the Austrians who attempt to make predictive models, but the likes of Bernanke and Krugman.
Edit: See doodle's post above? Those are a lot of models. What if a government looked at those models and made them law, and what if they get it wrong?

  The ever-recurring doctrine of “technological unemployment”?—man displaced by the machine—is hardly worthy of extended analysis. Its absurdity is evident when we look at the advanced economy and compare it with the primitive one. In the former there is an abundance of machines and processes completely un­known to the latter; yet in the former, standards of living are far higher for far greater numbers of people. How many workers have been “displaced”? because of the invention of the shovel? The technological unemployment motif is encouraged by the use of the term “labor-saving devices”? for capital goods, which to some minds conjure up visions of laborers being simply discarded. La­bor needs to be “saved”? because it is the pre-eminently scarce good and because man’s wants for exchangeable goods are far from satisfied. Furthermore, these wants would not be satisfied at all if the capital-goods structure were not maintained. The more labor is “saved,”? the better, for then labor is using more and better capital goods to satisfy more of its wants in a shorter amount of time.

Artificial intelligence is not in the same league as the shovel. He makes the assumption that man can compete with or complement machine. This might not be the case anymore. We have a situation where man is being wholly replaced by machine.

Frankly, Hayek and Rothbard and the other Austrians seems to have a mechanistic "cog in the machine" view of mankind that makes me a bit sick. They seem to place the importance of the economy and its creation of material goods above and beyond any affective or emotional issues that make us human to begin with. Humans are not machines and life is not just about the ever more efficient production of capital goods! At a certain point humans need to realize that the purpose of the economy is to serve them....not the other way around. What good is an economic system that leaves us feeling alienated and disaffected? I would rather dig ditches all day in the sun as long as I derived a feeling of self worth from it!

From whom do you think Harry Browne got a lot of his ideas from? I really don't think those guys are intended to be read in the way you are describing. When I read them, I get the sense that they see the brightest possible future exists with the freest economy - but that we should not expect a utopia to be possible either. Of course the textbooks are dry since the material sticks to relating human action to economic activity.

I just can't see how robots replacing certain labor factors as problems in and of themselves. What if the above example is taken to its end, and all workers are displaced? Then who is buying the products that these robots are making? As I understand it, before we can buy something, we have to first create a good that is desired by another person who is willing to exchange a good that we need in return - in other words, voluntary exchange. I find it hard to imagine that poor people are no longer creating anything that anybody wants. Are only the wealthy buying these products? The wealthy are much fewer in number than the poor, and relying on their patronage doesn't make sense to me. How expensive must labor be if it's cheaper to build a robot with human capabilities?

If the wealthy are the only ones patronizing the robot businesses, then the poor people are returned to a state with no capital investment, and they can start all over, serving each others needs. Sort of a Keynesian dream come true - full employment!

I think growth is important. Life is hard and resources are scarce. There are a lot of people in the world who can't afford necessities and the only way to make that happen is to produce goods in such an abundance that it drives their price closer to zero - to reduce scarcity. Machines have a role in making that happen.

I see much more harm done in using the political process to manage these issues.

[Pointedstick]

Rothbard's argument seems to amount to, "people simply adapt to the more productive tools," which is and has been true in general, but what we're all wondering here is whether we humans are capable of creating tools to complicated and advanced that they change faster then humans can adapt to them in the short term.

As doodle says, a shovel and an AI--or even a robotic assembly plant--are two different ballgames. The cognitive load on productive workers has been rising for a long time--literacy, arithmetic, logical thinking, communication, etc. If we add on computer programming, digital circuits, and machine learning, I don't think it's unreasonable to imagine that we could create a world where--at least temporarily--a large number of people are simply will not possess these skills and will be shut out of larger segments of the market.

On the other hand, JonathanH has a point too: if we eventually have a ruling class of robot-owning overlords and unproductive poor people whose labor is valueless compared to the robots, they can just provide services to each other. It would be a highly stratified society, but a functional one nonetheless, assuming that a revolution didn't result as the masses looked enviously at the robots.

I alos don't think we'll get to that point. There is a lot of work that will never be roboticized because it requires the human touch. If we ever create robots capable of creativity, philosophical thought, and self-awareness, I think we have much bigger issues to grapple with.

[doodle]

How is this for creativity? The goal of artificial intelligence is to create robots capable of learning and processing information which are the wellsprings of creativity.... 

http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/nstv/ ... phony.html

[Pointedstick]

Gotta say, that sounds pretty terrible.

[doodle]

Actually Plato thought this about human knowledge...

Plato asserts that universal knowledge is not acquired, but rather, is inherently present in humans from birth. This “knowledge of the forms”? was gained by the soul in an existence preceding entry into the physical realm. Fused within its mortal tabernacle, the soul subsequently “forgets”? its previous realm and universal lore.  Plato therefore argues that “all wisdom is recollection”? (Biffle 216)  of that which was learned prior to mortality. This notion remains consistent with beauty, perfection, courage, equality, and other metaphysical concepts that transcend sensory experience.

I guess this would clash with the behaviorists who view humans in a much more mechanistic sense. I think a behaviorist would be more apt to argue that humans are essentially supercomputers that compile and combine information and that we don't actually "create" anything but merely react in a stimulus, response type manner.

Im out of my league on this topic though...

[Tyler]

If you really distill it to its essence, I think that robotics is only going to kill off all the sucky jobs like moving heavy or dangerous substances from point A to Point B which if you think about it, describes an awful lot of jobs, from factory work to trucking, and virtually all farming and resource extraction.

I disagree.

Computers are currently replacing "knowledge workers" just as quickly as robots are displacing factory workers.  When's the last time you talked to a librarian?  Doctors won't be diagnosing illnesses much longer, when computer databases can cross-reference millions of disparate symptoms simultaneously.  The rise of online schooling will most likely kill 90% of teaching jobs as one rockstar professor can teach an entire nation at once (and computers can grade the homework).  And we're even reaching the point where computers can theoretically write code or design efficient mechanical parts more effectively than human engineers.  Even during the transition period, technology has made it trivial to outsource knowledge work halfway across the planet to human labor that is far more cost effective than machines (or you). 

Even when you talk about "inspiration" or "innovation", who do you think will be more proficient in creating new ideas in the future -- the rare inspired human intellect who can envision the best solution, or the sea of supercomputers that can study every possible permutation of a design and spit out a list of options?

So IMO, it's not manual laborers who will first be looking for new things to do in the future.  On the contrary, trades like auto mechanic, carpentry, plumbing, etc. will be some of the least cost-effective jobs to automate.  The bell curve will not be trimmed from the left, but gutted from the middle.

[doodle]

Robert Anton Wilson discussed his vision of a solution called the RICH economy. We discussed it a bit in this thread: http://gyroscopicinvesting.com/forum/ht ... ic.php?t=9

EDIT: hahaha...I just saw that I mentioned the Monster thread (http://gyroscopicinvesting.com/forum/ht ... ic.php?t=0) where I nearly blew a gasket arguing with Gumby on a similar topic related to technological unemployment. :-) ahhhhh the good old days.

[doodle]

TED talk on this topic.

http://youtu.be/kYIfeZcXA9U

Ultimately the speaker's conclusions are similar to mine....that this robotic future will fundamentally require a change in our economic system and the cultural notion that people must justify and support their existence through labor. In other words, a robot future will require us to fundamentally shift our conceptions on the meaning and purpose of life.

[MediumTex]

Actually Plato thought this about human knowledge...

Plato asserts that universal knowledge is not acquired, but rather, is inherently present in humans from birth. This “knowledge of the forms”? was gained by the soul in an existence preceding entry into the physical realm. Fused within its mortal tabernacle, the soul subsequently “forgets”? its previous realm and universal lore.  Plato therefore argues that “all wisdom is recollection”? (Biffle 216)  of that which was learned prior to mortality. This notion remains consistent with beauty, perfection, courage, equality, and other metaphysical concepts that transcend sensory experience.

I guess this would clash with the behaviorists who view humans in a much more mechanistic sense. I think a behaviorist would be more apt to argue that humans are essentially supercomputers that compile and combine information and that we don't actually "create" anything but merely react in a stimulus, response type manner.

Im out of my league on this topic though...

Isn't Plato the guy who taught that objects of different weights would fall at different rates without even bothering to go to a high place and drop two objects of different weights and see if they fell at different rates?

Such apparent intellectual laziness always puzzled me.  Did he really think he was so smart and insightful that is wasn't even necessary to test any of his theories, even when it would be very easy to do so?

[doodle]

I dont know how you would test Platos knowledge of forms hypothesis. Also I think it was Aristotle who talked about weights and falling objects....then again, he was Platos student so who knows where the idea originated. At any rate, these philosophers were some of the first people to begin to look at the world in a scientific manner and for all their shortcomings I think they came up with some amazing insights and ideas.