This article's meat is based on some critical assumptions - flawed ones.
Firstly, like most doom-and-gloom technology-obsoletes-humans and technology-steals-jobs articles, the writer assumes all these jobs will be replaced *instantly*. This is clearly wrong, for several reasons.
First, the major corporations that'd be buying the robots are risk-averse. They'll let someone else try - and be burned by - such a scheme before they try it themselves. This might take place over ten or more years.
Secondly, he assumes that this entire block of jobs can be replaced all at once, which is also clearly wrong. They all require varying sophisticated levels of working artificial intelligence. Unfortunately, we cannot assume robots will become capable of handling *all* these jobs at the same time. AI is like nuclear fusion power plants, in ever since the 1950s experts have been saying "it'll be ready in 10 years", and ten years later they're still saying "it'll be ready in 10 years", and so on. It is likely that improvements will continue to be incremental, as they have been so far with industrial robots. Robots capable of taking voice orders from anyone who walks in the door, making your burger, and working the register are the kind of robots that will be perfected *last*.
Third, he assumes that a robot worker will be cheaper than a human worker, and that the rise of robots will not create any jobs to replace those jobs they displace. This is also clearly wrong. Human replacement will take more than a 1-to-1 ratio at first, as the first ones will not be as versatile as humans - they'll be more customized towards doing a specific task. Checkout line robots won't also be pulling shopping carts out of the parking lot and stocking the shelves, you'll need a few custom bots for each job. If the cost of buying and supplying power to a bunch of robots is more than the cost of a minimum-wage human employee, the robots won't get bought. Plus the diversity of robot types would slow the economy of scale of production, keeping the prices up until their widespread adoption.
When robots DO start to become worth buying, they'll need humans to keep them in service - robot repair is a hard enough AI problem that, again, that'd be the *last* type of job robots would be able to replace. As an additional bonus, the human repairmen would probably make a better salary than the minimum wage jobs being lost. There will also, of course, be a spike in the number of robot engineers and robot programmers and robot company advertising firms and robot company markters and salesmen and managers and so on. There will be more business for insurance companies - hey, you want to protect that robot investment! bots make great vandalism targets and it'll probably be illegal for them to defend themselves. There will be more business for lawyers - hey! this robot rolled over my foot, this robot dripped oil in my burger! - as, again, we expect the first models to be imperfect. And as human jobs would be those requiring more skill, there would be more teaching jobs.
Fourth, he forgets that such a massive change in our economic structure would also likely affect the minimum wage. If there are no grunt-work jobs left, then the new jobs would require a level of skill such that the minimum wage would be raised quite a bit - a huge benefit to those human workers with jobs one tier up from those being filled by robots.
Fifth, he doesn't look long term enough. Total automation of all the grunt work would increase the overall efficiency of the system to a level where it would become attractive to shift our economy to a slightly different system altogether. Sort of a hybrid socialist one - hey, if the farms are nearly free to run, might as well give every citizen some free rations of staple foods every month. If construction is nearly free, why have homelessness? Give those who can't afford a house a one-room economy apartment. The economy would still be capitalist at heart - because if you want to improve your situation, you'v
Hahahhahaha! Thank you! The discussion was so serious before. The idea that big business would allow "our" leaders to raise the minimum wage... priceless!
Oh, it wouldn't be raised by law. It'd go up, basically, because all the *real* minimum wage jobs would vanish (the robots do those now, remember?). The remaining jobs would (theoretically) pay as much as they do now (more than minimum). The raise is a statistical illusion.
As for big business... well, the minimum wage already exists, so they've already mostly lost that battle. In some places there are actually "living wage" laws on top of that, pushing wages higher. Trying to *lower* the minimum wage is po
Frankly, I doubt it. According the article there are, what, 50 million people put out of (mostly) minimum wage jobs by the robots. All of a sudden there are a lot of job openings for maintenance techs, task programmers, robot supervisors, etc. In today's economy any one of those would pay a reasonable wage. But if there's an oversupply of labor (and there will be: it wouldn't make sense to switch to robots if you needed one human tech for every robot), supply and demand says those newly created jobs won't p
I live in Rhode Island. In the RI/CN/MA area the minimum wage has been steadily rising for as long as I can remember. It just went up again recently in RI, it's higher in Massachusetts, and it's going to break $7 in Connecticut in a few months. The restaurant owners scream every time, but they also lose every time, and they're all still in business - they tend to employ a lot of school kids part-time anyway, who they're allowed to pay less. http://www.dol.gov/esa/minwage/america.htm is my source on the mini
Straight lassez faire capitalism will not work when 50% of the workforce doesn't have a job.
No, it can't. It wasn't designed for this kind of situation.
The stock market's going to do great, though.
Based on what consumer demand? A family can only consume so much on a day-to-day basis, of both consumables (food, etc.), electronic consumer items, and capital expenses (housing, transportation, etc.). In conventional capitalism, the surplus gets invested. What's to invest in if demand is static because the
Given Human Nature, specifically the tendency to respond to free time and food abundance to procreate, Welfare is not a sustainable model. In some cases, and for brief spurts of time, we have seen welfare levels high enough to meet western standards of living, but "welfare generations" have trimmed down long term welfare even here. The status of global welfare on the other hand has always been just enough to keep the wars localized, if the warring gets bad enough that civilized (population controlled) count
Indeed. The level of "welfare" I'm envisioning, if it could even be called that, is one of bare subsistance if the recipient doesn't also work. A single small room, enough bland food to not starve, and plain servicable clothes (so as to not be nude). A living situation that'd barely be tolerable even today, even for the modern welfare system.
It's based on the assumption that 1) with robots doing all the work, the handouts are essentially free anyway, and 2) social pressure would be such that, ideally, no o
The interesting point that you raise is that wealth, beyond subsistence, is a competative reality. To be considered sexy in a world with automated McDonalds may require peacock feathers of a color you and i can't imagine at the moment.
The problem is that in women-supressive cultures, sexy doesn't matter. Women exist to make little voters. Their opinions and choices are limited, and either directly or indirectly force is used to procreate them. This removes the peacock definition of sexy, and replaces it wi
Ah, but the European immigration right now is encouraged only because it benefits both parties - the Europeans get cheap workers for the menial jobs and the immigrants get better living conditions (and work). If they had robot workers, there go all the jobs the immigrants would be taking. Therefore, no more mass immigration.
In the nations that could afford to be buying up these robots, women *do* have a choice. In most of the cultures where they do not, welfare (and charity in general) are alien concepts.
In the first two paragraphs, i feel you missed an important complexity. Importing labor is good for those that import, and less good for the status quo, the voting population, and the future stability of the region.
(2) Even developed nations have huge populations of Women-Oppressors largely imported.
No Fire Safety law is going to prevent multi-family dwellings. (reduce by.03% maybe)
Final point: immigration increases population - right fully agreed - at the expense of stability. Better really wold be for
Once 99% of the customer base carries a mobile (phone+PDA+GPS+wallet+tracking device;)... etc.) with a high quality touch screen that can display pictures of the available options of the closest "sale bot", there is no longer a business need for artificial intelligence. I believe this is feasible in a few years time.
Firstly, like most doom-and-gloom technology-obsoletes-humans and technology-steals-jobs articles, the writer assumes all these jobs will be replaced *instantly*. This is clearly wrong, for several reasons.
First, the major corporations that'd be buying the robots are risk-averse. They'll let someone else try - and be burned by - such a scheme before they try it themselves. This might take place over ten or more years.
A not unreasonable timeframe.
Secondly, he assumes that this entire block of jobs can
Unix is the worst operating system; except for all others.
-- Berry Kercheval
hmm. a few important flaws (Score:4, Insightful)
Firstly, like most doom-and-gloom technology-obsoletes-humans and technology-steals-jobs articles, the writer assumes all these jobs will be replaced *instantly*. This is clearly wrong, for several reasons.
First, the major corporations that'd be buying the robots are risk-averse. They'll let someone else try - and be burned by - such a scheme before they try it themselves. This might take place over ten or more years.
Secondly, he assumes that this entire block of jobs can be replaced all at once, which is also clearly wrong. They all require varying sophisticated levels of working artificial intelligence. Unfortunately, we cannot assume robots will become capable of handling *all* these jobs at the same time. AI is like nuclear fusion power plants, in ever since the 1950s experts have been saying "it'll be ready in 10 years", and ten years later they're still saying "it'll be ready in 10 years", and so on. It is likely that improvements will continue to be incremental, as they have been so far with industrial robots. Robots capable of taking voice orders from anyone who walks in the door, making your burger, and working the register are the kind of robots that will be perfected *last*.
Third, he assumes that a robot worker will be cheaper than a human worker, and that the rise of robots will not create any jobs to replace those jobs they displace. This is also clearly wrong. Human replacement will take more than a 1-to-1 ratio at first, as the first ones will not be as versatile as humans - they'll be more customized towards doing a specific task. Checkout line robots won't also be pulling shopping carts out of the parking lot and stocking the shelves, you'll need a few custom bots for each job. If the cost of buying and supplying power to a bunch of robots is more than the cost of a minimum-wage human employee, the robots won't get bought. Plus the diversity of robot types would slow the economy of scale of production, keeping the prices up until their widespread adoption.
When robots DO start to become worth buying, they'll need humans to keep them in service - robot repair is a hard enough AI problem that, again, that'd be the *last* type of job robots would be able to replace. As an additional bonus, the human repairmen would probably make a better salary than the minimum wage jobs being lost. There will also, of course, be a spike in the number of robot engineers and robot programmers and robot company advertising firms and robot company markters and salesmen and managers and so on. There will be more business for insurance companies - hey, you want to protect that robot investment! bots make great vandalism targets and it'll probably be illegal for them to defend themselves. There will be more business for lawyers - hey! this robot rolled over my foot, this robot dripped oil in my burger! - as, again, we expect the first models to be imperfect. And as human jobs would be those requiring more skill, there would be more teaching jobs.
Fourth, he forgets that such a massive change in our economic structure would also likely affect the minimum wage. If there are no grunt-work jobs left, then the new jobs would require a level of skill such that the minimum wage would be raised quite a bit - a huge benefit to those human workers with jobs one tier up from those being filled by robots.
Fifth, he doesn't look long term enough. Total automation of all the grunt work would increase the overall efficiency of the system to a level where it would become attractive to shift our economy to a slightly different system altogether. Sort of a hybrid socialist one - hey, if the farms are nearly free to run, might as well give every citizen some free rations of staple foods every month. If construction is nearly free, why have homelessness? Give those who can't afford a house a one-room economy apartment. The economy would still be capitalist at heart - because if you want to improve your situation, you'v
Re:hmm. a few important flaws (Score:1)
Re:hmm. a few important flaws (Score:1)
As for big business... well, the minimum wage already exists, so they've already mostly lost that battle. In some places there are actually "living wage" laws on top of that, pushing wages higher. Trying to *lower* the minimum wage is po
Re:hmm. a few important flaws (Score:1)
Re:hmm. a few important flaws (Score:1)
Right... and wrong. (Score:2)
Straight lassez faire capitalism will not work when 50% of the workforce doesn't have a job.
No, it can't. It wasn't designed for this kind of situation.
The stock market's going to do great, though.
Based on what consumer demand? A family can only consume so much on a day-to-day basis, of both consumables (food, etc.), electronic consumer items, and capital expenses (housing, transportation, etc.). In conventional capitalism, the surplus gets invested. What's to invest in if demand is static because the
Sustainble Level of Welfare (Score:1)
Re:Sustainble Level of Welfare (Score:1)
It's based on the assumption that 1) with robots doing all the work, the handouts are essentially free anyway, and 2) social pressure would be such that, ideally, no o
Re:Sustainble Level of Welfare (Score:1)
The problem is that in women-supressive cultures, sexy doesn't matter. Women exist to make little voters. Their opinions and choices are limited, and either directly or indirectly force is used to procreate them. This removes the peacock definition of sexy, and replaces it wi
Re:Sustainble Level of Welfare (Score:1)
In the nations that could afford to be buying up these robots, women *do* have a choice. In most of the cultures where they do not, welfare (and charity in general) are alien concepts.
The coming war with the overpopulated (Score:1)
(2) Even developed nations have huge populations of Women-Oppressors largely imported.
No Fire Safety law is going to prevent multi-family dwellings. (reduce by
Final point: immigration increases population - right fully agreed - at the expense of stability. Better really wold be for
Re:hmm. a few important flaws (Score:0)
tried to fix a newer car lately? you need a computer (robot) just to tell you what's wrong with the damn thing. last type of job indeed..
Artificial intelligence often unnecessary (Score:1)
So what's it really going to look like? (Score:2)
Firstly, like most doom-and-gloom technology-obsoletes-humans and technology-steals-jobs articles, the writer assumes all these jobs will be replaced *instantly*. This is clearly wrong, for several reasons.
First, the major corporations that'd be buying the robots are risk-averse. They'll let someone else try - and be burned by - such a scheme before they try it themselves. This might take place over ten or more years.
A not unreasonable timeframe.
Secondly, he assumes that this entire block of jobs can