Humans need not apply

Bigus

Whats my motivation to go out and find a job if I'm an unemployed robot in the future ?

or do I just waste away suffering from robot depression and anxiety or do I pick up a robot hobby ?

conorhal

kneemos wrote: »

Been hearing about the machines taking over since the seventies.Believe it when I see it.

Since the 70's eh? The mail cart guy and the girls in the typing pool don't believe it either!

Frank Lee Midere

Let me tell you why you shouldn't worry about automation.

Imagine a society of 1,000,000 people producing a Widget each per year.
It's GDP is 1,000,000 widgets per year.

Now it starts to automate: each worker can produce 10 widgets a year with machine help.
It's GDP id now 10,000,000 widgets per year.

So it is ten times richer. For that to work, though, the consumers have to have money. There is no point making widgets if nobody is going to buy them, and what tends to happen is that factory work is reduced but other kinds of work increase. But it doenst matter.

We've been automating work since the 1950's. I doubt it is accelerating, Moore's law doesn't really apply because a simple robot on a production line, whose job is merely to paint the doors of the car, doesn't need a modern CPU. The 80's was good enough.

The reason the West is in decline at the moment is the exact opposite of what people think, its not automation but the lack of it. China has opened up and the money and wages go there.

PopePalpatine

Bigus wrote: »

Whats my motivation to go out and find a job if I'm an unemployed robot in the future ?

or do I just waste away suffering from robot depression and anxiety or do I pick up a robot hobby ?

Simple, just be like Bender from Futura-oh wait, he still had a job.

ScumLord

Frank Lee Midere wrote: »

Let me tell you why you shouldn't worry about automation.

Imagine a society of 1,000,000 people producing a Widget each per year.
It's GDP is 1,000,000 widgets per year.

Now it starts to automate: each worker can produce 10 widgets a year with machine help.
It's GDP id now 10,000,000 widgets per year.

It's not really as simple as that, if a company has found a way of decreasing the cost of production per unit, it means any company can do the same, so those savings are just allowing the company to stay competitive. They don't automatically make more profit, they have to cover their costs of automation on top of staying competitive in the market.

We've been automating work since the 1950's. I doubt it is accelerating, Moore's law doesn't really apply because a simple robot on a production line, whose job is merely to paint the doors of the car, doesn't need a modern CPU. The 80's was good enough.

It's not as easy as that either, you can't have one robot using 80s technology in an environment were everything else is on 2000 technology, to make cost saving you have to replace that machine with something current for the simple fact that you won't get parts or support for the old machine.

Automating may seem simple on the face of it but it's complex to implement in the real world, there's no point in automating a process unless it will save you money, that's not always the case it depends on volume. Most factories simply use jigs that constrain what can be done by a person and that eliminate the possibility of mistakes. Automation is as much about reducing mistakes as it is doing things faster and cheaper.

The reason the West is in decline at the moment is the exact opposite of what people think, its not automation but the lack of it. China has opened up and the money and wages go there.

The Chinese have pretty poor quality control in my experience, it's just they're so cheap you can take the hit of a fifth of the product coming in being unusable. Chinese students also suffer from the restrictive way their education system works. They make great workers put have a lot to learn when it comes to development and design.

hatrickpatrick

You see the ideal would be a situation in which nobody had to work in order to survive because of mass automation, but we all know that what is more likely to happen is that the usual cartel of vested interests will run off with all the spoils and leave f*ck all for anyone else. As the OP said, it could either be the best thing to happen to humanity or the worst but knowing how these things usually turn out, I'd have to pessimistically go with the worst. For now.

House of Blaze

This fella is pretty class too.

And super creepy...

ScumLord

hatrickpatrick wrote: »

You see the ideal would be a situation in which nobody had to work in order to survive because of mass automation, but we all know that what is more likely to happen is that the usual cartel of vested interests will run off with all the spoils and leave f*ck all for anyone else. As the OP said, it could either be the best thing to happen to humanity or the worst but knowing how these things usually turn out, I'd have to pessimistically go with the worst. For now.

I think the reason people today are so willing to go along with the apparent disparity between rich and poor is because the middle class and even poor people (in the west at least) have it pretty good. We have an abundance of cheap food, we have access to technology (even a homeless person could afford a mobile phone if they really wanted one). It's enough to keep the general population content with the current social system because in the west at least we have a lot to lose by rocking the boat. We see 3rd world countries in anarchy and are afraid to upset what we have and end up like them.

Take too much away from the working classes and they will turn, it's happened again and again throughout history. Even if it's not the working class that revolts an economy is a balancing act if enough wealth is taken away from the consumer base it will topple economies too.

I think it's only a matter of time before human civilization has to give up on our current version of economy. It's simply unsustainable. Infinite growth with limited resources is doomed to failure, we've done great up until now but I think we're going to start seeing diminishing returns on our efforts in the future. I think it's imperative the human race move into space or we're just going to have to get used to living with less.

Tail Docker

ScumLord wrote: »

I think the reason people today are so willing to go along with the apparent disparity between rich and poor is because the middle class and even poor people (in the west at least) have it pretty good. We have an abundance of cheap food, we have access to technology (even a homeless person could afford a mobile phone if they really wanted one). It's enough to keep the general population content with the current social system because in the west at least we have a lot to lose by rocking the boat. We see 3rd world countries in anarchy and are afraid to upset what we have and end up like them.

Take too much away from the working classes and they will turn, it's happened again and again throughout history. Even if it's not the working class that revolts an economy is a balancing act if enough wealth is taken away from the consumer base it will topple economies too.

I think it's only a matter of time before human civilization has to give up on our current version of economy. It's simply unsustainable. Infinite growth with limited resources is doomed to failure, we've done great up until now but I think we're going to start seeing diminishing returns on our efforts in the future. I think it's imperative the human race move into space or we're just going to have to get used to living with less.

Damn, it was all going so well till that bit in bold. You had me reading intently till there.

ScumLord

Tail Docker wrote: »

Damn, it was all going so well till that bit in bold. You had me reading intently till there.

Space is the only place infinite growth will work, for a few thousand years at least.

It's really the only place for the human race to go, the initial cost of getting into space would be high but once you have colonies mining asteroids there's way more easily accessed resources available than you'd find on earth. I'm not even talking about exploring the stars, just utilizing all the resources floating in our own solar systems asteroid belt. There's an abundance of easily accessed minerals, metals and even water just floating around there.

All our energy saving technologies and even the likes of 3d printing are all essential space technologies.

Iwasfrozen

ScumLord wrote: »

Space is the only place infinite growth will work, for a few thousand years at least.

It's really the only place for the human race to go, the initial cost of getting into space would be high but once you have colonies mining asteroids there's way more easily accessed resources available than you'd find on earth. I'm not even talking about exploring the stars, just utilizing all the resources floating in our own solar systems asteroid belt. There's an abundance of easily accessed minerals, metals and even water just floating around there.

All our energy saving technologies and even the likes of 3d printing are all essential space technologies.

The energy costs of transporting the minerals wouldn't be economically feasible

ScumLord

Iwasfrozen wrote: »

The energy costs of transporting the minerals wouldn't be economically feasible

Where would you be transporting them? I wouldn't be advocating sending those resources down to earth, they'd stay in space with the colonies that mined them or traded with other colonies.

Once they're not trying to get on or off a planet moving them around isn't going to be all that difficult.

Iwasfrozen

ScumLord wrote: »

Where would you be transporting them? I wouldn't be advocating sending those resources down to earth, they'd stay in space with the colonies that mined them or traded with other colonies.
E
Once they're not trying to get on or off a planet moving them around isn't going to be all that difficult.

Well then what's the point? There are no habitable planets near Earth.

Tail Docker

ScumLord wrote: »

Where would you be transporting them? I wouldn't be advocating sending those resources down to earth, they'd stay in space with the colonies that mined them or traded with other colonies.

Once they're not trying to get on or off a planet moving them around isn't going to be all that difficult.

I'll be the one to go out on a limb here - this may not happen. Star-trek has a lot to answer for.

Iwasfrozen

Tail Docker wrote: »

I'll be the one to go out on a limb here - this may not happen. Star-trek has a lot to answer for.

Agreed.

@ScumLord, here's a really good article that goes into detail about why humans will (probably) never venture into space. If you can take the time, I really would recommend reading the whole thing.

http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/10/why-not-space/

ScumLord

Iwasfrozen wrote: »

Well then what's the point? There are no habitable planets near Earth.

There's no need for any. We would build large space colonies, even if we could go to another planet I don't think we'd ever colonise them. If we did find a planet that humans could live on, it's more than likely to have it's own version of life and us living there would corrupt it's native species, I don't see how scientists would want to do that. The kind of ship that could take us to another planet would be good enough to live on permanently anyway.

We'd basically be living in our own self sufficient cities mining the asteroid belt.

Tail Docker

ScumLord wrote: »

There's no need for any. We would build large space colonies, even if we could go to another planet I don't think we'd ever colonise them. If we did find a planet that humans could live on, it's more than likely to have it's own version of life and us living there would corrupt it's native species, I don't see how scientists would want to do that. The kind of ship that could take us to another planet would be good enough to live on permanently anyway.

We'd basically be living in our own self sufficient cities mining the asteroid belt.

Sounds like the plot to Wall-E.

Jesus Wept

Wompa1 wrote: »

Bill Gates has suggested that in the past too. The two lads at Google have suggested standardizing on a shorter work week. I went to a conference recently that suggested, task workers in Offices will suffer greatly and the few remaining will be working from home...Offices will become data centers with very little actual office space.

They are right, the 40 hour/5 day working week is just made up.

Bigus wrote: »

Where's the paperless office so, we had that 20 years ago but it didn't work .

It's your email account, your computer, etc. Maybe not paperless, but a lot less.

Bigus wrote: »

Plus as an example the horse industry hasn't been wiped out by the car/automobile yet , even a hundred years on,

ok it's very different now, a high value low volume equine industry, so maybe a good indicative model,

Well it sort of has, really, massively.

stimpson wrote: »

But win7 doesn't crap itself 5 times a day.

The big win for driverless cars is taxis without the opinionated bull**** and casual racism.

Hopefully that is an optional extra, the nostalgia package.

sink wrote: »

Part of the formula of basic income is lowering the wages business have to pay directly to employees. Somebody earning €600 today direct from their employer would with a basic income from the state of €200 instead be paid €400 direct from their employer. An general effect of this would be to make it cheaper to employ additional employees. However with basic needs taken care of people wouldn't be forced into menial labour simply to survive, meaning difficult dirty jobs will receiver a higher compensation which will also have the effect of incentivising them to be automated.

Business revenue and rather than income would have to become the primary source of direct taxation. It would fundamentally change the dynamics of our economy in so many ways, many of which we can't predict. However the net effect looks to be positive.

Businesses would just people less.

House of Blaze wrote: »

I dunno if this is the one, but it sounds like the 'Big Dog' from Boston Dynamics.

After about 30 seconds they start putting it through its paces, crazy stuff!

Basically boston dynamics were pretty much the cutting edge in robotics for the last decade until google bought them last year.

Clearly two lads dressed up.

Frank Lee Midere wrote: »

Let me tell you why you shouldn't worry about automation.

Imagine a society of 1,000,000 people producing a Widget each per year.
It's GDP is 1,000,000 widgets per year.

Now it starts to automate: each worker can produce 10 widgets a year with machine help.
It's GDP id now 10,000,000 widgets per year.

So it is ten times richer. For that to work, though, the consumers have to have money. There is no point making widgets if nobody is going to buy them, and what tends to happen is that factory work is reduced but other kinds of work increase.

To some degree, but it doesn't have to increase to the point where there are jobs for all.

Jesus Wept

Lux23 wrote: »

Who will fix the machines? Other machines? Who will fix those machines?

The coastguard.