60,000 slaves replaced by robots

peasant

Foxconn, that beacon of high wages and good working conditions has apparently replaced 60.000 of its workers with robots.

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-36376966

For years I used to laugh at the idea that we're all going to be replaced by robots one day ...but if it makes sense for foxconn to replace the lowest of the low paid workers in their Chinese sweatshops with machines, it doesn't look good for our expensive labour over here ..or does it?

jamesbere

This is how skynet starts

My name is URL

peasant wrote: »

Foxconn, that beacon of high wages and good working conditions has apparently replaced 60.000 of its workers with robots.

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-36376966

For years I used to laugh at the idea that we're all going to be replaced by robots one day ...but if it makes sense for foxconn to replace the lowest of the low paid workers in their Chinese sweatshops with machines, it doesn't look good for our expensive labour over here ..or does it?

It's pretty much obligatory to post this video in threads about this subject

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU

brevity

jamesbere wrote: »

This is how skynet starts

They can remove the sky net now...

Fratton Fred

"hey Bob, can I borrow your screwdriver?"
"of course Bob, her you go"
"thanks Bob"
"s'okay Bob"

Apple iPad, hand made by Roberts.

B.A._Baracus

Whoa. 60,000 is a lot. That's pretty much the same number of certain cities out there.

Qiaonasen

I am working right now on a software project which will replace 20 people. Am I a bad person?

B.A._Baracus

Qiaonasen wrote: »

I am working right now on a software project which will replace 20 people. Am I a bad person?

Nah.
But I am working on a software project that will replace the need for someone to develop the software that will be used to replace 20 people.

Fratton Fred

B.A._Baracus wrote: »

Nah.
But I am working on a software project that will replace the need for someone to develop the software that will be used to replace 20 people.

I'm outsourcing to India, a team of software developers who are working on a project that will replace the need for someone....

jimgoose

FortySeven

Inevitability in action. Now , how do we tackle the social fallout?
Hint. Not like Thatcher.

Its just capitalism in action really. Slavery was replaced by a 'workforce' because it became cheaper to 'free' slaves (employers didn't have to feed & house people) and 'pay' workers a 'wage' in return for their labour. "You have your own money now, so f**k off and house and feed yourselves." Machines now replace people, to the message to people now is: "f**k off people, period. I dont need you at all to make myself a profit".

emo72

Deleted User wrote: »

Machines now replace people, to the message to people now is: "f**k off people, period. I dont need you at all to make myself a profit".

who will they sell their wares to if no-one has any money?

Permabear

This post has been deleted.

emo72

emo72 wrote: »

who will they sell their wares to if no-one has any money?

Good question.

(Skynet was mentioned earlier........:pac:).

milehip

emo72 wrote: »

who will they sell their wares to if no-one has any money?

And how will the economy fare with all the lost income tax revenue and extra social welfare?
The singularity is near.

Junkyard Tom

Permabear wrote: »

This post had been deleted.

I wonder how 'capitalism' will manage to sustain itself if it engineers increasing numbers of former consumers out of the system.

prinzeugen

Fratton Fred wrote: »

"hey Bob, can I borrow your screwdriver?"
"of course Bob, her you go"
"thanks Bob"
"s'okay Bob"

Apple iPad, hand made by Roberts.

Went and stuck on Not The Nine O'clock News after reading that..

Your Face

The Voight-Kampff machine says you're lying.

BoatMad

Junkyard Tom wrote: »

I wonder how 'capitalism' will manage to sustain itself if it engineers increasing numbers of former consumers out of the system.

It is always a concern that transition technology will cause permanent unemployment , ( for example see the 1970/80s Mighty Micro series of TV) . However what tends to happen is many more are then employed by the new industries arising out of that technology.

the same comment was made when railways started displacing canals , yet many more people ended up employed in the rail industry then every was employed by the canals

riclad

There,s loads of articles on this ,
many jobs will be replaced by computers and software .
They are testing self driving cars and trucks .
Look at tesco ,some people are being replaced ,by self service checkouts.
Any job that involves forms , data could be replaced .
Middle class jobs ,office jobs are the most vunerable to being replaced .
Robots are replacing workers, eg building cars .
Society is based on collecting tax on workers and companys
,if theres 20-30 per cent of people not working will the whole system break down.

FortySeven

riclad wrote: »

There,s loads of articles on this ,
many jobs will be replaced by computers and software .
They are testing self driving cars and trucks .
Look at tesco ,some people are being replaced ,by self service checkouts.
Any job that involves forms , data could be replaced .
Middle class jobs ,office jobs are the most vunerable to being replaced .
Robots are replacing workers, eg building cars .
Society is based on collecting tax on workers and companys
,if theres 20-30 per cent of people not working will the whole system break down.

Two tier society is already in place. Those who do and those who sell them coffee and burgers.

Phoebas

BoatMad wrote: »

the same comment was made when railways started displacing canals , yet many more people ended up employed in the rail industry then every was employed by the canals

That's true, but its often not the same people.
Lots of canal workers' economic lives were destroyed, same with mill workers in England and so on, and it'll be the same with truck drivers when automation takes over their jobs.

Overall, more jobs will replace the lost ones, but they'll be different jobs, often done by different people.


I'm seeing robots/automation being used to replace waiters now. That looks like a growing trend that will displace more low skilled jobs. The people selling coffee and burgers need to watch their backs. If you don't have skills things are going to look increasingly bleak.

Phoebas

riclad wrote: »

,if theres 20-30 per cent of people not working will the whole system break down.

Nature hates a vacuum.
The system will adapt but some individuals wont adapt with it.

irishgeo

A few new jobs will be created. Robot maintenance technicians

Eugene Norman

Junkyard Tom wrote: »

I wonder how 'capitalism' will manage to sustain itself if it engineers increasing numbers of former consumers out of the system.

The individual capitalist company doesn't care. Overall capitalism depends on high paid workers earning more every year. Something modern capitalists have forgotten.

I've never been a fan of calling people who make an honest living, "slaves".

wexfordman2

Modern automation (or not last centuries automation) is a completely different beast to what we have experienced before.

This is a game changer, and probably not in a good way with the current levels of population.

There are few jobs which are not at risk as I see it.

wexfordman2

irishgeo wrote: »

A few new jobs will be created. Robot maintenance technicians

Nope, that be done by robots

Eugene Norman

BoatMad wrote: »

It is always a concern that transition technology will cause permanent unemployment , ( for example see the 1970/80s Mighty Micro series of TV) . However what tends to happen is many more are then employed by the new industries arising out of that technology.

the same comment was made when railways started displacing canals , yet many more people ended up employed in the rail industry then every was employed by the canals

Firstly the past isn't precedent. Technology isn't guaranteed to replace every job with a new job, that's not an iron law.

Secondly the state employs vast amounts of people these days, that act as buffers to secular unemployment. I'm not convinced we would get full employment if we had 19C levels of state employment.

Thirdly we live in an age of relative stagnation. If technology replaces people in a stagnant economy, they may not be replaced.

Eugene Norman

[Deleted User] wrote: »

I've never been a fan of calling people who make an honest living, "slaves".

Yes they get paid, they can leave, not property etc.

FTA69

I imagine in future we'll have to move to the payment on a liveable basic income or something along those lines. Either that or we end up with an increasingly unviable sort of society that ends up collapsing.

Sh1tbag OToole

If someone designed a smartphone thar doesnt break or go obsolete after two years a lot of those robots will be made redundant

peasant

FTA69 wrote: »

I imagine in future we'll have to move to the payment on a liveable basic income or something along those lines. Either that or we end up with an increasingly unviable sort of society that ends up collapsing.

Yes, the basic income idea is looking more and more like a necessity rather than just a socialist utopia.

Even the otherwise arch conservative Swiss deem the idea good enough to hold a referendum on it

http://www.basicincome.org/news/2016/04/swiss-poll-40-percent-favour-referendum/

Sh1tbag OToole

peasant wrote: »

Yes, the basic income idea is looking more and more like a necessity rather than just a socialist utopia.

Even the otherwise arch conservative Swiss deem the idea good enough to hold a referendum on it

http://www.basicincome.org/news/2016/04/swiss-poll-40-percent-favour-referendum/

First we need a way to tax the absolute bejeezus out of the robot-factory owners or else all the money is just going to end up in Panama and there will be nothing to pay a basic wage out of

Wibbs

BoatMad wrote: »

It is always a concern that transition technology will cause permanent unemployment , ( for example see the 1970/80s Mighty Micro series of TV) . However what tends to happen is many more are then employed by the new industries arising out of that technology.

the same comment was made when railways started displacing canals , yet many more people ended up employed in the rail industry then every was employed by the canals

Nope, afraid not. Not this time around. History simply can't inform nearly as well as previously as the fundamentals have changed.

In your example human labour moved from one area(canals), to another(railways). Human labour was still required, it moved in a different direction. In this new era human labour itself is no longer required for an increasing list of jobs. "Well we can repair the machines". Nope, that'll be a) a tiny number of people and b) the machines will repair each other and c) will get better at doing so with each generation, so even the tiny number of robot repair workers will dwindle.

There has already been an element of that with the PC. Back in the 90's livings were to be made just building, servicing and fixing PC's. Today not nearly so much. More and more they're becoming sealed units, non upgradable, reliably use for a few years, throw away, buy new. Apple products a good example of this and they have proven to be very good at reading crystal balls in the past.

Oh well more people will get jobs in the "thinking" rather than "doing" market? That already happened to a large degree in the West, from outsourcing to cheaper labour markets(skin robots) and automation so more people work in offices than on shop floors. Great, but automation is already in play in "thinking" jobs and again is getting better year on year and there will be a point reached in every thinking job where a skin robot will be replaced by an electronic one. This is already happening. It's just a matter of time before whatever career you work in reaches that point.

So no, it's not the same as before. It's as big a shift as the move from agrarian to industrialisation, but with far wider implications for humanity than that shift. That shift created work, this one will decimate it.

Eugene Norman

Sh1tbag OToole wrote: »

First we need a way to tax the absolute bejeezus out of the robot-factory owners or else all the money is just going to end up in Panama and there will be nothing to pay a basic wage out of

Yes. I don't see any practical way it would work.

petes

riclad wrote: »

Middle class jobs ,office jobs are the most vunerable to being replaced .

How exactly?

Sh1tbag OToole

Eugene Norman wrote: »

Yes. I don't see any practical way it would work.

You make it prohibitively expensive to import foreign-made phones so the company puts some bots on your home turf, then you tax those

donegal.

Phoebas wrote: »

I'm seeing robots/automation being used to replace waiters now. That looks like a growing trend that will displace more low skilled jobs. The people selling coffee and burgers need to watch their backs. If you don't have skills things are going to look increasingly bleak.

check out The Loop

Wibbs

petes wrote: »

How exactly?

Because most are data processing jobs to one degree or another. Something computers do far better than humans. Hell medical doctors are data processing "machines" and Dr Google has more medical knowledge stored today than any human doctor could ever amass. Oh but doctors rely on training, learning and experience(data storage) and observation(data gathering) and make decisions based on that(data processing and output). An AI could do all of that and almost certainly make fewer mistakes with it. Today such an AI might be room sized and take an age to come up with a diagnosis, but if 30 years ago I told you you could store 50,000 songs in your wristwatch you'd have likely thought me nuts.

But it's not just the middle classes. Transportation jobs are fooked. Game over there in a generation. Labouring jobs ditto. I would say the current way things are going in personal economics will grow and be reflected in the jobs market. A tiny percentage will be rich and become richer, the poor will become more voluminous and the middle will contract more and more. A tiny percentage will have full employment, the unemployed will grow and grow and the part time employed will contract more and more. It's a huge shift for the human race.

mg1982

Have heard people warning about this for a while now. A Study by some university in america found that up to 50 percent of all labour market jobs can or will be replaced by computer/robots in the next 30 years. Scary stuff.


https://www.technologyreview.com/s/519241/report-suggests-nearly-half-of-us-jobs-are-vulnerable-to-computerization/

Sh1tbag OToole

I for one am looking forward to a permanent holiday on basic wage. 9-5 corpororporate office work with lads in suits with gelled hair pestering you for updates is overrated. I'll move the the backarse of nowhere and spend my days in the pub while a bot with few solar panels rolls around my cabbage patch identifying and zapping weeds with frikkin' laser beams.

Speaking of pubs does anyone remember those yokes where you could pull your own pint without having to go to the bar? I havn't seen those in ages, have they been replaced by bar staff again?

Eugene Norman

Sh1tbag OToole wrote: »

You make it prohibitively expensive to import foreign-made phones so the company puts some bots on your home turf, then you tax those

That's kind of what India does but it won't work for small countries, maybe the EU.

Eugene Norman

Sh1tbag OToole wrote: »

I for one am looking forward to a permanent holiday on basic wage. 9-5 corpororporate office work with lads in suits with gelled hair pestering you for updates is overrated. I'll move the the backarse of nowhere and spend my days in the pub while a bot with few solar panels rolls around my cabbage patch identifying and zapping weeds with frikkin' laser beams.

Speaking of pubs does anyone remember those yokes where you could pull your own pint without having to go to the bar? I havn't seen those in ages, have they been replaced by bar staff again?

I wondered about that. Maybe people prefer professionally poured pints, maybe some people games the system.

Phoebas

petes wrote: »

How exactly?

There is a growing trend for automating manual human processes done by people working in offices and there is a whole software sector growing to help with this kind of automation.
There are companies who would have once offshored a lot of simple processes to places like India now bringing them home but having them done by software robots.

If you work in an office but you aren't what you'd call a knowledge worker then chances are that in the next decade your job will be automated. Even if you are a knowledge worker, you'll recognise that a chunk of the work you do every day is repetitive stuff that could be automated.

Wibbs

Eugene Norman wrote: »

I wondered about that. Maybe people prefer professionally poured pints, maybe some people games the system.

That may be one area where a niche will exist; "Human made". Those still in work and/or the wealthy may pay extra for the "organic" stuff, just like the trendies already pay more for organic food hand packed by Mexican hill workers. That organic movement may spread to the not so earthy. Both as a backlash and a fashion and a status signal. We kinda see that already with luxury items. The humble quartz wristwatch nearly sank the Swiss economy in the 70's and they came back with old fashioned mechanical watches, because they have "soul" and turned the industry around. Of course ironically considering the thread, an early 70's quartz was far more handmade than a brand new mechanical Rolex rattled out in their gazillions by a highly mechanised production cycle. One thing's for sure anyway, people will always buy bullshít. The day robots do is the day they take over.

Phoebas wrote: »

Even if you are a knowledge worker, you'll recognise that a chunk of the work you do every day is repetitive stuff that could be automated.

Knowledge workers themselves will be under threat too. "Automation" conjures up repetitive "dumb" work, but increasingly the AI stuff is getting "smarter" too and better at the not so repetitive analytical coming to conclusions work.

Sh1tbag OToole

Wibbs wrote: »

That may be one area where a niche will exist; "Human made". Those still in work and/or the wealthy may pay extra for the "organic" stuff, just like the trendies already pay more for organic food hand packed by Mexican hill workers. That organic movement may spread to the not so earthy. Both as a backlash and a fashion and a status signal. We kinda see that already with luxury items. The humble quartz wristwatch nearly sank the Swiss economy in the 70's and they came back with old fashioned mechanical watches, because they have "soul" and turned the industry around. Of course ironically considering the thread, an early 70's quartz was far more handmade than a brand new mechanical Rolex rattled out in their gazillions by a highly mechanised production cycle. One thing's for sure anyway, people will always buy bullshít. The day robots do is the day they take over.

Knowledge workers themselves will be under threat too. "Automation" conjures up repetitive "dumb" work, but increasingly the AI stuff is getting "smarter" too and better at the not so repetitive analytical coming to conclusions work.

Say the basic wage thing gets sorted, what will people do if they don't have the daily hum-dum-dum-a-drummadum-dum of corporate office life or whatever they used to do before. Do they sit in their Castleknock Semi-D's watching telly all day? Things like drug addiction and alcoholism are almost guaranteed to go up as far as I can see.

Will they turn to VR for escapism and never leave their houses again? Its nice to think that people will spend their free time kayaking and going on leisurely cycles and spending time with their family but I have a hunch that is unlikely to happen

sheesh

the only solution I see is to become a robot owner probably through some sort of franchise system you rent them out to users.

or farming fishing forestry or mining using the robots to create raw materials.

I still don't know how economic system is supposed to work though if everything is automated and less people are working who the hell is buying the products that the robots are creating and transporting.

What the hell is china going to do?

Brian?

My job is fixing robots. It's a great time to be me.


This is not a joke.

peasant

Sh1tbag OToole wrote: »

Say the basic wage thing gets sorted, what will people do if they don't have the daily hum-dum-dum-a-drummadum-dum of corporate office life or whatever they used to do before. Do they sit in their Castleknock Semi-D's watching telly all day? Things like drug addiction and alcoholism are almost guaranteed to go up as far as I can see.

Will they turn to VR for escapism and never leave their houses again? Its nice to think that people will spend their free time kayaking and going on leisurely cycles and spending time with their family but I have a hunch that is unlikely to happen

Most people actually do want a purpose to their lives, do some work, if not necessarily the mind numbing job they're doing now.

With basic income covered that frees them up to do other things...be creative, be caring, be social.

Call me an optimist, but I would see a guaranteed basic income as a huge opportunity for society rather than its downfall