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The Robotic Nation

http://marshallbrain.com/robotic-nation.htm
This is a cool essay on how in the near future our major economic problems are going to be un-employment because all the lower end jobs will be done by robots, even in the very near future you can imagine robots cleaning your house, machines flipping burgers and frying up some fries at McDonalds. automated check out lines are already in place in many convenience stores here....

what are your opinions on the future of automated help and its impacts on civilization

All I know is...I don't want something like the Matrix to occur

the other day on c-span, vermont senator bernie sanders talked about this subject. he said something along the lines of how machines make the jobs easier and increase profits, so you would except people to work less and make more money, but thats not the reality

ill see if i can find a video recording of it on c-span's site.


edit: Reflections on Careers in Government

its not free though check listings maybe it will be re-boardcasted.

The fear of being replaced by a machine is a red herring. Western workers over the coming years are infinitely more likely to be replaced by cheap labour in China or India.

All those service sector jobs that people were shifted into when Manufacturing was shifted offshore will get their turn to be retrenched in the next few years.

quote:

Originally posted by rupert The fear of being replaced by a machine is a red herring. Western workers over the coming years are infinitely more likely to be replaced by cheap labour in China or India. All those service sector jobs that people were shifted into when Manufacturing was shifted offshore will get their turn to be retrenched in the next few years.

bernie sanders and howard dean talked about this (damn vermont has awsome people in their government). they want any country trading with the US to have the same worker rights and eviromental laws, that way less companies move aboard.

quote:

Originally posted by Galapidate All I know is...I don't want something like the Matrix to occur

rofl
first thing that crossed my mind, too.

quote:

Originally posted by rizen bernie sanders and howard dean talked about this (damn vermont has awsome people in their government). they want any country trading with the US to have the same worker rights and eviromental laws, that way less companies move aboard.

Haha that may look good on paper but I can't think of anything worse for the economy. Just ask yourself this, what's going to happen to the economy if we restrict trade to all these countries with lower standards? I mean, shit our only trading partner would be Europe. Then, ask yourself what's going to happen when all these European companies take advantage of lucrative labor markets and start undercutting the prices of american companies? If the american labor market wants to remain competitive it must retool itself to become valuable once again.

But with regards to machines taking over our jobs, people thought that that was going to happen at the turn of the century with the innovations of mass production as well ...

quote:

Originally posted by rupert The fear of being replaced by a machine is a red herring. Western workers over the coming years are infinitely more likely to be replaced by cheap labour in China or India. All those service sector jobs that people were shifted into when Manufacturing was shifted offshore will get their turn to be retrenched in the next few years.

agree totally...i guess the safest jobs are those which cannot be exported, eg, carpentry, contruction, auto-mechanics and so on...but then u have the problem of machines maybe even replacing those heheh

but occrider has a point too...similar fears were voiced by ppl. at the onset of the industrial revolution...nothing too bad happened...time will tell i guess

quote:

Then, ask yourself what's going to happen when all these European companies take advantage of lucrative labor markets and start undercutting the prices of american companies? If the american labor market wants to remain competitive it must retool itself to become valuable once again.

International labour standards if they were genuinely enforceable through the WTO would really be the answer.

The European companies already take advantage of cheap wages overseas. The US corporations have led the way in cost costing and the Europeans are now playing playing catch up. In order to improve profitability all corporations are going to have to take advantage of whatever can reduce costs and therefore improve profit margins.

In the American context this means manufacturing jobs going to Mexico and then to China, in the UK finance jobs going to India and Germany's manufacturing jobs going to Bulgaria.

No amount of retooling is going to change the fundamental fact that Westerners get paid too much for what they do. The fundamental law of capitalism is "All things being equal lowest price wins" If a unit costs $1.00 to produce in the West but .20c in China, then it has to be produced in China.

The glory years of rising living standards are gone. There is only one way for living standards to go right across the West and that is down. A good case scenario of what will likely happen is Japan, overpaid workers, overpriced assets and an ageing workforce have meant that living standards have gradually been eroding for years.

Haha, this is a joke.

I'm no expert on robotics, but I presume that the level of technology isn't quite near enough to be competitive with the dexterous primates we are. We are nature's perfect manual labourers and precision-coordination instruments. This, then, takes care of the flipping burgers bit (or not). (Personally, though, I wouldn't be too worried about McBot taking over my burger-flipping job, because it sucks. This is not what you're all worried about, I presume.)

However, as far as the AI camp is concerned, I do know a thing or two, and I can tell you that automated McDonalds servers are NOT going to be showing up for a long time (I'm not talking about automated ATM kiosks, which are not hard to do -- let's look at the bigger picture here). It's quite simply just too complicated to implement. Even something as simple as ordering a damn Big Mac, believe me. Just to provide a simple example -- say someone is ordering something from an automated McDonalds station -- say it's a mother with a small child. The conversation goes as follows:

McBot: "How may I help you."
Mom: "I'd like to order a Big Mac and a Kid's Meal."
McBot: "What would you like to drink?"
Mom: "Hmm, tough question, I think I'll go with Coke. But I don't know about the kid. Let's see... *ouch*! Honey, stop pulling! Yes, we're going to eat soon, just please be patient! Ahh just scrap the soft drink for her, we'll just take juice."
McBot: "......"kaboom!

Do you realize how hard it is to process this conversation? Assuming that a machine can perfectly hear what you are saying and render it into speech, how will it know what you mean by "I'll have coke but I don't know about the kid"? How can it know that by that you mean that you are getting the kid's meal for "the kid"? How does it know it's YOUR kid? How does it know to wait for you to find out what your kid wants, because how does it know that it matters what your kid wants? It expects a straight answer. And how does it know how to distinguish between relevant information and garbage, like that little "pulling-on-mommy's-clothes" interlude? How about the "scrap the soft drink we'll have juice instead"?

A classic problem like this in the AI field involves an "AI parser" reading a preschooler story about a birthday party. The story goes (roughly) like this:

John was having a birthday party. All of his friends were invited. Sally was unsure of what to get him. She ended up going with her mommy and buying John a kite. But when they got to the party, and John opened up his present from Sally, he was sad because he already had a kite, and had to return the new one from Sally.

Any kind of computer that would have to read this would have to be aware of a staggering amount of information:

- what birthday parties are
- why it is the custom to bring presents to whoever's birthday it is as opposed to the host giving out presents to the guests, or not having presents at all
- why people invite friends to birthday parties as opposed to total strangers or even enemies
- what the emotional significance of birthday parties are (goes in line with #1, above)
- what emotions are (cut your teeth on that one!)
- why birthday parties are attended at parties and not at business meetings or charnel grounds
- why John was sad when he found out he got a kite he already had (goes in line with what emotions are)
- why it is the custom to return presents or exchange them if you already possess a copy of it, as opposed to keeping it and having two copies
- why Sally would go buy a present with her mommy as opposed to going alone or going with a stranger or her cat

Some of these may sound funny or stupid, but it just comes to show how much BUILT-IN knowledge (which we all take for granted!) must be assumed to understand this simple, one-paragraph mini-story that ANY FOUR YEAR OLD COULD UNDERSTAND.

The point of this long ramble is that the image of robots taking over humanity's work is FARFETCHED. Machines are good at doing tasks that are SIMPLE and REPETITIVE, like adding numbers quickly or building cars. They CANNOT perform tasks like communicating with humans, understanding language, conversing with humans, working in any kind of service area like fast food or anything of the sort. Human language, communication, and thought are just so immensely complicated that we are decades, if not centuries, away from creating anything that can understand things at an appreciable level, much less at a level that is COMMERCIALLY VIABLE enough to totally REPLACE human workers. And for THAT kind of a level, you need EXPERT systems that can compete if not EXCEED the performance of humans.

So don't worry, the Matrix isn't here just yet...

Heh, this problem has been talked about ever since the beginning of the industrial revolution. History shows, however, that things soon got balanced out. If you look at development of jobs throughout the history, in the beginning of civilization, all the workforce was concentrated on the primary sector, mainly agriculture. Later, as industrial revolution happened, the majority of the workforce abandoned farming and shifted to secondary industrial sector. Later on, as machines got more and more improved, large workforces were no longer needed in factories, so the majority of the workforce shifted to tertiary sector, mainly commercial services. Now, it is likely that such a large workforce in commercial areas will become obsolete in the near future. It won't diminish completely, as still some humans will be needed to operate and lead the businesses, But, there will not be nearly as high demand for them as it was before. What will happen is that most people will switch their jobs for ones in the quartary sector, mainly education, research and development. The improved robotic industry and services will be sufficient to sustain the increased workforce in the new areas of r&d. The only problem will occur during the transition period when a large amount of workforce will become obsolete, but still, that will be only a temporary downside, one that won't last for longer than a generation.

I would just add that during the Industrial Revolution (at least in England, other countries may have had a different transition) the workforce were by and large already kicked off the land. They didnt leave the land to go and work in the factories. There was a change in land ownership where the landlords enclosed their lands and the traditional tenants were forced into the cities.

Much of the crafts that were produced in the factories were also produced by skilled craftsmen who fought tooth and nail to maintain their crafts skills but were forced to become dependant employees working in factories from being independant craftsmen in their own homes.

This process caused massive dislocation, with skyrocketing crime and alchohol abuse. Those things are part and parcel of a properly working free market.

A properly working free market economy will have the managerial class with a high level of skill and everyone else de-skilled. For a capitalist a globalised labour market is absolutely ideal because now even the skilled workers can get paid what a labourer gets and there is nothing they can do about it because the capitalist can move elsewhere if their wages get too high.

In the modern world the owners of capital hold all the cards.

another useless topic

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