The Gravest Threat to Your Job Isn't Illegal Immigrants: It's The Robots!

Robots building robots. We're screwed!

Cute joke, though.

I work in television and when I hired on with my current company in 2000 we had 15-20 people per station employed around our network. Automation took over a whole lot of the jobs and now we are down to crews averaging around 6 people total per station. It is true that changes in our sales structure and consolidation of our management structure took some jobs, but sans the automation we'd still have 10-12 people per station employed. If we go to central casting it will cut our numbers even further. :(

We have nothing to lose but our robots!

:banghead:

grow up.

Automation has been displacing workers since Ned Ludd.

Once robots do everything, then we'll all be freed up to go shopping and stuff. :eyes:

:thumbsup:

MAY DEATH COME SWIFTLY TO HIS ENEMIES.

(It's funny--when they ask Billy West about Nixon's voice, he says he was inspired by the fact that he thought Nixon always sounded like he was turning into a werewolf.)

I loved Nixon on Futurama.

Hey Morbo, how's the family?

Numerous and belligerent.

Good, good. Nixon is pro-war and pro-family.

without exploiting those in the 3rd world...in theory.

K&R

Americans had access to an unbelievable (and utterly unsustainable) amount of consumer credit.

This means that employers were able to keep wages stagnant and demand still rose. Consumer just tapped more and more and more and more credit. Thus there was no need to either lower prices (to stimulate demand), or raise wages (due to competition in scarce labor market).

Nope the profits just flowed to shareholders & owners.

Sadly "easy credit" helped to continue the cycle of stagnant wages. Now that credit bubble has burst and consumers are deleveraging it is entirely possible productivity gains will result in supply exceeding demand and has the potential for crippling deflation.

Consumers should NEVER have had access to the level of credit they did. It utterly unbalanced the global economic system. Sadly we will be paying the price for that for years (if not decades).

more and more jobs will be lost to outsourcing and as the OP put it robots but we will fill that hole with credit instead of a decrease in prices. And same thing will happen again. If we had real wall street reform that wouldn't be so scary, unfortunately we didn't get real reform.

I only hope people got so utterly burned by credit and consumerism that they won't embrace it again.

In the very recent history the signs are good. Consumption is down, debt spending is down, Americans have a positive savings rate.
Sadly all these hurt the short term recovery but are absolutely vital to avoid another credit bubble.

Then again Americans have a short attention span so will that trend hold true for a a year, a decade, a generation? If it doesn't then we will NEVER see wage increases. Just credit bubbles and then credit busts a cycle repeating forever.

:hide:

Regular old sex workers just get the grunt and heave and fall-off.

An entirely automated plant. Raw material goes in, finished products (assimilated, inspected, packaged) comes out.

It is called "lights out" because during production run to save energy there is no need for lighting or climate control.

Some factories even operate in a partial vacuum. The reduced air pressure reduces resistance on robots allowing them to last longer and use less energy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Automated_Society

Some authors even believe this goes beyond just jobs, wages, or productivity. Virtually all manufacturing (of all forms from the most complex to the lowest cost) can eventually be replaced by fully automated systems. The cultural and socio-economic impact will be massive (and likely very chaotic).

Robot mechanics make very good money.

Say you got a plant that requires 1,000 humans.

It can be replaced by say 400 robots. While there are humans in the loop it isn't 1,000 humans. If it was then there would be no economical reason to use robots. So say the human footprint is 300 humans (operators, programmers, repair techs, management, etc).

While it is good for the 300 what about the net 700 human jobs lost?

Now think of that on a macroeconomic level. Companies with robots have an advantage over those without and thus the automation trend continues.

When 99% of manufacturing is fully automated we will still "build things" but it will require a lot less human jobs. So what does everyone else do?

Jobs that require more education and more specialized training than assembly tasks, like the IT infrastructure required to manage a robotic assembly operation.

There is a finite demand for the "higher level jobs".

The problem is demand for finished goods in the developed world is relatively stagnant. Cars last longer. People have many appliances already. Computers are being replaced but each year they too last longer and longer. At some point the market place is saturated.

That would be bad enough as it is but then you have robotics replacing workers it just adds to the problem. Long term there simply is not enough work to go around to keep everyone employed 40+ hours. However our entire society is based on this belief that demand always rises and thus production capacity needs to always rise.

That is ending. There won't be neough IT jobs to replace all the displaced manufacturing jobs. So either you have a situation like Rome (before the fall) where large portion of the population simply exists on public dole or we need a radical transformation of society.

Now this isn't to say increase productivity is a bad thing however when you combined increased productivity, the ever increasing capability of robotics and utterly (worst in 100+ years) unequal distribution of wealth it is a recipe for disaster.

The issue of job displacement due to advancing technology isn't a new one. What did agricultural workers do when advances in farm machinery reduced the need for physical labor?

However we are facing an utterly unbelievable rate of productivity gains. The transitions from agricultural to manufacturing was large and chaotic however there was rising demand for finished manufactured goods.

Productivity is growing faster than demand for finished good globally. Thus while aggregate demand is rising it takes less and less people (all jobs from management down to janitorial) to produce those goods.

If less and less and less people are required to satisfy global demand what happens to the people displaced? Not just displaced from manufacturing but displaced from all employment.

The common meme is the US doesn't make "anything". This is completely false. US industrial output is at all time time high however it can be done with less and less and less jobs due to productivity gains.

It functions similar to slavery except the robots are the "slaves" and they displace "freeman". This very same phenomenon happened near end of Roman empire. It utterly annihilated the living standards of everyone except the ultra rich (who were able to compound their wealth by using productivity of slaves to purchase more slaves).

They have been made to be disposable items since the 80s (at least in the US, now the disease seems to have infected even Mercedes and BMW). The rest of your post contains little else to criticize.

The 1980s were particularly bad but recent (late 90s onward) vehicles are incredibly long lasting. Not only are they long lasting but they have much less repairs & maintenance cost.

As an example: My Honda doesn't need either coolant or spark plugs changed for 100,000 miles. The onboard computer lets me know when to change oil and I am not getting about 7,500 to 8,000 miles between oil changes using Mobil 1 synthetic. My vehicle has 87,000 miles on it and another than fluids, filters, and brakes (rotors were fine) I haven't paid anything in maintenance or repairs.

In a couple years I will hit 120,000 miles that will be a major maintenance point; new timing belt, possibly a new water pump, new spark plugs, and coolant flush. Still the vehicle has been relaitvely maintenance free for 5 years now.

I expect half a million miles or more out of my diesel engines. I don't think anyone expects that of a gas engine, although there are still a large number of air-cooled Porsche gassers out there powering lots of bugs and hippie vans. I don't think you'll find too many newer-vintage VAG powerplants pulling that kind of duty.

It likely will run longer than that it just won't be driven by me.

I guess your right longevity depends on what you are comparing it to.

Compared to average vehicle in late 70s, early 80s I have found vehicles produced in late 90s and 2000s are far superior. Last longer, have longer maintenance intervals, and end up having less repairs.

Then again maybe I have just gotten lucky. In early 80s if someone bought a new car every 5 years I would say that made sense (based on how crappy they were made). Today I would say it is just vanity or consumerism.

In the fifties and sixties, if a car lasted 75,000 miles without needing major repairs, you got your money's worth. You changed the oil every 1000 miles and did a tune-up (plugs, points, condenser, filters, carb and timing adjustment) every 10 - 12,000 miles. Brakes, steering and suspension components needed regular adjustments and lubrication. Cars in cold climates were rusted out in a couple seasons. They needed constant tinkering, leaked smoked and smelled. The warranty was 1 year or 12,000 miles.

By the 80's quality of both engineering and manufacturing had increased significantly and now cars are just about zero maintenance.

I guess they don't matter

:shrug:

Kudos to anyone who knows the Three Laws of Robotics by heart. ;)

1. A robot shall not harm a human, or through inaction allow a human to come to harm.
2. A robot shall follow all orders given by a Human , unless it conflicts with Law #1.
3. A robot shall protect itself from harm, unless it conflicts with Laws 1 or 2.

Later in the extended Foundation series, Giskard realized that individual humans could harm humanity. Therefore he added a Prime "Zeroth" Law to supercede the others.

0. A robot shall not harm humanity, or through inaction allow humanity to come to harm.

So, I did forget about the last law. It slipped my mind. :(

On a serious note, the idea of society giving way to letting artificial intelligence and mechanization become one with social institutions could lead one to think that the time will come that we actually have to deal with something like those regulations in the future.

Society--especially when examined in Asimov's books--has never been one that has appreciated the "different" whether human, machine or otherwise.

Therefore, robots in any way, shape or form will evolve along those lines--especially when there are people today who easily try to scapegoat "the other" in various negative ways.

At one time DU used human grovelers for fund raising. It paid pretty well and had good benefits. How can a human groveler compete again grovelbot though.

"Listen, and understand. That grovelbot is out there. It can't be bargained with. It can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are broke. "

We need to work on the distribution of wealth, not necessarily the production of jobs.

It's a small protest on my part, but I refuse to use the self-checkout stations. I was told that each of those self-checkouts replaces six people. The speed doesn't do nearly as much for me as having employed neighbors does.

-

And I talk to the checker and people in line about how bad it is for our local economy to allow stores to come into our community but not hire our citizens. Its amazing how many people agree but have never given it any thought before.

That frees up half the population to appear in reality TV shows to entertain the other half after work.

You need to feel safe. And that's harder and harder to do nowadays, because robots may strike at any time.

http://www.senseoncents.com/tag/manufacturing-jobs-in-china/

"Economists at Alliance Capital Management took a look at employment trends in twenty large economies and found that between 1995 and 2002–before the asset bubble and subsequent bust–twenty-two million manufacturing jobs disappeared.

The United States wasn’t even the biggest loser. We lost about 11% of our manufacturing jobs in that period, but the Japanese lost 16% of theirs. Even developing nations lost factory jobs: Brazil suffered a 20% decline, and China had a 15% drop."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butlerian_Jihad

"Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind." O.C. Bible

like robot self-awareness.
you've all seen the movies.

... was the mechanization of agriculture.
In 1890, 90% of the U.S. worked in agriculture. Heavily labor intensive.
Today: 4%. Heavily mechanized (if not automated).

Robots and automation are doing to manufacturing, now, what mechanization did to agriculture in the 1920s.

The real question is, what basis are you going to have for an economy when the entire worldwide demand for any and all kinds of widgets can be produced by < 1% of the population? That's where we're headed.

J.