5 ms·

According to the article, when computers start doing the work of people, the need for people often increases. I simply cannot take anymore the doom and gloom of

by ergest 11y ago

According to the article, when computers start doing the work of people, the need for people often increases. I simply cannot take anymore the doom and gloom of the supposed AI revolution and how it will make us all jobless.

geggam 11y ago
You should visit some manufacturing plants. Ask them how many people used to work there and how many do now. Companies have a social responsibility to the communities they profit from.
- buckbova 11y ago
  If the entire plant is automated, how is that profiting from the community? More likely the community is profiting from the company in terms of tax revenue and business fees.
  - rm_-rf_slash 11y ago
    That's laughable. Companies will usually do whatever it takes to pay as little as possible in taxes, evade regulations from environmental to labor, and attempt to get away with it by putting on a big show as "job creators" - meaning that if other people, little people, are brought here to spend money and pay their taxes, then the town should be downright grateful that the company is there to give people work. I know it sounds hyperbolic but I have talked to local business leaders and they do indeed see themselves this way.
    - LordKano 11y ago
      It's only a little bit hyperbolic. If a facility isn't providing jobs to local residents, there's no leverage to get sweetheart deals on local taxes.
- boxy310 11y ago
  This is at its core a problem of elasticity of demand. Most factories are only tooled to produce a certain output, and business inputs are constrained more by their contract terms and raw material prices than they are by labor bottlenecks. As a result, the company is effectively moving from one bottleneck (labor) to another (resource constraints or market demand). Compare this to labor-intensive industries like law software engineering. Increasing the marginal productivity of labor while there is sufficient demand for increased output generates that required output, until it reaches its new equilibrium. In these cases where there is substantially more work to be done than there is time to do it, and there's sufficient market demand to handle additional output (thinking especially with software engineering), then increases to productivity will generate increased demand without appreciably changing per-hour market-clearing wages.
- lakeeffect 11y ago
  I was at the bmw plant in munich and they said the plant was 98% automated. The guy said they did need someone to go around and change the welding tips every 8 hours.
- rogerbinns 11y ago
  Because fewer people are involved, they can generally make the products to a more predictable standard ("quality") and cheaper. Lets say the item the plant made with all those people used to cost $10 for consumers to buy, but the efficiency improvement from the manufacturing plant now means that it costs $5 for consumers to buy. All over the town/country/world, people who used to part with $10 now only part with $5. They now have an additional $5 to spend in their community. The manufacturing plant has enabled many others to have their money go further - how is that a bad thing?
  - lifeisstillgood 11y ago
    Which fool drops their prices like that :-) Consumers should now pay $9.99 and we keep $4.99 profit in our community of billionaires :-)
    - rogerbinns 11y ago
      > Which fool drops their prices like that :-) Anyone who has competition, be they direct or reasonable alternatives.
  - TeMPOraL 11y ago
    That's not how it works :). If the productivity doubles, the product will still cost $10, but the company will happily pocket that $5 improvement - and no, they won't raise the salaries of their workers, because why would they? There's zero reason to. Also note that "efficiency improvement from the manufacturing plant" usually means a) automating a part of the production process, and b) firing the workers who are no longer needed. So now you have a product that's still $10, but some of the people in the community don't have a job anymore, so they can't buy it. Of course, then a competitor shows up, driving the product price down to $4.50. The original company has to adjust, so it fires some more people and cuts down the paychecks for the rest. The end result is: the product is cheaper, but the community is poorer, and some of its members don't have a job anymore. But hey, isn't this the whole point of optimizing business through competition? Isn't the goal to make more with less resources and less people?
- bentruyman 11y ago
  You should visit some farms. Back in the 1800's agriculture was 80%+ of jobs. With the end of slavery and the evolution of machinery that number dropped to <2%. Where was the economic implosion when automation took over agriculture?
  - MrTonyD 11y ago
    Some believe that reduction of farm labor was the underlying cause of the great depression.
    - bentruyman 11y ago
      Whether or not it did, you don't see a lot of people complaining they're no longer working on a farm. And we've replaced all of those jobs with arguably better and safer ones.
- MrTonyD 11y ago
  You shouldn't have been downvoted. I was in a fully automated "lights out" factory producing PCs. Big trucks came up to the doors where the components (produced by robots in other factories) were unloaded by robots and passed from robot to robot until the entire machine was assembled. Once fully debugged, the entire factory was moved offshore to be owned by a group of the executives who would be able to sell to the company and hide all the income from taxation (the group included executives from "competing" companies to avoid any legal issues of "self-dealing".) So the billionaires made more billions by selling at high prices to our society while hiding their income. I should add that they didn't automate boxing the computers, so that they could have a few people work each day doing boxing. We used low-cost humans (with degrees!) to box just to double check to make sure we were running the right products as scheduled for the factory. We could have automated that, too, but people are cheap. (Contrary to the beliefs of many, we more often stopped automation projects due to workers being too cheap to bother replacing, not because it was too hard to automate the job.)
  - lifeisstillgood 11y ago
    I think it's different that a) we (you?) can build a robot factory to make stuff and b) we let them use it as a tax dodge Fixing the tax system is a different problem, but no less complex - but cool factory.
    - MrTonyD 11y ago
      Good point. From my perspective, the major problem with free trade is that it lets the billionaires move production offshore and avoid all taxes while hiding their obscene profits. (And they then import the products while laying-off US employees.)(And the guy who owned the factory, let's call him "Steve", made many billions offshore for which there is no US accounting at all.) And it was a very cool factory - I had done automation projects, and some buddies of mine at the company were working on that project. As someone who had done robotic automation, it was truly amazing to watch and was probably the most state of the art at the time. We literally turned out the lights just to stand on the catwalk and watch the robots in the glow of the hundreds of LEDs on the electronics.
- 1812Overture 11y ago
  There's an old probably apocryphal story about Henry Ford III taking the head of the UAW on a tour of his new automated factory and asking "Think you'll be able to get these robots to pay union dues?" to which the UAW head replied "Think you'll be able to get them to buy cars?"
  - laotzu 11y ago
    This hits on one of the most basic of economic principles which is often ignored. If the community becomes unemployed due to automation and is not reimbursed properly for the work done by the machine, then the community will not have the purchasing power to buy the goods produced by the machine. Thus rendering the machine useless.
    - TeMPOraL 11y ago
      True, but the real problem lies on the road from here to there. I.e. you could probably make half of the population totally unemployable while selling the output of robots to the other half. But will the first half just lie down and starve to death, or will they try to fight back? And, given the incentive structure of market economy, will we be able to get off this road altogether before reaching that point?
- bigger_cheese 11y ago
  I work at a Manufacturing Plant - a Steelworks: In the early 1980's there were 7000+ people directly employed here Early 2000's about 2000 2011 (after a major restructure) about 900 people That number is falling. Our plant was largest employer in my town, now the University + tourism sector are the largest employers. At times I very much feel like I am working in a dead industry. The drops in the 1980's were largely caused by automation and technological efficiency. That loss has already been felt. The losses nowadays are caused by shutting down/moth-balling successively more and more of our plant. Competition from cheaper imports - particularly China is absolutely killing us. Unless you work in the industry it is difficult to comprehend the shear volume China produces. The market is hugely over-saturated. All the advanced technology in the world can't compete with that. In 20-30+ years China will probably undergo a transformation of it's own as all the manufacturing moves to whatever the next big developing market is (Africa maybe??) It's nice to say that companies have a social responsibility but at the end of the day they answer to their board and the shareholders. In fact they have a duty to act in the best interests of investors even if it goes against what would be best for their employees. That's the sad fact of capitalism.
DrScump 11y ago
"According to the article, when computers start doing the work of people, the need for people often increases." For the Atlantic (or any given periodical), compare how many they employ now versus 10 years ago versus 20...

by ergest 11y ago

geggam 11y ago

You should visit some manufacturing plants. Ask them how many people used to work there and how many do now. Companies have a social responsibility to the communities they profit from.

buckbova 11y ago
If the entire plant is automated, how is that profiting from the community? More likely the community is profiting from the company in terms of tax revenue and business fees.
- rm_-rf_slash 11y ago
  That's laughable. Companies will usually do whatever it takes to pay as little as possible in taxes, evade regulations from environmental to labor, and attempt to get away with it by putting on a big show as "job creators" - meaning that if other people, little people, are brought here to spend money and pay their taxes, then the town should be downright grateful that the company is there to give people work. I know it sounds hyperbolic but I have talked to local business leaders and they do indeed see themselves this way.
  - LordKano 11y ago
    It's only a little bit hyperbolic. If a facility isn't providing jobs to local residents, there's no leverage to get sweetheart deals on local taxes.
boxy310 11y ago
This is at its core a problem of elasticity of demand. Most factories are only tooled to produce a certain output, and business inputs are constrained more by their contract terms and raw material prices than they are by labor bottlenecks. As a result, the company is effectively moving from one bottleneck (labor) to another (resource constraints or market demand). Compare this to labor-intensive industries like law software engineering. Increasing the marginal productivity of labor while there is sufficient demand for increased output generates that required output, until it reaches its new equilibrium. In these cases where there is substantially more work to be done than there is time to do it, and there's sufficient market demand to handle additional output (thinking especially with software engineering), then increases to productivity will generate increased demand without appreciably changing per-hour market-clearing wages.
lakeeffect 11y ago
I was at the bmw plant in munich and they said the plant was 98% automated. The guy said they did need someone to go around and change the welding tips every 8 hours.
rogerbinns 11y ago
Because fewer people are involved, they can generally make the products to a more predictable standard ("quality") and cheaper. Lets say the item the plant made with all those people used to cost $10 for consumers to buy, but the efficiency improvement from the manufacturing plant now means that it costs $5 for consumers to buy. All over the town/country/world, people who used to part with $10 now only part with $5. They now have an additional $5 to spend in their community. The manufacturing plant has enabled many others to have their money go further - how is that a bad thing?
- lifeisstillgood 11y ago
  Which fool drops their prices like that :-) Consumers should now pay $9.99 and we keep $4.99 profit in our community of billionaires :-)
  - rogerbinns 11y ago
    > Which fool drops their prices like that :-) Anyone who has competition, be they direct or reasonable alternatives.
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  That's not how it works :). If the productivity doubles, the product will still cost $10, but the company will happily pocket that $5 improvement - and no, they won't raise the salaries of their workers, because why would they? There's zero reason to. Also note that "efficiency improvement from the manufacturing plant" usually means a) automating a part of the production process, and b) firing the workers who are no longer needed. So now you have a product that's still $10, but some of the people in the community don't have a job anymore, so they can't buy it. Of course, then a competitor shows up, driving the product price down to $4.50. The original company has to adjust, so it fires some more people and cuts down the paychecks for the rest. The end result is: the product is cheaper, but the community is poorer, and some of its members don't have a job anymore. But hey, isn't this the whole point of optimizing business through competition? Isn't the goal to make more with less resources and less people?
bentruyman 11y ago
You should visit some farms. Back in the 1800's agriculture was 80%+ of jobs. With the end of slavery and the evolution of machinery that number dropped to <2%. Where was the economic implosion when automation took over agriculture?
- MrTonyD 11y ago
  Some believe that reduction of farm labor was the underlying cause of the great depression.
  - bentruyman 11y ago
    Whether or not it did, you don't see a lot of people complaining they're no longer working on a farm. And we've replaced all of those jobs with arguably better and safer ones.
MrTonyD 11y ago
You shouldn't have been downvoted. I was in a fully automated "lights out" factory producing PCs. Big trucks came up to the doors where the components (produced by robots in other factories) were unloaded by robots and passed from robot to robot until the entire machine was assembled. Once fully debugged, the entire factory was moved offshore to be owned by a group of the executives who would be able to sell to the company and hide all the income from taxation (the group included executives from "competing" companies to avoid any legal issues of "self-dealing".) So the billionaires made more billions by selling at high prices to our society while hiding their income. I should add that they didn't automate boxing the computers, so that they could have a few people work each day doing boxing. We used low-cost humans (with degrees!) to box just to double check to make sure we were running the right products as scheduled for the factory. We could have automated that, too, but people are cheap. (Contrary to the beliefs of many, we more often stopped automation projects due to workers being too cheap to bother replacing, not because it was too hard to automate the job.)
- lifeisstillgood 11y ago
  I think it's different that a) we (you?) can build a robot factory to make stuff and b) we let them use it as a tax dodge Fixing the tax system is a different problem, but no less complex - but cool factory.
  - MrTonyD 11y ago
    Good point. From my perspective, the major problem with free trade is that it lets the billionaires move production offshore and avoid all taxes while hiding their obscene profits. (And they then import the products while laying-off US employees.)(And the guy who owned the factory, let's call him "Steve", made many billions offshore for which there is no US accounting at all.) And it was a very cool factory - I had done automation projects, and some buddies of mine at the company were working on that project. As someone who had done robotic automation, it was truly amazing to watch and was probably the most state of the art at the time. We literally turned out the lights just to stand on the catwalk and watch the robots in the glow of the hundreds of LEDs on the electronics.
1812Overture 11y ago
There's an old probably apocryphal story about Henry Ford III taking the head of the UAW on a tour of his new automated factory and asking "Think you'll be able to get these robots to pay union dues?" to which the UAW head replied "Think you'll be able to get them to buy cars?"
- laotzu 11y ago
  This hits on one of the most basic of economic principles which is often ignored. If the community becomes unemployed due to automation and is not reimbursed properly for the work done by the machine, then the community will not have the purchasing power to buy the goods produced by the machine. Thus rendering the machine useless.
  - TeMPOraL 11y ago
    True, but the real problem lies on the road from here to there. I.e. you could probably make half of the population totally unemployable while selling the output of robots to the other half. But will the first half just lie down and starve to death, or will they try to fight back? And, given the incentive structure of market economy, will we be able to get off this road altogether before reaching that point?
bigger_cheese 11y ago
I work at a Manufacturing Plant - a Steelworks: In the early 1980's there were 7000+ people directly employed here Early 2000's about 2000 2011 (after a major restructure) about 900 people That number is falling. Our plant was largest employer in my town, now the University + tourism sector are the largest employers. At times I very much feel like I am working in a dead industry. The drops in the 1980's were largely caused by automation and technological efficiency. That loss has already been felt. The losses nowadays are caused by shutting down/moth-balling successively more and more of our plant. Competition from cheaper imports - particularly China is absolutely killing us. Unless you work in the industry it is difficult to comprehend the shear volume China produces. The market is hugely over-saturated. All the advanced technology in the world can't compete with that. In 20-30+ years China will probably undergo a transformation of it's own as all the manufacturing moves to whatever the next big developing market is (Africa maybe??) It's nice to say that companies have a social responsibility but at the end of the day they answer to their board and the shareholders. In fact they have a duty to act in the best interests of investors even if it goes against what would be best for their employees. That's the sad fact of capitalism.

DrScump 11y ago

"According to the article, when computers start doing the work of people, the need for people often increases." For the Atlantic (or any given periodical), compare how many they employ now versus 10 years ago versus 20...