8 ms·

Evidence That Robots Are Winning the Race for American Jobs

36 points by ptrptr 10y ago

it 10y ago
That may be true in the short term but those robots aren't going to repair themselves or make more of themselves. Human beings will have to do that unless someone comes up with a major breakthrough.
- bluehazed 10y ago
  I think the issue is not that "all" jobs will be gone, just enough of them.
- gozur88 10y ago
  I don't see why you wouldn't make robots to construct and repair other robots. I would be shocked to find new robots aren't already being made by other robots. Of course there will always be people in the supply chain, but fewer. Maybe a lot fewer, in the long run.
- donald123 10y ago
  The replaced jobs by robots are much more than the added jobs that repair or make robots.
  - WalterBright 10y ago
    True, but the farm labor displaced by the mechanization of agriculture also did not all go into making farm machinery. They went into entire new industries that were made possible by mechanization. How many of you are engaged in providing a product or service that was inconceivable in 1800? I couldn't even describe what I do to an 1800 era person. I.e. there isn't a fixed amount of work to be done.
    - passthefist 10y ago
      My concern isn't that there will be widespread unemployment, it's more that there will be a higher barrier of entry to the labor market and/or high skill workers will displace low skill workers. Let's say that 20% of entry level or unskilled labor jobs are replaced by automation, but an equal amount of skilled labor or knowledge oriented jobs are created. Basically, jobs that require training or experience. Well, training and experience aren't free. You can't just show up and start welding things. There's apprenticeships or union schools or maybe you're lucky enough know someone with a welding kit, but you need to learn how to weld first. It's not entirely one of those artificial market barriers. Bad welds can create structural integrity issues and can be difficult to fix so they've got to be done right the first time. It's skilled labor, and skills take time to acquire. These newly created jobs require some kind of capital to access. Could be just money to pay for education, or could be social capital of knowing the right people, or time spent learning the skill, but you're not gonna show up for the job. There's plenty of reasons why someone would have trouble finding that capital. Maybe they work to help support the family and don't have the time for education. There could be any number of reasons though that getting new skills is difficult, and there's no mail room for you to start in and work your way up to management. What happens when you can't afford bootstraps? Also, as industries change or new industries are created, this can make it harder to transition to other industries if your skills don't transfer. You better have some savings or safety net while you retrain for a new industry if yours is collapsing. So, while I'm not sold that we'll have widespread unemployment, but I think it's more likely that social mobility takes a hit and the inequality gap widens. There's some evidence that this is already happening and while more people are graduating the number of jobs requiring those degrees isn't increasing as fast, so higher skilled workers are pushing lower skilled workers down the ladder. Not to mention that things are changing faster and faster (that exponential innovation curve), so changes that could wait for a new generation will need to be addressed sooner. http://www.nber.org/papers/w18901.pdf http://www.nber.org/papers/w18901.pdf
    - socmag 10y ago
      Retraining becomes a lot harder when the new bar is "become a big data scientist". I mean you mentioned the print workers who were hand setting typeface until quite recently. What did they do after their industry collapsed. Probably a lot of them became taxi drivers or took on other "equivalent" labor centric endeavors. There might not be a fixed amount of work to go around, but there certainly is a fixed amount of vocations that people are willing to pay money for, and that displaced workers can reasonably be expected to move into... And that bell curve does appear to be being squeezed tremendously.
- wvenable 10y ago
  This is ridiculous -- if the robots need more human repairmen than they displace nobody would buy a robot. The entire point of robots is that they require less human labor. Software is no different; I've coded many applications that have eliminated human labor. Obviously I still need to code them but the point is that the overall labor is smaller.
  - avmich 10y ago
    Actually, some robots - like one going into Fukushima reactor, or crawling on Mars surface - require quite a lot of people, which wouldn't be in the control room had that robot not exist. So sometimes robots create new opportunities which require more people.
    - mjevans 10y ago
      Exceptions rather than the rule. The huge issue is going to be robots displacing the low level human jobs... * Burger flipper 1000 * Fryalator 950 * Pizza Kiosk 2000 * Johnny Cab * ConstructUtron (builder of buildings, and welder of many standard joints)
zebrafish 10y ago
More of the same. Robots are easy to demonize in the US, especially for liberals, because they shift the vitriol from foreigners who took our jobs to machines who took our jobs. None of these publications ever run with a solution to the problem. How about increased funding for employee retraining programs? I could see high ROI from that.
- parennoob 10y ago
  > Robots are easy to demonize in the US You can't demonize robots, they are non-living. If anyone is being demonized, it will the corporations who are moving from human to automated labor in order to cut costs. If 670,000 manufacturing jobs since 1990 have been shifted from humans to robots, it seems only fair to point that out. > None of these publications ever run with a solution to the problem. Probably because it's hard and involves ideas like guaranteed basic income and 'robot taxes' that are very unlikely to be popular in the US due to social attitudes. Perhaps such articles will lead to the change of those attitudes.
  - killjoywashere 10y ago
    How do you impose a "robot" tax? Do I get taxed every time a neural net tarts up a photo on my Nexus? I'd say the real problem is a massive defect in what we imagine the goals of education should be. I read a novel once, I can't remember the name, but basically the galaxy-wide standard for being considered an adult us building your own spacesuit.
    - Kalium 10y ago
      No, you just get taxed every time you use google for a phone number instead of calling information.
    - avmich 10y ago
      That's a good question. We'll have to talk about it - may be it doesn't have an obvious solution. May be we can start with taxing only robots which are employed commercially and not for purposes like photos on Nexus.
WalterBright 10y ago
Ironic considering that I saw a recent documentary about the replacement of typesetting machines and their operators with automation at the NY Times.
faragon 10y ago
American robots will make America great again, not protectionism, I guess.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
dbcurtis 10y ago
And I have evidence that robots create jobs, and I don't mean just my job. We (Savioke) have customers telling us that our robot raises RevPAR, and that their payroll is largely a function of RevPAR. Add robot -> increase RevPAR -> add employees. But of course I have chosen the "get a job building the robots" path, so you can apply a bias filter to what I say if you like.
SomewhatLikely 10y ago
Freakonomics Radio recently rebroadcast an episode on this topic: http://freakonomics.com/podcast/safe-job-rebroadcast/ http://freakonomics.com/podcast/safe-job-rebroadcast/ Part of the discussion that stuck in my mind: "As all the people who left being blacksmiths, and stable boys, and equestrians and carriage drivers ... However, the birth of the automobile industry also gave rise to an industry constructing roads, it also gave rise to the motel and travel industry. It also gave rise to the fast-food industry. And so even though, in fact, net employment in personal transportation declined with the advent of the automobile, it gave rise to a whole bunch of new things that weren’t really on anybody’s list that we could do now that we that we had this additional leisure, additional wealth, and additional flexibility that came from not having to spend so much of our time on transportation."
- throwaway2048 10y ago
  Yet nobody can identify where these millions of jobs for the 75%+ of the population that is going to be made redundant are going to materialize from. Thats a lot of faith to put in an idea that dosent even have an actual conclusion.
  - moxious 10y ago
    This is flipping the burden of proof. That millions will be made redundant is already a projection about the future, and those are notoriously terrible. In the past when automation happened and jobs kept rolling it was due to the invention of new industries. So of course no one can say where the jobs of tomorrow will come from. Then again no one can really adequately explain why "this time it's different" with automation. Ever since the luddites, people have been projecting the death of work due to automation. Every time they're positive that this time is different. History suggests though that new industries will pop up to provide goods and services that no one had the time to make in our pre-automation state of toil. Human beings aren't going to stop being inventive, or stop wanting cool new stuff.
    - sillysaurus3 10y ago
_rpd 10y ago
Just the threat of a ban or tax on automation - much less the reality - will cause manufacturers to plan new facilities outside the US. This sort of scaremongering ... > 'Why Are We Doing This to Ourselves?’ Readers Respond to the Threat of Automation should be discouraged if the US desires to have any manufacturing capability at all.
gregpilling 10y ago
Robots Create Jobs. I just purchased my second welding robot. It is a Miller/Panasonic PA-750S with a 92" welding turntable. We make truck accessories with it. I bought a made in Boston laser cutter at the same time, a 4000w IPG LaserCube. All this new machinery lets us build in one (168 hour) week what we could build in 2015. And it took only one lease payment down to finance - about $8000.00, with another 59 payments of $8000ish to go - so I don't buy the "only the super wealthy can buy robots" idea. Some people on HN have paid that much for an office desk! These machines can make product to completely pay for themselves in one month, if you can get the work for them. By purchasing these machines, I was able to get some deals that would have gone to China. Then I had to hire 4 new people to run them, and we had to go to working 24/7 from only 40 hours a week before. All of this to make a product that would not sell as well if it had to be priced at human weld costs. The robots are at least 3x more productive than the human doing the same part - if you have enough units to do. 30 minutes of change over time between programs can waste any times savings. So in my anecdotal experience, everytime I add another automated machine, costs go down, prices go down, sales go way up, payroll goes up a little. I have to keep hiring humans. and I pay them bonuses that they seem pretty happy with. This doesn't count the machine manufacturers, their traveling support staff, the leasing companies who lent the money, etc. etc. I have friends with manufacturing companies in completely different industries that have the same experience. If anyone is in Tucson Arizona, you are welcome to come by. I will show you how easy it is to program the robot. It will take me 20 minutes to teach you how to make a basic weld.
- dsp1234 10y ago
  Some people on HN have paid that much for an office desk! I doubt many people on HN have paid $500,000 for an office desk
  - gregpilling 10y ago
    it was the $8000 down to get the machine I was referring to. The robot welder was $2200 down payment, and the laser cutter was $5800 down. Modest amounts for what they produce in goods, the machines can produce just an enormous mountain of product. The $500k in machines can make $500k per month in stuff, and you just have to make the $8k payment out of that. Robots are for the little people too - not just MegaCorp.

36 points by ptrptr 10y ago

it 10y ago

That may be true in the short term but those robots aren't going to repair themselves or make more of themselves. Human beings will have to do that unless someone comes up with a major breakthrough.

bluehazed 10y ago
I think the issue is not that "all" jobs will be gone, just enough of them.
gozur88 10y ago
I don't see why you wouldn't make robots to construct and repair other robots. I would be shocked to find new robots aren't already being made by other robots. Of course there will always be people in the supply chain, but fewer. Maybe a lot fewer, in the long run.
donald123 10y ago
The replaced jobs by robots are much more than the added jobs that repair or make robots.
- WalterBright 10y ago
  True, but the farm labor displaced by the mechanization of agriculture also did not all go into making farm machinery. They went into entire new industries that were made possible by mechanization. How many of you are engaged in providing a product or service that was inconceivable in 1800? I couldn't even describe what I do to an 1800 era person. I.e. there isn't a fixed amount of work to be done.
  - passthefist 10y ago
    My concern isn't that there will be widespread unemployment, it's more that there will be a higher barrier of entry to the labor market and/or high skill workers will displace low skill workers. Let's say that 20% of entry level or unskilled labor jobs are replaced by automation, but an equal amount of skilled labor or knowledge oriented jobs are created. Basically, jobs that require training or experience. Well, training and experience aren't free. You can't just show up and start welding things. There's apprenticeships or union schools or maybe you're lucky enough know someone with a welding kit, but you need to learn how to weld first. It's not entirely one of those artificial market barriers. Bad welds can create structural integrity issues and can be difficult to fix so they've got to be done right the first time. It's skilled labor, and skills take time to acquire. These newly created jobs require some kind of capital to access. Could be just money to pay for education, or could be social capital of knowing the right people, or time spent learning the skill, but you're not gonna show up for the job. There's plenty of reasons why someone would have trouble finding that capital. Maybe they work to help support the family and don't have the time for education. There could be any number of reasons though that getting new skills is difficult, and there's no mail room for you to start in and work your way up to management. What happens when you can't afford bootstraps? Also, as industries change or new industries are created, this can make it harder to transition to other industries if your skills don't transfer. You better have some savings or safety net while you retrain for a new industry if yours is collapsing. So, while I'm not sold that we'll have widespread unemployment, but I think it's more likely that social mobility takes a hit and the inequality gap widens. There's some evidence that this is already happening and while more people are graduating the number of jobs requiring those degrees isn't increasing as fast, so higher skilled workers are pushing lower skilled workers down the ladder. Not to mention that things are changing faster and faster (that exponential innovation curve), so changes that could wait for a new generation will need to be addressed sooner. http://www.nber.org/papers/w18901.pdf http://www.nber.org/papers/w18901.pdf
  - socmag 10y ago
    Retraining becomes a lot harder when the new bar is "become a big data scientist". I mean you mentioned the print workers who were hand setting typeface until quite recently. What did they do after their industry collapsed. Probably a lot of them became taxi drivers or took on other "equivalent" labor centric endeavors. There might not be a fixed amount of work to go around, but there certainly is a fixed amount of vocations that people are willing to pay money for, and that displaced workers can reasonably be expected to move into... And that bell curve does appear to be being squeezed tremendously.
wvenable 10y ago
This is ridiculous -- if the robots need more human repairmen than they displace nobody would buy a robot. The entire point of robots is that they require less human labor. Software is no different; I've coded many applications that have eliminated human labor. Obviously I still need to code them but the point is that the overall labor is smaller.
- avmich 10y ago
  Actually, some robots - like one going into Fukushima reactor, or crawling on Mars surface - require quite a lot of people, which wouldn't be in the control room had that robot not exist. So sometimes robots create new opportunities which require more people.
  - mjevans 10y ago
    Exceptions rather than the rule. The huge issue is going to be robots displacing the low level human jobs... * Burger flipper 1000 * Fryalator 950 * Pizza Kiosk 2000 * Johnny Cab * ConstructUtron (builder of buildings, and welder of many standard joints)

zebrafish 10y ago

More of the same. Robots are easy to demonize in the US, especially for liberals, because they shift the vitriol from foreigners who took our jobs to machines who took our jobs. None of these publications ever run with a solution to the problem. How about increased funding for employee retraining programs? I could see high ROI from that.

parennoob 10y ago
> Robots are easy to demonize in the US You can't demonize robots, they are non-living. If anyone is being demonized, it will the corporations who are moving from human to automated labor in order to cut costs. If 670,000 manufacturing jobs since 1990 have been shifted from humans to robots, it seems only fair to point that out. > None of these publications ever run with a solution to the problem. Probably because it's hard and involves ideas like guaranteed basic income and 'robot taxes' that are very unlikely to be popular in the US due to social attitudes. Perhaps such articles will lead to the change of those attitudes.
- killjoywashere 10y ago
  How do you impose a "robot" tax? Do I get taxed every time a neural net tarts up a photo on my Nexus? I'd say the real problem is a massive defect in what we imagine the goals of education should be. I read a novel once, I can't remember the name, but basically the galaxy-wide standard for being considered an adult us building your own spacesuit.
  - Kalium 10y ago
    No, you just get taxed every time you use google for a phone number instead of calling information.
  - avmich 10y ago
    That's a good question. We'll have to talk about it - may be it doesn't have an obvious solution. May be we can start with taxing only robots which are employed commercially and not for purposes like photos on Nexus.

WalterBright 10y ago

Ironic considering that I saw a recent documentary about the replacement of typesetting machines and their operators with automation at the NY Times.

faragon 10y ago

American robots will make America great again, not protectionism, I guess.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

dbcurtis 10y ago

And I have evidence that robots create jobs, and I don't mean just my job. We (Savioke) have customers telling us that our robot raises RevPAR, and that their payroll is largely a function of RevPAR. Add robot -> increase RevPAR -> add employees. But of course I have chosen the "get a job building the robots" path, so you can apply a bias filter to what I say if you like.

SomewhatLikely 10y ago

Freakonomics Radio recently rebroadcast an episode on this topic: http://freakonomics.com/podcast/safe-job-rebroadcast/ http://freakonomics.com/podcast/safe-job-rebroadcast/ Part of the discussion that stuck in my mind: "As all the people who left being blacksmiths, and stable boys, and equestrians and carriage drivers ... However, the birth of the automobile industry also gave rise to an industry constructing roads, it also gave rise to the motel and travel industry. It also gave rise to the fast-food industry. And so even though, in fact, net employment in personal transportation declined with the advent of the automobile, it gave rise to a whole bunch of new things that weren’t really on anybody’s list that we could do now that we that we had this additional leisure, additional wealth, and additional flexibility that came from not having to spend so much of our time on transportation."

throwaway2048 10y ago
Yet nobody can identify where these millions of jobs for the 75%+ of the population that is going to be made redundant are going to materialize from. Thats a lot of faith to put in an idea that dosent even have an actual conclusion.
- moxious 10y ago
  This is flipping the burden of proof. That millions will be made redundant is already a projection about the future, and those are notoriously terrible. In the past when automation happened and jobs kept rolling it was due to the invention of new industries. So of course no one can say where the jobs of tomorrow will come from. Then again no one can really adequately explain why "this time it's different" with automation. Ever since the luddites, people have been projecting the death of work due to automation. Every time they're positive that this time is different. History suggests though that new industries will pop up to provide goods and services that no one had the time to make in our pre-automation state of toil. Human beings aren't going to stop being inventive, or stop wanting cool new stuff.
  - sillysaurus3 10y ago

_rpd 10y ago

Just the threat of a ban or tax on automation - much less the reality - will cause manufacturers to plan new facilities outside the US. This sort of scaremongering ... > 'Why Are We Doing This to Ourselves?’ Readers Respond to the Threat of Automation should be discouraged if the US desires to have any manufacturing capability at all.

gregpilling 10y ago

Robots Create Jobs. I just purchased my second welding robot. It is a Miller/Panasonic PA-750S with a 92" welding turntable. We make truck accessories with it. I bought a made in Boston laser cutter at the same time, a 4000w IPG LaserCube. All this new machinery lets us build in one (168 hour) week what we could build in 2015. And it took only one lease payment down to finance - about $8000.00, with another 59 payments of $8000ish to go - so I don't buy the "only the super wealthy can buy robots" idea. Some people on HN have paid that much for an office desk! These machines can make product to completely pay for themselves in one month, if you can get the work for them. By purchasing these machines, I was able to get some deals that would have gone to China. Then I had to hire 4 new people to run them, and we had to go to working 24/7 from only 40 hours a week before. All of this to make a product that would not sell as well if it had to be priced at human weld costs. The robots are at least 3x more productive than the human doing the same part - if you have enough units to do. 30 minutes of change over time between programs can waste any times savings. So in my anecdotal experience, everytime I add another automated machine, costs go down, prices go down, sales go way up, payroll goes up a little. I have to keep hiring humans. and I pay them bonuses that they seem pretty happy with. This doesn't count the machine manufacturers, their traveling support staff, the leasing companies who lent the money, etc. etc. I have friends with manufacturing companies in completely different industries that have the same experience. If anyone is in Tucson Arizona, you are welcome to come by. I will show you how easy it is to program the robot. It will take me 20 minutes to teach you how to make a basic weld.

dsp1234 10y ago
Some people on HN have paid that much for an office desk! I doubt many people on HN have paid $500,000 for an office desk
- gregpilling 10y ago
  it was the $8000 down to get the machine I was referring to. The robot welder was $2200 down payment, and the laser cutter was $5800 down. Modest amounts for what they produce in goods, the machines can produce just an enormous mountain of product. The $500k in machines can make $500k per month in stuff, and you just have to make the $8k payment out of that. Robots are for the little people too - not just MegaCorp.