7 ms·

Robot automation will 'take 800M jobs by 2030' (2017)

52 points by Futurebot 8y ago

randomacct3847 8y ago
I wonder if the yellow vest protests in Paris and other European cities is our first taste of the kind of revolt that will happen when this really starts happening
- Flavius 8y ago
  Maybe, but we've been losing jobs to robots for over 300 years now.
  - _i____ii_______ 8y ago
    I think we are in a different place than the Luddites were.
  - maxxxxx 8y ago
    There have been quite a few revolts during that time.
  - jedberg 8y ago
    Up until now, they have mostly been replacing physical labor, which allowed the workforce to shift to service and mental labor. But now the machines are replacing service and mental labor. There is no where for a human to shift to this time.
    - hutzlibu 8y ago
      "But now the machines are replacing service and mental labor. There is no where for a human to shift to this time." As far as I know, computers on their own are not very good engineers, programmers, physicians, etc. I also believe creativity in general is a kind of unsolved problem. The art/music computers made so far ... not worth mentioning. (except as awesome research projects)
      - harshreality 8y ago
        The number of jobs requiring that kind of creativity is very small. Of course there will be a need for engineers, and physicians, to interface with other humans and to integrate answers from narrow, specialized AIs into real-world solutions, but that's not the bulk of everyday work even in high-skill jobs. If AI cuts the amount of work someone has to do in half, the outcomes are on a continuum between two extremes: either effective hourly wage for work doubles and people work half the time, or the job market shrinks by 50%. But what would actually happen is closer to 33% less work and the job market shrinks by 25% too. "People are still smarter and more adaptable than narrow AI" is completely irrelevant. What matters is the workload reduction offered by the narrow AI. The OP didn't say all jobs by 2030, it said 800M. Obviously there will still be lots of jobs, but not enough. Too many people unemployed and broke, combined with not enough of a social safety net for food, housing, and medical care, will result in social unrest and, if that's not dealt with well enough, it will progress to social breakdown, which either means a revolution (to institute a new government that does implement appropriate safety nets) or a martial-law type of scenario, neither of which is pretty. Below-average doctors, engineers, and lawyers will be at risk of being out of work. On-site blue collar jobs are safer, as a percentage. Robots can prefab things in factories, but it will be a long time before automated robots can build or repair anything on-site with the efficiency of humans + power tools. ETA: I think you overestimate the number of people required to handle most of the problems you think need work. And the current free market doesn't agree that they need more work, or it would price those jobs higher and more people would jump into those labor pools. In some cases, the jobs require serious specialization (maybe not advanced degrees, but a fair amount of training) and not just anyone can do them... in which case even the optimal labor pool size would barely scratch the surface of the coming AI-caused unemployment crisis. Even a massive public works effort to employ tens of millions of workers to deal with aging infrastructure, or to build green tech, is not a permanent solution. Most of those jobs would be gone in a decade, and then you're right back to where you started, only worse because AI will have gotten better. Massive government spending (including on temp public works projects) is essentially UBI for a lot of able-bodied people. I don't object to that, but it needs to be limited to public works projects that are really necessary, and then you have to figure out where you're going to get the money to pay for them when the govt is already running trillion-dollar deficits. Is 5% debt inflation per year not good enough? Should we try 10%? 15%?
    - hoaw 8y ago
      I don't see it as much of a problem. Unless only a minority gets to enjoy the increase in productivity, which is what we are mostly seeing now.
    - 8bitsrule 8y ago
      Robot killer for hire. Will work for food.
- 4thaccount 8y ago
  I'm not sure if we should hold onto humans doing things machine's can do better. Instead, perhaps UBI makes better sense. I know the economics part won't make sense until we're past the need for the current system, but if we don't need people to work, why have them waste their lives with suboptimal labor. My biggest issue with UBI is that you'll probably just get millions watching Netflix all day. What would be awesome is if those millions were writing books, doing physics, or creating works of art instead. You'd have machines doing the labor and humans being freed up to focus on new contributions to society. Of course, not to be elitist, but I'm not sure how many truck drivers will pick up work on the grand unified theory of physics, but if even one makes a new and important discovery that would be amazing. Also, I wonder how long until even jobs held by the highly educated (healthcare...etc) are largely automated?
  - whatshisface 8y ago
    >What would be awesome is if those millions were writing books, doing physics, or creating works of art instead. You'd have machines doing the labor and humans being freed up to focus on new contributions to society. There is a really easy solution to this that I have never seen suggested. Instead of giving money to everyone for free, why not raise the budgets of research and art institutions? You can get as many people as you want doing physics and making art as you want, all you have to do is give money to CERN. Now, a pessimist might say that some people can't advance science or art because they lack the capability. I counter with the fact that anyone can do it at some speed, some are just faster than others. If you greatly increased the amount of money the Institute for Advanced Study had, they would be able to bring people on to their staff that were less efficient on a dollars per fundamental insight scale, I.E. you or me.
    - hoaw 8y ago
      The problem is that it isn't an income issue. It is a cost issue, which in turn is a power issue. As in who decides what and therefor who society is for. Taking underprivileged people, or even anyone else, and employing them at CERN isn't likely to work (Switzerland isn't exactly cheap or big on taxes). In the Nordic countries there are "folk high schools", which gives you education (paid via taxes), housing and food for ~$650 usd a month. They are mostly in the middle of nowhere though. Is it a good idea to educate people who gets squeezed out of society? Sure. But most societies are going the opposite way even now. Like many other things it isn't a technical issue, but a social one. There isn't really a need to wait for society to collapse before giving people affordable access to housing, education, health care etc.
crdoconnor 8y ago
Robot automation will take 800M jobs, says consultancy typically brought in to reduce headcount.
jrs95 8y ago
A lot of people are into UBI as a solution to this, but I personally don't think that will work. The social issues that would come from having that high of a level of unemployment, even with a UBI, would be enormous. I think it would be valuable to consider a more drastic departure from a capitalist system rather than applying yet another band-aid fix to it.
- mac01021 8y ago
  > I think it would be valuable to consider a more drastic departure from a capitalist system rather than applying yet another band-aid fix to it. Such as?
- _i____ii_______ 8y ago
  What social issues have been postulated?
  - cantthinkofone 8y ago
    "Idle hands are the devil's workshop." The more people that are economically sidelined, who nave nothing to do and no prospects for self-advancement, the more appealing radical ideologies will become and the more social unrest there will be. A major source of social cohesion is the belief that if you work hard you will be able to succeed, but if it's structurally impossible to find work, and all you have is a UBI which doesn't afford much, you can expect that mass stagnation to provide ample breeding ground for a colorful assortment of social ills--drug abuse, suicide, crime, and finally, once the individual angst finds collective expression and organization, revolts and political radicalization. Work is one of the major sources of purpose people have. Earning an income and putting food on the table is fundamental to one's self-respect. Like educational achievement, it gives the impression that there is some way to advance beyond your lot. Take that away and it will cause a mass existential crisis unless there is something to fill the void. All the blights of the rust belt and other economically overlooked areas should be expected to spread.
    - mac01021 8y ago
williesleg 8y ago
I hope so! I can't wait for the 3 or 4 day workweek. Bernie????
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
open-source-ux 8y ago
I'm a bit cautious about this prediction. When the web became popular, I was convinced it would be the end of Estate Agents (Real Estate brokers) and Recruitment Agents. But both have thrived in an online world and seem as numerous today as they've ever been. Other automated changes for manual jobs would require substantial changes to infrastructure. For example, refuse collection using underground tubes to suck away rubbish is already a reality (e.g. Envac system designed in Sweden) but it's unlikely to be retro-fitted to existing housing developments. On the other hand, things like housing construction and crop picking I can imagine will continue to see improvements in automation.
craftinator 8y ago
Ah I can't wait, I'm so excited for early retirement!!
- imtringued 8y ago
  Don't worry. Someone else will retire earlier for you so you don't have to!
mabbo 8y ago
The total world productivity will be up and the total human labor to achieve that level will be down. This should be a good thing! ... but we don't share very well. Capital is making more money than labor. The 'hard working man' ethos makes less and less sense. You can't work your way out of poverty anymore. No sane person is arguing for full-blown communism here, but a shift towards a more socialist system is going to become the only way to keep society from breaking down. We need the benefits of this revolution to benefit all and not just those who were born wealthy. And it's going to be a very long road to get there, as political power today in most nations is most easily accessible to those with wealth, those who would lose out if such a shift were to take place.
DeonPenny 8y ago
Yeh but it will help move production closer to home, so it won't be as bad as most people think. Don't realize a lot of the things that american companies build oversea wouldn't need to be there if robots could do them. You'd also get faster deliveries and on-demand production.
whack 8y ago
https://outlookzen.com/2019/01/05/prosperity-comes-from-eliminating-jobs-not-saving-them/ https://outlookzen.com/2019/01/05/prosperity-comes-from-elim... > Prosperity Comes From Eliminating Jobs, Not Saving Them
caseymarquis 8y ago
I think the article has it backwards. The US and similar nations will be the least affected by this. Nations like India will be hit the hardest. Humans are flexible. Machines typically aren't. The more automation exists in a facility, the less flexible it becomes. Until we hit AGI, I think there is a cap on how automated a facility should (not can) become. A critical piece of this is that highly automated systems are expensive, and difficult to upgrade in a piecemeal fashion. Thus, using humans to tie systems together limits the amount invested in automation, and can save you money in the long run. US manufacturers are already aware of this, as some are dealing with the effects of aging overly automated production lines. All of this depends on what you're making and what quantity, but until we reach AGI, over-automating is a mistake manufacturers have made and will make again. In the US and similar, we've automated about as much as we could given existing technology. Newly available technology raises the automation cap a bit, but not that much. Contrast this with nations which are just getting to the point where mass automation is available and have a spiking per capita income. They're much more likely to see massive amounts of automation, proportional to their increasing wages.
- epberry 8y ago
  I agree with this. I think people are looking at the wrong layer for automation. Frontline workers will exist for a long time because of their flexibility and dexterity. I think automation will largely impact one level up - at the supervisor/manager level. My bet is on cameras and computer vision to be the enabling technology for this.
- contingencies 8y ago
  Nations like India will be hit the hardest When the majority of the population is essentially living extremely efficiently on a vegetarian diet without so much as personal transport, one should expect very little economic shock from issues as remote and abstract as gradual technology change. In addition, in many parts of India electricity is not yet reliable enough and corruption too endemic to allow the confident adoption of industrial automation. highly automated systems are expensive, and difficult to upgrade in a piecemeal fashion Highly automated systems are cheaper and more capable than ever, and getting cheaper. They are easy to justify on a budget because they pay for themselves in saved wages, 24x7x365 operation, and reduced error. Two examples are the dozens of companies now producing (1) industrial robot arms; and (2) warehouse goods transport robots at scale in China. You can design automated systems for modular upgrade, it just means accepting the costs for that up front. Often it doesn't make sense to do so, because by the time it matters you can probably design a new facility to pilot new off-the-shelf technology before retroactively updating prior sites. I believe major western companies use this approach for iterating data center designs, for example. In the US and similar, we've automated about as much as we could given existing technology. Newly available technology raises the automation cap a bit, but not that much. Strongly disagree. Just a few examples of areas the US has dropped the ball on despite access to technology would be: mobile payment, sustainable energy, transport, agriculture, health care, retail banking. From outside this often seems to be the case because the US domestic macro-economy is against change for reasons of monopoly, litigation, regulatory configuration, educational focus or similar. It seems that the technologies and social configuration being deployed in China today are likely to be the forebears of living arrangements for the majority of urban populations globally in the near future: package dropboxes (HiveBox), mobile payment (WeChat), high speed rail, nationalized critical infrastructure, etc. This is largely because they have, versus the US, what Tony Fadell recently described as "last mover advantage" and a population comfortable with socially mandated solutions. https://overcast.fm/+Lkc1bqy8c https://overcast.fm/+Lkc1bqy8c
scottlocklin 8y ago
"Nanotech will be a trillion dollar business by 2015" -source NSF document in 2001 http://www.wtec.org/loyola/nano/NSET.Societal.Implications/nanosi.pdf http://www.wtec.org/loyola/nano/NSET.Societal.Implications/n...
bedhead 8y ago
There are 3.5 million truckers in the US. Think about that. Politically, I'm fairly conservative/libertarian, and I generally accept the economic realities of things like creative destruction. And even with those overarching views, I am terrified of the social impact of autonomous vehicles. When you take a step back, it is nothing short of disturbing how aggressively and proudly Google and Uber (et al) are pursuing the destruction of the livelihoods of those 3.5 million households in this country. Just a bunch of mostly honest, hard-working folks who live in the exurbs or rural towns, with absolutely no backup plan when a robotic truck either creates tremendous wage deflation or takes their job completely. And for what? So we can all save a few cents at Target. So a couple billionaire founders can toss some more on the pile. So a handful of engineers can make more millions. So paper-pushing fund managers can make a few more bucks from their stock going up. It's like watching a horror movie in slow motion. Creative destruction has been a fact of life for centuries, but overall, societies have thrived. My sense - and I have no data to back this up - is that we are approaching a tipping point where the gains from technology are accelerating way beyond society's ability to reallocate those resources to other productive places in the short and even medium-term. That steady-state of frictional unemployment caused by technology is about to be majorly upended, and it just scares me. Societal problems are going to get very, very bad.
monkeydust 8y ago
As someone who works in a product management role building automation software what I am observing is that automation is helping to automate tasks not jobs. Jobs that humans do are being altered as a result focusing on more cognative and social tasks. Retooling / reskilling policies should be getting more attention.
FabianBeiner 8y ago
Getting replaced by a robot is a greater fear than I've ever anticipated. I've once build https://www.replacedbyrobot.info/ https://www.replacedbyrobot.info/ for fun. It turns out, the basic version back then got visited a couple of hundred, if not thousand times per day. I've since then built a more useful interface, and the traffic just increases day by day. I've even got interviewed by Vice once about the page.
Rexxar 8y ago
I wouldn't be surprised automation has already destroyed 2 or 3 more jobs that there is inhabitants in industrial countries over the last century. What is important is the balance between creation and destruction.
nojvek 8y ago
Robot Automation wouldn’t do jack shit in the larger scale in 10 years. May be 50 years yes, not 10. Robots right now are bulky and incredibly expensive devices which don’t even come close to human dexterity, intelligence or flexibility. Look at self driving cars. First DARPA driving challenge happened in 2004 and self driving cars are still very dumb and have killed a few people on the road. Simulation hours don’t count. Real driving hours without human engagement count. Sure in soft intelligence like speech recognition, language translation, vision we’ve done big advances. Deep Surveillance is going to be a real thing where every individual/car is tracked through the city. But replacing a ~billion jobs with robots. Not going to happen. Unless we have huge advances in bio manufacturing and computing. Doing it like DNA does it. Building machines from the same fabric we’re made of. Grow the machines from watery goo at scale. Make artificial muscles that are strong, fast, accurate, light and quiet. Now that would be the stuff of science fiction brought to reality.

52 points by Futurebot 8y ago

I wonder if the yellow vest protests in Paris and other European cities is our first taste of the kind of revolt that will happen when this really starts happening

Flavius 8y ago
Maybe, but we've been losing jobs to robots for over 300 years now.
- _i____ii_______ 8y ago
  I think we are in a different place than the Luddites were.
- maxxxxx 8y ago
  There have been quite a few revolts during that time.
- jedberg 8y ago
  Up until now, they have mostly been replacing physical labor, which allowed the workforce to shift to service and mental labor. But now the machines are replacing service and mental labor. There is no where for a human to shift to this time.
  - hutzlibu 8y ago
    "But now the machines are replacing service and mental labor. There is no where for a human to shift to this time." As far as I know, computers on their own are not very good engineers, programmers, physicians, etc. I also believe creativity in general is a kind of unsolved problem. The art/music computers made so far ... not worth mentioning. (except as awesome research projects)
    - harshreality 8y ago
      The number of jobs requiring that kind of creativity is very small. Of course there will be a need for engineers, and physicians, to interface with other humans and to integrate answers from narrow, specialized AIs into real-world solutions, but that's not the bulk of everyday work even in high-skill jobs. If AI cuts the amount of work someone has to do in half, the outcomes are on a continuum between two extremes: either effective hourly wage for work doubles and people work half the time, or the job market shrinks by 50%. But what would actually happen is closer to 33% less work and the job market shrinks by 25% too. "People are still smarter and more adaptable than narrow AI" is completely irrelevant. What matters is the workload reduction offered by the narrow AI. The OP didn't say all jobs by 2030, it said 800M. Obviously there will still be lots of jobs, but not enough. Too many people unemployed and broke, combined with not enough of a social safety net for food, housing, and medical care, will result in social unrest and, if that's not dealt with well enough, it will progress to social breakdown, which either means a revolution (to institute a new government that does implement appropriate safety nets) or a martial-law type of scenario, neither of which is pretty. Below-average doctors, engineers, and lawyers will be at risk of being out of work. On-site blue collar jobs are safer, as a percentage. Robots can prefab things in factories, but it will be a long time before automated robots can build or repair anything on-site with the efficiency of humans + power tools. ETA: I think you overestimate the number of people required to handle most of the problems you think need work. And the current free market doesn't agree that they need more work, or it would price those jobs higher and more people would jump into those labor pools. In some cases, the jobs require serious specialization (maybe not advanced degrees, but a fair amount of training) and not just anyone can do them... in which case even the optimal labor pool size would barely scratch the surface of the coming AI-caused unemployment crisis. Even a massive public works effort to employ tens of millions of workers to deal with aging infrastructure, or to build green tech, is not a permanent solution. Most of those jobs would be gone in a decade, and then you're right back to where you started, only worse because AI will have gotten better. Massive government spending (including on temp public works projects) is essentially UBI for a lot of able-bodied people. I don't object to that, but it needs to be limited to public works projects that are really necessary, and then you have to figure out where you're going to get the money to pay for them when the govt is already running trillion-dollar deficits. Is 5% debt inflation per year not good enough? Should we try 10%? 15%?
  - hoaw 8y ago
    I don't see it as much of a problem. Unless only a minority gets to enjoy the increase in productivity, which is what we are mostly seeing now.
  - 8bitsrule 8y ago
    Robot killer for hire. Will work for food.
4thaccount 8y ago
I'm not sure if we should hold onto humans doing things machine's can do better. Instead, perhaps UBI makes better sense. I know the economics part won't make sense until we're past the need for the current system, but if we don't need people to work, why have them waste their lives with suboptimal labor. My biggest issue with UBI is that you'll probably just get millions watching Netflix all day. What would be awesome is if those millions were writing books, doing physics, or creating works of art instead. You'd have machines doing the labor and humans being freed up to focus on new contributions to society. Of course, not to be elitist, but I'm not sure how many truck drivers will pick up work on the grand unified theory of physics, but if even one makes a new and important discovery that would be amazing. Also, I wonder how long until even jobs held by the highly educated (healthcare...etc) are largely automated?
- whatshisface 8y ago
  >What would be awesome is if those millions were writing books, doing physics, or creating works of art instead. You'd have machines doing the labor and humans being freed up to focus on new contributions to society. There is a really easy solution to this that I have never seen suggested. Instead of giving money to everyone for free, why not raise the budgets of research and art institutions? You can get as many people as you want doing physics and making art as you want, all you have to do is give money to CERN. Now, a pessimist might say that some people can't advance science or art because they lack the capability. I counter with the fact that anyone can do it at some speed, some are just faster than others. If you greatly increased the amount of money the Institute for Advanced Study had, they would be able to bring people on to their staff that were less efficient on a dollars per fundamental insight scale, I.E. you or me.
  - hoaw 8y ago
    The problem is that it isn't an income issue. It is a cost issue, which in turn is a power issue. As in who decides what and therefor who society is for. Taking underprivileged people, or even anyone else, and employing them at CERN isn't likely to work (Switzerland isn't exactly cheap or big on taxes). In the Nordic countries there are "folk high schools", which gives you education (paid via taxes), housing and food for ~$650 usd a month. They are mostly in the middle of nowhere though. Is it a good idea to educate people who gets squeezed out of society? Sure. But most societies are going the opposite way even now. Like many other things it isn't a technical issue, but a social one. There isn't really a need to wait for society to collapse before giving people affordable access to housing, education, health care etc.

crdoconnor 8y ago

Robot automation will take 800M jobs, says consultancy typically brought in to reduce headcount.

jrs95 8y ago

A lot of people are into UBI as a solution to this, but I personally don't think that will work. The social issues that would come from having that high of a level of unemployment, even with a UBI, would be enormous. I think it would be valuable to consider a more drastic departure from a capitalist system rather than applying yet another band-aid fix to it.

mac01021 8y ago
> I think it would be valuable to consider a more drastic departure from a capitalist system rather than applying yet another band-aid fix to it. Such as?
_i____ii_______ 8y ago
What social issues have been postulated?
- cantthinkofone 8y ago
  "Idle hands are the devil's workshop." The more people that are economically sidelined, who nave nothing to do and no prospects for self-advancement, the more appealing radical ideologies will become and the more social unrest there will be. A major source of social cohesion is the belief that if you work hard you will be able to succeed, but if it's structurally impossible to find work, and all you have is a UBI which doesn't afford much, you can expect that mass stagnation to provide ample breeding ground for a colorful assortment of social ills--drug abuse, suicide, crime, and finally, once the individual angst finds collective expression and organization, revolts and political radicalization. Work is one of the major sources of purpose people have. Earning an income and putting food on the table is fundamental to one's self-respect. Like educational achievement, it gives the impression that there is some way to advance beyond your lot. Take that away and it will cause a mass existential crisis unless there is something to fill the void. All the blights of the rust belt and other economically overlooked areas should be expected to spread.
  - mac01021 8y ago

williesleg 8y ago

I hope so! I can't wait for the 3 or 4 day workweek. Bernie????

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

open-source-ux 8y ago

I'm a bit cautious about this prediction. When the web became popular, I was convinced it would be the end of Estate Agents (Real Estate brokers) and Recruitment Agents. But both have thrived in an online world and seem as numerous today as they've ever been. Other automated changes for manual jobs would require substantial changes to infrastructure. For example, refuse collection using underground tubes to suck away rubbish is already a reality (e.g. Envac system designed in Sweden) but it's unlikely to be retro-fitted to existing housing developments. On the other hand, things like housing construction and crop picking I can imagine will continue to see improvements in automation.

craftinator 8y ago

Ah I can't wait, I'm so excited for early retirement!!

imtringued 8y ago
Don't worry. Someone else will retire earlier for you so you don't have to!

mabbo 8y ago

The total world productivity will be up and the total human labor to achieve that level will be down. This should be a good thing! ... but we don't share very well. Capital is making more money than labor. The 'hard working man' ethos makes less and less sense. You can't work your way out of poverty anymore. No sane person is arguing for full-blown communism here, but a shift towards a more socialist system is going to become the only way to keep society from breaking down. We need the benefits of this revolution to benefit all and not just those who were born wealthy. And it's going to be a very long road to get there, as political power today in most nations is most easily accessible to those with wealth, those who would lose out if such a shift were to take place.

DeonPenny 8y ago

Yeh but it will help move production closer to home, so it won't be as bad as most people think. Don't realize a lot of the things that american companies build oversea wouldn't need to be there if robots could do them. You'd also get faster deliveries and on-demand production.

whack 8y ago

https://outlookzen.com/2019/01/05/prosperity-comes-from-eliminating-jobs-not-saving-them/ https://outlookzen.com/2019/01/05/prosperity-comes-from-elim... > Prosperity Comes From Eliminating Jobs, Not Saving Them

caseymarquis 8y ago

I think the article has it backwards. The US and similar nations will be the least affected by this. Nations like India will be hit the hardest. Humans are flexible. Machines typically aren't. The more automation exists in a facility, the less flexible it becomes. Until we hit AGI, I think there is a cap on how automated a facility should (not can) become. A critical piece of this is that highly automated systems are expensive, and difficult to upgrade in a piecemeal fashion. Thus, using humans to tie systems together limits the amount invested in automation, and can save you money in the long run. US manufacturers are already aware of this, as some are dealing with the effects of aging overly automated production lines. All of this depends on what you're making and what quantity, but until we reach AGI, over-automating is a mistake manufacturers have made and will make again. In the US and similar, we've automated about as much as we could given existing technology. Newly available technology raises the automation cap a bit, but not that much. Contrast this with nations which are just getting to the point where mass automation is available and have a spiking per capita income. They're much more likely to see massive amounts of automation, proportional to their increasing wages.

epberry 8y ago
I agree with this. I think people are looking at the wrong layer for automation. Frontline workers will exist for a long time because of their flexibility and dexterity. I think automation will largely impact one level up - at the supervisor/manager level. My bet is on cameras and computer vision to be the enabling technology for this.
contingencies 8y ago
Nations like India will be hit the hardest When the majority of the population is essentially living extremely efficiently on a vegetarian diet without so much as personal transport, one should expect very little economic shock from issues as remote and abstract as gradual technology change. In addition, in many parts of India electricity is not yet reliable enough and corruption too endemic to allow the confident adoption of industrial automation. highly automated systems are expensive, and difficult to upgrade in a piecemeal fashion Highly automated systems are cheaper and more capable than ever, and getting cheaper. They are easy to justify on a budget because they pay for themselves in saved wages, 24x7x365 operation, and reduced error. Two examples are the dozens of companies now producing (1) industrial robot arms; and (2) warehouse goods transport robots at scale in China. You can design automated systems for modular upgrade, it just means accepting the costs for that up front. Often it doesn't make sense to do so, because by the time it matters you can probably design a new facility to pilot new off-the-shelf technology before retroactively updating prior sites. I believe major western companies use this approach for iterating data center designs, for example. In the US and similar, we've automated about as much as we could given existing technology. Newly available technology raises the automation cap a bit, but not that much. Strongly disagree. Just a few examples of areas the US has dropped the ball on despite access to technology would be: mobile payment, sustainable energy, transport, agriculture, health care, retail banking. From outside this often seems to be the case because the US domestic macro-economy is against change for reasons of monopoly, litigation, regulatory configuration, educational focus or similar. It seems that the technologies and social configuration being deployed in China today are likely to be the forebears of living arrangements for the majority of urban populations globally in the near future: package dropboxes (HiveBox), mobile payment (WeChat), high speed rail, nationalized critical infrastructure, etc. This is largely because they have, versus the US, what Tony Fadell recently described as "last mover advantage" and a population comfortable with socially mandated solutions. https://overcast.fm/+Lkc1bqy8c https://overcast.fm/+Lkc1bqy8c

scottlocklin 8y ago

"Nanotech will be a trillion dollar business by 2015" -source NSF document in 2001 http://www.wtec.org/loyola/nano/NSET.Societal.Implications/nanosi.pdf http://www.wtec.org/loyola/nano/NSET.Societal.Implications/n...

bedhead 8y ago

There are 3.5 million truckers in the US. Think about that. Politically, I'm fairly conservative/libertarian, and I generally accept the economic realities of things like creative destruction. And even with those overarching views, I am terrified of the social impact of autonomous vehicles. When you take a step back, it is nothing short of disturbing how aggressively and proudly Google and Uber (et al) are pursuing the destruction of the livelihoods of those 3.5 million households in this country. Just a bunch of mostly honest, hard-working folks who live in the exurbs or rural towns, with absolutely no backup plan when a robotic truck either creates tremendous wage deflation or takes their job completely. And for what? So we can all save a few cents at Target. So a couple billionaire founders can toss some more on the pile. So a handful of engineers can make more millions. So paper-pushing fund managers can make a few more bucks from their stock going up. It's like watching a horror movie in slow motion. Creative destruction has been a fact of life for centuries, but overall, societies have thrived. My sense - and I have no data to back this up - is that we are approaching a tipping point where the gains from technology are accelerating way beyond society's ability to reallocate those resources to other productive places in the short and even medium-term. That steady-state of frictional unemployment caused by technology is about to be majorly upended, and it just scares me. Societal problems are going to get very, very bad.

monkeydust 8y ago

As someone who works in a product management role building automation software what I am observing is that automation is helping to automate tasks not jobs. Jobs that humans do are being altered as a result focusing on more cognative and social tasks. Retooling / reskilling policies should be getting more attention.

FabianBeiner 8y ago

Getting replaced by a robot is a greater fear than I've ever anticipated. I've once build https://www.replacedbyrobot.info/ https://www.replacedbyrobot.info/ for fun. It turns out, the basic version back then got visited a couple of hundred, if not thousand times per day. I've since then built a more useful interface, and the traffic just increases day by day. I've even got interviewed by Vice once about the page.

Rexxar 8y ago

I wouldn't be surprised automation has already destroyed 2 or 3 more jobs that there is inhabitants in industrial countries over the last century. What is important is the balance between creation and destruction.

nojvek 8y ago

Robot Automation wouldn’t do jack shit in the larger scale in 10 years. May be 50 years yes, not 10. Robots right now are bulky and incredibly expensive devices which don’t even come close to human dexterity, intelligence or flexibility. Look at self driving cars. First DARPA driving challenge happened in 2004 and self driving cars are still very dumb and have killed a few people on the road. Simulation hours don’t count. Real driving hours without human engagement count. Sure in soft intelligence like speech recognition, language translation, vision we’ve done big advances. Deep Surveillance is going to be a real thing where every individual/car is tracked through the city. But replacing a ~billion jobs with robots. Not going to happen. Unless we have huge advances in bio manufacturing and computing. Doing it like DNA does it. Building machines from the same fabric we’re made of. Grow the machines from watery goo at scale. Make artificial muscles that are strong, fast, accurate, light and quiet. Now that would be the stuff of science fiction brought to reality.