10 ms·

‘Gods’ edging out robots at Toyota facility

248 points by marcusgarvey 11y ago

noir_lord 11y ago
“To be the master of the machine, you have to have the knowledge and the skills to teach the machine.” That is an awesome quote. Thanks for posting the article it was an interesting read.
riazrizvi 11y ago
Looks like the world is moving in the right direction again.
- falsestprophet 11y ago
  Several Toyota employees indicate the direction of the world?
- Igglyboo 11y ago
  Manual labor is the right direction? Wouldn't you rather have robots automating all the difficult/dangerous/demeaning work?
  - nosuchthing 11y ago
    Encouraging skill growth, problem solving skills, and wisdom from the workforce, rather just using humans as cogs.
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  It's not the "moving in the right direction", it's just slowing down the pace of going in current one, and I'd say it's just a stopgap. Even if you temporarily save a few high-skilled jobs (which are least endangered anyway), you're still waiting for software "gods" to grant machines the gift of self-improvement.
i_am_ralpht 11y ago
The recall problem was caused by software -- where are the software gods who write machine code instead of using compilers? ;)
- codewithcheese 11y ago
  I like the joke, but I feel I should say software is still a craft and not automated. Just that the tools have improved.
- freehunter 11y ago
  Yeah and if you have to drive a nail, you should use your fist instead of a hammer.
  - Noelkd 11y ago
    If you only have a hammer everything looks like a nail.
- mikeash 11y ago
  The best programmers I know all find an excuse to write some assembly every so often, even if just as an exercise.
ffk 11y ago
This is a fundamental shift from how many other factories work. In general, the workers are not given enough information to replicate the product. They are shown how to attach a specific sprocket to a widget. The tasks are kept so simple (nothing to do with pleasantness) that no one can learn how the whole device is created or suggest improvements. This model lends to people being replaced by robots because human capital is one of the most expensive parts of running a factory. In the case of Toyota, it sounds like these are high skilled engineers who are watching, understanding and making improvements to how the robots behave. While the article itself is good, the title feels like link bait to me because the engineer's job is not to replace the robot but to enhance the robot. The dynamic isn't human vs robot as in the first scenario, instead it is human & robot cooperating. With these types of factories, I think we'll likely see a resurgence of factories in rich countries as the most expensive component of the factory shifts from human capital to transportation of completed goods. [edited for grammer, sic]
- tjradcliffe 11y ago
  Thanks for the nice summary. No way was I going to click on a headline that read like this one! There are two kinds of jobs that robots will have a hard time replacing: these sorts of high-skill, creative, intution-and-experience heavy tasks; and low-skill but mechancially awkward tasks. In both cases, the key to job survival will be that it's something of a niche. Anything remotely generic will be taken over by machines. So for example we'll still see certain kinds of literature generated by humans, but 100% of financial reporting, political reporting and sports reporting will be automated. More sophisticated commentary of the kind that Nate Silver does might last, but the Paul Krugmans and David Brooks of the world will be engineered out in the next decade or so by bots that troll the web for stories and generate canned ideologically-loaded commentary based on a smattering of data sources. At the other end, jobs like fruit picking will be completely automated because it's a common task that can be implemented with a relatively generic machine, but cleaning houses will remain the domain of humans because houses are such awkward, complex spaces. Once we have a humanoid robot with very good AI that'll change, but I'm a little doubtful about seeing that in the next few decades.
  - 11y ago
neonbat 11y ago
This is nice PR but to imply that this is anything more than that is silly. These humans are clearly just improving the robots.
- hhandoko 11y ago
  I don't see that this is just another PR article, more that there will always be a place for craftsmen in Toyota, even in the face of the wave of production automation. One thing I admire from the Japanese culture, is that they take `craftsmanship` very seriously in all aspects of work. I gain this appreciation after working part-time as a kitchen-hand in a number of Japanese restaurants throughout my uni days. Those that are `authentic` Japanese (ran by Japanese owners) has a very methodical process and obsess over every single detail. Even a simple task such cooking rice has an elaborate process and specific technique that I must always follow through. Just two examples: * the amount of water to put into the rice depends on the season (i.e. dry vs wet season at harvest), must be exact to the millilitres. * the specific motion of washing (or more appropriately `grinding`, as the water has been sieved out). The chef always check the rice after it cooks and gave me feedback, every single time.
  - neonbat 11y ago
    I completely disagree, the type of craftsmen you're referring to will cease to exist at the company in the future. The very concept of craftsmanship is antiquated by the idea of intelligent machines. That is, machines that can learn. No matter how hard a human tries to "obsess over every single detail" they will simply be unable to compete with a machine intelligence in this regard. All the things you listed are so obviously suited to be tasks that intelligent machines can excel and surpass humans at. Even unintelligent machines would fare quite well against a human at all the tasks you listed. You may argue that there's an art to craftsmanship that machines "will never duplicate the creativity of humans." I hear that like 20 times a week and it's not true. This falsehood lies in a flawed premise. The premise that the machines doing art/crafstmaship will seek to "replicate" human creativity is simply false. Human creativity doesn't necessarily replicate the creativity of other humans; why would a machine creativity need to replicate? Many intelligent machines are already making art online. Machines do not need to replicate. Intelligent machines can create on their own, independently. People are doing this with twitter bots now. Notice I use the word "machine intelligence" and not just machine. A machine is process that has been animated in the physical world. A machine intelligence is fundamentally different. It learns and is better than we are at most (if not all) things. I understand that this eventuality is terrifying to people. Being scared of the inevitable doesn't stop it. We need to be thinking about this now so we can make plans to figure out what do with humans once these machines proliferate through our society. As an aside I also love Japanese culture. I had the opportunity to travel to Japan after high school. It was great.
SeanDav 11y ago
It seems to be working: > "In an area Kawai directly supervises at the forging division of Toyota’s Honsha plant, workers twist, turn and hammer metal into crankshafts instead of using the typically automated process. Experiences there have led to innovations in reducing levels of scrap and shortening the production line 96 percent from its length three years ago."
- Animats 11y ago
  That's how it was done at Chrysler in 1935.[1] Toyota's Honsha plant has had an automated crankshaft forging line since 1988.[2] I suspect this is a misconception. The Honsha plant was downsized in 2007. They have a lot of space there, and a "Museum of Production". They may have a manual forging setup as a training and demo operation, to give their employees a feel for how heated metal behaves during forging. A 1988-vintage automated forging line probably has too little feedback and too much brute power, and maybe too many die stages. Better employee understanding of the process may lead to a better. It's unlikely that Honda is doing manual forging for volume crankshaft production. [1] https://archive.org/details/0555_Master_Hands_18_27_28_00 https://archive.org/details/0555_Master_Hands_18_27_28_00 (start at 00:11:45) [2] http://www.toyota-global.com/company/history_of_toyota/75years/data/automotive_business/production/production/japan/general_status/honsha.html http://www.toyota-global.com/company/history_of_toyota/75yea...
  - gregpilling 11y ago
    which is exactly what I think the article is saying. So you are right.
oldmanjay 11y ago
There is a big implicit "for now" after nearly every sentence in the article. Sure, we don't have machines that can autonomously optimize themselves. For now.
- neonbat 11y ago
  Soon...soon... pets robotic white cat
tehchromic 11y ago
I think this is a real indicator and validation of what the next economy will look like: humans at the apex of the arts, where imagination and craft will be highly valued in the everyday folk worker, and mundane or trivial tasks will be assigned to automatons. We will choose our own employment adventure.
- nosuchthing 11y ago
  ...If we build framework to support such an economy, it may be possible.
  - TeMPOraL 11y ago
    That's the crux of the issue. It seems that the current economy will rather drive itself to the ground, taking all of humanity with it, rather than transitioning itself to a different value system. It looks like the post-scarcity world is not on the phase-space trajectory we're currently following.
    - nosuchthing 11y ago
      On a macro scale it's momentum and incentives at play. Daunting, but malleable. Locally, we're close to achieving sensible cities/communities with renewable energy, easier access to rapid prototyping, and worker co-op business models. Do what you can with what you have to make your city and friends have access to healthy enjoyable lives.
      - pavedwalden 11y ago
        From where I'm sitting, it doesn't look like we're remotely close. Renewable energy and effective urban planning are not at all common, and worker co-op business models are quite rare. I like your vision of the future, but I don't see much evidence that we're headed there.
    - willholloway 11y ago
      Right now I feel every reason to be gratuitously optimistic. - Solar photo-voltaic is or is about to be the cheapest form of electricity, we will solve the storage problem - Electric cars are getting closer to the tipping point, and they are going to drive themselves - Biotech is making incredible gains, see cancer immunotherapy or NSI-189 - The pace of technological innovation has accelerated and continues - The intellectual capital of the human race has never been anywhere near this large, free, accessible - Robots/a lot of weak AI is or is about to get to a point to change the game
samatman 11y ago
This is so applicable to our industry. I heard Chuck Moore say once that most microcoded division routines are bad, because it's the first and only time that engineer writes one. He said his tenth division routine was far better than his first. It concerns me that in the rush to build abstraction upon abstraction, we're neglecting the tools and practices that make it possible to work on and improve the fundamental layers.
- icebraining 11y ago
  Considering that one of the current trends is the development of unikernels (like MirageOS), network stacks in userspace, etc, I'd say we're still thinking about the lower layers.
danso 11y ago
> “If there is ever a technology that’s flawless and could always make perfect products, then we will be ready and willing to install that machine,” Kawai said. “There’s no machine that is eternally stable.” This seems like a nice reformulation of Turing's Entscheidungsproblem
- lukeschlather 11y ago
  No, it's definitely a separate observation. The Entscheidungsproblem describes a problem space that we cannot build a machine to solve. What Kawai is saying is a more physical thing - even for problems we can build a machine to solve, the machine will eventually stop working under normal use, and it's unlikely even to produce consistently correct results.
  - rocky1138 11y ago
    Somewhat tangential, but give 1909's "The Machine Stops" by E.M. Forster a read. It's excellent and speaks to this point. http://archive.ncsa.illinois.edu/prajlich/forster.html http://archive.ncsa.illinois.edu/prajlich/forster.html
BrandonY 11y ago
I seem to recall a very old science fiction story about a future where nobody has to go to school. Instead, they play all day until they come of age, at which point a computer programs their mind with all of the expertise needed for whatever profession they'd be best at and would be most useful. The problem turned out to be that, while this is great, the programmed minds couldn't innovate further improvements, and so society grew stale. A small percentage of the population, including of course the protagonist, were chosen to learn stuff the hard way in order to be able to come up with new advancements. For the life of me, though, I can't remember what story that was. Any ideas?
- spiritplumber 11y ago
  http://www.inf.ufpr.br/renato/profession.html http://www.inf.ufpr.br/renato/profession.html "Profession" by Asimov (1957)
  - BrandonY 11y ago
    That is exactly it! Thank you so much for finding that for me.
- ergothus 11y ago
  I vaguely recall something similar. I think it was called "Demon on my back" or the like, but I can find no such novel listed anywhere. It was a YA story. [Edit: Looks like it was "Devil On My Back" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devil_on_My_Back http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devil_on_My_Back Hope that is the one you are looking for]
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
chucksmart 11y ago
Headline term lost in translation; but well written concept.
TheLoneWolfling 11y ago
JS;DR.
AndrewKemendo 11y ago
What I don't understand is why the "Gods" don't say "No we won't train robots to do our jobs." One of the biggest hurdles to automation in general - especially where replacing skilled workers is concerned - is in teaching (algorithmically or otherwise) the machine to replicate what the skilled worker is doing. If there really is the existential crisis of "machines taking our jobs" then why are the robot trainers not pushing back? Isn't is immediately clear what they are doing? I personally think everything should be automated with no mandatory human inputs for the majority of tasks - but that is hundreds of years away if ever. The key sticking point though is whether people will be willing to be "the last human to hold this job."
- kijin 11y ago
  At least in Toyota, there seems to be no existential crisis of machines taking over our jobs. What the article mentions is just a strategy to improve quality and encourage innovation. These people are not particularly worried about teaching the machine to imitate the skilled worker; they're too busy figuring out what the skilled worker should be doing in the first place. Also, gods of engineering are probably different from other gods. Like passionate programmers, they're having too much fun making machines perform new and exciting tasks.
- Tad_Ghostly 11y ago
  As I understood it, under this plan there won't be a 'last human' because...kaizan...the humans will always be improving and innovating. ...Until profits are in danger and you have a conservative board. Then you might see the last human, shortly followed by corporate irrelevancy.
- Negitivefrags 11y ago
  Programmers don't seem to have a problem automating aspects of their own jobs. Efficiency for it's own sake is a motivation.
- NoPiece 11y ago
  Would you rather program robots, or work on a car assembly line?
johnong 11y ago
Back in the early 90s, I was working in a Sony plant in Singapore that produces CRTs. It's a fully automated plant and my section are in charge of making the famous Trinitron apperture gril. Anyway, I still remembered there was once a group of Japanese craftsman came to visit our plant. And some some of my colleagues were assigned to attach with them and learn. These craftsman turn out to be ladies (wow!) and they showed us how to do some of the work manually (WTF!) and the skills they have really put to shame the local guys, we stand and watch and totally stunned. The crafmanship and professionalism in their skill is truely awesome.
emmanueloga_ 11y ago
Sometimes I do find programmers that do not know how to, say, install a linux distro, or at a lower level, don't understand what a data bus is, or how one bit of information is actually stored in a computer. > Learning how to make car parts from scratch gives younger workers insights they otherwise wouldn’t get from picking parts from bins and conveyor belts, or pressing buttons on machines. This is also the spirit of the nand2tetris [1] course, currently running on coursera [2]. The book is a really entertaining read too. Depending on how familiar you are with electronics you may be able to outpace the video course quite a bit. Also, > “Fully automated machines don’t evolve on their own,” not yet... :p 1: http://www.nand2tetris.org/ http://www.nand2tetris.org/ 2: https://www.coursera.org/course/nand2tetris1 https://www.coursera.org/course/nand2tetris1
- gregpilling 11y ago
  I know a computer science professor that asked me how to make a website as recently as 2007
  - kwhitefoot 11y ago
    Not entirely sure what your point is here but I assume that you mean he should have known. Can't imagine why a computer SCIENCE professor would be expected to know how to make a website any more than my Newtonian mechanics professor would have been expected to know how to build a car.
SixSigma 11y ago
It's an avowed aim of the Toyota Production System Automation with a human touch http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomation
kriro 11y ago
I guess a programming analogy might be the "radical" idea that it might make sense to let highly paid engineers read through the source code of libraries that you use.
blackkettle 11y ago
Reminds me of the John Henry myth: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Henry_%28folklore%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Henry_%28folklore%29 probably will end the same way.
Htsthbjig 11y ago
This is the normal backwash of Toyota. Toyota was one of the(or probably the) first company to totally replace humans with computers in their production lines. So, as a result, they are the first to say: "Well, it looks like some things computers do very badly compared to humans". Today little things quality inspection is done by humans but most of the work is done by machines, so take whatever you read with a big grain of salt. Yeah, there are professionals needed, my company is one of those. But most of the jobs those companies created are forever gone.
rotten 11y ago
So should developers learn more about how low level libraries work so they can make better code? ie, should we be fostering more Kami-Sama developers? Or do you really not need to know that stuff, and focus instead on putting together higher level libraries into awesome apps because business is business and we have deadlines?
novaleaf 11y ago
The idea reminds me of this SciFi story from 1949: http://escapepod.org/2013/10/28/ep419-expediter/ http://escapepod.org/2013/10/28/ep419-expediter/

248 points by marcusgarvey 11y ago

“To be the master of the machine, you have to have the knowledge and the skills to teach the machine.” That is an awesome quote. Thanks for posting the article it was an interesting read.

riazrizvi 11y ago

Looks like the world is moving in the right direction again.

falsestprophet 11y ago
Several Toyota employees indicate the direction of the world?
Igglyboo 11y ago
Manual labor is the right direction? Wouldn't you rather have robots automating all the difficult/dangerous/demeaning work?
- nosuchthing 11y ago
  Encouraging skill growth, problem solving skills, and wisdom from the workforce, rather just using humans as cogs.
TeMPOraL 11y ago
It's not the "moving in the right direction", it's just slowing down the pace of going in current one, and I'd say it's just a stopgap. Even if you temporarily save a few high-skilled jobs (which are least endangered anyway), you're still waiting for software "gods" to grant machines the gift of self-improvement.

i_am_ralpht 11y ago

The recall problem was caused by software -- where are the software gods who write machine code instead of using compilers? ;)

codewithcheese 11y ago
I like the joke, but I feel I should say software is still a craft and not automated. Just that the tools have improved.
freehunter 11y ago
Yeah and if you have to drive a nail, you should use your fist instead of a hammer.
- Noelkd 11y ago
  If you only have a hammer everything looks like a nail.
mikeash 11y ago
The best programmers I know all find an excuse to write some assembly every so often, even if just as an exercise.

ffk 11y ago

This is a fundamental shift from how many other factories work. In general, the workers are not given enough information to replicate the product. They are shown how to attach a specific sprocket to a widget. The tasks are kept so simple (nothing to do with pleasantness) that no one can learn how the whole device is created or suggest improvements. This model lends to people being replaced by robots because human capital is one of the most expensive parts of running a factory. In the case of Toyota, it sounds like these are high skilled engineers who are watching, understanding and making improvements to how the robots behave. While the article itself is good, the title feels like link bait to me because the engineer's job is not to replace the robot but to enhance the robot. The dynamic isn't human vs robot as in the first scenario, instead it is human & robot cooperating. With these types of factories, I think we'll likely see a resurgence of factories in rich countries as the most expensive component of the factory shifts from human capital to transportation of completed goods. [edited for grammer, sic]

tjradcliffe 11y ago
Thanks for the nice summary. No way was I going to click on a headline that read like this one! There are two kinds of jobs that robots will have a hard time replacing: these sorts of high-skill, creative, intution-and-experience heavy tasks; and low-skill but mechancially awkward tasks. In both cases, the key to job survival will be that it's something of a niche. Anything remotely generic will be taken over by machines. So for example we'll still see certain kinds of literature generated by humans, but 100% of financial reporting, political reporting and sports reporting will be automated. More sophisticated commentary of the kind that Nate Silver does might last, but the Paul Krugmans and David Brooks of the world will be engineered out in the next decade or so by bots that troll the web for stories and generate canned ideologically-loaded commentary based on a smattering of data sources. At the other end, jobs like fruit picking will be completely automated because it's a common task that can be implemented with a relatively generic machine, but cleaning houses will remain the domain of humans because houses are such awkward, complex spaces. Once we have a humanoid robot with very good AI that'll change, but I'm a little doubtful about seeing that in the next few decades.
- 11y ago

neonbat 11y ago

This is nice PR but to imply that this is anything more than that is silly. These humans are clearly just improving the robots.

hhandoko 11y ago
I don't see that this is just another PR article, more that there will always be a place for craftsmen in Toyota, even in the face of the wave of production automation. One thing I admire from the Japanese culture, is that they take `craftsmanship` very seriously in all aspects of work. I gain this appreciation after working part-time as a kitchen-hand in a number of Japanese restaurants throughout my uni days. Those that are `authentic` Japanese (ran by Japanese owners) has a very methodical process and obsess over every single detail. Even a simple task such cooking rice has an elaborate process and specific technique that I must always follow through. Just two examples: * the amount of water to put into the rice depends on the season (i.e. dry vs wet season at harvest), must be exact to the millilitres. * the specific motion of washing (or more appropriately `grinding`, as the water has been sieved out). The chef always check the rice after it cooks and gave me feedback, every single time.
- neonbat 11y ago
  I completely disagree, the type of craftsmen you're referring to will cease to exist at the company in the future. The very concept of craftsmanship is antiquated by the idea of intelligent machines. That is, machines that can learn. No matter how hard a human tries to "obsess over every single detail" they will simply be unable to compete with a machine intelligence in this regard. All the things you listed are so obviously suited to be tasks that intelligent machines can excel and surpass humans at. Even unintelligent machines would fare quite well against a human at all the tasks you listed. You may argue that there's an art to craftsmanship that machines "will never duplicate the creativity of humans." I hear that like 20 times a week and it's not true. This falsehood lies in a flawed premise. The premise that the machines doing art/crafstmaship will seek to "replicate" human creativity is simply false. Human creativity doesn't necessarily replicate the creativity of other humans; why would a machine creativity need to replicate? Many intelligent machines are already making art online. Machines do not need to replicate. Intelligent machines can create on their own, independently. People are doing this with twitter bots now. Notice I use the word "machine intelligence" and not just machine. A machine is process that has been animated in the physical world. A machine intelligence is fundamentally different. It learns and is better than we are at most (if not all) things. I understand that this eventuality is terrifying to people. Being scared of the inevitable doesn't stop it. We need to be thinking about this now so we can make plans to figure out what do with humans once these machines proliferate through our society. As an aside I also love Japanese culture. I had the opportunity to travel to Japan after high school. It was great.

SeanDav 11y ago

It seems to be working: > "In an area Kawai directly supervises at the forging division of Toyota’s Honsha plant, workers twist, turn and hammer metal into crankshafts instead of using the typically automated process. Experiences there have led to innovations in reducing levels of scrap and shortening the production line 96 percent from its length three years ago."

Animats 11y ago
That's how it was done at Chrysler in 1935.[1] Toyota's Honsha plant has had an automated crankshaft forging line since 1988.[2] I suspect this is a misconception. The Honsha plant was downsized in 2007. They have a lot of space there, and a "Museum of Production". They may have a manual forging setup as a training and demo operation, to give their employees a feel for how heated metal behaves during forging. A 1988-vintage automated forging line probably has too little feedback and too much brute power, and maybe too many die stages. Better employee understanding of the process may lead to a better. It's unlikely that Honda is doing manual forging for volume crankshaft production. [1] https://archive.org/details/0555_Master_Hands_18_27_28_00 https://archive.org/details/0555_Master_Hands_18_27_28_00 (start at 00:11:45) [2] http://www.toyota-global.com/company/history_of_toyota/75years/data/automotive_business/production/production/japan/general_status/honsha.html http://www.toyota-global.com/company/history_of_toyota/75yea...
- gregpilling 11y ago
  which is exactly what I think the article is saying. So you are right.

oldmanjay 11y ago

There is a big implicit "for now" after nearly every sentence in the article. Sure, we don't have machines that can autonomously optimize themselves. For now.

neonbat 11y ago
Soon...soon... pets robotic white cat

tehchromic 11y ago

I think this is a real indicator and validation of what the next economy will look like: humans at the apex of the arts, where imagination and craft will be highly valued in the everyday folk worker, and mundane or trivial tasks will be assigned to automatons. We will choose our own employment adventure.

nosuchthing 11y ago
...If we build framework to support such an economy, it may be possible.
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  That's the crux of the issue. It seems that the current economy will rather drive itself to the ground, taking all of humanity with it, rather than transitioning itself to a different value system. It looks like the post-scarcity world is not on the phase-space trajectory we're currently following.
  - nosuchthing 11y ago
    On a macro scale it's momentum and incentives at play. Daunting, but malleable. Locally, we're close to achieving sensible cities/communities with renewable energy, easier access to rapid prototyping, and worker co-op business models. Do what you can with what you have to make your city and friends have access to healthy enjoyable lives.
    - pavedwalden 11y ago
      From where I'm sitting, it doesn't look like we're remotely close. Renewable energy and effective urban planning are not at all common, and worker co-op business models are quite rare. I like your vision of the future, but I don't see much evidence that we're headed there.
  - willholloway 11y ago
    Right now I feel every reason to be gratuitously optimistic. - Solar photo-voltaic is or is about to be the cheapest form of electricity, we will solve the storage problem - Electric cars are getting closer to the tipping point, and they are going to drive themselves - Biotech is making incredible gains, see cancer immunotherapy or NSI-189 - The pace of technological innovation has accelerated and continues - The intellectual capital of the human race has never been anywhere near this large, free, accessible - Robots/a lot of weak AI is or is about to get to a point to change the game

samatman 11y ago

This is so applicable to our industry. I heard Chuck Moore say once that most microcoded division routines are bad, because it's the first and only time that engineer writes one. He said his tenth division routine was far better than his first. It concerns me that in the rush to build abstraction upon abstraction, we're neglecting the tools and practices that make it possible to work on and improve the fundamental layers.

icebraining 11y ago
Considering that one of the current trends is the development of unikernels (like MirageOS), network stacks in userspace, etc, I'd say we're still thinking about the lower layers.

danso 11y ago

> “If there is ever a technology that’s flawless and could always make perfect products, then we will be ready and willing to install that machine,” Kawai said. “There’s no machine that is eternally stable.” This seems like a nice reformulation of Turing's Entscheidungsproblem

lukeschlather 11y ago
No, it's definitely a separate observation. The Entscheidungsproblem describes a problem space that we cannot build a machine to solve. What Kawai is saying is a more physical thing - even for problems we can build a machine to solve, the machine will eventually stop working under normal use, and it's unlikely even to produce consistently correct results.
- rocky1138 11y ago
  Somewhat tangential, but give 1909's "The Machine Stops" by E.M. Forster a read. It's excellent and speaks to this point. http://archive.ncsa.illinois.edu/prajlich/forster.html http://archive.ncsa.illinois.edu/prajlich/forster.html

BrandonY 11y ago

I seem to recall a very old science fiction story about a future where nobody has to go to school. Instead, they play all day until they come of age, at which point a computer programs their mind with all of the expertise needed for whatever profession they'd be best at and would be most useful. The problem turned out to be that, while this is great, the programmed minds couldn't innovate further improvements, and so society grew stale. A small percentage of the population, including of course the protagonist, were chosen to learn stuff the hard way in order to be able to come up with new advancements. For the life of me, though, I can't remember what story that was. Any ideas?

spiritplumber 11y ago
http://www.inf.ufpr.br/renato/profession.html http://www.inf.ufpr.br/renato/profession.html "Profession" by Asimov (1957)
- BrandonY 11y ago
  That is exactly it! Thank you so much for finding that for me.
ergothus 11y ago
I vaguely recall something similar. I think it was called "Demon on my back" or the like, but I can find no such novel listed anywhere. It was a YA story. [Edit: Looks like it was "Devil On My Back" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devil_on_My_Back http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devil_on_My_Back Hope that is the one you are looking for]
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

chucksmart 11y ago

Headline term lost in translation; but well written concept.

TheLoneWolfling 11y ago

JS;DR.

AndrewKemendo 11y ago

What I don't understand is why the "Gods" don't say "No we won't train robots to do our jobs." One of the biggest hurdles to automation in general - especially where replacing skilled workers is concerned - is in teaching (algorithmically or otherwise) the machine to replicate what the skilled worker is doing. If there really is the existential crisis of "machines taking our jobs" then why are the robot trainers not pushing back? Isn't is immediately clear what they are doing? I personally think everything should be automated with no mandatory human inputs for the majority of tasks - but that is hundreds of years away if ever. The key sticking point though is whether people will be willing to be "the last human to hold this job."

kijin 11y ago
At least in Toyota, there seems to be no existential crisis of machines taking over our jobs. What the article mentions is just a strategy to improve quality and encourage innovation. These people are not particularly worried about teaching the machine to imitate the skilled worker; they're too busy figuring out what the skilled worker should be doing in the first place. Also, gods of engineering are probably different from other gods. Like passionate programmers, they're having too much fun making machines perform new and exciting tasks.
Tad_Ghostly 11y ago
As I understood it, under this plan there won't be a 'last human' because...kaizan...the humans will always be improving and innovating. ...Until profits are in danger and you have a conservative board. Then you might see the last human, shortly followed by corporate irrelevancy.
Negitivefrags 11y ago
Programmers don't seem to have a problem automating aspects of their own jobs. Efficiency for it's own sake is a motivation.
NoPiece 11y ago
Would you rather program robots, or work on a car assembly line?

johnong 11y ago

Back in the early 90s, I was working in a Sony plant in Singapore that produces CRTs. It's a fully automated plant and my section are in charge of making the famous Trinitron apperture gril. Anyway, I still remembered there was once a group of Japanese craftsman came to visit our plant. And some some of my colleagues were assigned to attach with them and learn. These craftsman turn out to be ladies (wow!) and they showed us how to do some of the work manually (WTF!) and the skills they have really put to shame the local guys, we stand and watch and totally stunned. The crafmanship and professionalism in their skill is truely awesome.

emmanueloga_ 11y ago

Sometimes I do find programmers that do not know how to, say, install a linux distro, or at a lower level, don't understand what a data bus is, or how one bit of information is actually stored in a computer. > Learning how to make car parts from scratch gives younger workers insights they otherwise wouldn’t get from picking parts from bins and conveyor belts, or pressing buttons on machines. This is also the spirit of the nand2tetris [1] course, currently running on coursera [2]. The book is a really entertaining read too. Depending on how familiar you are with electronics you may be able to outpace the video course quite a bit. Also, > “Fully automated machines don’t evolve on their own,” not yet... :p 1: http://www.nand2tetris.org/ http://www.nand2tetris.org/ 2: https://www.coursera.org/course/nand2tetris1 https://www.coursera.org/course/nand2tetris1

gregpilling 11y ago
I know a computer science professor that asked me how to make a website as recently as 2007
- kwhitefoot 11y ago
  Not entirely sure what your point is here but I assume that you mean he should have known. Can't imagine why a computer SCIENCE professor would be expected to know how to make a website any more than my Newtonian mechanics professor would have been expected to know how to build a car.

SixSigma 11y ago

It's an avowed aim of the Toyota Production System Automation with a human touch http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomation

kriro 11y ago

I guess a programming analogy might be the "radical" idea that it might make sense to let highly paid engineers read through the source code of libraries that you use.

blackkettle 11y ago

Reminds me of the John Henry myth: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Henry_%28folklore%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Henry_%28folklore%29 probably will end the same way.

Htsthbjig 11y ago

This is the normal backwash of Toyota. Toyota was one of the(or probably the) first company to totally replace humans with computers in their production lines. So, as a result, they are the first to say: "Well, it looks like some things computers do very badly compared to humans". Today little things quality inspection is done by humans but most of the work is done by machines, so take whatever you read with a big grain of salt. Yeah, there are professionals needed, my company is one of those. But most of the jobs those companies created are forever gone.

rotten 11y ago

So should developers learn more about how low level libraries work so they can make better code? ie, should we be fostering more Kami-Sama developers? Or do you really not need to know that stuff, and focus instead on putting together higher level libraries into awesome apps because business is business and we have deadlines?

novaleaf 11y ago

The idea reminds me of this SciFi story from 1949: http://escapepod.org/2013/10/28/ep419-expediter/ http://escapepod.org/2013/10/28/ep419-expediter/