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No - we won't all lose our jobs to robots

B

Bernard Murphy

Moderator
Another viewpoint below. I still think the most compelling reason is simple economics. The more people lose their jobs to robots, the less people will be able to buy what the robots are making. This doesn't say that people don't lose jobs in some areas in the short term. But over time the number of active participants in the economy has to grow if the economy is to grow. This argument doesn't apply in non-productive parts of an economy (eg defense), but ultimately those activities can be funded only to the extent the productive parts of the economy are generating taxes.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-...JwnMoow&fromEmail=fromEmail&ut=2bLrwK30gzlTw1
 
Bernard, At least as a blogger I can continue to write about robots as they take over the planet, until they create a blogging robot script with some clever AI. Happy Thanksgiving week everyone.

I remember watching a movie in high school about workers losing their jobs to automation, and there was an accountant that was losing his job to new software being installed so he decided to become a photographer instead, because "somebody has to click the shutter".
 
One of the main purposes of government has become to protect the entrenched interests as in protecting teachers from automation. Teachers are still needed, but only to augment and support automated, adaptive education. Much of the building trades could be eliminated or automated through modular, panelized and prefab construction, but government regulations prohibit it. Already, ships are set to be fully automated. Every where government support of entrenched interests is flagrant to the point of being a blatant form of corruption. We could be automating or at least stream lining many jobs right now and many more as technology progresses, but a government beholding to special interests stands in the way. Many of our current military systems are either irrelevant or have been rendered ineffective by radical changes in warfare such as the autonomous, decentralized, stateless military perfected by Osama Bin Laden. This has rendered much of our military gear ineffective, obsolete or cost prohibitive. Military contractors are still selling horribly complex and expensive military hardware that was designed to fight a type of warfare that no longer exists. From education, to medical, to the military and many other areas, technology has changed the rules, but special interests prevail. Until this is overcome, we not be able to realize even a fraction of the value of current and future technologies.
 
High speed education/training will be critical to people adapting to new job sets requiring different skill and mind sets. This will be particular challenge for it will require a total revamp of an educational system that is rapidly becoming obsolete. This is but one area where the special interests are holding on for dear life to the detriment of us all. Educational content and methods have to start adapting and evolving like the rest of us. New employment for the last decade has essentially been zero when pay, benefits, part time/gig and job duration are taken into account. It has been estimated we could loose a significant portion of our jobs in the next decade. To create new jobs that add to the quality of life will take wisdom for we don't want to rely on law enforcement and prisons to be a major growth industry that has gone from under 300 K in prison to over 2.3 M in just thirty years. This not adds cost, but lowers the quality of our human capital, costing greatly a second time. Health care, the largest user of technology has used regulations to keep cost high, when technology should be driving them down. Technology and special interests need to be more separated if we are to truly advance for the good of all. The concentration of wealth is becoming acute and people that are shut out will be paid or become a dangerous burden on society. With knowledge comes responsibility and without it can become very dangerous.
 
Bernard Murphy said:
The more people lose their jobs to robots, the less people will be able to buy what the robots are making.
Click to expand...

Bernard:

So let's say we get a huge breakthrough, and robots cause 20% unemployment. Huge. i.e. economic recession/depression.

What do companies do at such times(like we've seen in the last recession) ? seek where to save money. If robots offer savings, and companies have the right financing(or robots are offered on-demand), companies will replace even more employees with robots(even though the global effect will be bad). To a certain extent they have no choice, because if they don't do that lose money and market share and die.

As for the article and the claim that Gordon doesn't see robots in any industry(besides warehouses and manufacturing):

* retail is becoming warehouses(E-commerce) and automated parcel lockers and self-driving cars.

* self-driving transportation

* Broad group has built 30 high rise pre-fab buildings which we're manufactured in a plant, hence could use robots for most of the work. But it's a slow industry so it will take a long time.

* Munchery is working on tranforming restaurants into large commercial kitchens(factory like), with labor costs per meal declining ~5x + already in some restaurant chains thousands of tablets replace some waiters's responsibilities

* We're starting to see automated teaching in online college courses, including complex stuff like grading.

etc, etc

In short: Gordon is a known skeptic because he doesn't see productivity growing in the economic numbers. But if you look into the details , in some sectors, like manufacturing and retail etc - producitivity does grow nicely, but than we silly humans decide to take all our extra money because of that , and waste it on low productivity industries (mainly getting better service, better experiences , all which take lots of labor) and than on average the numbers look bad.

This is from: The productivity paradox: why we're getting more innovation but less growth - Vox - a very good read about the subject.


The only question is: what could and what will change that pattern towards full automation ? or will we continue this way ?
 
The most productive fab is the one where no humans are working anymore. Problem is that the generated wealth is not distributed anymore to the working people only to the people who own the fab.
 
Bernard Murphy said:
Another viewpoint below. I still think the most compelling reason is simple economics. The more people lose their jobs to robots, the less people will be able to buy what the robots are making. This doesn't say that people don't lose jobs in some areas in the short term. But over time the number of active participants in the economy has to grow if the economy is to grow. This argument doesn't apply in non-productive parts of an economy (eg defense), but ultimately those activities can be funded only to the extent the productive parts of the economy are generating taxes.

Why Robots Will Not Decimate Human Jobs | Bob Gordon | LinkedIn
Click to expand...

Just remember, robots took Charlie's (and the Chocolate Factory) father's job at the tooth paste factory. He screwed the tops on the toothpaste tubes. He was rehired to fix the robots and of course Charlie got the chocolate factory so robots are good.

I had a good augmented reality experience during my last trip. I avoided a very long like at the desk by using a kiosk to rent a car. It had a video screen if I needed help, which I did, Kind of like Skyping a friend. It really was a good experience.
 
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Daniel:

Well chocolate has infinite demand, so even with the much higher efficiency of robots you still need similar amount of labor. And chocolate increases demand for toothpaste, so Charlie's Father's job is also guarranteed.

Sadly, life isn't a piece of chocolate. So there's a chance, due to all sorts of reasons , that demand won't increase exponentially with labor efficiency.

BTW, for the sake of horses watching the movie, they didn't show the nearest plant, a glue factory - a small present from the industrial revolution.
 
Sorry for my non-responsiveness - family emergency, now happily resolved. All good points above. Certainly there can be all kinds of short-term disruptions, but I stick by my thesis that in the long run an economy depends on not only supply but also demand and particularly growth. If the demand base shrinks as a result of automation, growth will become negative and investors will disappear. Healthy growth requires a growing market for products, hence growing demand, hence a growing number of people with money to buy those products. This seems to me to be axiomatic, unless you want to consider a post-economic world.
 
>> Sorry for my non-responsiveness - family emergency, now happily resolved.

Good to hear.

>> If the demand base shrinks as a result of automation, growth will become negative and investors will disappear


1. So maybe there will be a new equilibrium , at 50% unemployment ?

2. A lot depends on the chareseristics of growth and robots: let's say growth declines 10% per year , but the ROI on the robot is 3 years . so you might want to replace just 70% of your employees with robots. And after the fourth year you're suddenly stuck with some few unemployed robots(fully depreciated), so you might sell them cheaply to someone else.


3 . Disruptive innovations don't care about growth in a market, just size. The kindle didn't attack the book market because it has growth.




 
Bernard Murphy said:
This seems to me to be axiomatic, unless you want to consider a post-economic world.
Click to expand...

I agree that a post-economic world is not possible; it just is a law caused by the scarcity of goods on our planet. But what may be possible is to go to a post-growth driven world and due to scarcity of goods that may even be a necessity.
In the third industrial revolution the economic growth was a good thing as the extra wealth would mean better life for most people. But maybe we are now at new times so that the primary focus should not be creating more wealth but focus more on how to distribute the wealth better or even on how to convert the increased wealth in more citizen happiness. For the latter people are suggesting to not only look at GDP (gross domestic product) but also GNH (gross national happiness). All political shifts seen lately seem to indicate that the latter does not seem to be improving despite the big improvement in basic life circumstances since the third industrial revolution.
 
Staf - have you read "Sapiens - A brief history of humankind"? The author echoes your point about happiness. He says that while our lives are longer and we have more stuff, we are working longer hours with less obvious satisfaction that our early hunter/gatherer forebears. Interesting viewpoint. Don't know if I entirely agree, but I do agree that many people seem to be on an endless treadmill and measuring progress by how much stuff they have acquired. Not clear that is progress.
 
ConnerVT said:
[video=youtube;7Pq-S557XQU]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU[/video]
Click to expand...

This video was published more than two years ago on Aug 13, 2014. A lot new development and progress have been made since then that proved the observation stated in this video are so true.
 
Bernard Murphy said:
Another viewpoint below. I still think the most compelling reason is simple economics. The more people lose their jobs to robots, the less people will be able to buy what the robots are making. This doesn't say that people don't lose jobs in some areas in the short term. But over time the number of active participants in the economy has to grow if the economy is to grow. This argument doesn't apply in non-productive parts of an economy (eg defense), but ultimately those activities can be funded only to the extent the productive parts of the economy are generating taxes.

Why Robots Will Not Decimate Human Jobs
| LinkedIn
Click to expand...


On the global scale, the economic balancing rule between supply and demand might not work well or might not even happen. This situation can be worst in the regional or country level. For example, Africa has huge population and huge market potential since the end of WWII, but we haven't seen much wide spread prosperity there for a long time.

On the other hand, the advancement of technology and automation have reduced the demand in human labor. A small factory with few thousands workers in Korea, Ireland, or Israel, may supply a particular product to meet the total global demand. We can use TSMC as an example. At the end of 2015, TSMC employed about 45,000 people. If we estimate among its 15 or so fabs use about 250 acres each, it comes out TSMC utilized less than 26% of land comparing to the size of Manhattan, New York.

Yet TSMC provides more than 50% (in terms of revenue) of foundry services to the whole global market!

This kind of imbalance is everywhere in the global economy for reasons and it won't be solved by regulations or simple supply and demand principle. Unfortunately, many politicians and their supporters will ignore this fact and waste valuable time and resource going the wrong way to combat it.
 
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Bernard Murphy said:
Staf - have you read "Sapiens - A brief history of humankind"?
Click to expand...

No, will put it on my (long) list. A year or two ago I decided to not work long hours anymore and put the big career ambitions aside. It clearly had a positive effect on my happiness.
 
Good point, though the gig economy is not necessarily a good way to make great money. Seems to me to be more of a survival strategy than a get-rich strategy. Then again perhaps new industries will emerge from this economy which are not themselves so dependent on freelance labor and out of that new jobs with livable salaries will emerge. (Glass half-full, my default mode believe it or not)
 
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