Off Topic - Robotic Nation

ddavelarsen

ddavelarsen

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Dec 7, 2000
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Last night I started reading a series of articles called Robotic Nation and it scares the begeezus out of me. I can't say how credible the author is but he sure has convinced me. I've read enough other stuff along similar lines that his premise holds way too much water to make me happy.

Basically he says that in the next 10 - 20 years computers will have advanced sufficiently that they will take over virtually all of the minimum wage jobs and many middle management jobs. Taking this all the way, robots will do essentially all human work within the next 50 years. Only executives and robots will have jobs. And because our economic system tends to concentrate all the wealth with a smaller and smaller segment of the population, we're looking at mass unemployment of tens of millions of workers in the almost immediate future. Think about it: the internet has only been in common use for ten years; ten years is not very long.

My conclusion is that only artistic, creative types will have any valued work to do. That means we are lucky; our kids, unless they can find a valuable niche to fill, will not have work.

My wife says I'm crazy. I hope so. I was wrong about Y2K; I hope this is a false worry too. I'm praying it is. But I better start getting damn good at making valuable stuff.
 
Mark Williams said:
Invest in guns and sledge hammers.
Click to expand...

...and learn how to raise animals and grow vegetables. Looks to me like we are turning ourselves into a country divided. Northern Tier on the outside that had created our own 3rd world within itself.
 
There are other things that I would be more worried about Dave. This type of doomsday prediction has been around since I have.
The type of problem changes with the times but the basic premise stays the same.

You need to remember that technology does not advance in a straight line. I doubt very much that we will have the energy to make use of massive robotics. In fact, I doubt that we will have the energy to maintain the current technology.

If you really need something to keep you awake, worry about how we are going to feed our families when all the farms have been subdivided for homes. Worry about where we are going to put all our trash since the landfills are full of the new disposable lifestyle.

Just keep your skills sharp. You know how to work with your hands. Live your life on your terms and keep your family fed and safe because of your efforts, not someone Else's. Freedom is inside you, not in someone else's world. You can't change this country or the direction it's going. Just keep the 10 square feet around you, the way you want it! You can't expect much more these days!
 
peter nap said:
Just keep your skills sharp. You know how to work with your hands. Live your life on your terms and keep your family fed and safe because of your efforts, not someone Else's.
Click to expand...

Well we certainly can't accuse you of nihilism, Peter! I totally agree with this. I was explaining this to my wife. She said, "How is knifemaking going to keep us fed when/if all this happens?" I told her that wasn't the point, and that knifemaking was only a side-effect of the REAL skills here. I told her that if you look at what I can do - smithing, machining, electronics, and repairs of all things mechanical - that's my valued skill for the future.

This causes some anxiety within me. I hated witnessing the decline of the trades in this country. Is it a natural thing? At the same time its hard to avoid hipocrasy while I sit here pecking away at my computer, drinking coffee ground in a machine by someone else, and listening to a radio made somewhere in Asia. I seriously think we've dug this hole ourselves, and Peter - you are right - one person can't change things here and all we must do is fend for ourselves.
 
That knife makers commune sounds better every day. Chuck Burrows showed me a website with some property in Washington. 100 acres for $140,000. If my Father was not still living down in S.C. I would move today. They had another 30 acre plot for right at $30K. Shame we cant find some rich knife loving benefactor to start something like this. Could you imagine what kind of work we could produce with a bunch of us knuckleheads working together and sharing ideas at the workbench?
 
"Could you imagine what kind of work we could produce with a bunch of us knuckleheads working together and sharing ideas at the workbench?"

God help us all. ;)

I don't know - this whole machine thing has been a concern for people for a hundred years. I guess we as humans will always need a mythical monster of some sort to keep an eye out for (Hydro-powered Hydra?)

From a secular standpoint - machines can't believe or dream. They can't be creative. The best they can do is find an answer by elimination

From a religious standpoint - they're not created in God's image.... I wouldn't worry about them gaining dominion over the earth.

From a knifemakers standpoint - it'd be nice to have shop help that doesn't mind holding hot steel. :-)

Tim
 
peter nap said:
I doubt very much that we will have the energy to make use of massive robotics. In fact, I doubt that we will have the energy to maintain the current technology.
Click to expand...

This is more of a concern to me than robots taking over jobs...I'd be more concerned about the countries of India, Taiwan, China, etc., taking over American jobs.

Re Peter's (?) comments above, this is an even greater concern for us Americans regarding lifestyles in this country. There are several estimates out there that show world oil production has either already peaked or will in the next 20 years. This combined with urban sprawl, means at some point, and it's just a matter of time, we're going to be screwed. Maybe not for our generation, but for our kids, or our grandkids. Nobody wants to address the problem now because to do so means to give up many of what we deem as freedoms, i.e. have gas guzzling vehicles that we drive everywhere, own and live on land out far from towns so we have to commute long distances, not recycling, etc....you get the picture. At some point, somebody is going to pay for our lifestyle choices...

I'm as guilty as anybody too, although I do try...

-Darren
 
Kit's liable to send everyone nasty email but I really think this is very much a knife making related subject. So many people have lost the ability to do simple things like basic plumbing repairs or If you can't get the roofer out, it will have to leak and we will let the insurance take care of it.
At the same time its hard to avoid hipocrasy
I make my living from computers but I also try to keep my mind focused on basic things.

There seem to be three mindsets about the future.
1. Everything will be fine and we will all be living like the Jetson's.
2. The end is near and it will come with a bang.
3. Our selfish lifestyles will cause a gradual erosion of morals and depletion of resources and we will slip into poverty and sickness until the USP's (Ugly Stupid People) die off and nature balances itself with fewer but more self reliant people. This will happen slowly.

I vote for #3 and IMHO if it hasn't already started, it will soon!
 
Technology wise if it scares you, repels you, if it's something you would never use (and you're over 45), call your broker and buy some now.

In your business life relentless follow the money, in your private life follow the muse. This is actualy a pretty frustrating way to live, but it's as close as a guarantee of wealth as I can find.
 
Peter you forgot the other option,

4#--the future will be pretty much as it is now, but we won't understand it and remember "back in my day".
 
These are all the comments I had looked forward to hearing. I ran this by my bosses yesterday too and they had very similar responses. I think this guy's strident doomsday pitch makes some of his points less compelling.

Moore's Law for example. The idea that computing speed doubles every 18 months has held true for 20 years, with every potential physical hurdle being overcome by savvy and smart engineers. They're talking about processors with unbelievable speeds these days, and RAM with incredible volume... Which makes the idea that computers will be able to process as much information as a human brain in a short time plausible.

That does not say computers will ever show creativity, that's the big edge we have over any program ever written - it can only do what it's been made to do, nothing more. Even so, there are some really amazing programs that do a great job of problem solving, seemingly showing the ability to rationalize outcomes. But I don't buy this. Machines are machines; they don't think, they pull levers.

Still. The idea that cheap machines will become powerful enough to mimic dumb jobs and move like humans seems credible. Eating at a fast food place yesterday my order got delayed by a bottleneck waiting for fries. Human error! No machine would have let that happen, it would've had plenty of fries ready for every order. Some days I think a little assistance might be a good thing. :D

If you read the parts about machines taking over for airline pilots (computers can now land planes as reliably as they can fly them), the implication that even complex activities can be programed is scary. My boss had the best reply to this of all: "The unions will never let that one fly." I got a great laugh. Perhaps not.

And I think if we started to have mass unemployment - or even if it started to look like machines were replacing a lot of people - government would step in quickly and tax the living daylights out of that kind of capital investment. Bring the cost of robots back into line with that of humans. If half the employees are out of work, the economy collapses and there's no benefit to robots anyway cause nobody can afford any of their output.

I think it's another self-regulating economic change, but I also think it's not going to tend in the favor of us working people. The real economic benefit will continue to be concentrated in fewer and fewer wealthy people.

One really smart executive surprised me. He said that once machines can begin to replicate themselves they'll become a free commodity like air, everyone will have some, we'll all have whatever we want, and it'll finally become the utopia science fiction writers of the 50s imagined. This guy is a very savvy economist, and that's just what I like to hear!

Another great argument is that no matter how much of our everyday stuff machines can build, people are always going to want what isn't free; and those of us who provide the unique stuff will always be employed.

I'm just glad I'm with you creative types. There may be some great CNC tooling out there that builds some seriously good knives but it took one of us to imagine the product. No machine is likely to be truly creative, ever. That's why humans rule and why we always will.

Thanks for all the excellent thinking. The idea that we'll run out of energy and that that's what will bring our economy down is way too plausible. Politics and self interest are so short sighted we might well get caught short one day. It's good to hear people who have confidence in their own abilities and know they'll always have something to offer.
 
Peter you forgot the other option,

I hope that never happens Will.
When people become so arrogant that they cannot remember their roots we will be finished. I have no tolerance at all for the people I deal with that feel science and technology have progressed so far, they now understand everything and that there is no longer any reason to put faith in old ideas, morals or religious beliefs...

Remember that "We cannot live in the past but the past can live in us".
 
Really, for most jobs which require super fine manipulation in a highly flexible environment, robots are just plain too expensive. Think about those robots they have in some super markets now - the "automated check outs"?

How much do they suck? And all they have to do is sit there and read bar code tags.

Yes, there are some areas - highly repetitive manual jobs which require a lot of physical strength or extreme precision - where no human being can match a robot.

But other than that, minimum wage is a lot less expensive than an equivalent robot, and probably will be for a long, long, long time.
 
I'm with you Muppet, A lot of times it's a lot cheaper to hire a person than a robot. Also I don't see machines repairing themselves anytime soon. I work on a state of the art drill ship that has automated everything and we need even more people to run it. More maintaince people and more people in generial because the ship is so big.

Peter what I was refering to is the 'generation gap' that every generation feels, the old folks don't understand the music, ect.,not that the new generation forgets there roots. In the end the more things change the more they stay the same, and we seem to be destined to repeat history over and over.
 
During the Industrial Revolution people worked 12 hours a day 6 days a week from childhood til death. But improvements in productivity and labor laws radically reduced their workload. That did not cause widespread unemployment. At the same time gentlemen had lives of leisure and servants. They were also technically unemployed. That didn't seem to bother them. They managed to keep themselves busy, if only for the purpose of self fulfillment.

The point I'm trying to make is having wealth not jobs is the definition of a well to do society. Robots reduce jobs and workload, but they create wealth and create more leisure. If robot made products are half as expensive as man made products then you only need to work half the hours to pay for it. But history has shown people prefer to work just as long so they can own more stuff.
 
The whole argument in Brain's article is based on Moore's Law - computing power doubles every 18 months. That's why he says in 10 - 20 years robots will be able to repair themselves and compete very effectively with low wage people doing repetive jobs. These robots will (he says) have humanoid form and have the dextirity of any human being, but be way stronger and not require time off. Regardless the high initial price tag such a machine would pay for itself in very short order. He gave the current day example of diamond cutting robots. One machine can do the work in two hours of a highly skilled human diamond cutter's full day. One man can run 35 to 40 machines. And again, the machines don't take vacation or sleep. The million dollar price tag is pretty minimal when you put it against 4 people who cost $150,000 - $200,000 to employ for one year. So let's see. One machine costing $1,000,000 replaces $600,000 annual cost of humans in the job. That gives a breakeven on the capital investment of 1.4 years. Most capital investments are a "good deal" if they pay off in five years. That math is very convincing to executives who make these decisions. And that's near term technology. If you read more of the articles the picture begins to soak in - machines may not be creative but they don't take breaks, don't talk back (yet, anyway), speak perfect English, and don't make mistakes. When you factor in the way techonology has of filling voids incredibly swiftly, it's easy to see how mass unemployment could result from a single successfully operated fast food joint. One restaraunt managed by a benign, efficient management system one year, totally automated industry five years down the road...20 million unemployed workers. Remember, the internet has been in general use only about 10 years. But it feels like we've always had it and many of us would feel severely adrift without it. Technological innovation takes hold fast. I think the only thing humans have going for them in the employment realm is creativity. Anything that's just work is nothing more than an engineering problem. And these problems are becoming easier and easier to solve.

But think about that - 20 million people losing their jobs would have a nasty impact on the economy. Even legislators are going to understand that, and no matter how lucrative the contributions from industry might be this much larger issue surely will sink in somewhere, in time to give human employees a better break. But do you really think the human employee's life style is going to improve because of it? Not me. I think we'll have to find time to work four jobs to make ends meet, instead of three.

"Fortunately" this will line executive's and stockholder's pockets even more, and they're the ones buying high end knives. That suggests that our own markets should improve. I'm staking my retirement on selling collector grade knives, which is why this article had such an impact on me in the first place. By the time I retire in 10 years Walmart won't need those gentile human greeters at their stores - they won't need very many emplyees at all.

If you want to read about other techologies that will reduce industry's reliance on human workers, do some searching on "RFID", radio frequency identification devices, and "MNT", molecular nanotechnolgy manufacturing. RFIDs are already costing human jobs and may soon replace checkouts altogether (not to mention embedding tracking devices in everything you purchase). MNT has the promise of cheaply making virtually anything by assembling diamond components atom by atom (from acetone). All in the same 10 - 20 year timeframe.

Unless a whole bunch of legislators suddenly go all humanistic on us and blow off all their industry best friends, we're looking at a very different next couple of decades.

Cheery thought! :D Well, I'm going to keep collecting tools and taking very good care of them, and do everything I can to get very good at using them. It's a good thing we like to make unique stuff, because that looks likely to become the only thing regular people can create worth real money in the next 20 years.
 
Dave I can just imagine the the guy hundreds of years purhaps thousands of years ago reading about this scary new invention the WHEEL how it would make life better and redue the need for bullock teams to drag things around.

And the the industrial revolution

and then the robotic car industry. It is comming we can't stop it but something else will come up. How many plasma screen tv salesmen were there 100 years ago.

I think there will be challenges dealing with employment but the spin off industries will take care of some of it.

As you know I moved out of a trade background 16 years ago into an office environment. Ever since they started talking about the paperless office the paper mills have been working harder and harder. I am possibly just an ostridge with my head in the sand but I am also ignorant because I don't read much at all.

Ignorance can be bliss. I have an old encyclopidia which has a picture of an IBM personal computer it is the size of an office desk. I think that was the 1970ies look at laptops. They sent men to the moon with less computer power than you have at home now. Dave its comming but as you say we are lucky we can see out our lifetime in the shed making knives and having fun.
 
Technology probably won't stop at the door of displacing menial tasks that peole do just so that they will always feel needed. I still think that robots being a viable option in this regard is a ways off...maybe 50 years or a little less.

But it doesn't have to be a bad thing, does it? Think about how the human being will evolve when we don't have to worry about pouring concrete, taking out the trash, picking up sticks, mowing the lawn, painting the house, making dinner, doing dishes, and all that. There seems to be a general consensus that humans will be displaced by machines that can work 24-7 and never get tired, bored, angry or distracted by emotional issues. My view is that humans will become enabled to persue more intellegent and sensitive or artistic ventures by having the tedious things in our existance tended to by unthinking and uncaring machines.

I look at it as if I may be able to make knives and stuff all day every day and do something interesting instead. My opinion is that the 21st century will be about change and adapting to it....very quickly. We will have to be more adept at getting our minds straight than any other generation in history. Those who can see the good stuff coming and get on the train and participate will prosper and continue. Those who are glued to the old ways (in terms of technology and slow adaptation) are going to get run over. If something is scary to me I usually spend more time in close proximity to it to determine if "It" is really all that scary and monstrous or if it is simply my dependence on routine and Status Quo that is disturbing me.

It will all work itself out, guys. And when the smoke clears it is the human species that will prosper in the long run, IMO. The ice cutters and the teamsters and the ice house designers felt the same way back when refrigeration made all of their jobs no longer necessary. But in the long run it has been a good thing for the majority of us.

Nobody "needs" a custom made knife. They buy 'em because they are an expression of the *man* that made them. I feel that this will always be the case. My opinion is that there will be more and more demand for hand made goods and art as the machines give us more time to breath and think and begin feeling and emoting again after years of being menial laborers. There are a ton of machine made, cheap knives out there already that are perfectly serviceable. There will always be those who will appreciate the value of a knife made by the human hand. A knife is more than a tool, it is an icon...proof that we are human.

Brian
 
Brian you have nailed it perfectly. I know it doesn't come through but this is what I expect will happen too in the long run and for the majority of people. I believe that the economic impact of menial jobs going to machines will be mitigated - and probably rather quickly - by well-meaning legislation. Taxing robotic capital separately for example.

Your idea that humans will be freed to do their most creative work because machines are doing all the slag work is covered in one of Brain's articles. And I believe this is likely too, and the best of several of the changes machines will introduce.

My only real concern is the short term upheaval for those people who will lose their jobs. I guess that's because my kids are going to be directly affected by it - and my grandbaby! Man I don't want to see that sweet thing suffer in any way.

But I think you're right. Machines should make the Earth a wealthier place overall. On the radio yesterday some show was talking about how even the poorest Americans live more comfortably than royalty did 200 years ago - heat, refridgeration, vegetable produce, travel - all these things are available to virtually everyone who works in the US. And no one had them 200 years ago.

So no, the sky is not falling. But I sure do feel for the people that I see today working in fast food or car washes, who simply are not otherwise employable. They're the ones who will suffer by machines. But I guess government will step up and ensure that they don't starve or die too miserable a death. Which is a great improvement over life in the US even 75 years ago.

You're all correct, and Reg is right when he says that the members of this forum are in a great place to make it no matter what happens because we're generally a pretty self-reliant lot.

Thanks for all the discussion on this, it's far more than I expected. I know we all have more productive things to do than think about robots! :D
 
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