Mines May Eliminate More Than Half Their Human Workers Within 10 Years (computerworld.com) 231
An anonymous Slashdot reader quotes ComputerWorld:
In the next decade, the mining industry may lose more than half of its jobs to automation, according to a new report... This industry is adopting self-driving trucks, automated loaders and automated drilling and tunnel-boring systems. It is also testing fully autonomous long-distance trains, which carry materials from the mine to a port...
A broader question is whether mining is a bellwether for other industries. There's no clear answer, but what Aaron Cosbey, a development economist and a report author, can say is this: "Where you can find robotic replacements for human labor you tend to do it." Cosbey estimates that automation will replace 40% to 80% of the workers at a mine...
Driverless technology can increase output up to 20%, while decreasing fuel consumption up to 15%, according to the article. "This will increase demand for people with IT skills who can set up and operate the automation systems -- but at far smaller numbers than the people automation displaces."
A broader question is whether mining is a bellwether for other industries. There's no clear answer, but what Aaron Cosbey, a development economist and a report author, can say is this: "Where you can find robotic replacements for human labor you tend to do it." Cosbey estimates that automation will replace 40% to 80% of the workers at a mine...
Driverless technology can increase output up to 20%, while decreasing fuel consumption up to 15%, according to the article. "This will increase demand for people with IT skills who can set up and operate the automation systems -- but at far smaller numbers than the people automation displaces."
A broader question? (Score:5, Funny)
A broader question is whether mining is a bellwether for other industries.
Yes, it is, but we talk about that all the time and it's boring. Let's mine this topic for some other nuggets of value. Ore do you really want to take this opportunity for granite? Let's not cave in to the pressure to rehash that argument, and start with a clean slate. A boulder question would be weather the technology will translate to outer space. That other kind of thread hits rock bottom in a hurry.
Schist, I'm out of gneiss rock puns.
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I can't fault your logic.
[I've been sitting here trying to come up with a pun for "bituminous" and I just cannot do it because I'm just too sedintary].
Re: A broader question? (Score:2, Funny)
I might be able to help you with that pun if I could just bituminous of your time.
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I've been sitting here trying to come up with a pun for "bituminous" and I just cannot do it because I'm just too sedintary.
I might be able to help you with that pun if I could just bituminous of your time.
Well played, sir.
My dear GP, you must concede an ignious defeat. ;-P
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Schist, I'm out of gneiss rock puns.
Time to grab the gabbro, my friend!
When automation is cheaper than people... (Score:4, Insightful)
... it's not going to be a good day for people. Less safety and environmental requirements for non-people, and if they get crushed/buried there's no real negative press. Designed correctly, they can be rebuilt/repaired/dusted off and the work continued.
Re:When automation is cheaper than people... (Score:5, Informative)
On this other hand, at least in this situation, the only words I can think of are "Good. It's about time."
Mining is dangerous work; mines collapse, get filled with dangerous gasses that kill people, and so on. Getting people out of those environments is a great step towards making the world a safer place. I'd imagine their pay will also go down, given that they were getting paid a premium because the job they were doing was dangerous, but that reduction in workers and pay is pretty much unavoidable. The only alternative would be to continue putting people in harm's way unnecessarily, which IMO would be irresponsible once alternatives exist.
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Yes their pay is going down. To $0. In these systems one person oversees multiple vehicles so they can get rid of many people. And of course that's not saying the drivers are able to transfer over to operating the remote controlled vehicles so it's possible that all of the drivers are let go and new people are brought in.
Re:When automation is cheaper than people... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes their pay is going down. To $0. In these systems one person oversees multiple vehicles so they can get rid of many people. And of course that's not saying the drivers are able to transfer over to operating the remote controlled vehicles so it's possible that all of the drivers are let go and new people are brought in.
Over time, all jobs are made obsolete. The longshoreman career was made obsolete because of automation. The people who made vacuum tubes we made mostly redundant becauseof the transistor. The railroad workers faced a big reduction when we switched from steam locos to diesel - steam locomotives are tremendous powerful bits of technology, but are filthy and take insane levels of maintenance.
Two tractor steam plowing has come and gone, nothing stays the same.
Even over my career, instead of complaining about my jerb becoming obsolete, I adapted, learned new things, and didn't insist that what I originally did would continue forever. Where do we say - enough? No more technology, no more progress?
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All you really said is the "I've got mine screw you" slogan, oblivious to how close you are to the edge.
Fortunately "close" is relative; yes, we're inches away, your job is "exclusive" by the skin of its teeth, but it'll take generations to properly tick the last inch.
Yes, We'll be fine. You'll die thinking you're well off, even your kids probabl
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Physical labor was optimized, not automated. The former has happened. The latter has never happened. The two are mistakenly equated so much it's laughable.
I have no idea what you are trying to say. If you are trying to say that labor has been optimized and ther ehas never been a fundamental change in the labor, that's simply wrong. Here is a Ford plan in the 1930's http://theoldmotor.com/?p=1546... [theoldmotor.com]
Here is a modern assembly line https://telecotowalk.wordpress... [wordpress.com]
We can play where's Waldo with the people - I count two.
All you really said is the "I've got mine screw you" slogan, oblivious to how close you are to the edge.
That's pretty cryptic. I adapted, and thrived. What I was educated to do I only did a few times in my career. I went back to further my edu
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Counterpoint (Score:3)
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Automation has been "cheaper than people" since the invention of the water wheel. That's why people use it. Those people at the time who were grinding grain between two rocks had to find other things to do.
Mines are almost completely self contained (Score:5, Interesting)
The real question is, given that mines are natural resources why the *bleep* do we let so few people claim ownership of them? I suppose we could just tax the end product on the way out too, but we don't even do much of that. We just sorta give away something that's the birthright of all mankind without batting an eye. Not saying we go full on commie ( the wars and violence that come out of that would just shift the ownership ) but there ought to be a better way.
Re:Mines are almost completely self contained (Score:4, Informative)
The real question is, given that mines are natural resources why the *bleep* do we let so few people claim ownership of them?
We don't. If they're mining private land, they have to either own it or make a deal with the owner.
If it's public land, we make the mining company pay a (very, very, very, very, very, very, very cheap) lease to mine the land.
My experience with those leases (Score:3)
Re:Mines are almost completely self contained (Score:5, Insightful)
So why do we let national resources be private land?
In America, if you own the land, you own the mineral resources under it. Many other countries nationalize mineral resources. Nearly all those countries are poorer and less productive than America, especially in the mining sector.
Resource extraction should not be profitable for individuals, it should be profitable for the nation as a whole.
Karl Marx would have been in total agreement. Your idea has been tried. You might want to read some history books to see how it turned out.
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In America, if you own the land, you own the mineral resources under it. Many other countries nationalize mineral resources. Nearly all those countries are poorer and less productive than America, especially in the mining sector.
Many people have found out that that is not true. Locally, a company that owned the mineral rights proved that they have the right to extract the limestone under other people's property. Quite the court battle. Mineral rights can be sold separately. This also happens a lot with natural gas. The company buys the land, and then sells it to people while retaining the mineral rights of the land underneath the surface.
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In America, if you own the land, you own the mineral resources under it. Many other countries nationalize mineral resources. Nearly all those countries are poorer and less productive than America, especially in the mining sector.
Many people have found out that that is not true. Locally, a company that owned the mineral rights proved that they have the right to extract the limestone under other people's property. Quite the court battle. Mineral rights can be sold separately. This also happens a lot with natural gas. The company buys the land, and then sells it to people while retaining the mineral rights of the land underneath the surface.
So they bought the land, minus the mineral rights. The contract they signed specifically stated they were not buying the mineral rights. And the price they paid for a nice lot to build a house on was much cheaper than if they bought the same land with full mineral rights to it.
A good case of the exception proving the rule.
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Do you own land? Do you think you own the mineral rights to your land if you do?
Yes, I own land. So do my parents. For more than a decade they received monthly royalty checks from Conoco for a gas well. The well is currently capped because of low prices.
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You're talking to people who think mining is "dig a hole, find easy money, get instantly rich". So what do you need "efficiency" for?
The point is that there's money and they think they'd like some of it, and they don't understand why the guy who actually knows how a mining business works gets the money instead of them.
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UPS doesn't deliver letters. The US Postal System has that monopoly.
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that's the birthright of all mankind
Just because something exists doesn't mean it's a birthright for everyone.
Just because something is a resource doesn't mean anyone is able to use it.
The few control it because that's what they are good at. Finding something is somewhat trivial compared to making use of it.
from the article: this is "self-aware machinery" (Score:2)
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People have been building such systems for quite a while: long-duration robust robots that have to survive in hostile situations without continuous human assistance. Just look at what Liquid Robotics builds.
Showdown (Score:2)
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Nice reference. Except... doesn't John Henry die in the end? I mean... Human strength of spirit won out in the end, when presented with a singularly strong figure of indomitable strength. But ultimately, in that story, we the people, sacrificed that person to win one battle against "the system" or "the machine" and gain the people . A battle which didn't stop the progression of mechanized advancement.
But then again, perhaps that story is apt. As many strong spirited and vocal individuals will rise up agains
what drives automation (Score:3)
You do it when government imposes massive mandatory benefits on employers and raises the cost of labor. That is, the primary benefit of robots is that they don't unionize, don't get minimum wage, don't need health insurance, don't need retirement plans, don't need worker's comp, and won't sue over discrimination or injuries.
Of course, I don't think that's a bad thing either in this case. Robots replacing people in dangerous, boring, repetitive jobs is a good thing for everybody.
Re:what drives automation (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:what drives automation (Score:5, Interesting)
Regardless of the humanitarian merits of high wages, good benefits, and better safety regulations (which I'd hope everyone agrees is a good thing), the simple fact is that those all increase the cost of labor, which in turn provides a greater incentive to automate production as much as possible, reducing production costs.
Automation of labor-intensive tasks is a difficult thing. A high degree of automation tends to benefit the economy as a whole by producing more consumer goods for less cost, increasing the purchasing power of the common citizen. Unfortunately, it also has an immediate detrimental effect on the directly affected workers. I think this is why most people agree that it's critical to provide a safety net with unemployment and retraining, to help minimize the human impact of disruptive change like this.
For the most part, I think societies have been reasonably adept at finding other employment for workers as old industries scale down and other industries ramp up or spring into existence. For instance, my job (a videogame programmer) simply didn't exist a generation ago, and is largely possible because many people now have a bit of extra money to spend on a PC, videogame console, and the occasional $60 videogame. We just have to hope that trend continues - that these sort of advancements and transitions occur, but not so fast as to be too disruptive to society as a whole.
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Yes, I'll concede your point that operating a worker-safe mine is more expensive than running a "Arrows cost money. Use up the Irish. The dead cost nothing." operation.
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For instance, my job (a videogame programmer) simply didn't exist a generation ago,
And a generation or two from now the bulk of the "programming" will be done by a computer, and the only human part of making a video game will be design and high-level programming (what we call architecture or high-level design today) and some artwork.
In other words, just as the late-1970s/early-1980s video-game programmer writing in assembly language would barely recognize the day-to-day work done by people who make today's big-hit video games, today's programmers will barely recognize what passes for "pro
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Hence my comment: I don't think [government regulations destroying these jobs] is a bad thing either in this case
Yes, I am. I'm also serious about this: you are an illiterate bigot and partisan.
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Are you serious? Mining is and always has been the POSTER CHILD for worker exploitation.
Yes, he is seriously saying that mine owners don't give a crap about their workers' well-being or safety, and are only replacing them with robots to save money, largely because the government doesn't let them treat humans as disposable like in the old days while robots got better/cheaper.
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We need to help people transition, but the automation itself is a good thing.
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So you're saying you prefer miners to continue working in very dangerous occupations and get killed unnecessarily?
I think your premise is wrong. Younger workers can retrain and easily have a different, safer, and more productive career. Older miners are at high risk of disability and loss of their livelihood anyway.
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That's misleading as while the total number of jobs has gone up, the population has increased even faster.
Before the industrial revolution, employment was at close to 100% of the population between the ages of about 5 and death. They may have been small farmers who also spun wool for little money but their lifestyle gave them food and a home.
There were points such as at the beginning of the industrial revolution in the days of the Luddites where it took 70 years (3 generations) for the jobs to increase to c
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Don't you know even the basics of our economy?
http://www.businessinsider.com... [businessinsider.com]
The labor force participation rate increased pretty much steadily from 1945 to about 2003, a period of spectacular increases in automation; automation does not decrease labor force participation, period.
It's been declining somewhat since, not due to automation, but a co
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Not quite. Progressives and Democrats that suffer from the delusion that the only thing society can accomplish something is through government. So, they naturally believe that progress can only be achieved if it is created from above by government.
The rest of us simply don't agree on the means, not the desirability, of achieving progress. That is, we believe (and h
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Of course, they "know" that. They simply happen to be wrong.
How about when progressives worked for disenfranchisement, forced commitments, forced sterilization, and segregation? How about when progressive policies end up causing government corruption, starvation, disease, inequalitiy, racial disparities, mass incarceration, and economic decline? You can't
Great news! (Score:2)
No more mining jobs means less voters having a stake in the mining industry, much of which is the mining of coal. Less mining jobs also means less rural mining boom towns which inevitably turn into ghost towns.
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No more mining jobs means less voters having a stake in the mining industry, much of which is the mining of coal. Less mining jobs also means less rural mining boom towns which inevitably turn into ghost towns.
That implies the people who get their power from coal-based plants can't make the connection between coal and inexpensive electricity. People rather quickly notice when their monthly bills rise to unaffordable levels.
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Coal isn't much cheaper than renewable energy and will soon be more expensive, especially if pollution stops being an externality. Customers may be willing to pay more for a cleaner energy source anyway if there aren't many jobs on the line...especially those living downwind of coal power plants.
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Uh it isn't? Green energy pays between 0.43-0.92kWh in most places due to FIT programs. It's around 0.04-0.08kWh for coal which is still 0.01-0.03kWh more expensive then nuclear and roughly double the cost of hydro-electric. Looking at Ontario, yes you notice very quickly when your price of electricity goes from 0.07kWh@peak to 0.17kWh@peak in under 8 years. If you want to see the train wreck in motion of this happening, you can look at Alberta.
It could increase mine sizes to offset a little (Score:2)
Automated equipment is a fixed and predictable cost. It does require more technical people that can operate and fix them in the field. It also means less resources and planning for safety are needed for human personal with fewer people hurt in the field. Less training is needed so increased predictable production can be seen shortly after expenditure for automated machinery.
Overall this means mining operations can invest more predictably and scale linearly. So mines can be larger and with almost as many w
So tens of thousands of mining jobs gone (Score:2)
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Can I has basic income yet?
It's going to have to happen soon. Last report by our provincial, gave that between 25-40% of the current jobs going bye-bye, by 2025. They're wanting to automate trucking, cabs, various deliveries and so on. If that happens, at least around here you're looking at 50% of the people being unemployed. I sure hope these businesses enjoy their 40-60% tax, because that's the only way stuff like mincome/basic income is going to happen and they're the cause of it.
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Big news (Score:2)
Something that's happening might happen more in the long term. If it does then it might mean something.
Don't you people ever get tired of worrying about stuff that might someday happen, maybe in 10 or 20 years? Don't you have problems now, or something next month or next year to worry about instead?
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This is already happening today. Australia is a leader in this technology. Some of the mines there have their trucks that carry the ore autonomous with the operators at a major city instead of at the mine site. In Canada some of the companies mining the tar sands are looking at this or implementing this.
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The problem is that stories about the distant future are, by definition, "made up" stories. Some of them are "true", like the story about a young generation of people eventually turning into an old generation of people. But most are speculative, including this one.
Why should anyone want to worry about something that might be a problem for a completely unknown number of people at a vaguely-defined time more than 10 years from now?
Anyone who took an Economics class understands how people react to automation
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provides opportunities for people to move to new places and get new jobs.
That's the whole issue. In the past, automation displaced some boring jobs. Now it threatens almost every job in existence, other than "wealthy heir".
Exponential increases in the complexity and capability of the automated machinery will make the old argument of "people have always found new jobs when they are replaced" moot. To be employable, you have to be better than machines at doing something of value, as well as be competitive with other people who can do those tasks. Already, some people don't match t
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Now it threatens almost every job in existence, other than "wealthy heir".
Only if "now" means sometime in the next 50-100 years.
Exponential increases in the complexity and capability of the automated machinery will make the old argument of "people have always found new jobs when they are replaced" moot.
False. People will be able to do the jobs. The problem is guys (like you ?) who will claim that everyone needs a Master's degree to do any meaningful work. Complicated-to-use machinery tends to be very unreliable. Machinery that actually gets widely used can usually be operated by a regular person with a modest amount of training.
To be employable, you have to be better than machines at doing something of value, as well as be competitive with other people who can do those tasks. Already, some people don't match those requirements
Which is why we need a flexible society with a low cost of living. So someone who can't do extremely valuable work can st
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Machinery that actually gets widely used can usually be operated by a regular person with a modest amount of training.
What "operators"?. The whole point of AI is to get rid of operators.
So someone who can't do extremely valuable work can still do enough to get by and live an OK life.
No, for many people there won't be anything they can do that some machine can't do cheaper. They will have no jobs at all.
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You should stop making up science fiction stories and take an economics class or read an economics book.
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That's wonderful advice, given that the field of economics is pure bullshit. It's the poster boy for a cargo cult science.
I did spend a little time studying the field of AI back during one of its initial popularity fads. At the time, I quickly concluded that it was also bullshit, and went into other areas.
However, hardware capabilities and costs have both improved by about six orders of magnitude in the intervening years. By brute force, if nothing else, AI is no longer quite bullshit.
This stuff isn't scien
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That's wonderful advice, given that the field of economics is pure bullshit.
Economics is simply the study of human behavior in commercial situations. Saying it's "pure bullshit" is the same as saying human behavior doesn't follow any sorts of discernible patterns and is effectively random. Clearly that's false, but if you're determined to maintain your ignorance, no one will be able to talk you out of it.
People with a very basic understanding of Economics knew that the Y2k scare was wrong -- because people who use software for important things have an obvious incentive to make su
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Saying it's "pure bullshit" is the same as saying human behavior doesn't follow any sorts of discernible patterns and is effectively random.
Once parameters go outside the bounds of economists' preconceived models, it is effectively random. This has been demonstrated time and again throughout history, with one unforeseen economic panic after another.
Who was playing up all those scares in the first place anyway? It was those same damned economists that you think have some kind unique of insight into society. As I said, it's all 100% bullshit.
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You're right! Making up scary stories about the future is clearly a better predictive methodology than studying behavior and understanding why people do things! Why doesn't everyone understand this?
This is gonna happen fast (Score:5, Insightful)
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If we automate ourselves to the point of having all this stuff around us without most of the work we've needed to get it, our task will then be how to distribute it in new ways - without work's paycheck to allocate using it all.
I just don't know how to get people to accept that (Score:2)
Giving people who don't work money just plain _feels_ bad. Entitlement is a bad word around here too. Think about how much of a b
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we just finished prosecuting a mine exec for ignoring safety. It was a big deal because he'll do some jail time, which has almost never happened. The saddest thing is that somewhere is somebody who'll argue we shouldn't have prosecuted that guy because this is what will happen. E.g. it's better to have a job you get killed at than no job at all. Even when there's no good reason for that job to exist anymore. People just can't get over the idea that if you don't work you don't eat.
Actually, the saddest thing is that when they do switch to robots, somebody criminally neglects mine safety and 100 million dollars worth of robots get crushed the consequences for the executives in question will be swifter and harsher than if they'd caused thousands of human workers to die a slow and agonising death from some respiratory disease or toxic poisoning of some kind in which case the consequences would have been an all expenses paid legal defence and golden parachute. As for the workers, I think
Actually the urban poor don't vote Trump (Score:2)
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28 miners died in the US last year. 11 of those in coal mines. A dangerous business but not quite as bad as you make it out to be.
Maybe. (Score:2)
It depends on (a) how much cheaper it is to mine stuff and (b) the price elasticity of demand.
For example, suppose the price of coal drops so much that people use twice as much of it. You'll end up with exactly the same number of people working at coal mines. In that case the impact would be to stymie any attempts to reduce pollution by burning less coal.
On the other hand, suppose coal demand is inelastic; then you'll have half the number of workers but the companies in the business are more profitable; yo
autonomous long-distance trains??? (Score:2)
What about scanning the tracks and moving manual switches? also unions and other safety issues? Look at how long it's taking to get PTC to be installed so autonomous long-distance trains make take a long time for systems to even be installed.
still need local NON IT Repair & Maintenance t (Score:2)
still need local NON IT Repair & Maintenance techs on site to keep the systems running + IT workers running the system with maybe even local IT tech to keep the networking parts running.
Going by complaints, job loss is a good thing (Score:3)
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There are lots of dangerous and dirty jobs Generally these jobs are good money for people who otherwise would have nothing. Despite the slander that gets heaped on mining companies they do spend a lot of money on safety as these jobs are in fact much safer today than they were decades ago. 11 coal miners died in the US last year which is a record low. The companies are looking at automation because they can eliminate a lot of labor costs which will increase their profits. This is easily understandable
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Sitting at home collecting a benefit check, with no hope for ever having anything better, is also bad for people.
Safety first (Score:2)
Finally! All these safety regulations will be enforced because mining Co's won't want to damage their precious intelligent machines.
Stepping onto a dangerous parsing puzzle (Score:2)
After having failed to parse "Mines May Eliminate More Than Half Their Human Workers Within 10 Years" as "Land Mines May Eliminate More Than Half Their Human Workers...," I was relieved - after reading TFS - to discover that nobody was actually going to be killed by these nefarious mines!
To be honest.. (Score:4, Funny)
Great! (Score:2)
This is awesome. This is what we want.
Machines doing all the dirty, unhealthy, badly paid and dangerous work.
Nice to hear we're finally moving along another few steps in this regard.
Although I have to admit this is not really that much of a surprise. This has been going on since the dawn of industrial mining. Back in 18 hundred something it was completely normal for 10-year olds working 16 hours a day in the mines and dying very early deaths. Specialised machines came in and the children and the slavery wen
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Take this tech and build subways! (Score:2)
Relieve the nightmarish congestion in (for example) the San Francisco Bay Area by tunnelling new freeways. If Tech can bring the cost of tunnels down far enough, we could really improve cities everywhere.
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Why build an underground freeway, when an underground subway tunnel of the same size can carry approximately 10 times as many people? (1000 people per subway train, 30 trains per hour, vs 2000 cars per hour in a lane of freeway)
i am ready (Score:3)
If its mines vs humans now, I am ready. I have been training for years using the tactical simulator codenamed "minesweeper.exe", waiting for a day like this to arrive.
In other words, what's happened to farming (Score:5, Interesting)
The biggest change to labour -- probably -- has been the early 20th century creation of the tractor and its attendant grain handling machines to agriculture. It wiped out the largest employee type in the world - agricultural labour. Of course there are plenty of people picking produce today but it's a fraction of the population compared to our grandparents' era.
That mines have become automated with pneumatic diggers happened in a generation ago and those of us who are old enough to remember the miner's strikes of the 1970s and 1980s watched entire communities vanish from the map. (Watch the film Brassed Off as an example with the amazing Pete Posthewait.) That digitization and robotics have now matured enough to finish the job is really an end game, not anything new.
I was up north when GPSs came in and guides were an ancient and honoured profession that got wiped out in ten years at the lumber camps.
Automation. (Score:2)
So when we replace notoriously dangerous, low-paying and skilled jobs with robots that can only kill themselves and nobody else, we then need to crow about how many jobs have been lost?
It's like the UK miner's strikes all over again. We can't sell the shit once we pull it out of the ground without lowering costs (which means lower wages for those people or more dangerous working conditions for the unscrupulous), but we have to preserve those jobs artificially so people have something to do during the day?
N
Nature progression. (Score:2)
An application I approve of heartily (Score:2)
Nothing new here (Score:2)
This has been going on for a while. Rock face miners were replaced with mechanical excavators 20-30 years ago. Said excavators became remote controlled 15-20 years ago. They became semi-independent 10-15 years ago. Dirt haulers in open pit mines became self-driven about 10 years ago.
Mining is an ideal case for robot substitution. Robots do best in jobs that are not suitable for humans, either too dangerous, too heavy, too small or too repetitive.
Work sucks (Score:2)
Tax the robots and hook me up with universal basic income instead.
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Besides money from taxation, I don't mind owning shares and doing stuff like that. I can use the dividends to pay for luxuries. Universal basic income for the necessities.
A war is coming (Score:2)
And we already have so many illegal miners! (Score:2)
Also these lighthouse workers, how many lighthouses can there possibly be that need workers?!
Happens across multiple extraction sectors (Score:2)
Agriculture, mining, forestry, fishing, etc.
This trend has occurred for literally centuries. Each new wave of technological innovation eliminates jobs that escaped the previous wave. And I think this is a Good Thing for humanity in aggregate, even if it causes local disruption and job loss.
I don't think it's a coincidence that Trump has strong support in regions that engage in resource cultivation and extraction. Even if the citizens of these states are economically marginalized, politically they exercise d
Re:Not if Trump wins (Score:5, Insightful)
If you increase people's wages to try and counter the effect of goods,, then all you do is make automation more attractive, so in the end, I don't think Trump can actually change it or stop it.
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Most mining jobs are ALREADY gone. They disappeared when the steam engine and the backhoe replaced men with shovels and pickaxes.
We have been replacing people with technology for centuries. The biggest job destroyer in the history of the world was the steel plow.
Wait, what? (Score:4, Funny)
Mimes? Robot mimes are going to eliminate human workers?
Well, JFC. There goes white-glove service...
What?
Oh, mines. I can dig that. I saw Zoolander. I know about the black lung, you bet.
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You do realize, farming is a form of automation. Where would you draw the line with your outlawing idea?
Re: Not if Trump wins (Score:3)
Many shareholders are economically useless. Works fine. There's no reason we can't all be economically useless shareholders of our planet.
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Why is the cost of energy going to rise? Solar will be so cheap in the nearish future that energy prices will drop. Already some places are seeing prices dip below zero at certain times due to over-production. Germany is now working on storing excess (zero-cost) grid energy in the form of hydrogen or ethanol to be burned later when prices recover. The energy becomes so cheap at times, that water electrolysis becomes an economical source of hydrogen. Prices behaved similarly in Chile this past summer; how lo
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Nobody has the right to a job or even universal basic income/welfare.
Rights are whatever we agree they are, or enough of us to make it happen anyway. There's no such thing as natural rights. Nature, if it had consciousness, would laugh at such an idea.
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