Fear of Robots Taking Jobs in the Short Term is Overblown, Says General Electric CEO (qz.com) 99
An anonymous reader shares a report: "I think before we go to the phase where it's only robots at every bench, we are going to go through a phase of smarter workers," General Electric CEO Jeff Immelt told reporters on March 30. GE has been investing heavily in futuristic manufacturing techniques. Immelt said that in Lafayette, Indiana -- where GE Aviation is ramping up production for portions of its new fuel-efficient LEAP aircraft engine -- "we're going to add workers, but probably not as many as we would have twenty years ago" and each worker will be "higher value, smarter, more productive." [...] So if phase one is smart workers, what's the next? "I'm not that smart," Immelt said. "I don't know exactly how many phases that we're going to go through. But I think we're going to be in phase 'smart worker' for a fair amount of time. I really do. I think we're better off as a country focusing on the smart-worker phase than going right to 'robots are evil.'"
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I don't think robots would do that good of a job. I would be more concerned with the threat of immigrant workers.
How short term is short term to this guy? (Score:1)
How short term is short term to this guy? I expect robots to take over 99% of the workplace within my lifetime. That makes it very relevant and not overblown in the slightest.
Re:How short term is short term to this guy? (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, he's a modern business executive, so about a month. "Long term" is next quarter.
Re:How short term is short term to this guy? (Score:5, Insightful)
Imagine a guy who was a coal miner. Then the coal mine closed.
So he became an auto assembly line worker. Then was replaced by a GE robot.
So he became a truck driver, because those trucks aren't going to drive themselves.
The GE guy is saying that we're going to go through a phase of smarter workers. Okay, the mythical guy I just described might not be that smart. And it's not his fault. And he made rational choices. What's he going to do?
Free clue: if only the smart people will be employed, there are going to be a bunch of angry dumb people with torches and pitch forks. Something to consider. It will be a lot worse than angry ignorant Trump voters who uncritically believe whatever their dear leader promises. A lot worse. When it's over there may not be any operational robots left. Or high tech workers.
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And, of course, trucks could be driving themselves under certain circumstances over the next several years.
When I was young, it was possible for most white men of low skill but good work ethic to make a decent living for their families. That's pretty much over. Now that I'm old, I work in manufacturing, and when I'm on the shop floor the odds are I can't see another human being. One will pop by from time to time to do something with the computer-controlled machinery.
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And yet humans are becoming obsolete every day. The tech doesn't have to be 100% reliable - just have a reliability that is sufficient to save money after lawsuits for damages. Same as the Ford Pinto gas tank - they didn't bother to fix the gas tank because they calculated it would be cheaper to settle any law suits.
The bean counters don't care about you - and they'll care even less when they too are AIs running in a server farm.
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The good news is that those people already voted for Trump, so not much else can go wrong at this point.
I am saying this as a Finn watching the situation in the USA from afar: to me it seems pretty evident that Hillary voters were/are both dumb and exceedingly aggressive.
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Imagine a guy who was a coal miner. Then the coal mine closed.
So he became an auto assembly line worker. Then was replaced by a GE robot.
So he became a truck driver, because those trucks aren't going to drive themselves.
Good scenario, but let's change it up a little with two alternate paths.
Scenario #1:
Guy writes CGI backends for websites in Perl. LAMP stacks are invented and this becomes where all of the jobs are.
So, he learns PHP and MySQL, and works as a contractor building dynamic websites for businesses. But India rapidly trains up its workforce and floods the market with people with these skills.
Guy tries to find another niche, and learns NodeJS. New trendy language, nobod
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Blackmail should not be the thing that opens doors for some to live off of others.
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'within the next century' - I don't think you realise what that means in this context.
In 1917, automated machines pretty much used simple mechanical 'memory' and automation. The position of a tool was set in much of mass production by a template of some form that was followed.
In 1917, there were 2.5 million horses in the UK.
There were 0.3 million cars.
50% is _way_ too low.
50% of jobs can easily go away in the next three decades, conservatively.
Starting out, in the UK, there are 500000 truck drivers, another
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You have nothing to fear of robots taking jobs (Score:5, Insightful)
...says company that makes robots for assembly lines [gereports.com].
What's next, an article by Wall Street about how regulation is not needed in the banking industry?
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I was wondering how his claims made any sense.
We've basically always looked for ways to make achieving results easier. The migration from cottage-industry to the Industrial Revolution that led to massive factories was spurred by the desire to make more things with less labor, and to sell those things to more people for more total money, even if the per-unit cost came down in order to reach those new markets of poorer and poorer people.
The point of the assembly line was to make it efficient to build. Once
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'those jobs that involve doing the exact same series of steps repeatedly are the most vulnerable.' - not quite.
Those jobs that involve a large number of people in the same facility, doing the same steps are extraordinarily more vulnerable.
Any new factory setup wil be reducing employees to the bare minimum.
If you're building a new factory in the USA, and contemplating employing workers at $10/hr for 5 years (three shifts), that's $500K per station or so (probably more costing all costs of employees.
If you ha
Even if my job isn't replaced, I still lose (Score:5, Insightful)
What a lot of people don't seem to get is that if a substantial fraction of labor gets displaced, market forces will tend to devalue *all* labor.
Yes, maybe *my* job is safe, but my pay doesn't have to stay high.
Suppose all truck drivers are replaced with automation. That's 1M more people on the job market. Yes, maybe they can't do MY job, but, with no alternative, they'll try to get educated and move up the labor food chain.
And with more people in general chasing ever fewer jobs, there'll always be someone willing to do any given job for cheaper--including mine.
Arguably this has already happened significantly. Do you realize that the share of corporate productivity that goes to labor has shrunk in half compared to 1973?
That if labor got the same share of productivity today that it had in 1973, that we'd all have 2x the purchasing power? I'd love to be paid 2x the purchasing power. I'd be done with my mortgage, be completely unworried about retirement and paying for medical care, etc.
I welcome automation replacing labor, but we have to find a way to distribute the resulting wealth such that the people who own things have don't have ALL the wealth and so that the people who can no longer make ends meet in a depressed labor market can live decent lives.
--PeterM
Re: Even if my job isn't replaced, I still lose (Score:5, Insightful)
You know what, you're right about ME. I've built up enough funds to be in the "owns things" class. I personally will be just FINE, unless of course, I get unlucky and some unanticipated medical expenses wipe me out. (This could easily happen to ANYONE who isn't independently wealthy.)
However, there are a LOT of people out there, mainly younger than me, who weren't born with wealth and who rely on their labor to have any sort of standard of living or future. Right now, many of these people are living paycheck to paycheck with no chance to get ahead right now. I know lots of these people. They are often more inherently talented than I was, and work just as hard or harder.
However, they don't have the same opportunities, in general, that I did. They had to pay more for school and are saddled with debt. Fewer jobs are available to them.
The "ownership class" isn't open to them because, without reward from labor, they can't bootstrap themselves into it.
And unlike a lot of people who have succeeded, I'm not willing to turn my back on those that come later and say, "I got mine. **** you."
--PeterM
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Awesome! I'd like half your money please. Thank you for not turning your back on me.
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So you acknowledge that you're screwed and need the help?
Good. I'm sort of tired of the "temporarily embarrassed millionaires."
Instead of helping just you, how about we help everyone who needs to work?
Like for example, pay labor the same fraction of corporate productivity that labor got in 1973? Everyone would get 2x the purchasing power. I think that'd help you a lot more than I personally could help you. It would also help me.
--PM
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Because guillotines are not hard to build, and those people you do not care about can build them.
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In the long run, it should be the "owns things" class that should cower. Once everyone else recovers from their cowering and needs to eat, then the torches and pitchforks will come out. There may not be any of the current "owns things" people left when it's all done.
Just sayin'
I'm pretty comfortable myself. And I feel pretty secure in my job. But that doesn't mean I have nothing to fear if AI displaces enough employ
There's no speaking ill of Saint Supply & Dema (Score:2)
Serious question here (Score:2)
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how do you distribute that wealth from automation without making it feel like stealing?
Same way capitalism has redistributed the output of individuals to the wealthy oligarchy without it feeling like stealing.
Re: Serious question here (Score:4, Insightful)
Umm, I don't know may be adjust your world view? And realize no person is better than another and everyone is entitled to basic food, shelter and healthcare.
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And realize no person is better than another
Unfortunately I think that might be counter to the modern Republican philosophy.
and everyone is entitled to basic food, shelter and healthcare.
And that definitely is.
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how do you distribute that wealth from automation without making it feel like stealing?
Education. Progressive taxation is clearly not theft, but it could certainly feel that way to someone is simply doesn't understand the benefits of a more equitable society.
I would say it is analogous to the stroboscopic effect which can make tires appear to be spinning backwards. The only way to help someone understand why the tire seems to be moving backwards is to educate them about this optical illusion. The same goes for educating the populace about the benefits to society of having wealth better distri
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By realizing you either distribute a portion of it willingly, or the people with nothing left to lose will distribute all of it.
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What a lot of people don't seem to get is that if a substantial fraction of labor gets displaced, market forces will tend to devalue *all* labor.
Yes, maybe *my* job is safe, but my pay doesn't have to stay high.
Suppose all truck drivers are replaced with automation. That's 1M more people on the job market. Yes, maybe they can't do MY job, but, with no alternative, they'll try to get educated and move up the labor food chain.
And with more people in general chasing ever fewer jobs, there'll always be someone willing to do any given job for cheaper--including mine.
Arguably this has already happened significantly. Do you realize that the share of corporate productivity that goes to labor has shrunk in half compared to 1973?
That if labor got the same share of productivity today that it had in 1973, that we'd all have 2x the purchasing power? I'd love to be paid 2x the purchasing power. I'd be done with my mortgage, be completely unworried about retirement and paying for medical care, etc.
I welcome automation replacing labor, but we have to find a way to distribute the resulting wealth such that the people who own things have don't have ALL the wealth and so that the people who can no longer make ends meet in a depressed labor market can live decent lives.
--PeterM
You're telling me I have to worry about robotically-replaced truck drivers that's going to suppress my wage on top of the following things I already worry about suppressing my wages:
Goodness, programmers are so super-scared that someone somewhere is going to "suppress" their wages.
Fallacy of economics (Score:5, Interesting)
What a lot of people don't seem to get is that if a substantial fraction of labor gets displaced, market forces will tend to devalue *all* labor.
Yes, maybe *my* job is safe, but my pay doesn't have to stay high.
To be fair, Jeff Immelt is simply speaking from one of the basic fallacies. He probably learned it at management school, and hasn't spent even a moment in critical thought about it.
Specifically, modern economics assumes infinite consumption which implies infinite need for work. "Infinite consumption" comes from either the Malthus'ian idea that human population will grow exponentially until resources run out, or the idea of "always wanting more", as in bigger house, more cars, more land, more toys, etc.
Personal consumption has limits [wikipedia.org], and industrialized nation population *doesn't* grow without bounds, and productivity keeps going up [bls.gov], and you start to realize that the job pool is finite, and any reduction in jobs puts stress on the people who need to find jobs to live.
The US is at about $50,000 per person [visualizingeconomics.com] in production, and that's a huge amount. Note that this is per person, and not per working person. We have enough wealth in this country to let everyone live comfortably with only half our workforce - and productivity keeps going up.
It's a fallacy of modern economics, it's unsustainable (labor versus shrinking job market) and something has to give eventually.
Whether we transition to a different system that lets people enjoy our production, or whether civilization crashes and burns, depends on people like Jeff Immelt.
Specifically, whether Jeff Immelt, and other like him, can unlearn modern economics and help transition us to a different model.
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There are things that are worse. Due to the much lower standard of living, when I go out of the country I buy wool, handmade on a loom, handmade into all sorts of cool stuff. Again, this is possible, because of a low standard of living, where not everyone even has a video game console. True, the food better, the product are better, the air is better,
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First, we need to submit to the automatons (Score:2)
I work with a group of people who are all "smart enough" to automate most of their work, but they don't do it. Instead, they procrastinate, drag things out, and then when the deadline approaches, it's "too late" to employ automated techniques and they just hand-craft a solution and ship it. Someday, the company will lose out to competitors who do automate their work more effectively, but that will take decades before the competition can both manufacture a better, cheaper product and shift the customer bas
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Someday, the company will lose out to competitors who do automate their work more effectively,
Or the other companies will lose out to someone that makes automation work for them.
GE layoffs happening now (Score:2)
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They're laying off researchers and engineers, not manufacturing workers. A lot of their engineering staff is overseas now.
Robots and automation? Not a factor.
Sounds suspicious (Score:5, Funny)
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Why would the human CEO say anything different? A robot and a robot salesman have similar motives.
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It's right there in the title—they have an electric CEO!
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It's right there in the titleâ"they have an electric CEO!
And he's a general, they've taken over the military already. Run, run for the hills!
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LOL Re:Sounds suspicious (Score:2)
Thanks for making me laugh! :-)
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More jobs lost to off-shoring (Score:1)
I suspect that more jobs are lost to (and will be lost to) off-shoring than robots.
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26 May 2016: Apple and Samsung supplier Foxconn has reportedly replaced 60,000 factory workers with robots.
One factory has "reduced employee strength from 110,000 to 50,000 thanks to the introduction of robots", a government official told the South China Morning Post. Xu Yulian, head of publicity for the Kunshan region, added: "More companies are likely to follow suit."
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Translation (Score:2)
Fun fact: GM shut down production at factories for 3 months because they'd flooded the market with too many vehicles. That was due to productivity increases from automation/robotics.
And lack of consumer purchasing power (Score:2)
The OTHER factor that idled the factories for 3 months was lack of demand.
D'you think the market would have been "flooded" if laborers had 2x the purchasing power?
And 2x the purchasing power is *exactly* what labor would have if labor had the same share of corporate productivity that labor had in 1973.
Instead, GM would be looking to build more factories instead of idling their capacity.
"Virtuous cycle: productivity increases leads to more pay in wages which leads to more demand which leads to more investme
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Re:Future labels (Score:4, Funny)
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You laugh, but people within industrial centers do buy fasteners made locally. People know the factory names and know that their local economy is dependent on the people, not the machines.
I suppose it is not so laughable when you actually get to drive by the factory every day and are asked "how's the kids?" when filling your gas tank by someone that works in the plating department.
MRGA! [Re:Future labels] (Score:1)
Trump doesn't know it, but he's Made Robots Great Again!
(Before you complain about "again", T never defined the first time in MAGA either. He deflected the question in the debates.)
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Of course, we could all end up fully employed by the robots, who would own everything, in order to service the robots. Because only humans would be willing to do servicing jobs that robots feel is beneath them.
Bifurcation of Labor: High Skilled vs Minimum Wage (Score:2)
Source of Smarter Workers? (Score:2)
Left unsaid is where those smarter workers will come from. The current answers are: a) Trained by somebody else's company, b) From a body shop which told me the worker was smart so I am not liable for his/her actual deficiencies. The answer we need is: Trained and retained by the hiring company from decent candidates which will be admitted through revisions to profoundly poor HR and Management filters.
Obvious Candidates (Score:2)
"In the short term" (Score:2)
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In the long term, you're fsck'd
Just another example of "be careful what you ask for - you might get it." Remember everyone clamoring for sex robots. Well, get ready because robots are going to give you the f*cking over of your life.
Easy to say when it's not his job on the line. (Score:2)
If he wanted people to trust the direction of advanced automation (robotics, AI, ML), he failed at that objective.