Automation: The Exaggerated Threat of Robots (flassbeck-economics.com) 134
It will take quite a lot of time before robots become cheaper than workers in emerging markets such as Africa, argues Nico Beckert of Flassbeck Economics, a consortium of researchers who aim to provide economics insights with a more realistic basis. From the post: All industrialized countries used low-cost labour to build industries and manufacture mass-produced goods. Today, labour is relatively inexpensive in Africa, and a similar industrialization process might take off accordingly. Some worry that industrial robots will block this development path. The reason is that robots are most useful when doing routine tasks -- precisely the kind of work that is typical of labour-intensive mass production. At the moment, however, robots are much too expensive to replace thousands upon thousands of workers in labour-intensive industries, most of which are in the very early stages of the industrialization process. Robots are currently best used in technologically more demanding fields like the automobile or electronics industry.
Even a rapid drop in robot prices would not lead to the replacement of workers by robots in the short term in Africa where countries lag far behind in terms of fast internet and other information and communications technologies. They also lack well-trained IT experts. Other problems include an unreliable power supply, high energy costs and high financing costs for new technologies. For these reasons, it would be difficult and expensive to integrate robots and other digital technologies into African production lines.
Even a rapid drop in robot prices would not lead to the replacement of workers by robots in the short term in Africa where countries lag far behind in terms of fast internet and other information and communications technologies. They also lack well-trained IT experts. Other problems include an unreliable power supply, high energy costs and high financing costs for new technologies. For these reasons, it would be difficult and expensive to integrate robots and other digital technologies into African production lines.
We now have proof (Score:3)
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What I believe (Score:5, Funny)
People think I am crazy for believing this, but I believe that robots are stealing my luggage.
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He didn't say breaking into his luggage, He said stealing his luggage.
Want to know more? [youtube.com]
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Through a physical interface? I find that unlikely. At least one of those luggage combination dials would have to make 10,000 revolutions in the process, meaning it's rotating at 600,000rpm I'd bet good money that centrifugal "forces" would tear it apart long before it reached that speed.
One of the biggest advantages of physical locks over digital ones is that "brute forcing" isn't really viable - you have to either exploit a vulnerability (a.k.a. lockpicking), or ignore the lock entirely and simply brea
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> Through a physical interface? I find that unlikely. At least one of those luggage combination dials would have to make 10,000 revolutions in the process
No.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Just to follow up-- http://emis.impa.br/EMIS/journ... [emis.impa.br] constructing "r-ary" (i've always heard them called n-ary) maximally balanced gray codes. A fairly recent set of findings (2007) which would guarantee you optimality.
Means that every wheel has to spin close to 2000 times for a complete brute force of a 5 digit code (1000 on average; this comes from 100000 combinations / 5 shared equally over all wheels / 10 per revolution), or 250 times in the brute force of a 4 digit code (125 on average). Probably s
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Ah, of course. I haven't used Gray codes since college, but they would make perfect sense for such a project. I don't think I've ever even considered using them for non-binary codes, but they seem to have a system worked out.
Of course 2000 revolutions in a second is still 120,000RPM, and you'd need to factor in the "stop, test, accelerate" after every change so the wheels would still probably be torn apart, but you could probably get it done within in under an hour (~30 combinations per second) without to
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And I believe that we should allow all foreigners into the country as long as they speak our native language, Apache.
(Good bet very few get either your post or mine) :D
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Good bet very few get either your post or mine
Why? There's an XKCD [xkcd.com] for nearly every story posted here. Also it's Cherokee ;)
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No. It is indeed Apache [youtube.com]
Steve Martin's monologue predates XKCD by decades.
Next, you are going to be telling us that the chariot race in Ben Hur was a ripoff of the pod race in Phantom Menace.
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Could you be more specific on the dialect? :)
I would hate to waste my time for learning the wrong one
So what? (Score:5, Insightful)
It will take quite a lot of time before robots become cheaper than workers in emerging markets such as Africa,
So what? What does that straw man have to do with anything?
Today, labour is relatively inexpensive in Africa, and a similar industrialization process might take off accordingly. Some worry that industrial robots will block this development path.
I haven't seen one person worry about that. Not a single one. What people are worried about isn't whether Africans will get a job, they're worried whether outsourcing and automation will take jobs that people have now. Africans probably know that there is a good chance that most of the remaining human-based manufacturing jobs will end up in Africa, which is a situation all major corporations in a position to care are working towards.
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It is true that most businesses prefer to outsource such security and contract enforcement to cooperative governments - but organized crime is only moderately more expensive, especially in places where the rule of law is weak.
Less extra-legally, as I recall China (among others) is increasingly exploring city-building treaties that effectively hand them (possibly in partnership with other stable governments) legal and judicial jurisdiction of a region in return for building a city there and attracting invest
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The one basket-case-fits-all model of African development is exposing your ankles, restricting your natural leg movement, and giving you a hideous muffin top.
Get a bigger pair of pants. (Updating your intellectual wardrobe every twenty years or so would make for a good start.)
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Which is also the reason anti-globalism and protectionist policies are becoming more prevalent in modern politics. No one, except the corporations wanting to profit, wants to have their standard of living dragged down to whatever the poorest and most corrupt nations on earth will allow. Note,
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Re: So what? (Score:1)
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Re: So what? (Score:1)
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So what? What does that straw man have to do with anything?
Nothing. It's a "the technology isn't really ready yet" argument: it won't happen today, so it won't happen.
The real argument is that technology doesn't ever replace labor; it augments it. The counterpoint to this will be when technology becomes labor, at which point it won't matter. A generic technology able to do anything without human tuning and improvement would be able to think and reason: it would be human.
The magical thinking surrounding a world where work is no longer a thing has been arou
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The other 95% of the population are fucked.
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You're still thinking vertically: fewer low-end workers and more high-end engineers making the robots who replace them. That thinking is incorrect even in its own sphere: you're not saving any money unless there are fewer engineers and robot maintainers making and maintaining the robots than there are laborers replaced by robots.
Imagine if shoes can suddenly be made with half the labor in total. Not just half as many people sewing them together--maybe that doesn't even happen--but there are fewer peo
What kind of premise is this? (Score:5, Insightful)
No one's claiming robots are going to put Africans out of work. No one gives a shit about Africans. Robots are going to put Americans and Europeans out of work.
Re:What kind of premise is this? (Score:4, Insightful)
And that will eventually lead to death of capitalism - good riddance, although I doubt I'll be alive to see that.
Say what now ? (Score:1)
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The free market exists only on EUrope or America ? O'really ?
Wait... what?
I'm certain I said nothing even remotely like that. Anywhere. Ever.
You are perhaps taking capitalism as some utopian academic idea, and not for the exchange of goods and price-finding system that it is.
I'm not sure... no, correct that, I'm definitely sure I don't understand what you're trying to say here.
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Really after robots all we need is some FTL drive and there wont be mu
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> Really after robots all we need is some FTL drive and there wont be much to stop us from colonizing the galaxy.
Why bother ? If you're the 1% who controls the robots, you can simply order them to exterminate everybody else, and you'll have the whole planet to yourself.
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That's a dangerous game for the 1% to play. Once the culling starts, nobody is safe. For reference see every single violent revolution in human history.
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What do you think robots are? Hate to break it to you they are capital. Now once you can use robots to make robots capitalism will do what it has been trying to do since the beginning...drive costs to zero.
Has it really? Capitalism doesn't do or try anything. Capitalists do - and they most certainly aren't trying to drive costs to zero. They would call it socialism, although really it wouldn't be - it would be a new kind of system, free of capitalism OR socialism as economic systems.
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No one gives a shit about Africans.
All the manufacturing giants do. There will continue to be jobs for humans for some time, and now that labor costs in China have risen, all eyes are on Africa. The jobs which aren't highly automated will continue to go overseas, and they will go to Africa.
Re:What kind of premise is this? (Score:4, Interesting)
"The jobs which aren't highly automated will continue to go overseas, and they will go to Africa"
I can think of jobs that aren't easily automatable. But few of them seem candidates for shipping off the Africa. For example, picking apples can't currently be done by machines because the fruit bruises easily, and picking has to be done without damaging next year's buds. But shipping the whole tree off to the DRC to be plucked seems somewhat impractical.
I'd sure like to see a list of specific industries that will be moving to Ghana, Liberia, Uganda, et.al.to take advantage of the cheap labor. And why not move work to Afghanistan or Mongolia? which have (on paper anyway) easy access to existing trade infrastructure. It's not like running rail lines from the existing Eurasian rail network requires new technology.
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I don't mean to sound like an ass, but if that's your take on "a job too complicated for a robot" then I believe you are misinformed.
The technology to identify and do everything you've specified as being constraints exists. The only thing stopping them from taking over is the idea that one of them would cost something close to a couple hundred thousands dollars, likely a quite a bit more otherwise I feel like we'd be seeing them already in crops owned by very wealthy individuals/businesses (Maybe we are, I
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You missed the third choice, which is only made possible by the existence of mostly free global markets: Plant apple orchards in countries where labor is cheap, then bulldoze our apple orchards and replace them with food cro
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You missed the third choice, which is only made possible by the existence of mostly free global markets: Plant apple orchards in countries where labor is cheap, then bulldoze our apple orchards and replace them with food crops that can be mostly harvested by automation (wheat, corn, etc.). Then, import the apples while exporting grains.
More magical thinking. Agriculture simply doesn’t work that way.
OTOH there is no real reason that high paying STEM jobs can’t be much more widely distributed across the globe and that is exactly what is going to happen.
So America will never be rid of the need for apple pickers, but there will be fewer tech jobs. Especially if America continues to throw tantrums and elect idiots to pursue broken ideas like punitive tariffs and isolationist immigration policies.
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Sure it does—not over the course of months, but it very much works that way. Historically, most
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Addressing this unrelated subject in a separate post. The main reason tech jobs are so clustered is that most people over thirty have an aversion to packing up and moving to a new city to get a job, so businesses tend to locate themselves near where they can get talent easily. Tech started out concentrated in a few places, and remains so because of
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I can think of jobs that aren't easily automatable. But few of them seem candidates for shipping off the Africa. For example, picking apples can't currently be done by machines because the fruit bruises easily, and picking has to be done without damaging next year's buds. But shipping the whole tree off to the DRC to be plucked seems somewhat impractical.
Everything related to harvesting a raw material obviously has to be where that raw material is. And some things are perishable, apples are both so they're pretty safe from outsourcing. But everything else... just to take a random example here from Norway, a lot of the bread is actually no longer made here. It comes half-baked and frozen, here they simply put it in the oven and finish it. I have a friend that works in construction, more and more comes as prefab modules like say entire bathrooms and in case o
New apple picking robots... (Score:2)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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I'd sure like to see a list of specific industries that will be moving to Ghana, Liberia, Uganda, et.al.to take advantage of the cheap labor. And why not move work to Afghanistan or Mongolia?
Afghanistan, and a number of countries in Africa, are not going to be a popular outsourcing destination because of political instability.
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Add to that the fact that one of the deepest and most fundamental tribal divides has, throughout the history of civilization, been between the rich and the poor, and the problem comes into sharper focus. Especially since the rich mostly make the rules, and as you say, have no problems with others not of the tribe paying the bill.
Add of course they hold their position in large part by fostering further, more superficial tribal divides among the poor - keep the browns and the whites at each other's throats.
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That is not insightfull, but dumb. ... In case you mean that with 'robot'.
In Europe everything is already done by Robots.
Ah, obviously no one would visit a shop where the 'burger flipper' is not a hot chick or a hot guy
Re: What kind of premise is this? (Score:2)
If you have to work for a living that identifies you far more than you origin fairy tale. Convincing American and European working class people otherwise is the key to keeping them in serfdom.
Yeah, this has been a communist talking point for about a century now. One would think that you guys would have given it a rest after Lenin and Stalin came along and freed you from the shackles of serfdom.
Re: What kind of premise is this? (Score:2)
So communism failed and that is why capitalism is grinding these people to dust?
Which people?
Fear of the communist boogie man has kept working class Americans and Europeans stupid, poor and hopeless.
Anger over capitalism has killed and empoverished well over a hundred million people in the last century. If you're talking about "stupid poor and helpless Europeans", chances are you're talking primarily about the old eastern block.
"more realistic"? (Score:5, Insightful)
a consortium of researchers who aim to provide economics insights with a more realistic basis
"More realistic" than what? What is the yardstick or basis of comparison here, and how do they evidence whether they are in fact hitting their mark?
The problem is workforce as a ware (Score:1)
All this fucking neoliberals barfing always the same old nonsense.
The problem is -- and has always been -- to regard workforce (i.e. human time) as a ware, subject to the "laws" of supply and demand. Automation reduces demand, slowly lowering the prices in times where everything else goes up (especially real estate, and thus rents).
You won't see the "robots" substituting human labor at a given moment, but you are seeing (you've been seeing now from the 70ies, if you've been paying attention) the less-earnin
Re: The problem is workforce as a ware (Score:2)
You won't see the "robots" substituting human labor at a given moment, but you are seeing (you've been seeing now from the 70ies, if you've been paying attention) the less-earning people earning less and less.
By "paying attention" you must be talking about your personal anecdotes. Otherwise you would know that wages for most workers (including your "poorest") have remained essentially unchanged for the last 30 years. They declined slightly from the 70s to the mid 90s and have been rising at a similar rate since then.
http://www.pewresearch.org/fac... [pewresearch.org]
The whole subprime crisis in the USA can be seen as an "adjustment" in this direction.
Again, nonsense. The subprime crisis was an adjustment for the fact that housing had become insanely overpriced. It's not wages that were the problem but rather
Obvious flaws in the argument (Score:5, Insightful)
To begin with, since African labor is currently cheaper than Chinese labor and has been for decades, why aren't all iPhones made in Africa?
Consider:
* it's not just cost of labor but also quality of output by labor (related to training and life experience)
* the need for surrounding physical infrastructure (like reliable electricity)
* the need for surrounding social infrastructure (like a hierarchical work ethic)
* the need for surrounding political infrastructure (like rule of law and low corruption)
* the cost of transportation (including local transportation to and from ports)
* the cost of language barriers
* the cost of cultural barriers
Ultimately, to understand why the premise is wrong of all labor being done in Africa instead of by robots, ask yourself, why do you have a local printer or local copier in your home and office when it would be much cheaper per page to have everything printed and copied in a central print shop ten miles away? The answer is that the cost per page is not as significant to you as other values like convenience, turnaround, transportation, privacy, and security.
Most humans in any location are less and less employable relative to robots and AI because human output is of more variable quality, humans take breaks, humans don't work 24X7, humans get sick, humans file lawsuits about working conditions, humans steal things, and humans require safer climate-controlled workplaces. Those are some of the same reasons almost everyone now drives horseless carriages instead of keeping several horses in a barn.
Humans still have some advantages relative to robots and AI in some situations -- e.g. why Telsa should have set up a human-powered assembly line first and then automated when most of the routine needs were clearer. Long term though AI and robots will outperform human labor in almost all situations. Thus the need for a basic income, a gift economy, improved subsistence production with 3D printers and gardening robots, and/or democratically-planned government projects.
See also: "Humans Need Not Apply"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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They're saying other countries are moving away from their ways, since a lot of Asian economies are maturing, and only Africa remains to exploit.
You mentioned corruption. Oh, trust me, they will need corruption if they're going to replace what the Asian economies have provided to the Western world for some time. How else do you treat millions of people like slaves? Good, acting businessmen certainly don't.
Not really. Rare earth. (Score:2)
You have a warped view of Africa, 19th century style. it ain't the shanty hut continent. This IS Africa : https://www.123rf.com/photo_71... [123rf.com] and there are similar to other countries than Kenya. Yes when you go into rural country you don't see that cityscape, but between major country and capital there is even highway, major electricity production cente
Africa is a diverse continent of ~55 countries (Score:4, Interesting)
So, sure, one may find specific combinations of infrastructure somewhere. For example:
https://sourcingjournal.com/to... [sourcingjournal.com]
""The next China is not a where, it's a how you do business," he said. "But Africa seems to be the emergence of the next China." Africa today is much like China was in the late 80s and early 90s, McRaith explained. There's little there, but the continent is developing. The first thing to consider, however, McRaith said, is that the sizable continent cannot be discussed as one region and understood as such. Africa is big enough to fit all of the world's major players within it: the United States, China, India, Eastern Europe, Japan, the U.K., Spain, France, Germany and Italy, among others. "Africa is of a scale we've never dealt with," he said."
But it may be harder than you suggest. For your example of Nairobi, consider electrical infrastructure:
http://www.afd.fr/en/reliabili... [www.afd.fr]
"The poor performance of Kenya's energy sector hampers the country's economic development and poverty reduction strategy: per capita electricity consumption is low, the country suffers relatively frequent power cuts, and small proportion of the population has access to electricity, while the average tariff in the last five years was $0.15 per kilowatt hour, one of the highest in sub-Saharan Africa."
And: ..."
https://medium.com/@kyleschutt... [medium.com]
"You will be robbed in Nairobi, inevitably. No one really talks about it because it is a bit awkward, but it should be discussed. You should know what to do. Except for my sister, everyone I know in Nairobi has been robbed, especially if they own a business. After all, the city's nickname is Nairobbery.
And: ... ..."
https://travel.state.gov/conte... [state.gov]
"Terrorist threats remain in Kenya, including those aimed at U.S., Western, and Kenyan interests, within the Nairobi area, along the coast, and within the northeastern region of the country. Terrorist attacks have cumulatively resulted in the death and injury of hundreds of people since 2011. Over the last year, most incidents have occurred in the northeastern border region of the country; there have been no major attacks in Nairobi, Mombasa, or other major cities in the last two years.
CRIME: Crime in Kenya is a regular occurrence and Kenyan authorities have limited capacity to deter and investigate such acts. Violent and sometimes fatal criminal attacks, including home invasions, burglaries, armed carjackings, muggings, and kidnappings can occur at any time.
Can large businesses set up generators (or locate near cheap hydropower perhaps), hire private security (ignoring some of those thefts mentioned were inside jobs), build gated compounds for executives and their families, and so on? Of course, but it all adds to the costs and risks of doing business.
Work ethic is a complex topic -- and note I said "hierarchical" work ethic, meaning people's willingness to submit to a big corporation versus their desire to work for themselves and/or their family, village, or tribe. One study from 2011 comparing Chinese and South African work ethic:
https://www.emeraldinsight.com... [emeraldinsight.com]
"South Africa is a developing country, and within this context, it is essential to be economically competitive and proactive. Various sources reveal that the national productivity has been traditionally low, and continues to remain low. Within the context of the international arena, this is unacceptable. If South Africa is to become a recognised role player in the internationa
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Gift economy? 3D printers? Democratically-planned government projects?
Nice ideal, but no.
- A gift economy is still an economy. It is not based on pure altruism but on social rules that are much more complex than market economies. Passed a certain scale, gifts stop being gifts, they are a way of asserting power, repaying debts, etc... just like with money in a capitalist society. The difference is that in a market economy, we have clear rules. We know how much we will need to pay back, interest rates, etc...
Five Interwoven Economies (Score:3)
Thanks for your comment, and while those are all good points, I feel they a missing the forest for the trees.
While you are right for one type of gift economy, there are at least two types of gift economy. The first is as you outlined about maintaining social status in a social network (like for some Native American tribes that used the Potlatch ceremony). But there is also another form (or aspect) of gift economy based around volunteering semi-anonymously to give back to the larger community -- like with al
uh-huh (Score:1)
"At the moment, however, robots are much too expensive to replace thousands upon thousands of workers in labour-intensive industries, most of which are in the very early stages of the industrialization process. Robots are currently best used in technologically more demanding fields like the automobile or electronics industry. "
In other news, batteries are too expensive to use in cars, there's only a worldwide demand for maybe a dozen computers, and scientists prove that man can never fly!
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That's why this will be one of the first categories of jobs that
Just what do you expect to build there ? (Score:4, Insightful)
Even a rapid drop in robot prices would not lead to the replacement of workers by robots in the short term in Africa where countries lag far behind in terms of fast internet and other information and communications technologies. They also lack well-trained IT experts. Other problems include an unreliable power supply, high energy costs and high financing costs for new technologies. For these reasons, it would be difficult and expensive to integrate robots and other digital technologies into African production lines.
The article describes the place as a location nobody sane would want to locate manufacturing. Low cost is important but only as it relates to high productivity. Capitalism depends on the ability of capital to increase production and profit.
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You can replace a team of 5 expert doctors, 10 nurses and a group of psychologists per patients just by implementing a software that can do diagnosis better than doctors and a pill of correct medicine.
This post is so disconnected from reality that it's almost not worth responding to-- it's like saying you can replace a 747 with a jar of herring.
Diagnosis is really a pretty small part of what doctors and nurses do all day. It can be an interesting part, and that's why TV shows tend to focus on it, but it's a minor percentage of the overall workload. Most of the time you know what's wrong with the patient. Anyway, there are already lots of algorithms and treatment guidelines to help "automate" the proce
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Indeed. Typical clueless technology fanatic. Also, as to diagnostic superiority, look at the failed medical diagnostics by IBM Watson published recently, that ended up killing people. Technology is not there even for the relatively clean and clear field of diagnostics. It is not clear whether it ever will get there enough to replace human experts. It may take some of their work, but if MDs have 10% less work, that will not matter much. Medicine may in fact be the single largest area pretty safe from "robots
What a bulshit summary (Score:2)
Robots already have replaced thousands of thousands of workers! ... Probably it dropped ny a factor of 1000, most cdrtainly it is more than a factor of 100!
Or do you realy think a german or swedish car is made by humans?
Sure, there are still a few involved. But compare the number of workers of today with the late 1970s
Article is completely missing the point... (Score:2)
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Manufacturing will move closer to the markets to reduce cost of logistics.
Our logistical infrastructure is really efficient. Transportation costs of goods are so low that it doesn't really drive decisions. As one example, it costs more in transportation costs for you to drive a mile to the store to pick up a toothbrush than it does to ship if from China.
Longer Lines (Score:3)
It will take quite a lot of time before robots become cheaper than workers in emerging markets such as Africa...
How long will I have to wait for my burger in the drive through if it's made in Africa?
If you think robots are taking over all our jobs (Score:2)
...you haven't built many automation systems.
Automation, whether software or robotic, is HARD to get right.
Even the stuff called "AI" is difficult and expensive to train, and any time you throw something new at it, you have to start over.
Robots ARE taking over all our most mundane, routine jobs, yes. But they will not be able to take over more complex jobs for a long, long time.
JOBS ARE STEALING MY ROBOTS (Score:2)
What it comes down to is that I want a robot more than I want a job.
The foolish unions are working hard to prevent robots from being created out of fear that jobs will vanish.
Not much chance in Africa (Score:2)
Nope. Wrong. (Score:5, Insightful)
It goes the other way around:
We've banned child labour and established human rights because as a society as a whole we have decided that these are values worth investing in, especially since we easyly can. There is little point in having 12-year olds working in the mines, since it's way more benefitial to have a few grown men and huge machines do that. And send the children to school, to learn to build and maintain the machines when they grow up.
The benefits far outweight the costs. It will be the same with UBI. Only getting there can be painful.
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Meh, most people talk about UBI as a way to provide the basics for people that are or have become unemployable. The experience from pretty much every other benefit program is that people tend to become less employable that way, not more. If you wanted more student, you could do that today much simpler through better student benefits.
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I agree with you. UBI is a disaster waiting to happen. I believe in workfare, even if it involves sitting in a "work" room for 4 hours a day.
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There are plenty of humans who sit around for hours every day and do nothing. We call them prisoners.
I thought we called them NEETs. Prisoners spend 24/7 locked up, not 4 hours of "work" to receive benefits.
I'd rather see UBI become a catalyst for human creativity rather than a means to a dead-end with that workfarce concept of yours.
Ooh, is FOUR HOURS to have your basic needs met too much for people? Assuming 8 hours of sleep, that leaves TWELVE HOURS to be as "creative" as you want.
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Meh, most people talk about UBI as a way to provide the basics for people that are or have become unemployable. The experience from pretty much every other benefit program is that people tend to become less employable that way, not more. If you wanted more student, you could do that today much simpler through better student benefits.
Yes, UBI will be essentially Welfare 2.0 for the masses, but you failed to realize that UBI is meant to supplement the unemployable, not the "less employable". Unemployable is what most humans on this planet will eventually be classified as automation and AI continue to develop in the next 30 - 50 years.
And when I say 30 - 50 years, it's probably going to be more like 15 - 20. Greed will ensure that all it takes is "good enough" AI to replace humans as quickly as possible.
Also, becoming a student (or makin
Bump! (Score:2)
You took the reply out of my mouth. UBI is not yet another benefit program. UBI is/will be abundance and wealth by robots and automation spread through the population so we don't have a revolt on our hands.