Automation - How far can it go?
Discussion
Gecko1978 said:
Maybe or perhaps at the end of each shift they will self service etc
either way a person of a machine doing it will be less than current head count at the burger chain
Yes but the 'machine/robot' will need building, delivering, call-outs, servicing, replacing with a new machine, office workers etc etc etc so the company supplying it will need to increase their head count.either way a person of a machine doing it will be less than current head count at the burger chain
lionelf said:
Gecko1978 said:
Maybe or perhaps at the end of each shift they will self service etc
either way a person of a machine doing it will be less than current head count at the burger chain
Yes but the 'machine/robot' will need building, delivering, call-outs, servicing, replacing with a new machine, office workers etc etc etc so the company supplying it will need to increase their head count.either way a person of a machine doing it will be less than current head count at the burger chain
mondeoman said:
lionelf said:
Gecko1978 said:
Maybe or perhaps at the end of each shift they will self service etc
either way a person of a machine doing it will be less than current head count at the burger chain
Yes but the 'machine/robot' will need building, delivering, call-outs, servicing, replacing with a new machine, office workers etc etc etc so the company supplying it will need to increase their head count.either way a person of a machine doing it will be less than current head count at the burger chain
Until the singularity occurs and all of these questions are solved simultaneously then you'll need humans. Every time we automate some aspect of work another opportunity opens up for the exploitation of labour to make a profit. Current UK unemployment at 5.4% is almost as low as its ever been as a percentage of population.
Going forward, when work finally does cease for humans I don't want to be around. What the 15 or 20 billion people who'll populate the earth at that time will turn their unused energies too is a terrifying thought. Religious fervour amongst the idle who'll wonder what their role is in the Universe could grow at an exponential rate with all of these permanently idle hands around the globe.
lionelf said:
And the Robots that service the Robots, who'll service them?
Until the singularity occurs and all of these questions are solved simultaneously then you'll need humans. Every time we automate some aspect of work another opportunity opens up for the exploitation of labour to make a profit. Current UK unemployment at 5.4% is almost as low as its ever been as a percentage of population.
Going forward, when work finally does cease for humans I don't want to be around. What the 15 or 20 billion people who'll populate the earth at that time will turn their unused energies too is a terrifying thought. Religious fervour amongst the idle who'll wonder what their role is in the Universe could grow at an exponential rate with all of these permanently idle hands around the globe.
There will always be jobs that only have value because they are carried out by a person, these range from actor, musician to hooker.Until the singularity occurs and all of these questions are solved simultaneously then you'll need humans. Every time we automate some aspect of work another opportunity opens up for the exploitation of labour to make a profit. Current UK unemployment at 5.4% is almost as low as its ever been as a percentage of population.
Going forward, when work finally does cease for humans I don't want to be around. What the 15 or 20 billion people who'll populate the earth at that time will turn their unused energies too is a terrifying thought. Religious fervour amongst the idle who'll wonder what their role is in the Universe could grow at an exponential rate with all of these permanently idle hands around the globe.
The issue is going to be in a world of mostly services how do you decide on what services are valuable and avoid people doing unnecessary work.
I actually think that the whole citizens income idea will probably be needed here and in fact would probably work today.
Instead of people demotivated on job seekers or incapacity benefit citizens income would allow people to train, volunteer, work part-time or simply create things that people don't know they want yet be they science or art.
Millions of jobs will be lost, no doubt.
For example:
(1) Trucking will be fully automated with road trains of autonomous trucks. They have started to use autonomous mining trucks in Western Canada in remote regions, but I have no doubt that this will be perfected.
(2) highly intelligent systems like IBM's Watson will take over many kinds of diagnostics and research functions, lots of the lower skilled jobs like legal research.
(3) More and more self service will remove people
(4) Seamless communication technology will enable even faster data transfer so the high paying jobs will move to the lowest qualified bidder
In my view we are at a very early stage. Uber is likely to ally with Tesla or Apple or the like to build fully autonomous public transportation. The opportunities are endless and nobody knows here the new jobs for humans will come from .
For example:
(1) Trucking will be fully automated with road trains of autonomous trucks. They have started to use autonomous mining trucks in Western Canada in remote regions, but I have no doubt that this will be perfected.
(2) highly intelligent systems like IBM's Watson will take over many kinds of diagnostics and research functions, lots of the lower skilled jobs like legal research.
(3) More and more self service will remove people
(4) Seamless communication technology will enable even faster data transfer so the high paying jobs will move to the lowest qualified bidder
In my view we are at a very early stage. Uber is likely to ally with Tesla or Apple or the like to build fully autonomous public transportation. The opportunities are endless and nobody knows here the new jobs for humans will come from .
JagLover said:
RDMcG said:
In my view we are at a very early stage. .
Definitely so, but even at today's technology many millions of jobs in the west could be fully automated.It's not just the labour intensive jobs - those that require experience, brain power and intellect are just as suseptable ...(if not more)
wired magazine from early 2013 said:
.....in tests, Watson's successful diagnosis rate for lung cancer is 90 percent, compared to 50 percent for human doctors.
In computing terms 3 years a go is a life time ....I'm not sure I will be encouraging my daughters to go into general medicine Putting aside whether it's possible to fully automate everything, or near enough everything. Lets assume it happens.
It would require a pretty massive shift in Politics, Economics and whatnot wouldn't it. It's obvious that increasing automation shifts income away from the general population and towards the people with access to capital. You need money to buy robots and you don't need to pay people to do their jobs. Regardless of your current political persuasion, I think most people would agree that that isn't sustainable and there would need to be fundamental change to keep society functional.
It's particularly interesting when you consider that as wrong as the left are now, if full automation occurs the solution is likely to be some sort of communism or not too far off. But a communism where everyone lives well, enjoys their days not working, while a few elites work very hard building new robots to do new things for the state and a re well rewarded.
How do you think society would work?
It would require a pretty massive shift in Politics, Economics and whatnot wouldn't it. It's obvious that increasing automation shifts income away from the general population and towards the people with access to capital. You need money to buy robots and you don't need to pay people to do their jobs. Regardless of your current political persuasion, I think most people would agree that that isn't sustainable and there would need to be fundamental change to keep society functional.
It's particularly interesting when you consider that as wrong as the left are now, if full automation occurs the solution is likely to be some sort of communism or not too far off. But a communism where everyone lives well, enjoys their days not working, while a few elites work very hard building new robots to do new things for the state and a re well rewarded.
How do you think society would work?
Wilmslowboy said:
It's not just the labour intensive jobs - those that require experience, brain power and intellect are just as suseptable ...(if not more)
Let's face it, dogs can already detect some types of cancer, unaided, in a way no human can. If we can build machines will similar sensitivity, which don't drag their backsides and leave brown streaks on the carpet...wired magazine from early 2013 said:
.....in tests, Watson's successful diagnosis rate for lung cancer is 90 percent, compared to 50 percent for human doctors.
In computing terms 3 years a go is a life time ....I'm not sure I will be encouraging my daughters to go into general medicine This is a great topic, and it’s one of those that are raised every now and again that gets the grey cells thinking.
When I started on the drawing board years ago, I thought it was a talent that would be never be replaced. 2D CAD came, then 3D, neither which really reduced numbers that much. 3-D solid modelling is just reducing numbers slowly.
16 years ago, I was lead on a project to automate the design of the company’s products, and I mentioned that a side effect of this work would reduce the drawing office from 8 to 3, I felt terrible demonstrating the “new tomorrow” to drawing office people who I knew would be kicked out within 12 months if it all went ahead. As above, these were time served guys with ONC/HNC’s doing skilled technical work, and here I was making their talents redundant. I was told that’s the way it goes, and to carry on. We had some dismal people in positions of authority that couldn’t see the future either, so I left, and the guys were safe….
An old cynical engineer told me there will be 4 kinds of workers in the future:-
Those who create the tools – the high knowledge/creative/wealth originators (correct word?)
Those who use the tools – probably a newly defined type of middle class, some will move up to the above, some will move down.
Those who abuse the tools – probably those just about move to the level below.
Those who are just complete tools – what is becoming the underclass.
I was extremely doubtful when I heard this, but 20 years later I see bits of it happening around me…
When I started on the drawing board years ago, I thought it was a talent that would be never be replaced. 2D CAD came, then 3D, neither which really reduced numbers that much. 3-D solid modelling is just reducing numbers slowly.
16 years ago, I was lead on a project to automate the design of the company’s products, and I mentioned that a side effect of this work would reduce the drawing office from 8 to 3, I felt terrible demonstrating the “new tomorrow” to drawing office people who I knew would be kicked out within 12 months if it all went ahead. As above, these were time served guys with ONC/HNC’s doing skilled technical work, and here I was making their talents redundant. I was told that’s the way it goes, and to carry on. We had some dismal people in positions of authority that couldn’t see the future either, so I left, and the guys were safe….
An old cynical engineer told me there will be 4 kinds of workers in the future:-
Those who create the tools – the high knowledge/creative/wealth originators (correct word?)
Those who use the tools – probably a newly defined type of middle class, some will move up to the above, some will move down.
Those who abuse the tools – probably those just about move to the level below.
Those who are just complete tools – what is becoming the underclass.
I was extremely doubtful when I heard this, but 20 years later I see bits of it happening around me…
paulrockliffe said:
Putting aside whether it's possible to fully automate everything, or near enough everything. Lets assume it happens.
It would require a pretty massive shift in Politics, Economics and whatnot wouldn't it. It's obvious that increasing automation shifts income away from the general population and towards the people with access to capital. You need money to buy robots and you don't need to pay people to do their jobs. Regardless of your current political persuasion, I think most people would agree that that isn't sustainable and there would need to be fundamental change to keep society functional.
It's particularly interesting when you consider that as wrong as the left are now, if full automation occurs the solution is likely to be some sort of communism or not too far off. But a communism where everyone lives well, enjoys their days not working, while a few elites work very hard building new robots to do new things for the state and a re well rewarded.
How do you think society would work?
It raises all sorts of interesting problems.It would require a pretty massive shift in Politics, Economics and whatnot wouldn't it. It's obvious that increasing automation shifts income away from the general population and towards the people with access to capital. You need money to buy robots and you don't need to pay people to do their jobs. Regardless of your current political persuasion, I think most people would agree that that isn't sustainable and there would need to be fundamental change to keep society functional.
It's particularly interesting when you consider that as wrong as the left are now, if full automation occurs the solution is likely to be some sort of communism or not too far off. But a communism where everyone lives well, enjoys their days not working, while a few elites work very hard building new robots to do new things for the state and a re well rewarded.
How do you think society would work?
Companies already have "flags of convenience" now. If taxes have to be higher in the rich world due to mass unemployment/under unemployment what will stop them basing themselves in a low tax jurisdiction?. As you say the gains will flow to the holders of capital but what if they can insulate themselves from Labour?
With so many reliant on the state how does that tally with the push toward open borders?
The only way society would work IMO, is a citizens income for the bare necessities of life (nothing else would be affordable). Those with part time work on top would have a few luxuries and those in full time would live well.
JagLover said:
The only way society would work IMO, is a citizens income for the bare necessities of life (nothing else would be affordable). Those with part time work on top would have a few luxuries and those in full time would live well.
Two thing struck me about this,1, Peter Diamandis posted a very interesting article recently titled Why the Cost of Living Is Poised to Plummet in the Next 20 Years
2, Even the bottom socioeconomic class in the UK have a standard of living that the middle classes would have killed for two generations ago, poverty as my fathers generation knew it just doesn't exist anymore. If Apple/Sky/Nike don't adapt to provide goods and services that the majority of society can aspire to and afford, the free market will fill the vacuum with other companies that will do just that.
wiggy001 said:
Working in IT, I've implemented systems that could and arguably should have made dozens of people redundant, yet the companies concerned simply reallocate the people to something else they didn't realise they needed doing, rather than make them redundant. There's a reason for that...
This is exactly what has happened to me, working in banking and an operations team. Automation came in to effectively do my job, but rather than being made redundant I was moved into I.T directly to design and build more automation. We are now so over run with projects, upgrades to existing automation that we need more testers, analysts, project managers. The concept of being made redundant was not even an option.In the 50's companies had huge rooms full of people doing orders, accountancy, secretarial work etc.
Tens of thousands of people doing this day in day out.
Now they (or equivalent) are doing something else, hopefully more interesting..
Tens of thousands of people doing this day in day out.
Now they (or equivalent) are doing something else, hopefully more interesting..
Edited by RobDickinson on Thursday 4th August 08:20
RobDickinson said:
In the 50's companies had huge rooms full of people doing orders, accountancy, secretarial work etc.
Tens of thousands of people doing this day in day out.
[img]https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/564x/b4/0a/23/b40a2331160baece046d108ab53aabb0.jpg/img]
Now they (or equivalent) are doing something else, hopefully more interesting..
There are still Sales departments, Accounts Departments, Admin Departments, HR Departments, IT Departments, Customer Service Departments, PA's (in place of secretarys) etc etc etc.Tens of thousands of people doing this day in day out.
[img]https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/564x/b4/0a/23/b40a2331160baece046d108ab53aabb0.jpg/img]
Now they (or equivalent) are doing something else, hopefully more interesting..
There are even still some receptionists (my wife is one although this is a role that has diminished over the years) because some businesses still want a human voice at the end of the phone and human face in their reception area.
In reality nothing has really changed despite the forecasts in the late 70'S that Office jobs would disappear through automation. I'd wager that almost as many if not more people sit at a desk today as ever did back then.
RDMcG said:
In my view we are at a very early stage.
Indeed. Technology ousting human labour on this scale is completely unprecedented.https://azizonomics.com/2013/01/16/of-wages-and-ro...
Or perhaps not. People just go and do other things.
maffski said:
RDMcG said:
In my view we are at a very early stage.
Indeed. Technology ousting human labour on this scale is completely unprecedented.https://azizonomics.com/2013/01/16/of-wages-and-ro...
Or perhaps not. People just go and do other things.
We are talking of changes over the next 25.
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