[Pops]

I don't have confidence in automation per se - if confidence means trust that is. I have confidence that capital will chase technology as long as it increases profit by replacing humans. Tech for it's own sake is a consumer motivation not a capitalist one.

Moore's law is about more transistors on a single chip. I think miniaturization is great for the iWatch and whatever consumer products but multitasking across multiple processors doesn't require that does it? The portion of my brain that tells my fingers which keys to tap isn't the part that decides what word to communicate and that part isn't the part that comes up with the reason for the communication.

And really, few jobs require a total human to perform, so replacing humans in total is not required to perform most jobs.

[Pops]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('radon1', 'T')his requires two things: population surplus outside the boundaries of the financial economy ("China's peasantry"), and resources which are sufficient, in marginal terms, to provide for accommodation of this surplus within these boundaries ("Siberian riches").

[Pops]

The left/right bit was bull but it doesn't take my whole body or brain to move my typing finger and that is what a robot is, a replacement for my typing finger.

Likewise, "AI" as in a replacement for an entire human mind is not required either. There is no need to replicate everything I do to replace "part" of what I do - automatically kerning and leading a block of text for example or writing a sports or weather article.

[radon1]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Pops', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('radon1', 'T')his requires two things: population surplus outside the boundaries of the financial economy ("China's peasantry"), and resources which are sufficient, in marginal terms, to provide for accommodation of this surplus within these boundaries ("Siberian riches").

[Pops]

Come on Pete, are you saying that since AI/bots haven't replicated humans in their entirety, that there are no robots or automation putting humans out of work?

LOL

[Pops]

This is the first thing that popped into my head...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3UxZDJ1HiPE

I hadn't seen this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJZ2V5c8WaM

[Keith_McClary]

On Physorg today:
Robots unlikely to take big bites out of employment, expert says$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'A') new viral video titled "Humans Need Not Apply," which has garnered more than 2 million YouTube views in just over two weeks, says that the new robots will be smart enough to take jobs even in occupations normally thought of as being incompatible with automation.
But David Hummels, a professor of economics at Purdue University, says humans still have a unique advantage that machines may never be able to emulate: our ability to respond to other humans.
...
"One of the fundamental problems with the video and similar books and articles is that they claim that innovation is getting faster and faster, and cheaper and cheaper, and that we're going to lose the ability to control it," Hummels says. "That's just not consistent with any historical evidence we have. When there are large breakthroughs, like electrification or computers, you see initial waves of innovation to take advantage of these fundamental technologies. When you're caught up in it, that wave looks unstoppable. But it eventually recedes."

[radon1]

Overall, it looks like AI is viewed, basically, as something that works for free, i.e. does not need any motivation. Meaning, that it does not need money for its work. This would make money meaningless and capitalism obsolete. This kind of change - such a transition to AI's role as means of production - would have to be qualitative, revolutionary, abrupt, and one-off; rather than evolutionary and gradual.

Indeed, if you need a salaried worker to produce a robot, you need to get this salaried worker from somewhere. Presumably, take him from another production line where he produces other goods. But this would lead to a deficit of those goods, because the worker no longer produces them (this is the trap in which the Soviet Union arrived late in its life). As in a free market economy you cannot take the worker from a production line and transfer to another production line by way of a directive and thus lose other profitable production, you would have to find this worker elsewhere, i.e. take a subsistence peasant from outside the system and train him to become a worker. If this peasant agrees to work for less per hour than the existing workers - which has been the case so far in practice - then such expansion of the system is profitable for the entrepreneur (capitalist), and he will implement the automation (or indeed any other similar act of the division of labor).

Formally, a state of equilibrium of a closed economic system should be described, presumably, by an n-dimensional system of linear equations , where n is the number of economic agents (wage earners and profit earners), and the condition of equilibrium would, broadly, be described as production=consumption. This system would have a single solution - a formal equivalent of the assertion that removal of a worker from a production line would lead to a deficit (non-equilibrium).

Introduction of the peasant from outside will make the system of equations n+1 dimensional, and thus will modify its solution and the state of equilibrium in a non-contradictory manner.

[MD]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('pstarr', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Pops', 'C')ome on Pete, are you saying that since AI/bots haven't replicated humans in their entirety, that there are no robots or automation putting humans out of work?

LOL

[MD]

Automation has roughly followed Moore's Law since around 1850, or maybe a little earlier.

It got a real kick in the curve when transistors came on the scene sixty years ago.

And the whole damn thing fueled by baked algae cookies.

Too bad the sugar rush is about to dissolve into reality.

[MD]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3D_printing
http://www.newport.com/Hexapod-6-Axis-P ... /info.aspx
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanorobotics

[Pops]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('radon1', 'I')ndeed, if you need a salaried worker to produce a robot, you need to get this salaried worker from somewhere.

[radon1]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Pops', '
')All you need are robots to make the robots.

[Pops]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('radon1', 'B')ecause a situation where salaried labor is needed at any single place ...
... will be leading to more people employed by the system.

[KaiserJeep]

Yes, automation has spread throughout America. I have been to many "lights out" factories. Our fault tolerant, online transaction processing computers are used as the top tier supervisory machines in everything from nuclear power plants to large food warehouses.

Earlier I mentioned John Deere's Horicon Works, a large automated factory that makes lawn tractors. I have NO IDEA how many people were originally employed, but my guess is that the remaining employees comprise no more than 10% of the original workforce. The red brick building with hundreds of windows blacked out is 100+ years old and filled with robots, fabrication machinery, and automated assembly lines.

I once made a quality control visit to one of our larger customers, a huge food warehouse in the middle of Central Illinois. Semi-trailer trucks and railroad trains delivered bulk groceries to one side, unloading by pallet-loads. The computers were overhead in a chilled room danging under the roof, along with a few dozen people pushing paper. Human forklift operators (radio dispatched by computer) delivered and racked pallets. Pallets were delivered to staging areas where the individual cases were placed on conveyors. Automated conveyors transported the cases to other staging areas for assembly into store-specific pallets of assorted groceries. Human forklift operators loaded the trucks as they pulled up to the specific dock (radio dispatched as they approached the building). Trucks came, were loaded, and left in less than 15 minutes, with the exact food order placed less than two hours before by an individual grocery store. There was a crew of 40-odd forklift operators and 10 repairmen who had replaced 700+ people when the warehouse automated.

A nuclear power plant in a South-Eastern state uses our computers to manage a 4-unit reactor complex. All of the written operator manuals are online, and the thousands of sensors in the plant are connected to huge video displays for each reactor. Live operators manage the reactors - our machines guide them in making decisions, displaying status for reactors/turbines/cooling systems, and highlight dangerous conditions for human attention. There was an 80+ headcount reduction in operating crew from when the first two reactors went operational 37+ years ago.

The FAA uses our computers in a fault tolerant network that includes hundreds of small private and public airports and individual private airstrips throughout the USA. Flight plans are filed online from PCs, tablets, and other networked mobile devices, and the network forwards these to the destination and flags it for human attention if the flight plan is not closed out on time. This is an example of a system and application enabled by the technology, it does the work of hundreds of clerks and supervisory staff, and delivers a level of safety for private pilots that rivals the larger airports with Air Traffic Controllers. However it did not directly replace humans, the application could not be economically performed before the system was created.

The Las Vegas Metro Police use our computer systems to provide remote encrypted access to multiple law enforcement databases and networks, a policeman in a squad car on patrol essentially has all the tools and access as he would from a desk at the station, and is dispatched where needed by a video transaction that appears on his display, along with an optimized suggested route that minimizes traffic delays. This is an example of a system that did not replace jobs, it enabled additional productivity by the same number of administrative staff, now handling multiples of the original call volumes, while new headcounts are used for public-facing officers in squad cars.

These robots and other machines are NOT FREE. They simply cost less than human labor. But our premium-priced fault tolerant computers are an example of general purpose machinery that can be adapted to a huge variety of purposes by the peripherals attached (robots, automatic teller machines, over-the-air digital radios, etc.) plus the programming provided, to a huge variety of tasks.

Inevitably, as robots replace humans, government revenues based upon earned incomes decline. Lower human employments and very real rising unemployment numbers squeeze government budgets at all levels, while creating human misery and crime in our cities.

Now as oil reserves are depleted, energy will cost more, and all of the food and goods enabled by cheap energy will cost more. With more people dependent upon government checks - whether outright handouts or "earned" benefits such as Social Security - there is misery in our future, and perhaps, a revolution.

Revolutions do not always involve combat, either. We are after all, talking about the trailing edge of the Industrial Revolution, which has been ongoing for 400+ years. It was in fact around 1607 when disgruntled French peasants fed their wooden shoes (sabots) into the automated water-driven wooden loom machinery that had displaced hand weavers. It makes the US War in Afghanistan (13 years) seem brief, and the longest human conflict (Burma's Forty Year War) does not begin to compare.

But the robots themselves are not free. Nor is the energy to run a robotic factory - and transport and distribute the completed goods, free. The truck driver's job is in jeopardy, however.

[Pops]

Really good examples of the post-industrial revolution where machines are already taking over the middle and upper management "thinking" duties.

I don't think we'll get far enough down that road for the machines to actually take over. Unless the singularity happens in the next 10 years and puts humans out in the cold completely, LOL.

I think PO will put the kibosh on the economy to such an extent that consumption will fall precipitously reducing labor cost
Or if oil is still on a plateau at current levels it will be because the price has risen fairly dramatically (or the economy has fallen precipitously) and of course we'll be paying so much to get enough energy to just keep the ball rolling that the economy will fall even more precipitously.
Or if the current unexplained fall in the work force (2% is explained by recession and retirement but the final 1% isn't) begins accelerating after the central banks begin to dial back the easy money and folks get the idea that that bots are at fault (or don't care) and break out the pitchforks ...

The upshot of course is human labor becomes cheaper and cheaper, and fossil energy becomes expensiver and expensiver, until at some point you have the juncture of PO and Automation where we're back to human muscle being in direct competition with machine muscle.