If robots do most jobs how does man produce value?
Posted by terrycan 8 years ago to Technology
I found this video interesting and disturbing. If robots do the majority of jobs. How does man produce value? My biggest fear would be government deciding where the resources were used. Humans may quickly become helpless without robots to do their basic needs. Normally I embrace and become excited about new technology. How do my fellow Gulchers feel about this?
And what about all of the converses, robot hands, bionic implants, even eye glasses and hearing aids, all "robots" - are they taking away work from human helpers who read or listen for you?
I would have more to say, but I have to go shopping, and gratefully, I do not need to literally "run to the store" my robotic "horseless carriage" is waiting.
When we think of robots, we often think only of machines that walk around. But a robot is just a small subset of automated equipment, which is really nearly everywhere now. Imagine how much things would cost if grocery stores had to abandon bar codes and go back to having to look up the price of each thing at the checkout countr...
Imagine how nice it would be for the robot to review available health care plans, look at my medical records, estimate what services I might need in the next year, and figure out which plan would be cheapest and best. It would need to have access to medical records from the past couple of years, figure out what my costs would have been with a new plan for this year, and proposing what the best deal would be.
The cost of getting humans to do all that would be too high. I lose the National Car Rental ad where they guy talks about all he can do "without having to talk with a human"- I loved that ad until they took it off (political correctness I suppose).
Rather than machine intelligence being an isolated element of society in opposition to humans, it seems to be headed in the direction of a fused human/machine social structure. The next hundred years will be a kind of revolution, but not a repeat of the industrial revolution this presenter envisions.
interesting question to me is, will there be more or less social and economic stratification after this evolution?
who makes the machines that make the parts for the robots?
who makes the machines that make the machines that make the parts for the robots?
who gets the materials out of the ground necessary to make the parts for the machines that make the parts for the machines that make the parts for the robots?
man would be the answer however the way the government is doing things men will not be available to do any work because they will be taken care of by the government or so they think.
The stark reality is that things are winding down at a slow pace and the government will have accomplished their objective which is to make us all equal.
Ayn Rand related a comment from an actress who went to russia I believe in the 50's who said everybody was equally shabby. That my fellow Americans is the direction we are heading in.
So don't fret over a new robot here and there they to will come to a halt when the power is turned off.
So with your first 3 questions within the reach of existing technology, lets continue on... Who gets the material out of the ground? Much of that work is already dont by 'mechanical muscle' as described in the video... and with self driving cars being what they are, how long till a whole mining operation can be run by a couple of mechanics that just keep the machines running, and the machines do all the production?
And to your last point, when the machines are doing the work, and collecting the raw materials, and processing it, and delivering it, and running the power plant.... who is it that would be able, or even know how to turn off the power?
Mr Grey, the commenter in the video (his entire video collection is amazing) is not talking about something that is going to happen tomorrow, rather something that will happen, and already is happening one job at a time. I think the only question now is timeline and magnitude of the end point.
People had to work from sun up to sun down, and even beyond with light sources just to eat prior to the industrial revolution.
Eventually the industrial revolution lead to the 40 hour work week after some testing by Henry Ford who determined it provided better results.
This in turn resulted in more time for education and leisure. For some people a bit more of the later and not enough spent on the earlier.
Right now I plan some time for my team to "Sharpen the saw" allowing for 1 in 8 hours of work to be spent on educating one self on a new technology or process and then sharing what you learn with the team. This has effectively shortened the work day to 7 hours, but with a requirement to educate self for 1 hour a day.
Technology is going to move faster in a robotic world, the result will be more time requirement for learning and less for doing out of the jobs that are still around, and the new ones that come up.
This trend is 100 years in the making so far, I do not see it changing but rather accelerating. It may evolve to where 2 hours of each day are spent doing the productive work and 8 hours keeping up with the new tech, mathematics, engineering, physics...
I see the division between those who use there mind and those who will not growing, but otherwise I see plenty of work coming for those who wish to think.
Without work, how will we get the money to buy the fruit? Obviously we don't need it, we just pick it. We have no one to pay for the fruit.
Imagine, now, a world where the robots make everything we want, the robots make the robots. Some humans made the robots a long time ago but now no one does anymore. What do we need to pay them for the things they make?
Some things, like land, the robots can't make there is a limited quantity that has to be shared, but most other things no human has to work to create, so do we still pay for it?
We "pay" for them all with cinema, entertainment, and music as well as the electronic media that deliver them. Them, and the roads, the jet aircraft (robotic with two humans for failsafes), and, of course, all of our computers that let us chat like this.
:)
I'm not saying a future where no one works makes any sense, and like you say, the inability of people to pay for the goods and services is likely to be the limiting factor in how many jobs the machines can ultimately take over. (never minding a possible future where the machines have gotten to the point of not needing or wanting our money, and instead do what they do for their 'own enjoyment')
On your next point, I never gave opinion on if the world would be better one way or the other. Reread what I wrote, it isn't in there at all. Truth is that I personally feel the opposite of what you stated of me.
I do agree that you are sorry, but not for the reason you claim. I'll go ahead and use my vision of the future that you fail to recognize to continue to invent said future, as I have been doing for decades.
I frequently think about the coming "age of plenty" where pretty much everything that humans need to live, all food, clothing, shelter and various products are produced without the need for human labor. If human labor is no longer a necessity, is it still a virtue?
And what does the economic system look like then. Do we embrace a form of universal income where everyone gets a fund that they can use to buy things? If we don't need the labor to have the products there is no need to require it to get them.
Some will still do creative tasks, but the vast majority of the population works on jobs that are only fulfilling in that they allow one to earn a living. We will not all become painters and musicians. Will a large percentage of the population become video game addicts? In Star Trek, I wondered why anyone would leave the holodeck.
I don't know what the economics of this looks like. I don't want a centrally controlled economy, even if money is sufficiently common that no one wants for the necessities of life, there will still be the market forces of what people choose to purchase to guide where to develop productivity.
Those that cannot survive....die.
And, where do you get the bread to toast?
My comments about hunter gatherers was in response to the statement: "Humans may quickly become helpless without robots to do their basic needs." Practically we are relatively helpless without the technical infrastructure we live in. And keep in mind that Jan and I participate in a medieval recreation group and know people who can sheer a sheep and make a shawl from it. Of course they buy the sheers.
My point, though, is related to work that people can do, particularly in the software area. One person can create a program that the entire world can use. This is a level of effort leverage that is unprecedented in human history. It does limit the number of people who get to play in a particular sandbox.
As you say, there's lots of sand.
A down side would be government rationing of resources.
I mean, 100 years ago, we had phones, cameras (and photo albums to share), calendars, notepads, compasses, maps, weather reports, stock market tickers, books, newspapers, and games. ... but they did not all fit in your hand at the same time. Who saw that coming?
And the Rolling Stones playing in Cuba. 100 years ago, it was common to learn a musical instrument, rich or poor or in the middle, the piano in the parlor was ubiquitous. Other instruments were also encouraged. They have not gone away, but we have "robot musical instruments" now - YouTube and Pandora and MySpace; CD players, tapes, even vinyl for aficiandos - on the shoulders of FM Stereo in portable radios, even in radios in automobiles.
Television was theoretically possible in the 1890s. No one (few) predicted the current state. Among the "few" was socialist Edward Bellany's Looking Backward. It is a heck of a read...
Cinema... Indies!
But look what has not been mechanized. We may never have robot barbers and beauticians. I have all kinds of little tools for my grooming, including a cute electric clipper to keep my "high and tight" within specifications at drill. But I still goto the barber. Social grooming runs pretty deep. Even in Asimov's "Robot" stories, one of the characters on a Spacer world is a "stylist."
My favorite example: White-Out - invented by a freelance typist.
You never know what the future will bring.
They are driving the demand for elder care robots.
If we no longer need to make drawings on the computer by defining simple lines and circles, we can focus on animation. If we make animation easier then we can focus or realistic movement. If we make that easier we can focus on 3D.
This video is Ludditism.
Can you build a society around each of 9 billion people being like Howard Roark?
If AS doesn't say that a small number of people makes things happen then the idea of them separating themselves from the rest of humanity becomes nonsense. The people who don't go to the Gulch would just keep creating things and not notice them missing.
The US was not just populated with people of extraordinary skills, it was that the system allowed these people to benefit from their creativity. As a result the US was the most inventive and therefore the richest country in the history of the world.
You have confused cause and effect in AS.
There is always more work to be done. It doesn't get done with minimum wages, rules and regs, welfare, or any other edict of our Rulers.
One may ask the same question about automobiles and horses.
What are 'the majority jobs'?
The dropping of prepositions along with forms of 'to be' seems to be becoming common in this era of tweeting.
Sorry for being pedantic about it but I am old and still remember some English lessons from late 1940's.
The post was about whether man produces value. Values exist only in minds and not in products. Prices will vary depend upon the value judgments of individuals. Of Course Rand defined a noun 'value' as something that one acts to gain and or keep, which is a much wider concept which includes both tangible and intangible aspects of objective reality. But it remains that a value is a measurement in individual minds.
It would seem that for the rest of us, we might have to redefine what it is to create value most of which might be merely from our minds.
I don't see, as many propose that there would be a "Complete" take over by robots..."We" in a sense, would still be their "Gods".
Centuries later, the robots wake him up after having built a galaxy-wide system of machines searching until they found a primitive people and guided them until they were biologically similar and had a compatible society. They then present him with the companion he asked for.
You can go a long way on a relatively small amount of "human intention" if it's sufficiently broad.
("Again, so many stories that illustrate how terrible people are at giving machines instructions.")
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fw5C...
http://necessaryfacts.blogspot.com/20...
The guy in the video was wrong about one small fact: ASCII codes do not go back to the 1980s. It goes back to 1963. Over fifty years we have been building on that -- and it was, in fact, built on the 1-inch 5-hole paper tape of teletype machines invented by Emile Baudot in 1870 and patented in 1874. -- and it was based on a cipher from Sir Francis Bacon.
("Tell me," asked the Black Adder, "is the Renaissance just something that happened to other people?")
BASIC was invented for schools in 1964, COBOL for business in 1959, FORTRAN for science in 1953. The first Assembler dates to 1949.
We have been communicating to machines for over 65 years.
Your coffee maker, your stove... it is not the buttons you push, but the programming within that allow that to happen.
I must ask again: Do you not know how to program a computer?
but not completely provided. . robots will always, I do
hope, require masters who prescribe their actions.
it will be a week or two before they "evolve" into value-
defining beings competing with us as "owners" of real
estate and voters in the future of the world(s). . and
for those who don't manage robots, there are zillions
of creative value-producing endeavors::: culinary art,
music, architecture and engineering, research, fashion,
sports, and above them all, philosophy. . what, me worry? -- j
p.s. enjoy! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-diB...
.
My problem with this concept is the ability of the average person to create value in this scenario. I can see this taking us further into socialism and unsustainable welfare if we don't take steps to limit population in some manner.
This would go like Japan and Taiwan wiping out fat, lazy, unions with narcoleptic management in the US. If we'd listened to Deming, we'd have washed the floor with Japan; however...
A majority of people I've met are not going to "branch out and integrate" anything useful. Darwin may step in and we'll find those that do, but none...none...without grave incentives.
Google cars beat humans all day long, and they have only been driving 3 years, with one accident to their fault (I think). I get the Star Trek arguments and Asimov Laws, but Azimov's Laws work, and computers are not infinitely simpler than Vulcans, and people are not as cool as we'd like to think. Half of them would be 400 lbs and completely ignorant if fed well and taken care of.
Look the tech which is not perfect and has still had more accidents that the average person, (I.m sure they'll get better) will be good for some folk. I on the other hand and hopefully others in the future as well, prefer to do it ourselves. That skill is an important human exercise for one well rounded. I personally do not want some machine making choices for me, I am in charge of my own life and my own actions, otherwise there is no point in being alive or being human.
No one is suggesting robots make your decisions, but they have and will continue to erode menial labor, because like all machines over the last 200 years, they have proven to increase production, efficiency, quality and reliability against hand labor. Printing press (Luddite), steam engine, gas engine, diesel engine, electric motor/generator, turbine, telephone, computer...robot. The problem now is that technology has gotten to the point that some people can not meaningfully contribute. Now, not the future. None of this is thinking...yet.
Here is the only Google car accident attributed to the Google car:
http://www.wired.com/2016/02/googles-...
Eight of 12 total accidents have been someone simply driving into the back of the Google car.
The Google 2016 metric is one accident at fault in 1.4M miles of driving, with no injury. The 1990 human average is 10/million miles, with 2/10 involving fatalities. Robot are presently beating a 25 year old human statistic by 10:1 or 2:0 depending on one's interest in property damage or injury. (I can't find current statistics, and wonder if someone has obfuscated them).
If they drive like Asimov's robots are to behave, you won't have to predict them. You can just drive around them.
I'm sure they'll get better too. Uber, Google and others are investing heavily in it, and the complainers will be the unions. Just like the overpriced cab drivers and ridiculous medallion holders do with Uber now.
James Taggert would probably defend the needs of the cab drivers against driverless cars over the safety and costs to riders. I for one support Dagney and Hank in leading Uber and Google to release the rest of us from this needless burden.
I've been around a lot of electronics and there are times that they do the strangest things for no apparent reason...No thanks.
I only have manual transmission cars that turn and go like hell. Two six speeds and one five speed. Can't wait to drive the new Focus RS on April 18th.
In the meantime they are already safer than humans and will become much better in the next few years, the advance is amazing. You will be safer driving your own car with them out there -- as long as you remember that the car in front of you may stop when the light turns yellow.
And, I really like the idea of being able to read, watch TV or even sleep while my car gets me where I want to be.
Not everyone will realize that there is stuff they don't know...everyone by nature has a different catalyst that produces that "Ah Ha moment.
The problem with robots is we have to deal with the people who can not contribute as (not when) continue to take menial jobs away. Progressives would have us pay for these people to exist, with respect, and propagate many more in their spare time. The other end of the spectrum would have them starve.
The US is already here. Here now. We have an unsustainable service economy because the producers can only make what they design elsewhere, and the menial laborers are encouraged to compare their salaries and standard of living against the producers, not the foreign laborers. This is simple, and already failed. Stratification of lazy egos can not be reflected in their standard of living.
You see menial trash I see those who don't quit in the face of overwhelming adversity they are worth a hundred of the trash of the left.
They should be honored. And so should Walmart for ensuring they can recover part of what was stolen from them with dignity by the Clintons, the Sanders and the Trumps of the world.
Second, I do not see hard working menial laborers as trash! Absolutely not! I value hard work and craftsmanship. My earlier comments are not about those people, and "Walmart people" refers to people shopping there, not working there.
These comments are about those not working, those that are not hard workers, those that lack the skills and initiative for even basic value creation. They are everywhere. Maybe they can be taught/trained, which is better than welfare, but a cost no less. However, as machines (including robots) take become more capable (a 200 year trend well in its maturity), these people will have less to do. Anything else is economically unsustainable, and to become angry at this or resist it is the absolute definition of a Luddite (a matter of fact, not a jab).
These people either need to raise their game or be supported by society or a combination. Nature's version is this is obvious and more harsh. There is no alternative.
This is not a future trend. It has already happened. Why is there practically no manufacturing in the US? Where there is, what is the ratio of machine labor to hand labor - very high!. Where is the hand labor prevalent? China, Vietnam, , Mexico, Malaysia, etc. Why, because the standard of living there keeps wages low enough that investing in robotics is a net loss. What I find so ridiculous about this is that the people and unions whose jobs have been outsourced rail at the system, while shopping at Walmart, specifically supporting the foreign supply of cheap labor. The irony is astonishing! These people are NOT the ones "wallet voting" to keep jobs in the USA. They are the first ones shopping at Harbor Freight for tools.
Robots are not a new concept. They are a now practical, obvious next step in a hundreds year old trend beginning at the latest with the industrial revolution.
There are people who can not readily produce value in such a system, by a combination of skills, talent, intelligence and initiative.
These people can either be supported by welfare or retrained/raise their game.
This is the first order part where politics (Clintons, Saunders, etc) play in. Even our ridiculous corporate tax is not responsible for the manufacturing transition. The labor cost ratio is ten times the tax rate. Taxes, tariffs, and trade agreements are second order at best.
Fundamentally we need more quality people, and less overall people, and there is no feedback system to control this in the US. There is a strong one in Africa.
Obama wants a pay raise for his retirement check? Let the son of bitch take the same hit as the rest of us.