Automate or perish
July 9, 2012 | Source: Technology Review
Robots made by Kiva Systems move product shelves on a warehouse floor. Amazon bought the company earlier this year in a step toward automating its distribution system and reducing labor costs (credit: Kiva Systems)
Successful businesses will be those that optimize the mix of humans, robots, and algorithms, says Christopher Steiner in Automate This, a book due out next month.
Today, automated trading bots account for nearly three-quarters of U.S. equity trading by volume. Trading houses plow millions into fiber optics and microwave dishes so their algorithms can send trades a millisecond faster than the next guys’.
This month’s Technology Review business report looks at what it takes to succeed at the cutting edge of automation.
As the MIT economist David Autor has argued, the job market is being “hollowed out.” High-wage, high-skill employment is still being created — and so are many poorly compensated service industry jobs for food preparers, home care aides, and others. It’s the jobs in the middle that are disappearing: certain clerical, sales, and administrative jobs and some on factory floors.
Any work that is repetitive or fairly well structured is open to full or partial automation. Being human confers less and less of an advantage these days.
Some economists believe automation may explain why U.S. economic output has grown since 2007 while the number of jobs has fallen.
Some say what’s taking shape is a more productive symbiosis between man and machine — and successful businesses will be the ones that optimize it. Rodney Brooks, founder of ReThink Robotics in Boston, believes that a new type of general-purpose robot could reinvigorate manufacturing. The machines he’s building aren’t hardwired for any one job; they’re flexible, so many types of businesses could use them for a variety of production tasks.
Comments (17)
by Renzo Canepari
Don’t be too sure that the robots will start with the “unskilled” jobs.I believe that there will soon be an explosion in medical automation and robots.
A few weeks ago this website had an article about a new surgical robot that costs only a fourth of the Da Vinci robot.
Recall also that–30 years ago– the robots that displaced the unskilled did not displace the minimum wage hamburger flippers. Those robots displaced well paid factory workers.
by John Goodrich
Everyone is missing the elephant in the room IMO.
I’ve seen predictions of exponential growth in AI coupled with technologies replacing most need for human labor by 2030.
Anyone who can understand, grasp, believe the Singularity type of exponential growth in lieu of the the intuitive and erroneous (IMO) linear type of flatline progression, even pushed off by a large number of years will see that this likely outcome is still relatively close.
When a large enough portion of the workforce is out of work, not because of economic slumps or seasonal lay-offs or shifting productions, but in a permanent fashion as they are replaced by ever smarter machines .
I think it no coincidence when one reliable source says that machines will reach human equivalent intelligence by 2029 or so and another reliable source says that there will be no jobs for humans by 2030..
At some indeterminate point just as a man who needs a shave becomes a man with a beard and like turns into love so too will mild unrest at some point and rather quickly become real revolution .
Think about it. Capitalism will function perfectly well without humans but under capitalism if most people are not working, they are not getting paid
If they are not getting paid and the government simply can’t raise enough taxes to provide for this huge chunk of people , what do you think is going to happen.
Automation will produce all the goods and services needed but no one will have the money to buy stuff including incidentals like food and heat because there are no more paychecks earned by working.
How do you fix that ? and you MUST fix that.
And those at the top of the economic ladder will allow their wealth to be nationalized only by prying it from their cold dead fingers m
by Vance
It seems to me that the majority thinks we are living inside a SimCity simulation. They continue to place some abstract economy above the lives of people. The economy becomes an end in itself. It’s reaching a point where it can produce goods and wealth without limit, but there will be no one left there to enjoy it. To me it’s self-evident that the current system is totally callous and backwards. Humans are not numbers. For a first step there really needs to be some system of credit, basic income/consumer tax to overcome this problem or otherwise I have totally lost my faith in humanity’s supposed intelligence.
by James
Total automation is key, including robotic consumers.
by DeBee Corley
There is an easy solution. Turn all robot development over to NASA.
by anthrobotic
Excerpt from Frank Tobe’s piece in February of this year:
The Logic Behind Bailing out the Auto Industry: Job Creation with Robots:
…the International Federation of Robotics predicted that robots will contribute 1 million new jobs in this decade and will save another 2 million jobs from going offshore. Their commissioned study reported that: “In world terms, three to five million of jobs would not exist if automation and robotics had not been developed to enable cost effective production of millions of electronic products, from phones to playstations.”
So like, you know, that.
(via Singularity Hub: http://goo.gl/2gwxp)
Reno J. Tibke
http://www.anthrobotic.com
by err...
It’s time for a basic income guarantee…
by trebaryar
Doesn’t seem too bright to to allow millions of low-skilled immigrants, legal or illegal into the country just as their jobs are disappearing and their options become welfare or criminal activity.
by Bri
I like when they tell you to get a degree in a better paying field. Four years at this rate of change and everything you’ve learned has become moot.four years from now a robot will learn all you’ve struggled to learn in an instant! Our economy runs on labor. We use various”tools” to leverage that. Microsoft is a tool of Bill Gates. He’s worth 20 billion dollars because, he’s got a big tool(pun intended) if he spent 20 thousand a day, since Jesus was doing his thing, he’d have a few hundred years to go. There is a culture of gluttony. Bill is rather generous. He has plowed back a lot into noble causes, but the problem remains. Our economy is driven by consumption. He can’t consume all his money, but if he gave it to the lower ranks, they would spend all of it. Then he’d make back more money there are many ways to go about this. Taxes is like armed robbery. It hurts! Stocks, pensions, any system where you become an owner, like Bill, is more effective. Reducing upper level pay structures in companies would allow more money to the average workers. Unfortunately these concepts as they stand are untenable. That big pay day is a driving incentive. Not everybody can have his house, or life style! It’s easy to spend money that you don’t have, by this I mean, how much can be taken out of a pension system before it goes bust? These are the forces that keep companies strong. Watch the movie Born Rich to clearly see the negative effects of excess. We are in for a bumpy ride! Like an ice skater spinning on axis, as the arms pull in, the rotations go faster. As these jobs are lost, people will have less income. The cost of hoods will have to deflate. It’s all a relative value, based on what you can pay. Two factors are holding back this spiraling to a relative slow speed. Robots can’t think on their own yet, and they are tethered to power sources. Once robots have enough juice to funtion autonomously, and can compete mentally, just kiss all jobs goodbye they easily beat our best at everything! Could easily happen within the next twenty to thirty years, maybe sooner.
by Bri
Your suffering under the delusion that our elected official are wise, they’re connected. Lots of greed everywhere! You think they care that they’ll live in cramped impoverished conditions. How else are we to compete with China. Little bit o black in the white, little bit o white in the black. Don’t mind me, it’s just that Yin and yang thing again. See it as a whole, or polarize it. Just remember when you polarize it, it’s like being in a revolving door. The more you push, the more the other side rushes in!
by DrDubious
So when do we start getting a weeks wages for an 8-hour week, as was predicted thirty years ago?
The 99% will be living like the Democratic Republic of the Congo unless we make some change to our economic system.
by Chrispium
You’re absolutely right there. In the industrialized world we have seen, for the last 2 or 3 decades, a rise in CEO salaries that far outpaces any other salaries. Right now the 1% is concentrating wealth like never seen before in history, while all the time doing everything to describe the labor unions as fat-cats. People need to wake up and understand that government and unions are the only ones to protect the working classes.
by Gorden Russell
“Some economists believe automation may explain why U.S. economic output has grown since 2007 while the number of jobs has fallen.”
Oh? D’ya think?
by Gorden Russell
I’ve run out of things to say about this.
by Bri
As soon as they make autonimus robots, that can navigate their surroundings, like googles car. Identifying and understanding objects, and solve that energy issue, then all the low end jobs will go. As soon as they figure out the basic problem solving AI type circuit, then all the upper level jobs will go. I love how they say in the article that robotics may be the reason productivity is increasing! Do ya think. Here I thought it was aliens at night. ( not the illegal kind!).
by Marcos Marin
Are you parroting the parrot Mr. Russel? :-)
Who will buy the products and thus fund increased productivity from automation? Think about it.
by Gorden Russell
Marcos…robots don’t spend money. They increase productivity so that the 1% get increased bonuses.