The Robotic Future

[RustiePyles CPG]

As someone who works in the industrial automation and robotics industry I can tell you that robotics are not really taking away jobs per se. As robotics and automation get more sophisticated the low wage mindless task jobs are being replaced by highly skilled technical jobs. Robotics are complex and require a lot of maintenance and upkeep, but it takes a lot of training and experience to do these jobs. So if you don't want to be replaced by a robot learn how to work on or with robots.

The drive for robotics is really a catch 22, as the population expands exponentially the need for cheaper and more plentiful goods becomes evident. The robots can work for 24hrs a day 7 days a week without the need for breaks, health care, vacations, or even pay. This drives down the cost of goods and increases production.

But.... as the population expands the need for more low wage jobs also grows.

If you don't want the robots to take over all the low wage jobs then learn to live without the things the robots produce... Overly processed foods, consumer electronics, automobiles, cheap textiles, etc. I.e. don't be a hyper consumer.

I personally don't take part in most of these things though I do make my living from them, that should tell you something. People who work in the social media industry often do not use social media or let their kids use it, just as people who work in the poultry industry often will not eat processed poultry, etc.

 

[Jbrewer2002]

As someone who works in the industrial automation and robotics industry I can tell you that robotics are not really taking away jobs per se. As robotics and automation get more sophisticated the low wage mindless task jobs are being replaced by highly skilled technical jobs. Robotics are complex and require a lot of maintenance and upkeep, but it takes a lot of training and experience to do these jobs. So if you don't want to be replaced by a robot learn how to work on or with robots.

The drive for robotics is really a catch 22, as the population expands exponentially the need for cheaper and more plentiful goods becomes evident. The robots can work for 24hrs a day 7 days a week without the need for breaks, health care, vacations, or even pay. This drives down the cost of goods and increases production.

But.... as the population expands the need for more low wage jobs also grows.

If you don't want the robots to take over all the low wage jobs then learn to live without the things the robots produce... Overly processed foods, consumer electronics, automobiles, cheap textiles, etc. I.e. don't be a hyper consumer.

I personally don't take part in most of these things though I do make my living from them, that should tell you something. People who work in the social media industry often do not use social media or let their kids use it, just as people who work in the poultry industry often will not eat processed poultry, etc.

When I sell a robot the customer is always asking about ROI. The sad part is when I ask them what the alternative is they quickly say robots. There’s your ROI. Our company has made it possible to use robotics on low to medium qty runs. You can easily make 6 figure being a welder but no one wants to take the time to learn the trade. This can be said about almost all trades.

 

[Chasing Embers]

Masamune the 13th century blacksmith? Interesting choice for an automated dystopian archetype.

Shirow Masamune, creator of the Ghost in the Shell and Appleseed stories.

 

[Kobold]

Shirow Masamune, creator of the Ghost in the Shell and Appleseed stories.

And Tank Police!

 

[Zero]

When I sell a robot the customer is always asking about ROI. The sad part is when I ask them what the alternative is they quickly say robots. There’s your ROI. Our company has made it possible to use robotics on low to medium qty runs. You can easily make 6 figure being a welder but no one wants to take the time to learn the trade. This can be said about almost all trades.

How many robots do you sell in a day?

 

[kcghost]

I am too old to care. Let young whippersnappers figure it out.

 

[Davy]

As far as I'm concerned, they can take their robots, Ai and the works and shove 'em. We were doing just fine without that rubbish.

 

[mso489]

I have compassion for the Japanese in this regard. My dad served in the Pacific theater during WWII, but toward the end of his life had a Japanese couple as friends who invited him over for the Japanese tea ceremony and such. It was a moving healing of cultures at the personal level.

The Japanese have been haunted by dwindling population for decades. I hosted a Japanese TV crew at the environmental health institute where I worked as a media liaison. They were obsessed with work on endocrine disruptor chemicals that affect human reproduction.

They misunderstood our organizational culture and thought we were keeping science results secret from them, whereas our whole justification was to make verified research results public. But they were frantic to figure out the science behind this and, from our point of view, didn't behave very well. But I ended up understanding just how deeply concerned they were about lower fertility that afflicted their nation.

I grew up with the whole over-population concern exemplified by the baby boom in the West, but now we see the other side of the coin.

I think even in our own culture, vigorous child-rearing families depend a lot on economic circumstances. Many couples don't even try for kids until late in their years of fertility, and day care and pre-school are the cost of an extra mortgage, so kids become an extreme luxury like a yacht or a summer home.

 

[renfield]

Robots of the world unite!

 

[shanez]

I do enjoy these threads but try to avoid posting in them for whatever reason.

This is just a gross misunderstanding of the world we live in. The world is dynamic, not static. Everything, and I do mean everything, is in a state of flux.

I'm not at all sorry to say job's do not "disappear". They simply shift. Technological progress makes the world a better place. Unfortunately, good progress is typically disregarded in the world while misfortune is the king of hype.

Schadenfreude is very real and that's okay. We have the ability to choose empathy, logic, and defiance of to overcome it.

 

[georged]

D. I sell robots for a living ( mainly welding) but this job force scares me. We can’t even find people to program and maintain the robots.

Yup.

That's the wrong kind of work, you see. Much better to be an "influencer" or similar.

The catch? The uber-sophisticated and complex high-tech infrastructure that makes sitting at a keyboard for a living possible in the first place cannot survive without physical maintenance.

THEN, there's the physical infrastructure that supports daily life: roads, bridges, power plants, water plants, sewer systems, electrical distribution grids, and so on.

I literally saw a high school age kid the other day who couldn't use a screwdriver.

 

[chilllucky]

Shirow Masamune, creator of the Ghost in the Shell and Appleseed stories.

That makes a lot more sense, thanks for the clarification.

 

[Chasing Embers]

That makes a lot more sense, thanks for the clarification.

He did however adopt the pen name due to his love of the work of his native black smith.

 

[brian64]

Thomas Malthus was wrong when he wrote, and he's wrong now.
97% of people currently live in countries with birth rates below replacement level.
In most European countries, Canada, Japan, South Korea, Russia, etc., median ages are quickly rising.
The entire world's population could fit into the state of Texas with a population density of about 27,000 per squ. mile (NYC has a population density of about 29,000 per squ. mile).
Paul Ehrlich once warned that the US would face mass starvation by 1985. Today, we're awash in weight loss clinics and there are always diet books on our best seller lists.

Yes exactly...and it is the ill effects of overcrowding that the population control freaks use to sell their overpopulation dogma.

 

[Auxsender]

B. We have all these people in the world but yet we find ourselves needing to automate more and more because people don’t want to work.

People very much want to work. What people don’t want to do is work a full time job and still be poor. People don’t want to be as severely exploited as they’ve become through unregulated and grossly corrupt capitalism.

I know you understand that the rise of automation has absolutely nothing to do with the work ethic of the available workforce and everything to do with the insatiable lust for profit.

People are not lazy, people are tired of being taken advantage of.

 

[K.E. Powell]

People very much want to work. What people don’t want to do is work a full time job and still be poor. People don’t want to be as severely exploited as they’ve become through unregulated and grossly corrupt capitalism.

I know you understand that the rise of automation has absolutely nothing to do with the work ethic of the available workforce and everything to do with the insatiable lust for profit.

People are not lazy, people are tired of being taken advantage of.

There will always be a contingent of people who are indolent, even in a nation such as America where what Weber called the "Protestant work ethic" still remains a very powerful current in our culture.

That being said, I agree with you entirely. This whole notion that people don't want to work is asinine. The unemployment rate in the U.S. is at its lowest point since the 1960s. The welfare safety net in this country, or rather what passes for such, is at best a sieve with holes large enough to leave entire generations of working class poor behind (especially those who are black or brown). Therefore, to not work is to condemn oneself to poverty, if not worse. That is something only a comparative small handful are willing to accept fully.

In my own neck of the woods, I find myself hearing lamentations about the collapse of the work ethic all the time, especially from the older generations. The breakroom at my job is filled with such discussions, often by men who are in positions that make it so they never have to work more 40 hours a week. They complain about younger people not willing to work, even as the younger people under their supervision work multiple 12 and 16 hours shifts a week, and the ones who do leave typically do so because they find more gainful employment elsewhere. To be sure, we often are stuck with lazy and stupid employees, but it wasn't always so. We get what we pay for, as it were.

 

[chilllucky]

I went back to school in my mid 40's to learn to use the robots that were going to "take my job away" someday. In just the few years I've been doing it some of the hard-won software knowledge I struggle to gain has already been made obsolete. The pace of change is just relentless.

At our machine shop, we have to buy robots because 1. We can't find enough qualified help to run a second shift. 2. Having said robots feeding the machines "unattended" overnight is the only way to get enough productive time out of the them to justify their 6-7 figure initial costs.

 

[cersono]

40 or 30 years ago we phantacized of the future robotized world as of the place where robots serve the people and expand immensely the abilities of the man.
The real life experience of the last 10 or 5 years convinces that the robots are employed rather for controlling the people and expand immensely the possibilities of the tiny minority hungry for the total power over the mankind.
If the luddite approach to the "progress" has ever been right, it's now.