The Siren Song of the Robot

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41

Hi,


Anyway, to relate this to your story here, this really does look more than a buzzword, and the more we dig into it and talk to the software (and hardware vendors), this stuff looks real.  My team looked at me the other day and simply said, you know, if this works and does what it says, we are all out of work.

I don't know enough (any, really) electrical engineering to render an opinion on that. But in the article to which Chris linked in his earlier comments, there was a meter reader making $67,000 who was worried about his job. My reactions were: 1) $67,000 a year for a meter reader!, and 2) he was right to be worried, because smart meters are definitely the future of electrical meters. In fact, they are the present. Another thing I can think of is something Ray Kurzweil wrote somewhere (I've read so much of his stuff, I couldn't say which book it was). He made the point that the number of Internet connections had been doubling every three years (or whatever, I forget and am too lazy to look up the details). But if the number of Internet connections goes from 1000 to 2000 in 3 years, nobody notices. Or even 200,000 to 400,000 in 3 years. But when they go from 10,000,000 to 20,000,000 in 3 years, or 50 million to 100 million, everyone is surprised at this "new" thing. That's the incredible power of exponential growth. All of the sudden....boom! It's a really big thing. Even though it was doubling regularly for a long time, and nobody noticed it. In the long run (and I'm only talking 30-50 years) it seems like computers/robots will be able to do every job that a flesh-and-blood human can do. According to the separate calculations of Ray Kurzweil and Hans Moravec, we are only about a decade away from a computer capable of performing the same number of calculations per second (roughly 0.5 to 20 petaflops) costing $1000. I expect to see robots everywhere in the decades that follow that. 
42

It's astounding how our society continues to search for new systems to maintain our old premises that are not working, and never thinks to "look around" at what's happening…   It seems our environment is being perverse, as if attacking our main purposes somehow.  
If you have a glance at the natural world we live in occasionally, perhaps the most perfect certainty in nature you come across is that growth is both a totally necessary and completely natural system, of multiplying change, that invariably comes to violate its own premises.  That's its natural purpose, in its role of getting things started.   So… throughout nature, after its start-up phase of explosive development, done by systematically reinvesting its profits in multiplying it's processes, any new environmental system needs to look for something else to do with them.  

In nature it's just like in business, once growth takes you to saturating a market or inviting competitors to crowd in, then you better spend your profits securing the niche and NOT on a blow-out of wasteful spending trying to keep enlarging your niche by ever larger steps as before…

http://synapse9.com/signals

43

Great comments!
Mark, I hope I don't seem completely on the other side of you opinions. My business and teaching deal a lot with technology, which in the end is what any robot is. So I appreciate it as much as I fear it. Although I've read some of Kurzweil, I'm sure I haven't done as much reading as you have. I have used some of his technologies. I'll try to read more of him in the near future.  You might read some sociologists' views on technology and its implications. There are plenty of books out there. Just a thought.

RnCarl, great posts. Lol How many times have we made that call to customer service only to get stuck in the circular pattern of the computer trying to send our question to the appropriate canned answer… only to have us throw the phone against the wall? Also enjoyed your post on putting robots into the context of energy!!

Wendy, yes!, with the rate of innovation increasing in speed, the built-in planned obsolences almost always has to be shorter to maximize profits. So our new stuff breaks down quicker forcing us to throw it on the exponentially rising global trash heap (okay some of it gets recycled). As RnCarl points out, the corporate board's main concern is maximizing profit…because it's mandated by law, well at least for publicly owned cos.

What's helpful to me in putting this into context is I try to remind myself that technology is really just a 'means to an end' as originally defined. Therefore all our 'systems' are a form of technology…the economy, government, education, hell we even look at nature as a technology, hence the term ecosystem. One of the big issues I now see in all of this is that as these systems get more complex, the implications of lock-in also become greater. For example, the binary structure of computer programs tends to isomorphically expand outward making our world and choices more binary. Many have written on this, so this not something new, but once you see it, it's hard to deny.

Funny experience I had on Thursday that relates indirectly to this. I went to a scoping meeting for the FERC (Fed. Energy Reg. Comm) relicensing of GDF Suez/First Light Generation's 5 major dam and pump storage facilities on the Connecticut River spanning from Turners Falls, MA up through Northern, VT. This is a 5 year licensing process to set regulations in the interest of the utility (notice I put them first), the public, and the environment for either the next 30 years or possibly 50 years depending on what licensure they are granted (50 YEARS??!). This is a HUGE energy company, one of the top 10 energy cos in the world, so the implications of this relicensure are huge. I had a chance to comment during the formal public comment. So little ol' me gets up there and starts asking some of the questions many of us on this site have been asking regarding the direction of energy. I asked them about EROEIs and the attempt to shift away from non-renewables, as well as many other questions. There were a lot of blank stares… not comforting. My one point that I tried to convey to FERC committee was that in a period of energy transition, where even the immediate future is up for grabs, that the license should be at the max 30 years in the interest of avoiding major system lock-in, but a shorter 20 year license would be more appropriate in light of this transition. They got my message, but the head of the committee also responded that a license less than 30 years would not be possible because of a law passed in 1934 that stated that it had to be either 30 or 50 years. I asked if the law could be changed in light of current global situation. Yes, but only an act of congress could change it, laughter erupts, so the answer is NO. The irony is that the system lock-in I was asking to avoid had already been created in 1934. Some got it, others didn't.

Peace!

44

I'm a physicist, of natural systems, and do have the bad habit of physicists of not boring my readers by filling in all the blanks between the lines.  It's more fun to just state the principles,  like in comment 41 above [https://peakprosperity.com/comment/146789#comment-146789] as if to leave people hanging till they fill in the blanks for themselves for homework or something.   

Here's one to fill in.   If, as a natural process, systematic growth inherently leads to a violation of its own principles, it's then important for people in a struggling growth system to... "go look"... to see how our system is making the world impossible for itself. 

One way that I've been studying for a three decades is the quite remarkable continuing divergence between US GDP and wages that began in ~1970.    In outline sketch form... what seems to be the cause is a dramatic shift in productivity from people to machines, particularly by computers that have proved to be so good at cranking out equations calculating "the bottom line", showing businesses how to eliminate people as the economy pushes into an ever tougher business environments.  fyi http://www.synapse9.com/signals/2010/12/24/complexity-too-great-to-follow/ 

The double catch is how that solution both makes the problems being addressed worse, and also "breaks the circle" of earnings and consumption.  **When technology earns the profits** the earnings don't generate incomes to pay for the products being produced, as when people earn and spend.  Computers don't eat Cheerios, only people do, but are getting paid relatively less and less for their role in making the products they consume.

Where the earnings of technology actually goes is to investors, that habitually DON'T spend it on consumption at all, but to expand their investments, creating an **entirely different circle** of growing self-defeating investment ...  !    fyi  http://www.synapse9.com/signals/2012/09/07/computers-taking-over-our-jobs/

So this shows a way our systematic investment in growth is violating its own principles, guided by computers programmed for the entirely wrong "bottom line", a real suicide mission of a sort.   Our "business information system" is guiding investors in this and several other ways, to pour the profits of the system into making the system ever more unprofitable, in a real sense.   There are better uses for the system's profits.

 

 

45

A perfect example of this is the near-total removal of the corporate "middle manager." There is a reason we no longer call people "secretaries" - instead we have administrative assistants. The reason the title changed is that their scope of work changed. Thanks to things like spread sheets, and software, the former secretaries are now doing the middle manager's jobs as well as their own. The administrative assisants get a new titile, they make a dollar or two more, and the middle manager's job is gone.
Construction, however, is an imperfect example. I am an engineer in the construction industry. l've seen limited modular things in the field like sections of brick walls assembled at the brickyard by bricklayers with embedded steel lift points, sections which were added to a building's face by steelworkers. This eliminated the need for bricklyer scaffolding - a huge expense and risk. So maybe the scaffolding guys had less work, but the bricklayers had the same amount of work and the ironworkers had more work.I've also seen a robot demolition machine that still needed a human operator, but was useful to break down a roof on a 125-year-old building that was falling apart: was I glad not to put a human out there. This sort of robot is like senfding in a bomb-sniffing dog: great for dangerous applications. Too expenisve otherwise. Can I see the demolition robot getting less expenisive? Not really. Even if the robot itslef was cheaper it usess a HUGE amount of energy.

The big news in ENR last year, to me at least, was an article on modular building of a high-rise, but all that meant was that the rooms, which are all alike (pretty much) could be built somewhere else in an assmbly-line fashion by the same workers who would have trudged to the jobsite every day.

The safety director for a very large construction firm also told me they are looking at modular hospital rooms for a design-build hospital. (Design-build basically means that the Owner tell the builder, "Here's a lump sum and here is what we want built. Within these engineering parameters, build it any way you want.") Construction sites are dangerous and chaotic, so the safety director was all excited about how modular building could make construction a more controlled environment, like a factory floor. The monetary savings were not in labor costs, though.

 

46

…while the savings wasn't in labor then controlled environment allowing work to be done 24/7/ 365 and no lost productivity then, Yes? Productivity enhancement even, as site is safer, weather protected? Benefits cost saved not lost to weather down time as many business costs still must be met rain or shine.? I still see monetary savings in labor costs however. I like the visual of this quite frankly as safety was always my main concern, and a huge cost to the business in workman's comp. payments. I wonder since I have gone, with these enhancements, if that has lessened? I did home const., and understand that is different construction but same principles.
BOB

47

Great comment, I'm happy I saw you comment today.You might like to find out more about LiftPort Group as they and a few other Companies are leading the way toward low cost, non-rocket access to Space and/or mining astroids for minerals and or water for future use both on Earth, the Moon and in Space itself.
 
Here are my favorites book on near future:
 
The High Frontier by Gerard K. O'Neill,
Colonies In Space by A. Heppenheim­er.
The Third Industrial Revolution by G. Harry Stine
The Space Enterprise by Philip Robert Harris
Mining the Sky by John S. Lewis 

48

Robots have now been developed that are "user trainable" which means that non programmers can simply start them in "learning mode" and move their "hands" as needed to do a specific job, then exit the learning mode and the robot will be able to do that job!  Also it is important to note that while most industrial robots must be separated from humans because of humans getting hurt by "dumb" robots, these new robots monitor their surroundings and can work next to humans because they can "perceive" where humans are and avoid hitting them!
Just like current smart phones can now do may things via voice, robots will become ever more useful to industry, as they phase out humans from repetitive tasks to both save money and increase production.

Remember Robots don't care about any of the things that are very important to humans, like day shift or night shift, hazardous job vs safe job or even if it is a holiday or not!  I expect to see all forms of special pay for special types of work get eliminated as those seeking work will now have to accept any kind of job and put up with low wages and or no benefits because they have no money!

Another factor is that robots don't pay Social Security Taxes (YET) so expect to see Social Security funding dwindle as time goes by.  Just like the US Government dragging its feet by not allowing hyper milage cars to be sold in the USA because that would drastically affect gasoline /road taxes; look to Industry being taxed for it's robotic workers, something which the Wealthy's Politicians will fight tooth and nail.

The poor still have one important commodity, which is their vote during public elections and in some Countries voters are being "paid" in food for their vote (and being made to use their phone to take a picture of they're "properly completed" ballot as proof of voting correctly, which happened in Mexico) so expect to see the same thing happen in the "Land of the Free"…

ALSO

The ultra wealthy families in the US (and other Countries) will rule for decades with they're only real fear of being vulnerable to a well armed poor "Class" that refuses to pay homage to them, but hey the Government is working on fixing that as we speak…

Watch the original version of Brazil to get a great glimpse of our Future…

49

Great comments by all- you are all way smarter than I, a humble permaculture advocate. But no one addressed the possibility that the elite will just kill everyone no longer needed and live in their machine utopia thus bypassing the resource, social conflict and ecosystem constraints. Please respond as i may be ignorant of much here.

50

At Last.A fellow traveller. I am not sure if we can find anything to argue about SeniorD. 
A Good list of books.

"The hollow horn plays wasted words, Proves to warn, That he not busy being born, Is busy dying" Bob Dylan.
 
51

Robots work where labor is in short supply, energy is relatively cheap, and consumer demand is high.  This is old paradigm stuff, last ditch effort to make mass production work, same as GMO's in their attempt to save industrial agriculture.  Loads of unintended consequences as many here have already pointed out. I posted this on part 2, which thread has seemed to peter out:
 

We have become materialists through and through.  But I think this diseased form of western european thinking is about to break.  Broad thinking about the future paradigm is still bounded physical constraints, which it is, but I would like to suggest this is thought about in the wrong way.  We still judge progress in a purely material way. We have traded convenience for meaning and that way of thinking permeates everything we say and do.

Making bread with a machine is considered an improvement no, just throw in the ingredients and walk away and go do something else, watch television, for a walk, surf the internet.  Surely this is a good thing?  We can go on line and look at a thousand different kind of products that we might like to buy. Jump in our car and go to the grocer, pick from a thousand different products from all over the world.  Maybe stop off at a friends house and go for a walk in the woods.

But are we really in relationship with anything?  The clothes on our back, our friends, the food that we eat, the woods that we walk through.  Do we understand their natures, where they come form, how work.  Do we have a connection to them.  We crave stimulation, activity, fun, but do we go deeply into anything.  Do we allow ourselves even to experience ourselves in a significant way?

We are psychotically disconnected from each other and the natural world.  Shootings like Newtown are not an aberation but a symptom of a deeply disfunction system.  We cannot look at the world in a fragmented way any more, these implications are as much economic as they are cultural and spiritual.

Make your own bread, sew your own clothes, grow your own food, spend time with your own thoughts without distractions.  Robotics are the same as GMO's, application of an idea to save a dying disfunctional system that ultimately creates greater distortions, centralizes power centric rather than iimproving human information based systems.

Robotic distribution centers still depended centralized production and transportation systems which are fossil fuel based.  Centralizing of wealth and loss of meaningful work are more gas on the fire which will ultimately lead to more dramatic change.  Do robots have their place, absolutely, but there functionality will not be central to our future paradigm.  Relationship, meaning, and a deeper connection to each other and the beautiful planet we are currently destroying are the organizing principals of our sustainable future.

When we drink more deeply from the world around us, so much less is needed materially, and lives become so much more richer and worth living.  The desire of something is more meaningful and powerful than the actual having of it because it draws something from within ourselves.  We need a revolution of mind, not in technology.

52

Robots have now been developed that are "user trainable" which means that non programmers can simply start them in "learning mode" and move their "hands" as needed to do a specific job, then exit the learning mode and the robot will be able to do that job!  Also it is important to note that while most industrial robots must be separated from humans because of humans getting hurt by "dumb" robots, these new robots monitor their surroundings and can work next to humans because they can "perceive" where humans are and avoid hitting them!
Just like current smart phones can now do may things via voice, robots will become ever more useful to industry, as they phase out humans from repetitive tasks to both save money and increase production.

Remember Robots don't care about any of the things that are very important to humans, like day shift or night shift, hazardous job vs safe job or even if it is a holiday or not!  I expect to see all forms of special pay for special types of work get eliminated as those seeking work will now have to accept any kind of job and put up with low wages and or no benefits because they have no money!

Another factor is that robots don't pay Social Security Taxes (YET) so expect to see Social Security funding dwindle as time goes by.  Just like the US Government dragging its feet by not allowing hyper milage cars to be sold in the USA because that would drastically affect gasoline /road taxes; look to Industry being taxed for it's robotic workers, something which the Wealthy's Politicians will fight tooth and nail.

The poor still have one important commodity, which is their vote during public elections and in some Countries voters are being "paid" in food for their vote (and being made to use their phone to take a picture of they're "properly completed" ballot as proof of voting correctly, which happened in Mexico) so expect to see the same thing happen in the "Land of the Free"…

ALSO

The ultra wealthy families in the US (and other Countries) will rule for decades with they're only real fear of being vulnerable to a well armed poor "Class" that refuses to pay homage to them, but hey the Government is working on fixing that as we speak…

Watch the original version of Brazil to get a great glimpse of our Future…

53

HI jnerics,Welcome! That is a good a question and I am sure that more than a few people think that at some point there will be some form of population control by the elites. It is not inconceivable in my mind.
I tend to believe that if it were to happen, it would be covert, made to look like some kind of a natural event e.g. the intentional spread of a virus in a targeted area to produce a pandemic like effect. I mention this one in particular as I have noted how masses of people have responded to previous flu threats by literally stampeding to get innoculated. What better way to commit such a devious deed than with a bunch of "sheeple" willingly lining up to get injected with supposed vaccines? I am sure there are many other covert "methods" tested and ready for use if/when required.
It sure as heck is not fun to think in these terms, but the reality is if the elites have their status quo threatened by too many of us serfs, they will do what they have to do to maintain power. Of that I have no doubt
Gee, sometimes I feel like I need to get a big tinfoil hat
Jan
 

54

…like this.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=inYjUer-jX0

55

+"You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows" - Bob Dylan
One more great book which is not about future tech but describes how descisions are made:
Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missle Crsis by Graham T. Allison

56
We are psychotically disconnected from each other and the natural world.
Absolutely. I've met products of our fine public government schools who had no clue that plants came from seeds. We wander around in our little semi-interdependent seperate realities. no one connects, and loneliness is epidemic.

What our society needs is a good barn raising. Really. Get 'em outdoors and interacting and helping their neighbors instead of insisting on being entertained.

57

What a great metaphore for our future, a barn raising, it encapsulates so many great aspects of a functioning society, community, local sustainablity, and a connection to something real, a place to store an abundant harvest.

58

It's unfortunate our public schools have been taken hostage by the corporate mentality. The new popular policy is to have every student bring-your-own-device (BROD). It's really sad, just more electronically mediated connection to reality. Most policies I see now only reinforce that students are being looked upon as an aggregate of test scores and data, which inevitably boils down to money. Another new trend I've heard of recently is administrators coercing high school teachers into giving students worse grades so that the overall average grades will be more in line with the average SAT scores. So teachers now need to adjust their assessments to a very narrow criteria of cognitive assessments. I guess class participation, creativity, and team-based assessment should be a footnote at the bottom of the report card. I have to say the nonsense in education is sometimes frightening, but I also have to say it is coming from the top down. I also wouldn't exclude private schools since my experience has been teaching at both. It's really a trade-off. Public schools have more bureaucracy and you have to deal with more socioeconomic backgrounds, but private schools are way more disfunctional in regard to power structure/dynamics. At least that's been my experience.
Thank You

 

59
Mark, I hope I don't seem completely on the other side of you opinions. 
I'm not sure why this would be a problem.

But I also don't see how you could be completely on the other side of my opinions. Here are my opinions that I think are similar to those of many/most on this site:

  1. The federal government's debt is a signficant problem.

  2. The federal government's actions now and in the future are likely to contribute to inflation.

  3. Artificial intelligence is likely to contribute to deflation (i.e., in opposition to the government's actions).

  4. Artificial intelligence is likely to result in technological unemployment, as computers/robots increasingly rapidly displace more and more traditional occupations.

Where I differ from most poeple on this site is:

  1. I see (free) human minds as the source of all wealth.

  2. I don't see the price/supply of fossil fuels as being a significant in economic growth…especially not in the long run.

  3. Barring takeover by terminators, global thermonuclear war, or some other apocalyptic event, I think that in 10 to 20+ years, world per-capita economic growth will consitently be higher than 6 percent per year. And it will continue at that level or higher.

Mark

 

 

60

Nice to know we are more in agreement than not:) When I have these conversations in person, I can see the look in their eyes… "he's a tech and science basher." I know I probably shouldn't care what people think, but on the other hand I feel if I don't care then the conversation shuts down and I've been merely written off. In response to your 3 above:1) I would disagree that the human minds are the source of all wealth since these minds exist within and as a part of nature and rely on adequate nourishment from and balance within nature. I would guess most on this site see all wealth (energy) as being derived from the earth, us being included. I feel too often science still tries to hold onto the old narrative that our brain-minds are somehow divorced from nature and exist in some alternate reality. The newer narrative acknowledges this past narrative as not true, so I'm more hopeful.
2) I would agree with you in the long run, but too often the futurists don't fill in the gap as to how we're going to get from point A to B. How do we make this transition in a way that maintains a balance and doesn't cause enormous pain and suffering? I think that's what everyone is trying figure out. My guess? Some of it will come from technology and science, and more will come from realigning our social and cultural values, which includes getting back in touch with the natural world.
3) I see the gears of the system moving way too slow for your prediction. Actually, one might argue it would have to take an apocalyptic event like the ones you mention to create that kind of growth. But who knows, time will tell.
Peace!