
Robots are leaving the factory floor and heading for your desk – and your job - edward
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/feb/09/robots-manual-jobs-now-people-skills-take-over-your-job
======
Htsthbjig
"It could be said that the job of bridge toll collector was invented in San
Francisco."

Romans did collect taxes for using a bridge 2.000 years ago.

There was the alternative of crossing the river yourself or hiring someone to
do it(ferrymen).

I have been working in automation for a while. It is true that companies could
fire more and more people and replace it with robots because they are less
expensive.

It is also true that now people could compete with big guys much cheaper
because robots will become dirt cheap. We are starting to see with 3d
printers(that are robots themselves).

War has started, big guys are ok with people playing with toys in their
basements, but want to make it illegal for small guys to compete with them.

This is what software and business patents are about. Only big guys, most of
whom were in the past little guys , creating a legislation in order to make it
impossible for newcomers to do with them what they did to others in the past.

------
massysett
"Will robots cause unemployment or create new types of jobs and increased
leisure time for humans?"

Usual false dichotomy. It can be both, or neither. Robots are nothing novel.
You can replace "robots" with "farm machinery" or "construction equipment" and
ask the same question--except then, then answers are clearer, which makes the
absurdity of this question apparent. Farm machinery probably created
unemployment among farm hands. On the other hand, rich countries would not
have the same standard of living they have today if half their labor forces
were on farms.

~~~
chillingeffect
Yup, typical dramatic headline technique.

Anyway, consumer's hunger increases with productivity increases. In 20 years,
when even more robots _than we already have_ are deployed, we will all want
more complex, highly integrated stuff, requiring the same amount of employment
to produce.

Anyone who doesn't believe me, think back to the days before interchangeable
parts. We could live that way today and have lots of free time, but we
apparently don't choose to. We have higher standards, want more diverse food,
more complex entertainment, cleaner everything, fancier, more decorated
houses, vehicles with more features.

Additional robots - on top of the ones of which we already have lots of -
won't take away jobs, they will deliver us finer consumer items and health
standards.

------
miralabs
if everything gets replaced by bots, how will the economy run given that much
of it is because of employees getting paid and in turn spending that money?

~~~
jjoonathan
Most interesting possibility: there will be an inflection point in the way we
do production & distribution. The capital costs and inefficiencies of
distributed production fall every day (internet to distribute knowledge, ever-
advancing low-N fabrication technology) while the disadvantages of centralized
production increase (capital is becoming more important, labor less important,
meaning the average split of the proceeds is ever more extractive). At some
point people on the bottom rungs will find it advantageous to work for
"communes" instead of employers. Scare quotes because there's a lot of back-
to-nature & peacenik baggage associated with the word "commune" that doesn't
necessarily apply here -- it's just a different structure for production and
employment that avoids the deleveraging effects of forcing people to compete
for a spot in a shrinking global pool of jobs. The communes I'm picturing
would make heavy use of industrial technology and compete against one another
for people by advertising the benefits they offer vs the labor required for
membership.

Less disruptive: mandatory reduction in workweek to restore supply/demand
balance in unskilled labor market.

Costly but traditional: Basic/minimum income. Expansion of traditional welfare
programs. Society creaks along having found the minimum handout required to
keep people from doing something about the problem.

Cynical: civic unrest, police crackdown, rinse, repeat, spiral out of control.
We've all seen the movies.

~~~
bsbechtel
There are lots of unknowns left in this world, and lots of exploring left to
do. Space, curing disease, and finding additional sources of clean water and
energy are all areas that require lots of work and human ingenuity. The
challenge is getting people educated to do work in these fields and allocating
capital properly. The unskilled labor market was known as the illiterate labor
market 100 years ago, and we overcame that challenge, lifting those people up
and educating them on how to read. The same can be done again, we just need to
figure out how to do so.

~~~
jjoonathan
Yes, there are undiscovered future uses for labor and the capital/labor
imbalance could be alleviated (or exacerbated) by discovering them. It is
still utterly absurd to bind the wellbeing of our society to a gamble on the
rate of discovery and the extent of these untapped resources.

~~~
bsbechtel
My point was more we should look to re-allocate resources, financial and
human, to discovery producing activities in the future, i.e. R&D, thus
employing, educating, and empowering people, regardless of the actual rate of
discovery per person/dollar invested in R&D.

~~~
jjoonathan
I completely agree that this would be the best approach in terms of long-term
value generation. If I were emperor for a day it's how I would tackle the
problem. I just don't see any realistic way to make this vision a reality
(other than conquering the world, of course) so I don't focus on it.

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glaberficken
When I saw this photo[1] in the article I thought: "What would happen if the
customer kicked the robot really hard making it topple over?"

Sorry, i get these random thoughts in my head sometimes! :P

[1] [http://i.guim.co.uk/img/static/sys-
images/Guardian/Pix/pictu...](http://i.guim.co.uk/img/static/sys-
images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2015/2/4/1423050885569/e606f204-09ae-49e1-8ce3-63dfa11c0b79-2060x1236.jpeg?w=620&q=85&auto=format&sharp=10&s=cfd0c667f0f8ff00375713302c803cb6)

------
salmonellaeater
> But they note that the boundaries of what counts as routine and non-routine
> are moving all the time. It was once thought that driving was a skill so
> complex it couldn’t be automated only to see it turned on its head by Google
> and others.

What happens when _programming_ becomes routine? I expect there will be a very
scary moment when we all realize that someone with the right resources has
discovered the right learning algorithm, before all of us plebes die.

~~~
danso
A lot of programming _has_ become routine. Think of all the programming
involved to build even a 1/10th of the functionality of what can be created,
literally, in a single command. Yet anyone who is acquainted to programming
and web dev would say that running the Rails generator does not obviate the
use of programming. And for those who are relatively experienced, this
automation is a _huge benefit_ , allowing the programmer to focus on designing
more features and expending more of their creative energy on non-routine work.

In other words, as some programming tasks becomes routine, many more non-
routine tasks become available to us.

~~~
vezzy-fnord
Furthermore, the idea of the "one single algorithm" followed by extinction
that the parent poster proposes is overly simplistic.

Assuming the sheer level of interconnectedness and computational ubiquity
where every conceivable piece of matter used by humans out there has a bus or
exports a remote API for most of these far-fetched AGI apocalypse scenarios to
work, it's probably wiser to worry about crippling cyberwar way before AGI is
even a consideration.

------
uuilly
One's fear of robots taking over the world is usually inversely proportional
to the number of times they've debugged a brownout.

------
ekianjo
Always coming back to this silliness:

> They all float the idea of basic guaranteed incomes for everyone, or tax
> credits to supplement low-wage workers.

Yeah, just like tractors made 90% of farmers permanently unemployed and they
decided to take early retirement and spend time on the beach. It's so
disappointing to see otherwise smart people ending up with these kind of
conclusions.

~~~
falcolas
> just like tractors made 90% of farmers permanently unemployed and they
> decided to take early retirement and spend time on the beach

Early retirement wasn't an option for those farmers - they had to find a way
to support themselves or their families. As a result they took up desk jobs
(many of which are, in the broader view of things unnecessary) in the city.
When those desk jobs go away, where will they go next? Into manual labor?
That's pretty ripe for automation as well.

~~~
ekianjo
> When those desk jobs go away, where will they go next? Into manual labor?
> That's pretty ripe for automation as well.

The service industry is not going to be replaced by robots anytime soon. Many
jobs wont even be replaced because robots wont be economical enough to do so
(hairdressers robots anyone?).

And the more you have robots out there, the more you will need maintenance
people, industries to manufacture robots, and the whole lot of engineering
that goes with it. Because, like it or not, we have not discovered a way to do
super smart robots than can design themselves just yet.

And just like farmers got more education in order to do desk jobs, the ones at
the lower end who get more educated to do the jobs that are needed, because
you know, the job market is dynamic.

~~~
falcolas
> The service industry is not going to be replaced by robots anytime soon.

Funny, the use of iPads instead of servers at many fast food restaurants was
one of the examples I was considering using. Hair dresser robots for many
people aren't that far out.

> we have not discovered a way to do super smart robots than can design
> themselves just yet.

Key word there: yet. What do we do when that yet comes to pass?

> the job market is dynamic

Do you believe the job market will continue to provide jobs when it's not
profitable to? When a company has to make the choice between a machine and a
human, why would it ever go with the human, when the net cost of the machine
is lower than that of the human? One machine can replace a minimum of three
people (working 24 hours on a job your average worker does 8 hours on), and it
won't take three people per machine to maintain them.

Of course, the human could always offer their services at a cost below that of
the robot - but I don't believe that is sustainable for the human. As an
example, for me to be more economical than a computer for my employeer, I
would have to methodically classify over 2,500 tweets to earn a single dollar.
And since my employer wants these classifications done in near real time,
they'd have to employ most of the town I live in, just to do this one mostly-
clerical task.

------
suttree
Seems like now might be a good time to repost this:

[https://medium.com/@somewhere/how-i-learned-to-relax-and-
sto...](https://medium.com/@somewhere/how-i-learned-to-relax-and-stop-trying-
to-predict-the-future-of-work-15c8b1768202)

------
mschuster91
Currently, if a company disposes of all of its workers and replaces them by
robots (minus a bit of left human staff for administration), the profits end
up entirely in the pockets of the owners instead of getting redistributed to
the working population.

Therefore, I believe that companies operating this way should pay a "robot
tax"; the funds gathered by this tax must be redistributed as
unemployment/social benefits or, better, as guaranteed income.

Otherwise funds will accumulate in the hands of a very few and not be put into
any productive use - hell, just look at Apple's cash reserves, Apple alone
could bail out Greece and even profit from it. Currently, the Apple money is
just lying around and doing nothing productive at all.

~~~
maxerickson
Unless it is literally sitting in a vault (it isn't), Apple's cash is being
used for stuff. Here's an article about that:

[http://seekingalpha.com/article/1246081-apple-does-not-
have-...](http://seekingalpha.com/article/1246081-apple-does-not-
have-137-billion-in-cash)

I don't really get the idea of a robot tax, why make special rules for one
particular type of productivity? Should accountants that use better software
also pay higher taxes than less efficient accountants that use simple
calculators and paper?

~~~
adventured
Even if you parked $200 billion in cash in a vault, its removal from
circulation for any meaningful amount of time would generate a purchasing
power increase for every other dollar holder.

The idea of a robot tax is not a rational one. It's based off of an emotional
response to the fear of workers losing jobs and income. It will become a very
loud, common argument over the next decade. It rests upon the incorrect notion
that productivity gains through automation must inherently result in fewer
jobs - when in fact, history has proven the exact opposite to be true (the
industrial revolution being the overwhelming proof, but there were prior
examples including the agriculture revolution). The most productive economies
are always among the wealthiest for the median of people, and come in at the
lower quarter of unemployment rankings.

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callum85
"Will robots cause unemployment or... increased leisure time for humans?"

These aren't mutually exclusive.

~~~
falcolas
So long as you need to work to provide yourself with food and shelter, they
are. And since we as a society put so much value on how one contributes to
society (i.e. their job), it's unlikely to change in the foreseeable future.

------
coldcode
Someone has to program those robots.

~~~
falcolas
Probably not the secretary, accountant or dispatcher whom they replace. And
for every programmer created to develop for these devices, there will be 10,
100, even 1,000 desk jobs which will vanish.

The best and brightest will find jobs as these programmers; the rest will be
left to fend for themselves - to find another meaningless job with a tiny
wage, so they can live.

This, as something of a tangent, is why I support basic income.

~~~
batou
This is mainly why I write software...

~~~
spacefight
And you will be replaced by software writing software.

