
Robots Don't Complain or Demand Higher Wages or Kill Themselves... - jkuria
http://www.economist.com/node/21525432
======
DannoHung
I know that the suggestion that these are going to eliminate human positions
is an unpopular sentiment here at HN because economics. However, are we really
so sure that there will always be a human labor demand to effectively meet the
human labor supply?

What _do_ we do when there is an excess of human labor? Everyone here is
opposed to make work for good reason. But a suggestion that solves the moral
issue of what to do with an unemployed human who is not contributing due to a
lack of labor demand has not been proposed in the general case. It is
typically waved away by saying, "There will be a new industry." But can we
really not imagine that this new industry will remain un-automated for long?
What about the new industry that begins by being automated?

I am not opposed to automation in the slightest. I think that if we can
automate every task in the world, that would be the best thing. If anything I
am just opposed to insisting that as technology changes, we must maintain the
same social values and behaviors.

~~~
wisty
New industry will be service-orientated. Even if robot cooks _can_ make a
better pizza, people will tell themselves that human-made ones are more
individual, and taste better.

As the price of human labor goes to zero, humans will be increasingly used as
marketing props.

In a democracy or socialist state, handouts or negative taxation will
redistribute wealth.

~~~
joe_the_user
What evidence do we have that handout are increasing with the recent increase
in automation? My sense is they're going in the opposite direction and have
strong momentum.

And I will tell you that few people will chose human made pizzas just for the
experience, especially if their wages are going to zero.

------
natfriedman
At Foxconn in the last five years there have been 17 reported suicides out of
~1 million workers. The US rate in 2007 was, according to the American
Foundation for Suicide Prevention, 11.5 suicides per 100,000 people, or ~35x
higher than the Foxconn rate.

Foxconners are not unusually predisposed to kill themselves. It's a jingoistic
myth.

~~~
Groxx
How many of those 11.5/100k have been done _at work_ , though? The 17 and this
quote seem to imply those are just the ones happening at the buildings
themselves:

> _To pacify its increasingly restive workers, Foxconn has repeatedly bumped
> up their wages, improved facilities, provided counselling and swathed its
> factories with nets to catch anyone leaping from a window._

And, for comparison, the WHO gives numbers that are closer to each other,
though still surprising individually:
[http://www.who.int/mental_health/prevention/suicide/suicider...](http://www.who.int/mental_health/prevention/suicide/suiciderates/en/)

~~~
free
IIRC, foxconn provides on campus housing for the workers, so everything
happens at the plant

~~~
Groxx
That rings a bell, thanks! I do wonder why the (relatively) extreme measures
exist if there _isn't_ a problem, though. Straight PR could explain, but I
find it a bit unlikely.

------
forensic
This debate isn't about jobs.

The question is this: will the powerful still value human life when robots are
better than manual workers?

Wealth keeps concentrating in the hands of a small minority.

Unskilled workers increasingly look like nothing but a drain on resources,
unable to produce anything valuable or afford education.

Many many billionaires have little respect for unskilled human life and
libertarians do not believe in free education or social services.

When the bottom 50% of society finally ends up with no money, no marketable
skills, and no military prowess, what is going to happen to them?

~~~
reemrevnivek
When they have no marketable skills, they'd better learn some. In the absence
of mental or physical handicaps, I don't see any reason why people would be
incapable of doing this.

~~~
bdr
It seems like the mental/physical floor required to get a job is getting
higher.

~~~
tomjen3
The physical floor has crashed, actually. Today a man in a wheelchair can
contribute meaningful work.

~~~
bdr
Only above a certain mental floor. Calling it a floor in general is
oversimplifying, it's a curve (Stephen Hawking, football player).

------
pilgrim689
Rodney Brooks stressed how the first nation that embraces new robot technology
in their industries will have huge economic advantages over other nations.
(he's a highly influential roboticist, MIT AI researcher, co-founder of the
company that makes the Roomba and other robots (military mostly)).

He stated in a conference (2009) that for robots to be successful in
manufacturing, they needed :

1- object recognition skill of a 2 year old child

2- language capability of a 4 year old

3- manual dexterity of a 6 year old

4- social understanding of an 8 year old

I guess Foxconn is eyeing robots that are close to reaching those numbers.

ref. : conference I mentionned:
[http://fora.tv/2009/05/30/Rodney_Brooks_Remaking_Manufacturi...](http://fora.tv/2009/05/30/Rodney_Brooks_Remaking_Manufacturing_With_Robotics)

~~~
burgerbrain
Surely robots are already successful in manufacturing. Just look at.. well..
just about _anything_ you own that has a weld in it..

I guess that's not the cool sort of robotics though.

~~~
pilgrim689
Oh yes, definitely. The robots used, however, are still "first generation", so
to speak. They do not adapt to the product. They are designed to build one
thing, to automate one task, and they do that (insert screw of shape X into
hole of shape Y).

What Brooks speaks of is a new generation of robots. Robots that can be
shipped from a factory that builds iPods to a factory that builds car wheels.
They take way less space than the first generation, and they adapt. So if your
product decides it's going to use nails instead of screws, you don't need to
redesign your robot line.

In the US, it's mostly behaviour-based AI that got a big push at MIT in the
90s and have been used in the US military for the passed decade... seems like
they're ready for manufacturing now :D

------
jacques_chester
Automation is bad for the economy. Think of the tens of millions of phone
operators put out of work by rotary pulse dialling exchanges. Where are they
now? Those 100 or 200 million phones worldwide won't connect themselves!

~~~
zizee
This won't last forever though. Once true strong AI is created we will be able
to automate everything. It might not happen for centuries but eventually we
will be forced to rethink the way society functions.

Perhaps people will pay a premium for a "human made" sticker on the side?

~~~
mahyarm
Saying true strong AI is like saying once teleportation is available, we can
live anywhere in the world! Or that if we use nuclear fission for our power
production, it will be too cheap to meter. Reality is a bit more sticky, and
strong AI is a long ways away.

------
malkia
Wanted to share this - Robot comes from the slavic (czech, russian, bulgarian
and others) word - rabota - WORK.

~~~
faboo
And created by Czech playwrite Karel Čapek:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R.U.R._(Rossum%27s_Universal_Ro...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R.U.R._\(Rossum%27s_Universal_Robots\))

Noteworthy, I think, because it'd seem natural for a technology to be named by
the people who created it, but that isn't always the case. Sometimes its the
people who dreamed of it.

------
dmix
If Foxconn is the "Apple" of chinese manufacturing - high value customers,
largest workforce etc, I wonder if they will be trendsetting in their move to
robotics.

Many other companies in China will be watching very closely on how it works
for them, and may do the same if it succeeds.

~~~
InclinedPlane
I think people are looking at this the wrong way. Look at the history of
manufacturing in any country, at any company. They may start off by taking
advantage of lots and lots of inexpensive low-skill labor (even Ford did), but
as they grow over time and become more successful they start taking in more
and more revenue. And that revenue allows them to accelerate their capital
investment, making increasing use of automation for example. It happened with
manufacturers in America, and Japan, and Korea, and Taiwan, and it's happening
again in China. I don't think it's necessary to invoke any other motivations.

------
realize
yet

------
molecule
but that would be a trivial instruction set to upload.

------
geogra4
So where will the low wage jobs run to? Perhaps African nations will pick up
the slack. What happens to the unemployed chinese laborers then? Marx is still
relevant after all these years....

~~~
InclinedPlane
Automation.

Does NOT.

Destroy.

Jobs.

Is the economy smaller today than in 1911? Are there fewer jobs today? Are
there less worthwhile jobs today? Exactly the opposite in every case.
Automation may eliminate _A_ job in the near-term but in the long-term it
creates and enhances wealth. Ultimately every dollar spent makes its way from
one person to another person.

Robots don't have bank accounts.

~~~
Hawramani
Building on Donald Knuth's definition of an artist (someone who does work that
cannot yet be automated, such as a programmer), it seems like today the most
efficient economy is one that automates everything that can be automated, so
that all of its population work as artists.

The argument that automation destroys jobs assumes that at least part of the
population does not have the propensity to be artists. This is the crucial
point that this whole debate rests on.

In other words, are there people who are so un-creative that everything they
could produce can be automated? If there are, then such people will lose jobs
due to automation and will not gain back any alternative jobs.

I think on a site like HN the debate is skewed because most of us are high IQ
people who, so far, don't have any trouble competing with robots. If there
were robots who could do everything I can do and do it cheaper than I, why
would anybody hire me?

~~~
protagonist_h
The question here is -- which jobs will remain longest. Is that "high IQ"
jobs? Computers are wonderful at solving well-defined "high IQ" problems, like
playing chess or performing register allocation. And creativity is just an
ability to generate original solutions to the problem. Computers are more than
capable of doing that.

