George Rebane
RR reader and longtime friend sent me a current piece on the theme of machines replacing humans in the workplace (here). The article focuses on the current labor crunch reported under the ‘I quit’ spate of news articles. Hard to tell how many jobs are actually going unfilled, but the number is somewhere north of 6M. Workers are not applying for a couple of reasons – they don’t have the skillsets required and they’re already getting enough government payouts to support their lifestyles.
As you might guess, those greedy capitalists with open job slots are not just sitting on their thumbs. They are doing everything possible to reduce the cost of expensive, undependable, recalcitrant, and quirky labor and substitute machines wherever possible. The more workers, on or off the job, resist, the faster the development and acquisition of replacement robots.
But I and most observers of this process believe that the road to robotics will not be traveled quietly with just the judicious substitution of universal basic income (UBI). One of the core attributes of Man is his irrepressible demand to be relevant in his environment, no matter the size of his UBI check. This will give rise to a spate of modern age luddite riots demanding that robots be excluded from a catalog of jobs to be reserved for humans. These uprisings will be promoted and championed by leftwing politicians within a whole new category of vote-buying policies.
RR is a repository of many commentaries that deal with this most human problem of pre-Singularity systemic unemployment. A sampling of these from just the last ten years are available here, here, here, here, here, and here.
I think there's too much emphasis on robots replacing burger flippers.
The real change in employment, given a big boost up from COVID & work-from-home, is going to come in the 'knowledge' work area.
It's not all that easy to build a general purpose manipulator as cheap/good as a human or to redesign a work flow to suit machines.
OTOH, if a person's work consists of looking at screens and pushing buttons, there's a good chance that a ton of those jobs can be automated, or have the automated parts drawn out and fewer people are needed. Working from home gave it all good push since it standardized a set of highest-level interfaces (work through a computer) combined with the chance to radically instrument the people working to better understand their job. Double bonus points for the ability to grade workers.
No problem though, we'll all start a 'business' non-profit and go grant seekin'.
"the judicious substitution of universal basic income (UBI)."
Gotta love that concept. The US already has a scad of people living a life of barely scraping by on public money. You think you've got a lot of poor behavior and low level crime now? Just wait. You probably won't see Luddites so much as simple criminal gangs out for a bit of the old ultra-violence, cracking folks a fine fair tolchock on their Gullivers.
Posted by: scenes | 16 November 2021 at 02:06 PM
Well George, I was going to suggest that the next plateau for robots would be to replace most of our politicians. How could it be worse?
But then scenes says "The real change in employment... is going to come in the 'knowledge' work area." So there went my suggestion. If a pol has even a bit of knowledge going in, they lose it faster than AOC sucks dicksonii tree sap.
Posted by: The Estonian Fox | 16 November 2021 at 05:37 PM
The tractor they gave me to operate has a computer system within. It makes the composter grinder "work". I push a button and it fires up the cutter head and conveyor system at the push of a button. All is well till the computer goes on strike.
The damned thing reached it's "call the tech for service" limit, and shut down. The "go" button don't work till the fix it man shows up.
Posted by: Walt | 16 November 2021 at 06:51 PM
re: Walt@6:51PM
I suspect that embedded systems in tools, from portable drills to great big movers of earth and hewers of wood are there to save money as much as to enable a drop in labor costs/add features. It allows you to design a less robust solution as (fer example) the system can back off when the primate keeps pulling the trigger.
Well, that, and to spy on the operator.
The future of work doesn't look great.
As for automating politicians, it probably wouldn't take much to build a clanking humanoid that wears sparkly cowboy hats on top of a wig and holds a cassette deck prerecorded by staff with an hour or two of crazy 'progressive' catechism.
Posted by: scenes | 16 November 2021 at 07:10 PM
scenes 7:10 - "...humanoid that wears sparkly cowboy hats on top of a wig and holds a cassette deck prerecorded by staff with an hour or two of crazy 'progressive' catechism."
The model for your idea:
https://www.essence.com/fashion/black-congresswomen-frederica-wilson-colorful-hats/#90612
Posted by: Scott O | 16 November 2021 at 07:20 PM
Eve'n gents.. Seems the ghost in the machine wiped the program from the system. Just GONE... Now the computer geek from CAT needs to come out and reprogram the damned thing.
After an hour this morning, we got it to work in good ol' manual mode. Ain't hightech great?
All this BS to get the PTO to spin. We never had this issue with the pre computer machines.
Posted by: Walt | 17 November 2021 at 04:51 PM
Walt@4:51
Have you tried turning it off and on again?
Posted by: scenes | 17 November 2021 at 07:26 PM