The rise of the robots.

[bungeejumper]

I'll chip in for his lady friend with the special relationship to hold his hand.

That's no way to talk about Nigel Farage.

BJ

[saechunu]

Here's an interesting thesis (link via Monevator) albeit a bit heavy reading:

http://www.danielsusskind.com/research

"In the past 15 years a new area of the economics literature has emerged to explore the consequences of technological change on the labour market. This is the ‘task-based’ literature. The account that emerges is optimistic about the prospects for labour in the 21st century. The central argument of this paper is that this particular optimism is unjustified.

I explore the consequences for earnings and employment if the set of types of tasks in which human beings have the comparative advantage continues to be eroded -- beyond the boundary currently imposed in the literature by the ALM hypothesis."

...concluding:

The outcome is remorselessly pessimistic – labour is displaced at an endogenously determined rate, is forced into specialising in a shrinking set of tasks, and absolute wages are driven to zero. No steady-state is possible until labour has been entirely driven out the economy by advanced capital i.e. the economy must approach a steady-state where ¯i(t) = 1. Labour is fully immiserated, and technological unemployment follows.

...but see Section 6.1: "Five New Channels for Optimism?" for some alternatives.

I don't know how probable it is that labour becomes almost entirely driven out of the economy but it at least appears possible that much could be driven out, certainly enough that society would face change on a scale rarely before seen. This issue then overlaps with that of a universal basic/subsistence income and gives rise to a lot of other interesting things to consider.

In the meantime, the advice must be to have or accumulate capital and, still if a worker, be as highly skilled as possible. This has always been good advice but the increasing availability of 'advanced' capital (that is, technologies able to perform the same tasks as labour) could cause a widening bifurcation of incomes/lifestyles for those with capital/high-skills versus those without than has generally been the case in recent history.

PS Looking even further ahead it's possible that even possessing capital won't offer much protection (say if the owners of the advanced capital no longer have a need for external capital, thus making investment opportunities increasingly scarce), but that's hopefully a problem best left to some future generations to worry about...

[AleisterCrowley]

a widening bifurcation of incomes/lifestyles for those with capital/high-skills versus those without

that never ends well....

[saechunu]

a widening bifurcation of incomes/lifestyles for those with capital/high-skills versus those without

that never ends well....

Capital's share of GDP is currently around an all-time high while labour's share is around an all-time low.

If mean-reverting: the trends in capital's and labour's shares of GDP reverse, broad-based wage inflation, declining profit margins (although profits themselves could still rise if that wage inflation lead to greater revenues). Perhaps bumpy-to-OK markets in the nearer term, but good for society (and markets) longer term.

Else if a new era: no mean-reversion, real-terms wages suppressed or falling, the share of the spoils going to capital remain on a rising trend. Perhaps OK-to-good markets in the nearer term, but eventually for society (and thus markets), "Danger, Will Robinson!".

[kiloran]

a widening bifurcation of incomes/lifestyles for those with capital/high-skills versus those without

that never ends well....

Capital's share of GDP is currently around an all-time high while labour's share is around an all-time low.

If mean-reverting: the trends in capital's and labour's shares of GDP reverse, broad-based wage inflation, declining profit margins (although profits themselves could still rise if that wage inflation lead to greater revenues). Perhaps bumpy-to-OK markets in the nearer term, but good for society (and markets) longer term.

Else if a new era: no mean-reversion, real-terms wages suppressed or falling, the share of the spoils going to capital remain on a rising trend. Perhaps OK-to-good markets in the nearer term, but eventually for society (and thus markets), "Danger, Will Robinson!".

--kiloran

[vrdiver]

In the short term, as AI and robots eliminate human job opportunities, the outlook for those replaced seems bleak, but there surely has to be a point when robot capacity is greater than affordable demand? Prices fall and we need less pay and/or can afford more tax to redistribute the wealth. I'd also imagine governments taxing the automation owners so as to ensure the citizens can afford to buy robotic output, else the economy just shuts down.

Eventually (possibly with some quite ugly intermediate scenes) we reach a post-capitalism society where the supply-side is effectively infinite and humans can have pretty much whatever they want. Value would be restricted to limited goods, such as artisan (certified human-made) products, or human-to-human services, such as acting or singing (etc.). Marketing would, of course create "value" in limited supply merchandise, not because of its superiority, but based on its scarcity. We end up living in an Iain M Banks "Culture" society.

Just as the industrial revolution wasn't particularly pleasant for those who lived through it, the net benefit to their children was huge. I suspect more of the same this time around, provided we don't do something stupid like go to war in the meantime.

VRD

[saechunu]

Eventually (possibly with some quite ugly intermediate scenes) we reach a post-capitalism society where the supply-side is effectively infinite and humans can have pretty much whatever they want.

I think Utopian outcomes are possible, but I believe it will take sustained effort - and luck - for them to be achieved.

But Dystopian outcomes, in extreme the 'exterminism' described in the article below, are also possible, and even perhaps more probable:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/ ... vable-wage

If that scenario isn’t bleak enough, consider the possibility that mass automation could lead not only to the impoverishment of working people, but to their annihilation. In his book Four Futures, Peter Frase speculates that the economically redundant hordes outside the gates would only be tolerated for so long. After all, they might get restless – and that’s a lot of possible pitchforks. “What happens if the masses are dangerous but are no longer a working class, and hence of no value to the rulers?” Frase writes. “Someone will eventually get the idea that it would be better to get rid of them.” He gives this future an appropriately frightening name: “exterminism”, a world defined by the “genocidal war of the rich against the poor”.

It's interesting how, in the publicly listed businesses that are best able to take advantage of network effects and thus trend towards winner-takes-all outcomes, there is a trend for voting (owner) and non-voting (non-owner) share classes. And this is a trend I can see continuing. This points towards an end-game where even being a successful capitalist (normal person with accumulated wealth) will provide no protection, as control of all of the 'advanced' capital will lie within only the hands of a tiny few.

[DiamondEcho]

An article from a respected blog that I follow, dated yesterday:

'Does Technology Destroy Jobs? If Not What Does?
In light of my posts on robots, driverless vehicles, and automation, readers keep asking: where will the jobs come from?
I do not know, nor does anyone else. But does that mean jobs won’t come?
Is technology destroying jobs for the first time?
Daniel Lacalle on the Hedgeye blog offers this bold claim: Face It, Technology Does Not Destroy Jobs.
"If you read some newspapers and politicians’ comments, it seems that technology companies are a threat and robots will take your job . The idea is interesting and has populated hundreds of pages of science fiction books that feed on a dystopic view of the future where humans are only an annecdote.
It’s an interesting idea, there’s only one problem. It is a fallacy." [continues]
https://mishtalk.com/2017/03/04/does-te ... more-44478

[redsturgeon]

Google's DeepMind AlphaGo artificial intelligence has defeated the world's number one Go player Ke Jie.

AlphaGo secured the victory after winning the second game in a three-part match.

DeepMind founder Demis Hassabis said Ke Jie had played "perfectly" and "pushed AlphaGo right to the limit".

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-40042581

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_(game)

High-level players spend years improving their understanding of strategy, and a novice may play many hundreds of games against opponents before being able to win regularly.

Not much point in doing that anymore is there?

I assume your point was made tongue in cheek but in does raise some interesting questions:

- What does humankind do when there is nothing to "win" anymore.

- What is the point of playing sports and games against an opponent?

- Is it to win?

- Is it to beat the opponent?

- Is it for personal enjoyment?

- Is it to earn money?

- Is it to earn the respect and admiration of others?

- Is it just to pass the time?

- To take your mind off other things?

- For the enjoyment of self improvement?

- Is it to interact in a meaningful way with another human being?

I think none of these is made any lesser by the fact that a man made machine can beat you every time.

John

[redsturgeon]

I only poker poker face to face these days for that very reason...actually it is a lot more fun too.

John

[Mapfumo]

- What is the point of playing sports and games against an opponent?

Seems to me that plenty of people still play Chess - and the fact that your phone can analyze a game and show you all the minor errors you made means that people improve much faster than in the past.

I organised a conference last week and we had numerous experts on AI/machine learning & robotics speaking. The implications of what is on the way are quite hard to fathom out (small robots which roam farmers fields and destroy weeds seem easier than self-driving cars - at what point do they become cheaper than herbicide spraying?) The key thing is that these methods are very good on things which can be taught to systems. It's easy to feed in millions of pictures of plants and categorise as weed/not weed. It's easy to play millions of games of Go with a win/not win outcome to train on, or indeed millions of pictures of x-rays or lists of symptoms. Not all human activities have this ready supply of data or ways to train systems.

[XFool]

I organised a conference last week and we had numerous experts on AI/machine learning & robotics speaking. The implications of what is on the way are quite hard to fathom out (small robots which roam farmers fields and destroy weeds seem easier than self-driving cars - at what point do they become cheaper than herbicide spraying?)

But will they like John Wayne?

http://reddwarf.wikia.com/wiki/Skutters

[Mapfumo]

Kryten certainly got a couple of mentions....

[CommissarJones]

I think none of these is made any lesser by the fact that a man made machine can beat you every time.

Or it could play for a draw like this man-made machine.

[Itsallaguess]

For years now, some researchers have been anticipating that robots would take away jobs from humans. In the UK, Deloitte and the University of Oxford predicted that 10 million unskilled jobs could be taken over by robots. University of Oxford researchers Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael Osborne estimated in 2013 that 47 percent of total U.S. jobs could be automated and taken over by computers by 2033.

When they started down the Artificial Intelligence path, I did hope it would take a little longer for the robots to fully grasp the gravity of the situation -

Security robot 'drowns itself' in office fountain

An autonomous security robot designed to patrol car parks and buildings appears to have taken its life into its own hands by driving into a fountain in an office building in Washington DC.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2 ... -fountain/

Hey, we've all had days like that.....

Marvin eat your heart out....

Cheers,

Itsallaguess

[XFool]

Deep Mind is getting better:

https://www.ft.com/content/39786fe4-b3e ... 002965bce8

[Itsallaguess]

Very interesting article here from the BBC, regarding the growing use of drones in the retail sector and how their speed, accuracy, and efficiency is replacing the slow, expensive humans that carried out their tasks previously -

Flying drones and robots now patrol distribution warehouses - they've become workhorses of the e-commerce era online that retailers can't do without. It is driving down costs but it is also putting people out of work: what price progress?

It could be a scene from Blade Runner 2049; the flying drone hovers in the warehouse aisle, its spinning rotors filling the cavernous space with a buzzing whine.

It edges close to the packages stacked on the shelf and scans them using onboard optical sensors, before whizzing off to its next assignment.

But this is no sci-fi film, it's a warehouse in the US - one of around 250,000 throughout the country, many gargantuan in size: retail giant Walmart's smallest warehouse, for example, is larger than 17 football fields put together.

And these automated drones are now doing the jobs humans - on foot, or operating fork-lift trucks and mechanical lifts - used to do: and they're doing them more cheaply and more accurately.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-41737300

Cheers,

Itsallaguess

[JMN2]

Robots! And I am still waiting for that 90's hype nano-technology.

[JMN2]

And I'd like to know where did that ozone problem go.

[DiamondEcho]

And I'd like to know where did that ozone problem go.

Still there https://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/10/26/ ... one-layer/
ps. where did acid rain go?