In Manufacturing and Retail, Robot Labor is Cheaper Than Slave Labor Would Be • Hacker News Board

Re: In Manufacturing and Retail, Robot Labor is Cheaper Than Slave Labor Would Be

#171

Post by marcosdumay » Fri, Mar 17, 2017, 6:04 PM UTC

pygy_ wrote: post #131

marcosdumay wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a great question. Without any good answer, just needs some better context. You see, capitalism is a paperclip maximizer but has no builtin paperclip model to produce. It is still made of people, and gets it's goal from those people all the time. If there's no goal given, it simply fails (economists call the milder versions of that failure mode by "deflationary depression"). Also, unemployed people are not comple…

The human bits are being gradually replaced. First strength, then dexterity, now smarts. We are still, to some extent driving the demand side of the equation with our various needs (see Maslow's hierarchy), but it looks like finance has become mostly independent, for example. The "rising tide that lifts all boats" is nice for people rich enough to buy a boat, and with the growing rift between economy and the medium i…

> but it looks like finance has become mostly independent

It's not. The fact that when we take a little bit of human demand away, everything falls apart is evidence of that.

Governments are a kind of AI that demands stuff by itself. We've been good at keeping it at check up to now. I'm not concerned about anything else being a more effective consumer until we get into superhuman AI, as desiring stuff is not something we engineer very well.

I agree much more with your concerns about wealth distribution. Automation's endgame is pushing the price of everything into zero, and the salary of everybody also into zero. Buying power on that scenario is too loosely defined to let anybody stay calm.

Re: In Manufacturing and Retail, Robot Labor is Cheaper Than Slave Labor Would Be

#172

Post by crdoconnor » Fri, Mar 17, 2017, 6:08 PM UTC

Broken_Hippo wrote: post #158

BurningFrog wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People have said that it's only a matter of time before all manual labor is replaced by machines since the industrial revolution started. Yet it keeps not having happened just yet. EDIT: I'm talking about all human work, not just physical labor. The "manual labor" part of the quote confuses my intended point.

That isn't really true. Not only has it been happening, but we've gotten more ambitious and broadened the definition. Now, we aren't only saying machines will take over labour, but that we'll be able to do even less with automation . The fact of the matter is, however, that we (humans) do a lot of different things, so we need a multitude of specialized machines and automation. That takes time, and we had to pick and…

The first automated fast food sales outlets ("automats") appeared in the 1890s in Germany. They became very popular for a while. In the US the last ones (Horn and Hardart) went into a deep decline in the 60s and had mostly disappeared by the 1970s.

Re: In Manufacturing and Retail, Robot Labor is Cheaper Than Slave Labor Would Be

#173

Post by lohi » Fri, Mar 17, 2017, 6:22 PM UTC

fapjacks wrote: post #161

lohi wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, I don't think it will work in the US (at least not initially). Americans are accustomed to a certain level of service, in part because of cheap labor. I remember standing behind an American family at McDonald's and their order was just on another level, very specific. Nothing wrong with that, they are getting their money's worth, just different expectations. We've had automated ordering at local chains in Sweden…

I've never been in a Max Burger place that didn't have humans also taking orders.

The one at way out west might have been without human ordering [0]. But since you still need humans to make and compile the food it might not make sense to have automated serving. And since you have people serving they might as well take orders under normal conditions.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZmCECwKpLgA

Re: In Manufacturing and Retail, Robot Labor is Cheaper Than Slave Labor Would Be

#174

Post by blacksmith_tb » Fri, Mar 17, 2017, 6:33 PM UTC

rljy wrote: post #119

hedonistbot wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> from Czech robotnik "forced worker," from robota "forced labor, compulsory service, drudgery,"... I am not sure if this is correct. In Bulgarian we have almost the same word работник (rabotnik) and it just means "worker". No forced, slave connotations. Also checked with google translate and it doesn't find Czech translation for "robotnik" but it suggests to switch to Polish and translates it to "worker" as in Bulga…

It does mean that in Czech. Which is strange, because in Slovak it just means work. I've translated a paragraph from wikipedia for you: "Robota neboli poddanství je ve feudálním systému osobní služba sedláků a rolníků pro jejich pány. Robotník je pak výraz pro poddaného robotujícího pro svého pána, někdy též vyššího správního či soudního úředníka, drába apod." "Robota is a feudal system of personal employment to the…

Capek's War with the Newts [1] is a little better read (I have only read it in translation, admittedly).

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_with_the_Newts#As_satire_a...

Re: In Manufacturing and Retail, Robot Labor is Cheaper Than Slave Labor Would Be

#175

Post by pygy_ » Fri, Mar 17, 2017, 6:50 PM UTC

thehardsphere wrote: post #169

pygy_ wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With capital becoming self-sufficient and human labour non-competitive, why would you think robots would serve us on a large scale? What's the incentive to serve and feed idle meat bags? Automation is destroying the only power that people still had over capital. Capitalism is the ultimate paperclip maximizer... a zombie that feeds on growth rather than brains. https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Paperclip_maximizer Edit:…

> Capitalism is the ultimate paperclip maximizer... a zombie that feeds on growth rather than brains. The "paperclip" that "Capitalism" seeks to maximize is money in exchange for goods and services that people want. The robots aren't going to be built in the first place if they're not going to serve somebody, and if they no longer provide things that people want in exchange for money, their owners will turn them off…

Robots are not the maximizers. People are at this point still driving the demand side of the equation, that's true, but there's not reason why they can't be replaced as well on that end.

The economy is a self-maximizer, bootstrapped on human labour. As automation progresses, it will become self-hosted.

Re: In Manufacturing and Retail, Robot Labor is Cheaper Than Slave Labor Would Be

#176

Post by Sammi » Fri, Mar 17, 2017, 6:50 PM UTC

crdoconnor wrote: post #170

_bpgl wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People have said that it's only a matter of time...Yet it keeps not having happened just yet. That's incredibly facile. Were there solid state digital electronics at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution? Was there machine learning? Motion control? Systems engineering? A robotics industry? Just aping the "power source of the future" line from the fusion joke and pretending it's the trenchant result of long exp…

Why do you think that the future will similarly not have jobs that you can't conceive of now? As far as I can tell the only special thing about automation in today's world is that the jobs being created are more often being created abroad than they are in the US (e.g. the million or so people employed by Foxconn in China) and predictions of automation destroying jobs are very blatantly being used politically as a way…

Jobs are only being created where human labor is still cheaper than robots. But the price of human labor keeps rising, so the factories continually keep moving to new countries with cheap labor. Meanwhile robots just keep getting cheaper. Inevitably there must come a point where there isn't anywhere to move the factories for cheap labor, as the whole world has come out of extreme poverty, while robots have gotten cheaper than what any human can offer their labor for.

Re: In Manufacturing and Retail, Robot Labor is Cheaper Than Slave Labor Would Be

#177

Post by Broken_Hippo » Fri, Mar 17, 2017, 7:14 PM UTC

crdoconnor wrote: post #172

Broken_Hippo wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That isn't really true. Not only has it been happening, but we've gotten more ambitious and broadened the definition. Now, we aren't only saying machines will take over labour, but that we'll be able to do even less with automation . The fact of the matter is, however, that we (humans) do a lot of different things, so we need a multitude of specialized machines and automation. That takes time, and we had to pick and…

The first automated fast food sales outlets ("automats") appeared in the 1890s in Germany. They became very popular for a while. In the US the last ones (Horn and Hardart) went into a deep decline in the 60s and had mostly disappeared by the 1970s.

Some of those weren't really automated, but rather worked more like vending machines. Weirdly, I've seen an updated version of these in hospitals. In addition, I've seen vending machines with cafeteria sandwiches and frozen microwave dinners.

For clarity, what I more refer to is kitchens without human intervention save for mechanics. The machines make burgers, fries, and whatnot. It seems the first wave is going more to replace the cashier, though: McDonalds has introduced touch-screen ordering stations and grocery stores have self-checkouts.

Re: In Manufacturing and Retail, Robot Labor is Cheaper Than Slave Labor Would Be

#178

Post by CuriouslyC » Fri, Mar 17, 2017, 7:38 PM UTC

thehardsphere wrote: post #169

pygy_ wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With capital becoming self-sufficient and human labour non-competitive, why would you think robots would serve us on a large scale? What's the incentive to serve and feed idle meat bags? Automation is destroying the only power that people still had over capital. Capitalism is the ultimate paperclip maximizer... a zombie that feeds on growth rather than brains. https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Paperclip_maximizer Edit:…

> Capitalism is the ultimate paperclip maximizer... a zombie that feeds on growth rather than brains. The "paperclip" that "Capitalism" seeks to maximize is money in exchange for goods and services that people want. The robots aren't going to be built in the first place if they're not going to serve somebody, and if they no longer provide things that people want in exchange for money, their owners will turn them off…

The problem with the current incarnation of capitalism is the assumption that goods and services will make people happy, and that their wants are intrinsic rather than indoctrinated. In truth both of these are false more often than not. Thus, while capitalism is very efficient, at this point that efficiency is mostly allowing us to crank up the speed setting on the hedonic treadmill, while we rack up debt, work soul crushing jobs and destroy our environment. This is sad, because in theory capitalism is awesome - we just need to stop letting the people with all the money write the rules of the game.

Re: In Manufacturing and Retail, Robot Labor is Cheaper Than Slave Labor Would Be

#179

Post by bryondowd » Fri, Mar 17, 2017, 7:41 PM UTC

mljoe wrote: post #120

koonsolo wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Power is currently about having lots of people doing your bidding. If that large group is unhappy about you, good luck! But as stated, times are changing. Power will not be about you commanding lots of people, but it will be about how many robots you have under your control. Military, police, etc, can all be robots. Your robot army just has to match the fighting power of the unhappy people.

That's why we can't have tech and science knowledge concentrated in the hands of a powerful few. If AI/robotics knowledge is everywhere, no single group will be able to control it.

Even with well distributed knowledge, you'll still likely end up with 1% of the population controlling 80% of the resources, which would mean they'd have plenty enough to quell any insurrection from the common people. It doesn't matter if a million people have the skills to cobble together a few war bots each, when a few oligarchs each have a factory and supply chain capable of churning out a million each in the same time-frame.

If it comes to that. I'm still somewhat hopeful that democratic processes and altruistic members of the elite will sort things out in the next century.

Re: In Manufacturing and Retail, Robot Labor is Cheaper Than Slave Labor Would Be

#180

Post by WalterBright » Fri, Mar 17, 2017, 7:43 PM UTC

idiot_stick wrote: post #85

WalterBright wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you force people to work, they're apt to poison you, sabotage the work, do as little as possible, be as unhelpful as possible, etc. Defending against that is costly.

> Defending against that is costly. Costly, yes. But do those costs out-weigh the immediate benefits of slave ownership? Probably not. I have a hard time thinking slave-owners were hurt by slavery; they made out like bandits, but their gains don't counter all the harm done to those enslaved.

That's a more difficult question to answer. Slaves are only good for the lowest menial labor, such as picking cotton. Up until the introduction of the cotton gin, slavery was dying out in the US because it was unprofitable. The cotton gin made slavery profitable again, but it was again dying out by the time of the Civil War. One of the causes of the Civil War was the southern states trying to erect trade barriers to protect the economics of the slave plantations.

Businesses run on slave labor just could not compete with those run with free labor.

(For example, it was illegal in the slave states to teach slaves to read, and any slave who could read would do well to conceal the skill. The southerners were fearful of an educated slave, because that made them more dangerous. But an illiterate slave was also less useful as a worker.)