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Just own the damn robots

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Re: Just own the damn robots

#151

Post by adrianN »

politician wrote: post #48
leggomylibro wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What will that tech need to survive? Lithium, for batteries. Heavy metals, for processing. Energy, most of all. I wonder how long it'll be until we replace fiat currencies with a balance of kilowatt-hours.

Well, if we can get some variant of the ARC reactor or ITER working, never. Or if we see grid-scale energy storage systems become cost effective to deploy.

"Too cheap to meter" was already the promise of fission. Fusion won't be much cheaper. The actual fuel doesn't make up the bulk of the cost of fission power. Building the plants and operating them is not cheap. Those costs have to amortized into the electricity price.

Re: Just own the damn robots

#152

Post by rtpg »

adrianN wrote: post #147
Chathamization wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Maybe people /should/ be more concerned about automation but they just aren’t right now. Or maybe people should be less concerned about it. The rate of automation/productivity growth has actually been pretty low over the last decade[1], some of the slowest in the past 70 years. [1] https://www.bls.gov/lpc/prodybar.htm

That doesn't mean that the technology hasn't progressed. Cheap labor from countries like China has made it less profitable to invest in automation.

it's also possible that we no longer have a lot of general technology imporvements that can be cost effective relative to just paying someone.

We could probably build excellent robots to bring food from the kitchen to tables of a restaurant, but the capital costs are just not worth it relative to hiring wait staff (conveyor belt sushi nonwithstanding).

Would it ever be worth it to Chili's to outfit a 40-table restaurant with automated delivery systems, replace 3 wait staff with a technician, and deal with the edge cases (how do tables get cleared??)? Probably not.

Likely most tech ends up actually make existing staff more efficient, to be simply overworked instead of insanely overworked. Tablet digital ordering systems, fast dishwashers, kitchen-side logistics improvements....

Re: Just own the damn robots

#153

Post by no_wizard »

Like all things this well written on this topic I feel like it hits the nail on the head and misses a few things because it’s an article by necessity must paint in broad strucks so let me say this:

It’s completely right that automation/ robotics will accelerate the displacement of workers and cause upheaval. Certainly owning the productive fruits of this will make one very rich.

What won’t happen is that these will displace those who service unmapped or poorly systemic mapped things. For instance: in the last 15 years there have been techniques to attempt to automatically curate wine. Most either fail or pivot. Why? Because chemical composition is only ine facet in the high end. Remarkably software still does not do a great job here as tastes are subtle and hard to train in a model or algorithm. It so far can only get n times better than average but never tops an expert human curator in the high end. Will it some day? Maybe. On an infinite time scale yes it will but I wouldn’t quite go dumping my high end wine skills quite yet.

Which brings me to my point: automation is great for irredeemable or trainable repetitive processes but still an infant at more complex things like the example given.

In turn, if you can carve out a niche that is unusually hard to model and train you may be okay. Unfortunately that’s not 90 percent of jobs I reckon.

The other sure fire bet us to only deal in Veblen goods. The value there being exclusivity, which I reckon will never stop being a thing

Re: Just own the damn robots

#154

Post by arca_vorago »

Have fun trying to own the robots after we've allowed proprietary licenses and leasing to takeover anything with a CPU attached.

Ownership is important, which is why copyleft is important, and its time to recognize how integral the four freedoms are to the future I think most of us want.

Re: Just own the damn robots

#155

Post by intended »

no_wizard wrote: post #153

Like all things this well written on this topic I feel like it hits the nail on the head and misses a few things because it’s an article by necessity must paint in broad strucks so let me say this: It’s completely right that automation/ robotics will accelerate the displacement of workers and cause upheaval. Certainly owning the productive fruits of this will make one very rich. What won’t happen is that these will d…

There an article somewhere which breaks down the types of automation, into a useable manner.

Theres automation of tasks which free up labor to do MORE work - so if you were a bricklayer, and were bottlenecked by number of hands, the wheelbarrow would be a force multiplier.

Theres removal of jobs with less useful jobs, so the chef got replaced by the burger flipper (not really, but I can't think of a good example at the moment).

And finally removal of jobs entirely, with no need of replacement.

Re: Just own the damn robots

#156

Post by sien »

ThomPete wrote: post #103
aorloff wrote: post #102

15 years ago all the software jobs I worked at were retiring clerical workers with software (oh you have 15 people doing spreadsheets ? We can automate that and you won't need them for the same report generation). So this has been going on a lot longer than the article supposes. Yes its true that the sophistication of the automation, and the breadth of its reach (with robots / gig economy) is higher than before, so i…

The point isn't that it's been going on for a long time but the speed with which it is happening today. Furthermore, I don't think most people understand how little the tech sector is. Even in the Bay Area, it's only around 15-20% who actually work in tech. Most people aren't able to just relearn and adopt.

If it's happening so fast why is US unemployment low and productivity growth low?

Re: Just own the damn robots

#157

Post by intended »

Iv wrote: post #106
aorloff wrote: post #102

15 years ago all the software jobs I worked at were retiring clerical workers with software (oh you have 15 people doing spreadsheets ? We can automate that and you won't need them for the same report generation). So this has been going on a lot longer than the article supposes. Yes its true that the sophistication of the automation, and the breadth of its reach (with robots / gig economy) is higher than before, so i…

> but it will also create new jobs managing the automation No, that's bullshit. New jobs will be created that way but far less: there would be no incentive to automation otherwise. This month I visited a warehouse with a team tasked to automate it. If we succeed, phase I should put ~10 people out of job and we don't expect to have to do more than occasional monthly interventions (and that's assuming that we have a hi…

An article somewhere had a useful categorizaiton of automation of jobs in terms of human jobs

1) Automation removes a bottleneck, and lets workers be more productive - often creating more work.

2) Automation removes a better paying job, and leaves behind a less skilled role for humans

3) Automation removes an entire type of work.

Automation doomsday scenarios focus on the last work.

The issue with automation, fundamentally ties down with the ability to transfer people to other roles if they suffer from automation of types 2 and 3.

But as I have pointed out elsewhere, and economists also admit - retraining is not really an option. For someone to change tack and learn an entirely new set of skills is more than slightly challenging on its own. Let alone with the tensions of losing a job and having to take care of a family with their time needs.

The weakpoint in the larger economic model is retraining.

Re: Just own the damn robots

#158

Post by intended »

ThomPete wrote: post #109
ian0 wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is where social safety nets (or the lack of them) come into play. The market can be short sighted when it comes to training and typically focus on younger generations where they do (large orgs sponsoring university courses etc). A good adult education scheme in conjunction with social welfare to allow people to make use of it makes a world of difference when it comes to re-tooling older people once jobs…

I don't disagree but how are you going to pay for social welfare if no one is making money? So what do you tax? do you do something else? These are the questions that are really relevant to figure out IMO.

You take a loan.

And people are making money - the GDP is growing overall, therefore there is far more productivity and value add happening in the system at large.

Americans have the potential of a good social safety net already (compared to many worse countries), its more a question of detail orientation and unpalatable politics - from the perspective of an outsider.

Re: Just own the damn robots

#159

Post by fspeech »

adrianN wrote: post #147
Chathamization wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Maybe people /should/ be more concerned about automation but they just aren’t right now. Or maybe people should be less concerned about it. The rate of automation/productivity growth has actually been pretty low over the last decade[1], some of the slowest in the past 70 years. [1] https://www.bls.gov/lpc/prodybar.htm

That doesn't mean that the technology hasn't progressed. Cheap labor from countries like China has made it less profitable to invest in automation.

China is investing in automation at a faster pace than anyone else.

Re: Just own the damn robots

#160

Post by fspeech »

paulpauper wrote: post #49
adventured wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The largest market cap companies in a given decade, overwhelmingly tend to be under-performers in the following decade. It's a trend that has repeated decade after decade. Many of these types of companies - AMZN, NFLX, GOOGL, FB - have pulled a massive share of their future returns forward (which is what happened to Microsoft, stagnating its stock for ~15 years). In 2007 the largest companies were: Exxon, GE, Microso…

Netflix has a ~200 PE ratio, there is no means for it to ever justify its existing valuation (400 million global subscribers? no chance), much less a far higher one. Their present business model has never proven the ability to produce good margins, content has perpetually sapped their earnings potential and is likely to continue to do so. Facebook and Google will stagnate and grow into their valuations. Google partic…

I don't think there's such a thing as impassable moat other than a monopoly. And monopolies eventually get busted by governments.
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