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Automation Agenda of the Davos Elite

nytimes.com

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Re: Automation Agenda of the Davos Elite

#81

Post by mhuffman »

sgt101 wrote: post #69
brobdingnagians wrote: post #46

>“The choice isn’t between automation and non-automation,” said Erik Brynjolfsson, the director of M.I.T.’s Initiative on the Digital Economy. “It’s between whether you use the technology in a way that creates shared prosperity, or more concentration of wealth.” This could lead to a scenario with what happened when there was aristocracy. Land was a major necessary means of production and was overwhelmingly owned by t…

Napoleon put an end to that, the state's monopoly on violence came to rest on it's ability to mobilise an army of it's citizenry. Napoleon's army's demolished (comprehensively) army's dragooned into the field by aristocrats, aristocrats who thought to ignore this truth came to a bad end. In China, currently, there is an interesting experiment being played out about what the limits of modern centralised power are. The…

It seems that centralized power would benefit from encouraging differences and factions in its citizenry. This keeps any sort of broad mobilization limited in scope and also if force needs to be used against a mobilizing group, there is always a plurality of citizens that would not be opposed to it.

Re: Automation Agenda of the Davos Elite

#82

Post by rafiki6 »

sgt101 wrote: post #70

Journalists are credulous, and sell clicks. Execs are credulous, and sell tenure till the next bonus. Consultants and vendors are selling themselves. There will be automation, it will take much longer to deliver than is being pitched. It will deliver smaller benefits (initially) than are being pitched. It will probably not realise the type of value that is easy to pitch. In the meantime lying liars are scaring people…

I love how they always lump words like AI, automation, ML, Deep Learning together. They make it seem like there already exists an army of robots just as capable as humans ready to take over. Sure, many companies have managed to automate lots of things, but this isn't new and is expensive and takes lots of time to achieve. Further capitalism is predicated on growth, and growth requires people to have money and for the population to continue growing to see spending growth. We run into an interesting problem. Why do we need so much production if no one has money to buy anything? Why do we need so many people if we have an automated labour force? Further has no one considered that much our economy is based on solving entirely unique human problems? Things like finance, communication, luxury goods and even energy production...these are things for humans. I have yet to read an meaningful analysis of what a truly automated labour force will mean for the human population and capitalism.

Re: Automation Agenda of the Davos Elite

#83

Post by rafiki6 »

The biggest missing point in this article is that the companies who actually succeed at automation are few and far between, and generally speaking entire industries need to be upended for automation to actually take hold. I don't agree with the re-skilling narrative, but I do think they're overblowing the capabilities of something like RPA. It's not as good as they claim and generally speaking you have to rejig an entire process for it to make sense. The most important missing discussion point here is that unless we have a global view of humanity and our goals as a species, who are we doing all this automating for? If people lose their jobs and can't spend money, why do we even care about high production? The real thing no one at Davos is openly talking about is the global population and what to do with 7 billion people if you really only need a world of 500 million since you've automated all that labour away and now you don't need to produce as much.

Re: Automation Agenda of the Davos Elite

#84

Post by heurist »

rafiki6 wrote: post #83

The biggest missing point in this article is that the companies who actually succeed at automation are few and far between, and generally speaking entire industries need to be upended for automation to actually take hold. I don't agree with the re-skilling narrative, but I do think they're overblowing the capabilities of something like RPA. It's not as good as they claim and generally speaking you have to rejig an en…

Automation thought leaders have become an echo chamber divorced from the reality of problem solving. I rarely see discussion of concrete steps to take to automate something, only fluffy high level conversation about impacts should a vague widespread automation rapidly occur. Meanwhile, the hardest problems are still out there and it's impossible to determine impact without knowing what those problems are and basic steps to automating them.

That said, there are broader trends that can be studied and discussed, like the impact of the industrial revolution on the world wars, global trade, etc. But those are academic in nature and don't directly indicate investment potential, so tend to stay in academia.

Re: Automation Agenda of the Davos Elite

#85

Post by mistermann »

mhuffman wrote: post #81
sgt101 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Napoleon put an end to that, the state's monopoly on violence came to rest on it's ability to mobilise an army of it's citizenry. Napoleon's army's demolished (comprehensively) army's dragooned into the field by aristocrats, aristocrats who thought to ignore this truth came to a bad end. In China, currently, there is an interesting experiment being played out about what the limits of modern centralised power are. The…

It seems that centralized power would benefit from encouraging differences and factions in its citizenry. This keeps any sort of broad mobilization limited in scope and also if force needs to be used against a mobilizing group, there is always a plurality of citizens that would not be opposed to it.

> It seems that centralized power would benefit from encouraging differences and factions in its citizenry.

Key word being "encouraging". A possible(!) recent example of this would be the maga hat kid. The beauty of this incident is, the initial incident is guaranteed to polarize people, but even if more truth comes out it the result is even more polarization. Can't lose strategy, provided no one notices what's going on.

I believe this is a bi-partisan issue, I imagine many similar examples could be found with the political roles switched.

An effective modern day Napolean is going to need the persuasive skills of Donald Trump combined with political beliefs from both poles (~ Trump + Bernie Sanders), but even then with the top down control (censorship) over modern means of mainstream communication it could be difficult to even get your message out there.

So far there always seems to be reason for hope though, while Bernie is getting along in the years almost out of the blue here comes this Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez girl, almost like a "far left" Donald Trump to keep things interesting.

Re: Automation Agenda of the Davos Elite

#86

Post by sgt101 »

mhuffman wrote: post #81
sgt101 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Napoleon put an end to that, the state's monopoly on violence came to rest on it's ability to mobilise an army of it's citizenry. Napoleon's army's demolished (comprehensively) army's dragooned into the field by aristocrats, aristocrats who thought to ignore this truth came to a bad end. In China, currently, there is an interesting experiment being played out about what the limits of modern centralised power are. The…

It seems that centralized power would benefit from encouraging differences and factions in its citizenry. This keeps any sort of broad mobilization limited in scope and also if force needs to be used against a mobilizing group, there is always a plurality of citizens that would not be opposed to it.

This worked in China right up till The Red Guard emerged. After that, it stopped working with about 5 million bangs. It's an unstable approach (so far), with blowback guaranteed.

Re: Automation Agenda of the Davos Elite

#87

Post by sgt101 »

rafiki6 wrote: post #82
sgt101 wrote: post #70

Journalists are credulous, and sell clicks. Execs are credulous, and sell tenure till the next bonus. Consultants and vendors are selling themselves. There will be automation, it will take much longer to deliver than is being pitched. It will deliver smaller benefits (initially) than are being pitched. It will probably not realise the type of value that is easy to pitch. In the meantime lying liars are scaring people…

I love how they always lump words like AI, automation, ML, Deep Learning together. They make it seem like there already exists an army of robots just as capable as humans ready to take over. Sure, many companies have managed to automate lots of things, but this isn't new and is expensive and takes lots of time to achieve. Further capitalism is predicated on growth, and growth requires people to have money and for the…

Ha ! Try The Culture novels by Iain M. Banks :)

Re: Automation Agenda of the Davos Elite

#88

Post by AboutTheWhisles »

empath75 wrote: post #12
MBlume wrote: post #3

...Good? Work is horrible? If a drop in the amount of work that needs to be done is actually a problem then that's a policy failure.

It’ll be a problem because ultimately the people who own all the capital won’t need anyone else to survive. They’ll build walls and robot guards and live in their utopias of plenty while everyone else starves.

If you really believe this, does that mean you are studying robotics?

Re: Automation Agenda of the Davos Elite

#89

Post by NeedMoreTea »

pas wrote: post #75
NeedMoreTea wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was far more to it than that. Whole communities arose around the pit, steel works or ship yard. Hundreds or thousands of local families depended on it. Family, friends and everyone in the street was a part of it. When it goes a few shop or driving jobs may be possible but leaves the majority up shit creek with no paddle. > Sure it can crush a generation (see the american midwest from 1960-2020), but most people…

You are right, so is OP, but I don't think OP's post is heartless. It's simply descriptivist (positivist) and not normative. It is what it is, there's no point in sugar coating it. And yes, of course our response to these facts are even more important. Do we just short steel mill stocks and Pittsburgh bonds or advocate for retraining, for subsidizing emerging industry establishments in the affected areas, etc. Some o…

There's a certain truth to it, but I think we owe society far better, rather than just blithely accepting it as it is what it is and tough shit for everyone affected. If we want a society at all, that is.

For instance, I remember the wave of de-industrialisation of the 80s. While I wasn't personally affected, I knew plenty who were. For many tens of thousands it wasn't a simple case of just move to where the work is.

How do you do that when your house is worth a quarter or tenth of of what you paid, but the mortgage debt remains? When almost everyone else locally is trying to move to get work too. Who is going to buy the house? In a town with no work. They may lose the dozen ship builders or steel works, but also lose the hundreds of businesses that serviced, supplied and depended on the products of those major works, then everything that depended on the money flowing from those - the takeaways, supermarkets, cinema, garages etc. The whole supply chain breaks. You may as well ask them to flap arms and fly out of the ghost town.

If one of the lucky few that were able to get out, carry a debt that can never be paid off, whilst earning half or less of the former skilled wage. They can't all move to the outskirts of London to work in banking or retrain in age discriminating IT in their mid 50s. Who's going to employ that junior? It ruins more than just one generation. The kids deprived of education and other life chances, or just the consequences of having parents from whom the hope has been sucked, perhaps on anti-depressants long term. Little wonder most of those places gained a huge drug and crime problem in the aftermath. Some places have still not come close to recovering.

Clearly we can't artificially keep every rural pit village viable, but we could, and should try not to lose whole towns, cities and regions, unless we want more civil unrest and more extremists elected. That history even goes some way to explaining Brexit. So yes, from what I've seen over those 40 years in the UK, we should and probably must subsidise through tax and incentives new industries and services establishing in deprived areas until they can sustain once again. Ignoring whole regions as acceptable losses in a "free" market was a huge, unforgivable mistake. Adequate regeneration help is probably far cheaper for the state once you consider all consequences anyway. Particularly in a future where it appears likely many more will lose their work, much more quickly, than in the past.

Re: Automation Agenda of the Davos Elite

#90

Post by throwaway218649 »

redahs wrote: post #25
empath75 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’ll be a problem because ultimately the people who own all the capital won’t need anyone else to survive. They’ll build walls and robot guards and live in their utopias of plenty while everyone else starves.

The ownership of land by value is more unequally distributed than the ownership of capital. Capital depreciates and needs to be regularly replaced each generation. The wealthy have never needed robots to live a life of plenty; they can extract as much labor power as they need through rent.

The "rich will just live on their land without workers" seems like a hypothetical scenario, but it actually happened a few times during the colonization of the Western United States and Australia (post-Native American/Australian genocide). Marx has an interesting note on this in chapter 33 of volume I of Capital:

> It is the great merit of E. G. Wakefield to have discovered, not anything new about the Colonies, but to have discovered in the Colonies the truth as to the conditions of capitalist production in the mother-country… First of all, Wakefield discovered that in the Colonies, property in money, means of subsistence, machines, and other means of production, does not as yet stamp a man as a capitalist if there be wanting the correlative - the wage-worker, the other man who is compelled to sell himself of his own free will. He discovered that capital is not a thing, but a social relation between persons, established by the instrumentality of things. Mr. Peel, he moans, took with him from England to Swan River, West Australia, means of subsistence and of production to the amount of £50,000. Mr. Peel had the foresight to bring with him, besides, 3,000 persons of the working class, men, women, and children. Once arrived at his destination, "Mr. Peel was left without a servant to make his bed or fetch him water from the river." (E. G. Wakefield. "England And America," vol.ii, p. 33)

In the United States, the slave labor system kept the workers from subjecting their masters to this "violation" of property rights. There are many historical records of European colonists running away from indentured labor to join Native Americans (the reverse does not seem to have ever happened).

The wealthy need poor laborers a lot more than vice-versa. What is really happening with automation is that it is being used to build militarized police states around the world that keep the poor from squatting the land held by the rich, to force the poor to work for the benefit of the rich (for example, someone is going to have to keep working on oil extraction for a long time to come, even if all the farming will be done by robotic tractors). A police state forcing people into wage slavery is the necessary precondition for the "rich live in automated luxury" scenario to occur.

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