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Automation

RetiredUSN said:
Automation will not destroy the job market.

Automated machinery parts wear out and the industry will require parts, machine shops, programmers, operators, mechanics, warehousing, logistics, transportation, etc. etc. etc.
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All of which will also eventually automated.
 
James972 said:
they all died millions of times thanks to new inventions and still we have 97% employment despite, now, more rapid technological advancement than ever in human history so there in 0 evidence to support your libcommie alarmism.
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There is no alarmism except in your head dude. I only pointed towards current technology that will eventually make most jobs unnecessary, I do not find that alarming at all; I see that as a good thing.
 
FreedomFromAll said:
current technology that will eventually make most jobs unnecessary, .
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total insanity!! Farm equipment meant that 99% of humans no longer had to farm but that did not make most jobs unnecessary it simple created new ones.
 
FreedomFromAll said:
Wow dude you seem really worked up.
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Farm equipment meant that 99% of humans no longer had to farm but that did not make most jobs unnecessary it simple created new ones. Do you understand?
 
James972 said:
Farm equipment meant that 99% of humans no longer had to farm but that did not make most jobs unnecessary it simple created new ones. Do you understand?
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Yes I understand that you desperately want me to take up a strawman.
 
We just kicked off a $3M automation project: 5 robots and ancillary equipment processing over a million alum die cast parts annually, from furnace to dunnage. Trust me. No freaking human wants to be in the middle of that production line.

The project will keep 10 well-paid people in our company busy for close to a year. Another 10 will then be integrated into the program on the customer’s side beginning about Christmas. At least 5 of them will be with the equipment for the next three or four years, at which time it will need retooled. Then, a dozen more will be needed all over again.
 
calamity said:
We just kicked off a $3M automation project: 5 robots and ancillary equipment processing over a million alum die cast parts annually, from furnace to dunnage. Trust me. No freaking human wants to be in the middle of that production line.

The project will keep 10 well-paid people in our company busy for close to a year. Another 10 will then be integrated into the program on the customer’s side beginning about Christmas. At least 5 of them will be with the equipment for the next three or four years, at which time it will need retooled. Then, a dozen more will be needed all over again.
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I hope you pay those technicians around $40/hr. or more.
 
calamity said:
Why would it matter?
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That's what it should be, unless you are in an area with an excess of skilled labor vs. job availability.

Or...

You are OK with the lesser of the qualified.
 
Lord of Planar said:
That's what it should be, unless you are in an area with an excess of skilled labor vs. job availability.

Or...

You are OK with the lesser of the qualified.
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Some people make $20 others make $60 to $100. It depends on their skill sets, job function, etc. That's why I balked at your question--it was too simplistic. The guy loading our machines onto a truck certainly does not pull in $40 an hour. :roll:
 
FreedomFromAll said:
Yes I understand that you are pretty ignorant on this subject of automation/autonomous manufacturing. We are not talking about a fancy new tool or even millions but, systems and advanced AI's. There will be no need for tool makers or people to work on them. Nor will there be a need to have people manage them. The entire operation will eventually be autonomous.

Reinventing manufacturing with autonomous factories | Genpact

"Example 2: An autonomous self-learning ai-driven steel mill fulfills custom orders without any human intervention"



The world will move on whether you accept it or not.
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AI is a buzzword, not a specific technology.

Machine learning is just meta optimization, and is subject to the same issues as standard techniques (only more so) Deep learning is essentially just high dimensional automatic stochastic classification. They’re not magic. They have advantages and limitations. These generic algorithms are not going to take over the world and replace all human workers just because they’re better at machine vision.

The human brain is amazing. Yet we still require more than a decade of instruction by other humans who have been specifically trained to instruct in order to produce a functioning worker. And even then there are quite a few failures. So I really wouldn’t worry that a computer running on some data set for a week might become skynet and take away all of our jobs.

Automation is evolutionary, not revolutionary.

The successful effort to build Panama Canal took 10 years, employed at least 40,000, and cost the lives of at least 5609. This was after a failed French attempt that cost the lives of 20,000 people. 100 years later the Chunnel was completed in 6 years, cost the lives of 6 people, yet still employed 13,000 workers.

The difference in technology between the efforts is staggering. A single machine replaced thousands of manual laborers. Yet the Chunnel still employed a large number of people. They were just paid more and died less. Technology didn’t make workers obsolete, it made them more productive, comfortable, and safe. It also allowed us to take on challenges that would previously been impossible.

Today is no different. Specific jobs and skills will become obsolete, workers will not.
 
Mithros said:
AI is a buzzword, not a specific technology.

Machine learning is just meta optimization, and is subject to the same issues as standard techniques (only more so) Deep learning is essentially just high dimensional automatic stochastic classification. They’re not magic. They have advantages and limitations. These generic algorithms are not going to take over the world and replace all human workers just because they’re better at machine vision.

The human brain is amazing. Yet we still require more than a decade of instruction by other humans who have been specifically trained to instruct in order to produce a functioning worker. And even then there are quite a few failures. So I really wouldn’t worry that a computer running on some data set for a week might become skynet and take away all of our jobs.

Automation is evolutionary, not revolutionary.

The successful effort to build Panama Canal took 10 years, employed at least 40,000, and cost the lives of at least 5609. This was after a failed French attempt that cost the lives of 20,000 people. 100 years later the Chunnel was completed in 6 years, cost the lives of 6 people, yet still employed 13,000 workers.

The difference in technology between the efforts is staggering. A single machine replaced thousands of manual laborers. Yet the Chunnel still employed a large number of people. They were just paid more and died less. Technology didn’t make workers obsolete, it made them more productive, comfortable, and safe. It also allowed us to take on challenges that would previously been impossible.

Today is no different. Specific jobs and skills will become obsolete, workers will not.
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Many of the jobs machines do today killed people by the time they reached their late 40’s.
 
Mithros said:
AI is a buzzword, not a specific technology.

Machine learning is just meta optimization, and is subject to the same issues as standard techniques (only more so) Deep learning is essentially just high dimensional automatic stochastic classification. They’re not magic. They have advantages and limitations. These generic algorithms are not going to take over the world and replace all human workers just because they’re better at machine vision.

The human brain is amazing. Yet we still require more than a decade of instruction by other humans who have been specifically trained to instruct in order to produce a functioning worker. And even then there are quite a few failures. So I really wouldn’t worry that a computer running on some data set for a week might become skynet and take away all of our jobs.

Automation is evolutionary, not revolutionary.

The successful effort to build Panama Canal took 10 years, employed at least 40,000, and cost the lives of at least 5609. This was after a failed French attempt that cost the lives of 20,000 people. 100 years later the Chunnel was completed in 6 years, cost the lives of 6 people, yet still employed 13,000 workers.

The difference in technology between the efforts is staggering. A single machine replaced thousands of manual laborers. Yet the Chunnel still employed a large number of people. They were just paid more and died less. Technology didn’t make workers obsolete, it made them more productive, comfortable, and safe. It also allowed us to take on challenges that would previously been impossible.

Today is no different. Specific jobs and skills will become obsolete, workers will not.
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The chunnel was not an automated operation, thus your argument invalid. And AI isnt even a word; AI is a acronym for artificial intelligence which is indeed a specific technology.

And dude seriously I am not worried about some make believe skynet scenario taking away jobs. Back here in reality one can just recognize the evidence that technology will progress to the point that human labor will not be necessary. It is no different than any other advancement that made it unnecessary to hire a human to do a specific job. Technological progress have made entire industries (and every job in them) obsolete. I am sure that there were people in each of those industries that could have sworn that their jobs would never be obsolete.

The world is not going to do things the hard way just for some romantic memory of how things used to be done.
 
FreedomFromAll said:
The chunnel was not an automated operation, thus your argument invalid. And AI isnt even a word; AI is a acronym for artificial intelligence which is indeed a specific technology.

And dude seriously I am not worried about some make believe skynet scenario taking away jobs. Back here in reality one can just recognize the evidence that technology will progress to the point that human labor will not be necessary. It is no different than any other advancement that made it unnecessary to hire a human to do a specific job. Technological progress have made entire industries (and every job in them) obsolete. I am sure that there were people in each of those industries that could have sworn that their jobs would never be obsolete.

The world is not going to do things the hard way just for some romantic memory of how things used to be done.
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The Panama Canal was dug largely by hand. The Chunnel was dug largely by a tunnel boring machine. That’s automation.

And the effects are important. The work of tens of thousands of miners was done by a machine and a handful of operators. We didn’t see a 1000x reduction in the workforce, but we did see a 1000x reduction in deaths. Furthermore a Chunnel could not have been built in 1915 meaning the tens of thousands of well paid jobs in the 80s wouldn’t have existed without automation.

I develop cutting edge automation for a living. I’ve done countless ROI studies. They all look like the difference between the Panama Canal and the Chunnel. Automation removes the dangerous/worst jobs and adds a bunch of new better well paying jobs. Yes more jobs are removed than created for a given task, but since automation reduces costs and adds capabilities it opens up new opportunities.

There is no evidence that automation is going to remove the need for human workers. There are only a few tech ceo’s that make a lot of noise, but don’t have much of a technical grounding. Robotics is hard. It’s easy to make demos and promises, but very few people have managed to field a robot that takes fewer people to operate than it replaces.

Not to make this too long, but technology is not advancing as fast as we think it is. Life in 1930 was unrecognizable to 1910. The same with 1930 to 1950. The differences between 2000 and today really isn’t that significant. So yes there will be painful changes, but we’ve already experienced a myriad of painful changes. The coming worker “apocalypse” isn’t any different from the one that took away typists, human calculators, the slide rule, draftsmen, etc...
 
Mithros said:
The Panama Canal was dug largely by hand. The Chunnel was dug largely by a tunnel boring machine. That’s automation.

And the effects are important. The work of tens of thousands of miners was done by a machine and a handful of operators. We didn’t see a 1000x reduction in the workforce, but we did see a 1000x reduction in deaths. Furthermore a Chunnel could not have been built in 1915 meaning the tens of thousands of well paid jobs in the 80s wouldn’t have existed without automation.

I develop cutting edge automation for a living. I’ve done countless ROI studies. They all look like the difference between the Panama Canal and the Chunnel. Automation removes the dangerous/worst jobs and adds a bunch of new better well paying jobs. Yes more jobs are removed than created for a given task, but since automation reduces costs and adds capabilities it opens up new opportunities.

There is no evidence that automation is going to remove the need for human workers. There are only a few tech ceo’s that make a lot of noise, but don’t have much of a technical grounding. Robotics is hard. It’s easy to make demos and promises, but very few people have managed to field a robot that takes fewer people to operate than it replaces.

Not to make this too long, but technology is not advancing as fast as we think it is. Life in 1930 was unrecognizable to 1910. The same with 1930 to 1950. The differences between 2000 and today really isn’t that significant. So yes there will be painful changes, but we’ve already experienced a myriad of painful changes. The coming worker “apocalypse” isn’t any different from the one that took away typists, human calculators, the slide rule, draftsmen, etc...
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We need another paradigm shift, like CMP was to the computer industry.
 
Mithros said:
The Panama Canal was dug largely by hand. The Chunnel was dug largely by a tunnel boring machine. That’s automation.

And the effects are important. The work of tens of thousands of miners was done by a machine and a handful of operators. We didn’t see a 1000x reduction in the workforce, but we did see a 1000x reduction in deaths. Furthermore a Chunnel could not have been built in 1915 meaning the tens of thousands of well paid jobs in the 80s wouldn’t have existed without automation.

I develop cutting edge automation for a living. I’ve done countless ROI studies. They all look like the difference between the Panama Canal and the Chunnel. Automation removes the dangerous/worst jobs and adds a bunch of new better well paying jobs. Yes more jobs are removed than created for a given task, but since automation reduces costs and adds capabilities it opens up new opportunities.

There is no evidence that automation is going to remove the need for human workers. There are only a few tech ceo’s that make a lot of noise, but don’t have much of a technical grounding. Robotics is hard. It’s easy to make demos and promises, but very few people have managed to field a robot that takes fewer people to operate than it replaces.

Not to make this too long, but technology is not advancing as fast as we think it is. Life in 1930 was unrecognizable to 1910. The same with 1930 to 1950. The differences between 2000 and today really isn’t that significant. So yes there will be painful changes, but we’ve already experienced a myriad of painful changes. The coming worker “apocalypse” isn’t any different from the one that took away typists, human calculators, the slide rule, draftsmen, etc...
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Ill say this again I am not worried about whatever the **** it is that you want me not to be worried about. But I will point out that comparing the early 1900's to now is just plain stupid. And for all your super authority in automation you seem very, very ignorant about where technological advances in automation stand at this time. The chunnel was finished is 1994, back when todays technology was merely science fiction. And actually the differences in technology between 2000 and now are significant. And you would know that if you actually developed cutting edge automation for a living. Hell simple googling would tell you that you were wrong, I do not need to claim to be some faux authority on the subject. We are a world apart from Y2K. Both Intel and AMD pass the 1 GHz CPU barrier. Something many people in the computer industry thought would never happen. flash forward to Artificial Intelligence Neural Networks, which would be some of that cutting edge crap you claimed to know all about.
 
FreedomFromAll said:
Ill say this again I am not worried about whatever the **** it is that you want me not to be worried about. But I will point out that comparing the early 1900's to now is just plain stupid. And for all your super authority in automation you seem very, very ignorant about where technological advances in automation stand at this time. The chunnel was finished is 1994, back when todays technology was merely science fiction. And actually the differences in technology between 2000 and now are significant. And you would know that if you actually developed cutting edge automation for a living. Hell simple googling would tell you that you were wrong, I do not need to claim to be some faux authority on the subject. We are a world apart from Y2K. Both Intel and AMD pass the 1 GHz CPU barrier. Something many people in the computer industry thought would never happen. flash forward to Artificial Intelligence Neural Networks, which would be some of that cutting edge crap you claimed to know all about.
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They're still just fancy tools. Sure, we no longer need a roomful of draftsman standing in front of boards with pencils and erasers in their hands to design millions of dollars worth of equipment and products. But, we can't just set computers loose on the project yet either. The tube is just a tool.

Robots do not yet program themselves, nor are they of any use when building custom equipment. And, as stunning as it may sound, humans are still cheaper to use than robots in most production applications.

Now, should the average burger flipper and order taker start demanding $20 an hour, I can see the kiosk concept taking over. In fact, I hope it does. We should be able to order a burger by iPhone and have a drone come drop it off. We are behind the times. Why? People are still cheaper.
 
FreedomFromAll said:
Ill say this again I am not worried about whatever the **** it is that you want me not to be worried about. But I will point out that comparing the early 1900's to now is just plain stupid. And for all your super authority in automation you seem very, very ignorant about where technological advances in automation stand at this time. The chunnel was finished is 1994, back when todays technology was merely science fiction. And actually the differences in technology between 2000 and now are significant. And you would know that if you actually developed cutting edge automation for a living. Hell simple googling would tell you that you were wrong, I do not need to claim to be some faux authority on the subject. We are a world apart from Y2K. Both Intel and AMD pass the 1 GHz CPU barrier. Something many people in the computer industry thought would never happen. flash forward to Artificial Intelligence Neural Networks, which would be some of that cutting edge crap you claimed to know all about.
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**cough**
Mithros said:
AI is a buzzword, not a specific technology.

Machine learning is just meta optimization, and is subject to the same issues as standard techniques (only more so) Deep learning is essentially just high dimensional automatic stochastic classification. They’re not magic. They have advantages and limitations. These generic algorithms are not going to take over the world and replace all human workers just because they’re better at machine vision.
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As to what you're worried about:
FreedomFromAll said:
The chunnel was not an automated operation, thus your argument invalid. And AI isnt even a word; AI is a acronym for artificial intelligence which is indeed a specific technology.

And dude seriously I am not worried about some make believe skynet scenario taking away jobs. Back here in reality one can just recognize the evidence that technology will progress to the point that human labor will not be necessary. It is no different than any other advancement that made it unnecessary to hire a human to do a specific job. .
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There is zero evidence that this will happen. We do have many examples in which technology advances make certain jobs and industries obsolete while simultaneously creating more skilled or specialized jobs. We used to have armies of ditch diggers, typists, farmers, drafters, telephone operators, human calculators, etc. Hundreds of millions of jobs have been made obsolete. We've also significantly added to the size of the workforce and increased worker productivity. Yet we don't see any long term rise in unemployment. Individual skills (especially the lack thereof) are becoming obsolete, but the human workforce isn't. Automation is a tool that augments human effort, it does not replace it.

Machine learning is the methodology used to to train Neural Networks, as a result the terms are used mostly interchangeably (although you can build a NN without ML and visa versa). Neural networks are not simulated neurons. Machine learning is not akin to human learning. It's meta optimization. These algorithms and techniques are powerful, especially in image and speech recognition. Unfortunately many people talk about them as techno-magic solutions to all of our problems. And before you throw the just add more input data, performance of cnn's is logarithmic at best wrt #samples. They're also "flat" and have significant difficulty representing any kind of abstraction. Furthermore, while they're fairly capable of interpolation, they tend to be catastrophically bad at extrapolation and have difficulty differentiating between the two. eg.

What ML has done is made it far easier to make convincing demonstrations. These demonstrations are akin to a trick-shot highlight video. You see videos of amazing capabilities as all of the failures are edited out. And in many cases, developing these techniques is as likely to solve the underlying problem as practicing trickshots will prepare you for the NBA. Automation is HARD.
 
IMO, the assumption that human labor will not be necessary is absurd. Now, that is not to say some jobs will not become obsolete, replaced by automation. For sure they will. But, new jobs will follow. They always do.
 
Mithros said:
**cough**


As to what you're worried about:

There is zero evidence that this will happen. We do have many examples in which technology advances make certain jobs and industries obsolete while simultaneously creating more skilled or specialized jobs. We used to have armies of ditch diggers, typists, farmers, drafters, telephone operators, human calculators, etc. Hundreds of millions of jobs have been made obsolete. We've also significantly added to the size of the workforce and increased worker productivity. Yet we don't see any long term rise in unemployment. Individual skills (especially the lack thereof) are becoming obsolete, but the human workforce isn't. Automation is a tool that augments human effort, it does not replace it.

Machine learning is the methodology used to to train Neural Networks, as a result the terms are used mostly interchangeably (although you can build a NN without ML and visa versa). Neural networks are not simulated neurons. Machine learning is not akin to human learning. It's meta optimization. These algorithms and techniques are powerful, especially in image and speech recognition. Unfortunately many people talk about them as techno-magic solutions to all of our problems. And before you throw the just add more input data, performance of cnn's is logarithmic at best wrt #samples. They're also "flat" and have significant difficulty representing any kind of abstraction. Furthermore, while they're fairly capable of interpolation, they tend to be catastrophically bad at extrapolation and have difficulty differentiating between the two. eg.

What ML has done is made it far easier to make convincing demonstrations. These demonstrations are akin to a trick-shot highlight video. You see videos of amazing capabilities as all of the failures are edited out. And in many cases, developing these techniques is as likely to solve the underlying problem as practicing trickshots will prepare you for the NBA. Automation is HARD.
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No that would be the thing that you are worried about. Im not worried in the least about humans not having jobs.


Let me make this simple for you to understand: I believe that every job replaced by technological advances is a good thing. I am not at all arguing that there is some job apocalypse on the horizon. Nor any of the other crap that you want me to be arguing. I am not arguing "techno-magic" that is just you jumping to stupid conclusions. And quite frankly you are only parroting the typical arguments that people take up on this subject. You know where one side argues that jobs will still be around, while the other side says that we are all doomed. You obviously think that I am on the we are all doomed side; but I am not.

BTW that link that you gave to bolster your argument was from 2016, there have been much advancements since then.
 
calamity said:
IMO, the assumption that human labor will not be necessary is absurd. Now, that is not to say some jobs will not become obsolete, replaced by automation. For sure they will. But, new jobs will follow. They always do.
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What jobs will remain?
 
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