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  • Author Author: gervasi
  • Date Created: 29 Jun 2011 6:49 AM Date Created
  • Views 469 views
  • Likes 1 like
  • Comments 3 comments
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Automation and Jobs

gervasi
gervasi
29 Jun 2011

Automation has been the target of criticism from unrelated sources in the past few weeks.  Some of it is related to its eliminating jobs, which I believe is actually a good thing.
On June 14, IEEE Spectrum published a post on Senator Tom Coburn’s criticisms of NSF-funded robotics research projects.  That same day, President Obama linked automation to economic problems:
There are some structural issues with our economy where a lot of businesses have learned to become much more efficient with a lot fewer workers.  You see it when you go to a bank and you use an ATM, you don't go to a bank teller, or you go to the airport and you're using a kiosk instead of checking in at the gate.
Last Friday President Obama, perhaps in an effort to reach out to those of us working in industrial automation, visited the Carnegie Mellon University's National Robotics Engineering Center and announced an initiative to fund new robotics projects. 
What Is Behind This Interest in Automation?
Senator Coburn’s admits he is not knowledgeable about the robotics programs he criticized.  He selected programs that “just caught [his] eye.”  I suspect his motivation is a search for ways to cut spending without affecting entitlements and military, which account for most spending. In his report he says knows scientific research is important; he is only criticizing what he believes is wasteful spending.
President Obama may have used the word “structural” to contrast with “cyclical” issues.  The economic cycle can be influenced by monetary and fiscal policy (i.e. interest rates, money supply, and rate of government borrowing).  The idea is that the economic cycle has some would-be consumers, works, and means of production all sitting needlessly idle.  “Structural” issues go beyond the economic cycle and relate to things like needing new skills or new kinds factories.  This is consistent with last week’s initiative supporting robotics research.
Engineers Resisting Technology
Some engineers are surprisingly skeptical of encouraging robotics research.  The most common complain is the impact of automation on jobs.  As an engineer, I consider it always a good thing to be able to produce more with less effort.  That means if artificial intelligence reaches the point where it can understand specs, read datasheets, and make tradeoffs, I will be mostly out of a job and need to learn something useful in the post-AI-EDA world.  I do not want to people to forgo the new EDA software as charity to me. 
Technology’s Creative Destruction
The problem of new technologies not benefitting everyone is important and ancient. In Jared Diamond’s book Guns, Germs, and Steel, which covers why certain human societies increased their production and came to dominate hunter-gatherer societies, Diamond points out that even though moving from a hunter-gather society to an agricultural society increased productivity, the change at first made the average person’s life worse in some ways.  We should not accept as inevitable that new technologies won’t benefit everyone at first, but we should not be surprised either if there are some painful changes associated with a new technology. 
Some of my colleagues have rightly pointed out that in a modern context this means we create something that replaces someone’s job, e.g. Obama’s airport kiosk.  People who would have done that job, now must learn to design, test, build, repair, or sell that machine.  As the technology matures, low-cost competitors appear, the technology becomes commoditized, and many of those people are again out of a job.  As one thing becomes commoditized, however, there is a reciprocal process of decommoditization occurring some place else as if there were some law of conservation of charge for commoditization.  (See Clayton Christensen’s amazing book, The Innovator’s Solution, for more on this.)  All those people and businesses affected by this commoditization must again anticipate what activities will be profitable after the change and move in that direction. 
This process of creative destruction leads to more good and services with less work.  It also makes life much more complicated than it was in the past when the type of work people did was the same as what their grandparents had done and what they expected their grandkids to do. 
If we deploy new technologies mindful of their costs and do our best to mitigate the pain associated with change, it is better to have the technology than stability.  I don’t know whether robotics will shake up the world and get more done with less work, in other words “eliminate many jobs”, but I certainly hope so. 

Automation has been the target of criticism from unrelated sources in the past few weeks.  Some of it is related to its eliminating jobs, which I believe is actually a good thing.

 

On June 14, IEEE Spectrum published a post on Senator Tom Coburn’s criticisms of NSF-funded robotics research projects.  That same day, President Obama linked automation to economic problems:

There are some structural issues with our economy where a lot of businesses have learned to become much more efficient with a lot fewer workers.  You see it when you go to a bank and you use an ATM, you don't go to a bank teller, or you go to the airport and you're using a kiosk instead of checking in at the gate.

 

Last Friday President Obama, perhaps in an effort to reach out to those of us working in industrial automation, visited the Carnegie Mellon University's National Robotics Engineering Center and announced an initiative to fund new robotics projects. 

 

What Is Behind This Interest in Automation?

 

Senator Coburn’s admits he is not knowledgeable about the robotics programs he criticized.  He selected programs that “just caught [his] eye.”  I suspect his motivation is a search for ways to cut spending without affecting entitlements and military, which account for most spending. In his report he says knows scientific research is important; he is only criticizing what he believes is wasteful spending.

 

President Obama may have used the word “structural” to contrast with “cyclical” issues.  The economic cycle can be influenced by monetary and fiscal policy (i.e. interest rates, money supply, and rate of government borrowing).  The idea is that the economic cycle has some would-be consumers, works, and means of production all sitting needlessly idle.  “Structural” issues go beyond the economic cycle and relate to things like needing new skills or new kinds factories.  This is consistent with last week’s initiative supporting robotics research.

 

Engineers Resisting Technology

 

Some engineers are surprisingly skeptical of encouraging robotics research.  The most common complaint is the impact of automation on jobs.  As an engineer, I consider it always a good thing to be able to produce more with less effort.  That means if artificial intelligence reaches the point where it can understand specs, read datasheets, and make tradeoffs, I will be mostly out of a job and need to learn something useful in the post-AI-EDA world.  I do not want to people to forgo the new EDA software as charity to me. 

 

Technology’s Creative Destruction

 

The problem of new technologies not benefitting everyone is important and ancient. In Jared Diamond’s book Guns, Germs, and Steel, which covers why certain human societies increased their production and came to dominate hunter-gatherer societies, Diamond points out that even though moving from a hunter-gather society to an agricultural society increased productivity, the change at first made the average person’s life worse in some ways.  We should not accept as inevitable that new technologies won’t benefit everyone at first, but we should not be surprised either if there are some painful changes associated with a new technology. 

 

Some of my colleagues have rightly pointed out that in a modern context this means we create something that replaces someone’s job, e.g. Obama’s airport kiosk.  People who would have done that job, now must learn to design, test, build, repair, or sell that machine.  As the technology matures, low-cost competitors appear, the technology becomes commoditized, and many of those people are again out of a job.  As one thing becomes commoditized, however, there is a reciprocal process of decommoditization occurring some place else as if there were some law of conservation of charge for commoditization.  (See Clayton Christensen’s amazing book, The Innovator’s Solution, for more on this.)  All those people and businesses affected by this commoditization must again anticipate what activities will be profitable after the change and move in that direction. 

 

This process of creative destruction leads to more good and services with less work.  It also makes life much more complicated than it was in the past when the type of work people did was the same as what their grandparents had done and what they expected their grandkids to do. 

 

If we deploy new technologies mindful of their costs and do our best to mitigate the pain associated with change, it is better to have the technology than stability.  I don’t know whether robotics will shake up the world and get more done with less work, in other words “eliminate many jobs”, but I certainly hope so. 

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  • Former Member
    Former Member over 14 years ago

    Ultimately, our machines will take over design work as our automated tools become more intelligent. We may even find that our machines can predict future needs better than us, and negate the need for human management of the design process. Design philosphies such as "money is most important", or "the environment is critical", or "human life is the most important", should be programmed into our machines from the start. Humans are basically lazy and will willingly let things be automated so long as their own needs are looked after.

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  • DAB
    DAB over 14 years ago

    Alas, even service jobs will not be immune as AI and robotics improve.  As for engineering, as the model to product research evolves into an implementation, even engineers will soon be replaced by capable automation.  Eventually, even idea generaton can be taken over.  If you doubt that, look at what WATSON was capable of doing to a posed problem.  How long before it can be set up with a broad problem space and begin to correlate solutions using available technology.

     

    So what are we humans going to do?  I honestly do not know.  As an avid science fiction reader, I have seen many speculative evolution concepts, both with and without automation.  The book DUNE identified what could happen if humans make machines too capable to the point where they enslaved the humans.  In other concepts, a melding of automation and human via nanobots improved human capability by augmenting our weaknesses with automated assistance.

    I think we are still very undecided as a species as to what we want and how will we get there.  The possibilities are endless.  Automation is a technology, it is humans who shall decide to what level we integrate technology into our lives.  That is the scary part.

     

    This is one of those issues we need to seriously resolve before we are over taken by events.

     

    DAB

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  • Eavesdropper
    Eavesdropper over 14 years ago

    It is very much like how manual elevators with operators were replaced with automation. Millions of people were out of a job, and they must have moved elsewhere. But the change was a cheap one.

     

    When it comes to robotics replacing people, I believe it is a long way away. When labor is at the slave wage it is in some countries, robotics are just not a practicle option. There are plenty of examples of robotic worker's poised to take the place of humans. $100,000 dollar bot or $4 dollars a day dexterous human hands, which would most businesses employ?

     

    Also there are some things robotics is still struggling with, such as garment manufacturing. It is getting better, but robots are still not quite ready.

     

    On this subject, most jobs are lost to outsourcing to cheaper human labor globally.

     

    For us humans, it looks like the service industry is our only refuge. Like being a waiter. Or, is it safe?

     

    Eavesdropper

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