Is 2017 the Beginning of the End of IoT Investment?

Michael,

I happened to see on the electronic ticker tape at our train station in Chicago that said  Bill Gates has gotten flack over his comments about taxing robots. So I went and looked up the stories. The argument being put forth is that a robot or automation tax would stem innovation. Here's what Bloomberg says what's wrong with Bill's tax idea:

https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-02-28/what-s-wrong-with-bill-gates-robot-tax

But the solutions are un-innovative: wage subsidies and income re-distributions.

IoT is not a product, it's a concept like Artificial Intelligence... even though A.I. failed to evolve in 80s, 90s... it's picking up now and going strong. Even A.I. has deep future. IoT is a part of A.I. So, I don't think it will fade away. There is more to invent around IoT and A.I. JUST WAIT AND SEE...

Panic is not my response. I don't set public policy. But I think as we close in on the 22nd century it will be quite a different place. People will do a lot less in the sense that we define "doing something," and machines quite a bit more. Even the engineers of today may be standing in the unemployment life. Our model of economics is still rather based on Adam Smith's Capitalism and Max Weber's The Spirit of Capitalism. What happens when all the machines do most of the work? Our economic model does not fit that scenario. What I actually suspect is in the 22nd and 23rd century will be the beginning of a long period of depopulation across the planet, causing political upheavals. Will the robots "matrix" the humans? Not really. But there will be political upheavals. Of course, I will not be around to see it. Or...will I? Cheers.

Don't panic Randall,

once most people worked on the land growing food, now, in the UK it's less than 1% - we seem to pretty good at finding new things for people to do.

Things will change - no question, it's the idea of taxing "robots" that is silly. Automation in agriculture takes the form of machines like tractors and bailers, in other industries different machines. If you were to apply a tax on owning the machine it would slow down economies and generally screw things up.

We might end up in a world where most people don't have to work but currently we are some distance off.

But already the Swiss and some Nordic countries are floating the idea of giving every citizen a "pension" which would be enough to live on - so far no one is actually doing it (at least not in Europe).

The hard part will be convincing the smart people that they want to work largely for the benefit of others.

MK

Michael,

I actually read that story about Taxing Robots in The Financial Times a few weeks ago. I thought it was a pretty crazy idea, and that intrigued me to read the article. My eyebrows raised a lot when I read Bill Gates supporting the idea. You may think it is "dafty" and I guess from our current point of view in history, it is. But let my pose this situation to you and everyone on this blog:

Imagine a time when self-driving cars eliminates the need for truck drivers (local and OTR). For the US that around 3.5 million jobs. Now, imagine also a time when there is no need for cashiers in your local grocery stores. I looked it up--about the same amount. This isn't too faraway from a reality. Finally, imagine all the no-to-low skilled jobs that can be eliminated beyond those two occupations. What are we talking about 10, 20 million? What are you going to do with these people? Make them computer specialist, IOT engineers? No fricking way. Lot's of people are stuck in these dead end jobs because they can't get through Algebra 1. If you can't do higher mathematics, you are unlikely to get a high paying job unless you are a smooth talking salesman or a house flipper until we automate the process to eliminate flipping.

I suspect 50 years from now the world will be very different as plug-and-play automation (not the painstaking automation engineering we have today) will literally destroy 100 million jobs globally. The nature of our world will change. You get 50 million people who can't earn a living and put food on the table for their babies and you will see social change in ways we in 2017 would not imagine.

Randall

I answered maybe because:

We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run

Too early to see the long run effects at this time. For sure we went over the top in the short term. Hence the euphoria in media and overuse of IoT in the vernacular of engineers and industry.

Just taking a "Look Inside" in that book on Amazon, looks promising so far, thanks for the tip!

A friend of mine recommended a book 'Competing against luck' and I'm about 30% of the way through it. It kind-of states the obvious, but clarifies how to encourage good ideas that are more than the usual incremental upgrades we see to products like 'faster' or 'smaller' or 'now with USB 3' etc.. In essence based on trying to identify what 'job-roles' people want to use products for. From the 30% I've read, I can see that it is worthwhile reading.

It just takes one person to have a spark of inspiration and come up with a revolutionary idea for things to really take off further and investment in the sector to grow rapidly. I'm sure there are lots of inspired people around the world so I don't think the IoT sector is going to decline for the foreseeable future.

I assume that you post these "assertions + poll" thingies to try and stimulate discussion.

So I'll take the a bait and call you out on two assertions:

"Industry leaders have reported that they are considering delaying their plans to implement more smart factory" - which leaders, cite the reports, what delays ?

"And everyone is worried that we are not prepared for the wide scale robot revolution that is expected" :  everyone !! - come on - you know that isn't true.

But to respond a little more constructively - the daftest thing I've heard recently (well, I suppose, more accurately, a fairly daft thing I heard recently) was the idea of taxing "robots" used to 'replace' people - don't Bill Gates and others realise that we already do tax businesses on profits, sales and all sorts of other things - or do they consider that a "robot" is somehow different from a machine tool, or a steam powered loom or a windmill.

Do they really long for a pre-windows Nirvana where we grind corn between two stones and everyone has so much work to do that average life expectancy is down to about 30.

One more thing - be careful, one man's populism is another woman's democracy - so when you say "Political populism won the day" are you really just saying "my own view didn't prevail".

And as for the IOT  - it's all classic hype cycle stuff - we may well be into the plunge to reality:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hype_cycle

MK