Posted on 03/02/2015 4:49:50 AM PST by expat_panama
As robots increasingly adopt human qualities, including those that allow them to replace actual human labor, economists are starting to worry. As the Wall Street Journal reported last week, some “wonder if automation technology is near a tipping point, when machines finally master traits that have kept human workers irreplaceable.”
The fears of economists, politicians and workers themselves are way overdone. They should embrace the rise of robots precisely because they love job creation. As my upcoming book Popular Economics points out with regularity, abundant job creation is always and everywhere the happy result of technological advances that tautologically lead to job destruction.
Robots will ultimately be the biggest job creators simply because aggressive automation will free us up to do new work by virtue of it erasing toil that was once essential. Lest we forget, there was a time in American history when just about everyone worked whether they wanted to or not — on farms — just to survive. Thank goodness technology destroyed lots of agricultural work that freed Americans up to pursue a wide range of vocations off the farm.
With their evolution as labor inputs, robots bring the promise of new forms of work that will have us marveling at labor we wasted in the past, and that will make past job destroyers like wind, water, the cotton gin, the car, the internet and the computer seem small by comparison. All the previously mentioned advances made lots of work redundant, but far from forcing us into breadlines, the destruction of certain forms of work occurred alongside the creation of totally new ways to earn a living. Robots promise a beautiful multiple of the same.
To understand why, we need to first remember that what is saved on labor redounds to increased capital availability for new ideas...
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
This is exactly why America needs to bring manufacturing back to America.
Stop building up China.
Mmmmm. I have my doubts. Sure people will be freed up, but most of what people will be freed up to do will already be getting done by robots.
Is this satire?
Robots - doing jobs illegals refuse to do.
As long as there is free-market capitalism, there will be jobs. Precisely because we will think of new ones.
Take away or erode free-market capitalism, all bets are off. Even without robots.
LOL! Forbes is trying to sell you another lie.
The Robots, Automation, Androids, A.I. (Artificial Intelligence) will replace people at jobs.
We are A LOT closer than people realize (14 years or 2029).
The Quantum Chip is the game changer. it will be rolled out to the public in 2024. It’s already invented. NASA, CIA, GOOGLE AND AMAZON all have the prototype chips now.
The computing power to say an iPad Air, which has 1 Billion Transistors..... is 2^300th power
Oh and Quantum Chip does not have Transistors. It has Qbits.
lol!!
Not necessarily. When automation is cheaper and can do pretty much anything there’s not much reason for jobs. Technology is a force multiplier, and between automation and printers we just might be multiplying our forces to the point we just don’t need most people to have jobs.
There was a big demo of a unmanned-driverless vehicle here in Germany within the past six months. They’ve already tasked the federal agency here to start reviewing the regulations and how a driverless vehicle would be ‘controlled’. The gut feeling is that it’ll happen within a decade.
So, you start to assume that truck deliveries, buses, and taxi-drivers will be replaced within three decades. What occupation do you think they will take up?
Then you start to look at grocery operations. Within three decades....a normal twenty-man employee situation with the local Piggly Wiggly? It’ll be six guys total, with automation running the normal day-to-day shelf-process and purchases.
Your local bank? Your local pharmacy? Your local gas station? By the end of this century....I would be able to lay off fifty percent of the current employee base existing today. Where exactly do you think they will be working? It’s not my job as the government to care...but there is a consequence to this path and if you have twenty million Americans who used to be employed and now they aren’t....there’s bound to be a bit of trouble arising eventually.
Most economists should be replaced by robots, along with all 0bama voters.
It’s not just anyone who is going to be able to maintain and reprogram these machines. Generally speaking, one machine needs an adjustment in its commands to change tasks, also needs checkups from time to time. But similar to solar panels, a few people can handle the maintenance on MANY robots as contractors.
I know this is your signature issue, so you must have thought about it quite a bit. Would you list the laws you think need to be changed or put in place so that manufacturing jobs will return to America?
FWIW, we may very well have “Robocops” in a few years. Without them being part man, just remote-controlled so that people can do dirty work without getting any LEOs killed.
Kraftwerk - The Robots
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXa9tXcMhXQ
Now playing: ATTACK OF THE KILLER CHINESE ROBOTS!!!
Every productive invention in the history of man has created more jobs because they have created capital and more capital leads to economic expansion and that leads to increased human input.
If human demand were to decrease (i.e. no jobs, no money, no demand), the usefulness of robots and technology itself would end.
As an aside, welders, plumbers, oil field workers are presently in great demand, but liberal arts grads are jobless.
It matters what you train to do.
The jobs need to come back even if every law cannot be changed. You question has a false premise you are tying two things together when they are not related.
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