Skynet economics

Investment Analysis Clubs Macro Economic Trends and Risks
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The EU is taking a serious look at an AI future with robots. If robots do take over many jobs then how is the economy going to work. Presumably the state will end up keeping more and more people who are served by more and more robots. Interesting but confusing to imagine how such an economy will work. There are many downsides that are highlighted by an EU study, summarised here:

Angry mobs of unemployed citizens riot in the streets against the hordes of service robots that have stolen their jobs.

Police officers armed with “robo freezer guns” and “nano net grenades” shoot down swarms of drones deployed by terrorists to attack electricity and water supplies.

This is not the plot of a new sci-fi film but what may await Europe in the next 10 years, according to a report from the EU’s police agency.

https://archive.is/kc2ae

The EU report:

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Um, presumably you’ve heard of the Luddites? Lesser known is the 1824 Pawtucket Strike, and the 1877 Railroad Strike, not to mention the rise of the American labor movement in the 1920’s & 30’s seeking to “preserve jobs” because mass production was requiring fewer workers to produce more.

Yes, there will be strife, and yes, it might get a little crazy. It will also settle out, and people will continue on, having cookouts in the backyard and taking the kids to Little League. I think the pitchforks are unlikely to be used anytime soon.

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Quite agree, but this time robots will replace humans on a scale, and possibly at such a speed, that massive disruption will take place.

if you can replace a commercial driver, then you can replace them all. If you can replace one server in fast food, then they can all be replaced and so on. Millions of jobs gone in a relatively short time. The report indicates that ‘it’s going to be different this time’ - we shall see.

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It took days, even weeks to produce a car before Ford put the assembly line in place, that’s why the total production was only a few thousand a year. After the assembly line there was a Model T being driven out of the factory every 90 minutes. You want to talk about scale? Yes, we’ve seen this movie before.

No, not all. Somebody has to wash the ice cream machine. Somebody has to be around to keep the teenagers from taking over the place. Somebody has to fix the credit card reader.
Sure, “drivers” may go the way of “stagecoach coachman”, but other jobs will arise. The grocery store used to have 4 or 5 employees. Now it has a hundred. The hardware store had good old Mr. Wrench, now each Home Depot employs a couple hundred.

It’s always different. And it’s always the same. Old jobs out, new jobs in. Never quite enough of them, so there’s always excess labor. Haven’t figured that one out yet.

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The point the report makes is that the 4 or 5 employees will not be expanded to 100 people but 100 robots if necessary. The Home Depot will not expand its workforce to a couple of hundred people but a couple of hundred robots.

I ran my business for 35 years employing people. People can be a complete pain to deal with. They want monthly salaries, benefits, sick leave, holidays, etc. nor can they work 24 hours a day, seven days a week!

If I could have replaced them with robots that were cheaper, worked faster, were more reliable and which could probably out think them I know who i would choose. Which would you choose?

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Yeah, Nardelli tried that - replacing knowledgable workers in the electrical, plumbing, and hardware aisles with low paid kids who opened boxes and almost tanked the company. (He was fired, and went on to great things at, um, Chrysler, which is also nearly out of business.)

Sorry. Humanoid robots are a VERY LONG WAY away from any of this sort of thing. Generations at least, possibly never.

They will find some applications, I’m fairly sure, but it won’t be “customer facing” for a long long time.

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It won’t be low paid kids that replace knowlegable workers :slightly_smiling_face:

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Well, I said “generations.” Let me look at that:
(Years of birth)
Greatest Generation: 1901-1927
Silent Generation (1928-1945)
Baby Boomers (1946-1964)
Generation X (1965-1980)
Millenials (1981-1996)
Generation Z (1997-2012)
Generation Alpha (2013-2025)

With the exception of very early in the 20th century, when such things weren’t parsed and delineated as they are today, the typical “generation” is about 15 years.

Do I think “humanoid robots” are likely to be in the aisles of Home Depot (or elsewhere) in 15 years? I do not.

It took 13 years from the existence of the first “personal computer” (the Kenbak-1) to widespread deployment by Apple & Commodore.

The first industrial robot was deployed in the early 1950’s, but it took 30 years for them to achieve wide acceptance in manufacturing.

Germans were sending V2 rockets into space in 1945, but it took more than a decade for the US to do the same thing, albeit unsuccessfully and with a goad from the USSR.

Ford started his car company in 1903, but it wasn’t until a decade later that he changed manufacturing by instituting the moving assembly line.

The truth is that everything takes longer than people think. The most amazing, cultural shifting products still take years, sometimes a decade to penetrate the zeitgeist. The first cell phone worked in 1973, but you didn’t have one in your pocket until the 90’s, if then.

While there are a few “to the moon” products, they tend to be softwares which don’t require cumbersome manufacture or distribution: Windows, Facebook, etc. The rest of the world moves at a slow (albeit sped up in today’s environment) world.

Yeah, a generation at least before you see “Android robots” in the aisles of Home Depot. Maybe two. Maybe never.

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As I previously posted

If I could have replaced them with robots that were cheaper, worked faster, were more reliable and which could probably out think them I know who i would choose. Which would you choose?

So, which would you choose?

It’s going to happen, all you are saying is not yet. You may be correct, I, like you, don’t know when, but it’s going to happen.

So, give the scenario i have outlined which ‘employee’ would you go for.

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In my lifetime? Humans.

In some far off, mythical, imaginary George Lucas scenario? Maybe the robot.

Maybe.

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Presumably 1946 … guess who recently had a birthday …

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Getting back to what will probably happen one day I found this IMF article headed " Robots, Growth, and Inequality"

It suggests that inequality will increase, the worst affected being those whose work can be done by robots (pretty obvious really). Presumably this is where the EU sees riots in the streets coming from:

Quite a detailed and interesting article:

A subject that I’d not thought much about until now.

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I, for one, welcome our new robot overlords.

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Curiously, the arguments around mass production were that it would end work for those in the trades by taking all those valuable “mechanical skills” (mechanics, electrics, plumbing) and make them unnecessary.

And as it turned out, it did just the opposite. Beware of predictions, especially about the future.

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The UK government is also drafting a paper on the subject of AI and job replacement:

https://post.parliament.uk/approved-work-the-effects-of-artificial-intelligence-on-uk-employment/

Interesting

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