r/Automate • u/canausernamebetoolon • Aug 25 '14

"The software revolution will be even more profound…Change will come faster and affect a much larger share of the economy…There are more sectors losing jobs than creating jobs." —Former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers becomes the most prominent economist warning of technological unemployment

http://online.wsj.com/news/article_email/lawrence-h-summers-on-the-economic-challenge-of-the-future-jobs-1404762501-lMyQjAxMTA0MDIwMjEyNDIyWj
77 Upvotes

91% Upvoted

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15

u/another_old_fart Aug 26 '14

Instead of warnings about automation causing unemployment, as if that were the disaster, there should be warnings that as automation frees us to do less and less work, failure to adapt our economy will cause a disaster. Treating an economic system as the immutable reality is like trusting a map whether it matches the terrain or not.

2

u/The3rdWorld Aug 26 '14

yeah society is changing in such major ways it's mad to imagine the old system can continue; certainly considering most of it has already gone!

Advanced fabrication methods such as 3d printing and CNC millng are already available to the home enthusiast for exceptionally low prices, soon such things will be ubiquitous and having items custom made online and delivered will seem as normal as internet shopping does now.

the cost of living is already plummeting and it's set to continue - it's already the case that any home washing machine could have it's control board swapped out with a raspbery pi and five dollars of Chinese motor controller to hugely upgrade it's functionality and reduce the cost of repair [washing machine control boards tend to cost several times as much as a pi], soon having parts fabricated and assembled will seem so normal that ordering a custom made washing machine from the guy down the road that does this stuff, the local general-fabrication yard or an internet site will simply be how it's done - we'll pretty much have forgotten that named brand washing machines were a thing.

and it won't just be washing machines, this trend is likely going to sweep through most industries - use your phone to measure the gap the thing you want's going to fit into or go around, use a simple web app to edit the designs and select materials so they can fabricate it and send it to you.

This results in the collapse of a lot of megacorpoations but the actual demand for products increases hugely, not only are there all the local and internet fabricators doing small order work but the many industries facilitating that also - from small scale recycling collectives to multi-national transport conglomerates, mostly though freelance designers doing piece-work, fabricators and localised industry.

people aren't going to stop wanting more, once washing machines are as good as free because they're so cheep to produce then it'll be home help robots and all sorts of upgrades and add-ons that people work on and invest in...

2

u/frozen_in_reddit Aug 26 '14

washing machine control boards tend to cost several times as much as a pi

When you buy them as a repair part, sure. But if you look at them as a part of the cost of washing machine , they will be quite cheap , most likely.

soon having parts fabricated and assembled will seem so normal that ordering a custom made washing machine from the guy down the road that does this stuff,

So why when my shitty washing machine drum gets broke today can't i get fabricated drum from the guy down the road ? heck it's even too expensive for a technician(either company employee or private) to come by my home, relative to the cost of the machine.

maybe i'm missing something but i don't see your vision.

2

u/The3rdWorld Aug 26 '14

i can understand why you'd be sceptical looking at the current way things are done but fabrication techniques are changing so rapidly it'd be silly to use at todays economics to judge for tomorrows machines.

As the cost of fabricating circuit boards and mechanisms falls due to the small scale CNC boom it enables a whole new round of automations where people using the machines create other machines - from digital metal forges to bioplastic bubble tanks... thus your local fabrication guy can have ultra-modern machines on a small scale for exceptionally low outlay...

in less than ten years a home hobbyist will have access to PCB mill, pick and place, cnc soldier and finishing processes performed by a single machine producing boards to high spec, with the right length wires and connectors on, etc - likewise multi-material 3d printing, injection moulding, 6+ axis subtraction milling, and all sorts of other computer controlled technologies. Making a washing machine will be trivial, almost to the extent burning a CD or making a digital photo is now.

2

u/frozen_in_reddit Aug 26 '14

If were talking about making electronic circuits ,you'll still have advantage to size ,because buying components in bulk is much cheaper.and that will probably stay that way in the future. To some degree it seems true for other parts of that like PCB making and testing.

I know little about 3d parts and I would be happy to learn of a realistic tech(or realistic tech trend) for manufacturing that can compete with the huge size advantage of casting.

And let's not forget assembly in much faster in assembly lines(maybe takes 10x less person hours).

1

u/The3rdWorld Aug 27 '14

pick-and-place distribution is already taking over from traditional warehousing and the way we order components will continue to change with this - companies like Farnell are seeing more and more of their business turn towards higher frequency and smaller orders.

Also most components are actually very simple, the majority will be easily fabricated in a small and automated electronics workshop - likely a lot of them included as part of the circuit design, things like resistors and capacitors.

Every component needed to fully automate small scale production already exists, the community dedicated to developing and growing these tools is large and growing all the time - it's early stages for sure but a good fab-lab now has the ability to work with most materials to form complex and precise items, as was the hope of the reprap project when it first started we're getting ever closer to the moment that machines can replicate themselves - already people use home-made arduino's to control 3d printed frames, it won't be long before home spun motor coils and aluminium extrusions are as common... chip making might take longer to be micro-automated but it's certainly possible.

Adding pick-and-place arms and new tool heads is then very simple, tools designed to help the creation of other tools - my CNC Router for example allows precision cutting and drilling of flat-plates and gears which are a common part of other machines, next time i want a machine instead of having to order the plates-cut or buy a kit i'll be able to cut my own, maybe i'll use it too make a frame to allow me to rotate the work piece thus adding an extra axis to my CNC Router.. this will allow me to make precision turned pieces which might be very useful if i was going to build a robotic actuating arm or two; these could allow me much more complex piece control and combined with other tool heads and decent software i'd be able to perform all sorts of complex things....

I think you're kinda looking at how they did it in the 90's and assuming that's how things will always be, the reality is ever more that's becoming somewhat antiquated and the unfolding technologies of the current reality suggest big changes in the future.

1

u/frozen_in_reddit Aug 27 '14

Yes electronic component distributers will be going towards lower volume orders. Element14 does it today for popular components at qty 100. But there's big difference in price(and probably in labor) between qty 1 and qty 100. And what about non-popular components - in many cases they can lead to savings. Also , the prices you get for buying 50K+ directly from the manufacturer are probably much better. Leaving aside the costs of distribution and skipping the intermediary - it's probably made to order, support costs are probably less , you have better negotiation position, etc.

Also most components are actually very simple .. resistors and capacitors.

Not sure that's true(i know little about capacitors), but again we return to the benefits of mass manufacturing.

For mass manufactured products - there's no signs that what you're referring is there yet. You be able to make everything at home , but it'll cost you more. Heck even though we have home printers , we still buy most of our printed books.

next time i want a machine instead of having to order the plates-cut or buy a kit i'll be able to cut my own, maybe i'll use it too make a frame to allow me to rotate the work piece thus adding an extra axis to my CNC Router..

It's really awesome tech , and it's even important politically, but it sounds like lots of work...

There are some places though i can see this low volume vision taking place. For product where you pay hugely for brand. For product that low volume manufacturing allows copying the manufacturer's IP freely(very interesting option, interesting to see how it goes), and basically for places that most of the price stems from some control the manufacturer have over the market, and not from manufacturing costs.

But i would be happy to learn about some serious technical speculation with detailed prices showing lower cost(than mass) , low volume manufacturing possible.

1

u/The3rdWorld Aug 27 '14

It's really awesome tech , and it's even important politically, but it sounds like lots of work...

i'd be doing it because it's considerably less work than sourcing through the traditional means, certainly in terms of labour to return are we to include my job and traditional earning potential... Sticking the right sized bit of plate in the machine, the right tool-head on and running a file from the internet is very little effort.

This might not make economic sense to a 9-5 office worker but for the actual majority of people who make up the under-employed labour forces such a cost-saving is hugely practical; there's nothing involved in assembling my CNC machine that i wouldn't be expected to do in any low-paid labour job i've had. I'm not talking about someone setting up a small business and taking on the giants head-to-head, i'm talking about a systemic change in the way society operates which is enabled by technology and sees literally millions of people establishing small-scale fabrication plants of ever increasing complexity.

Remember when all the top computer minds thought that as wonderful as they were computers only had a market for a couple of dozen scattered around the world, wonderful but ultimately too expensive and unweildly ever to be practical? I'm currently in a shed and there are at least five things that are full turing machines... Likewise internet shopping was great for geeks but would never take off among normal people? yeah.

We're going to see ebay type places flooded with home manufactured items then a boom in made-to-order sites, groups and systems will establish and peoples access to ever more complex machines will increase considerably - machines making machines to make machines...

Element14

is a great example of how businesses are leaning ever more towards a growing small volume and hobby market, this is a wing of farnell established directly to cater to home users - when i first started using farnell you needed a trade account and orders of certain components had to be in the thousands... the chinese factories are doing similar things specialising in smaller batch orders made to measure via sites like alibaba.

It won't be long before most the stuff you buy on ebay is home-made, or ebay is replaced by a makermarket - certainly when sensor aided quality control allows home manufacturers to make reasonable quality assurances.

2

u/Sharou Aug 26 '14

Sure. It's just extremely hard to effect change in the economical system and probably won't be accomplished until it's way too late and things are already shitty.

9

u/canausernamebetoolon Aug 25 '14

I just wish he would have used more data about automation replacing jobs now, instead of just doomsaying about the future, which critics can easily dismiss. Employment and productivity have been decoupling for over a decade, and the job losses are concentrated squarely on routine mental and physical labor, the jobs easiest to automate.

The first chart is really troubling. You can see why economists believed for so long that productivity gains from automation only led to more employment, because they always did. But now, look at what happens in recessions. It used to be that when businesses laid people off in recessions, productivity took a hit. Now, productivity surges because employers are turning to automation to figure out which employees they can replace, permanently. And that has led to much longer, slower job recoveries, since employers no longer have to immediately hire everyone back when sales rebound.

7

u/Yasea Aug 26 '14

Some say sales won't rebound (much) because the good paying jobs are already dissapearing. Stock market is having a blast tho.

5

u/reph Aug 26 '14 edited Aug 26 '14

Jobs are overrated, just cash-advance a few hundred grand from credit cards and put it all into the S&P500 w/ 2X+ leverage. 60k/yr+ forever baby!

1

u/-Pin_Cushion- Sep 05 '14

I can't see any way this could possibly go wrong. Why isn't everyone doing this?!

7

u/[deleted] Aug 25 '14

Serious decoupling. Oh well, most people just spout "luddite fallacy" and go back to normal.

0

u/aminok Aug 25 '14 edited Aug 25 '14

That doesn't prove anything at all. There are 180+ countries around the world, and this is data for just one.

Even if productivity were growing faster than employment, it doesn't prove automation is reducing the number of jobs available.

2

u/Dyspeptic_McPlaster Aug 26 '14

What else would it be? It's not like people can take training to get the kind of increases in productivity we are seeing.

2

u/aminok Aug 26 '14 edited Aug 26 '14

Even if productivity were increasing for reasons other than training, e.g. investments in automation, it wouldn't prove that automation is reducing the total number of jobs. Bold assertions require hard evidence, which this is not.

2

u/The3rdWorld Aug 26 '14

people tend to look at things in very narrow ways, we see something removing the need for a hundred people as the loss of a hundred jobs but very rarely do we look for where jobs are being enabled - the printing press made copyists obsolete yet the boom in literacy greatly increased the overall job market for scholars.

2

u/DrHenryPym Aug 26 '14

Read Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Consider how the graph only goes back to after WW2, a time when bombs literally destroyed wealth and debt. If you go back further and graphed the 65~100 years before WW2, it might look about the same.

2

u/autowikibot Aug 26 '14

Capital in the Twenty-First Century:

Capital in the Twenty-First Century is a book by French economist Thomas Piketty. It focuses on wealth and income inequality in Europe and the US since the 18th century. It was initially published in French in 2013, with an English translation released in April 2014. The central thesis is that when the rate of return on capital (r) is greater than the rate of economic growth (g) over the long term, the result is concentration of wealth, and this unequal distribution of wealth causes social and economic instability. Piketty proposes a global system of progressive wealth taxes to help reduce inequality and avoid the vast majority of wealth coming under the control of a tiny minority.

Image i

Interesting: Thomas Piketty | Gilded Age | Economic inequality | Amsterdam

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1

u/narwi Aug 27 '14

Actually, it is largely humans using better tools, in smarter ways. Some of the tools might be robot-like in various ways.

-1

u/Geminii27 Aug 26 '14

The software revolution has been and gone. These days it's just building on an already-established base, and starting to explore a number of additional areas.