Sunday, December 11, 2016

Where is the Age of Robots (i.e. Right Now)

Not all news coming regarding jobs in America is a tragedy and Homestead Creamery is investing in a plant, albeit not such a large one, in Virginia.  (Area Development:  Homestead Creamery Invests $1.1 Million To Expand Its Burnt Chimney, Virginia, Facility)

There was also the questionable news about retention of jobs by Carrier but our preference for dealing with corporations which outsource jobs is a substantial tax penalty rather than special favors for those which do not.  If corporations do not feel pain from errant behavior then what reason have they to stop.


The bigger matter than retention of jobs is the contrasting news in which two thousand jobs in England will be replaced by robot workers.  (RT:  Robot takeover begins? Corporate giant Capita replaces staff with automatons)

That title is a bit misleading since it may seem they replace all staff but that's not what I took from it. However, they will eliminate two thousand human jobs.


Bloomberg:  Rise of the Robots Will Eliminate More Than 5 Million Jobs

About 7 million jobs will be lost and 2 million gained as a result of technological change in 15 major developed and emerging economies, WEF founder Klaus Schwab and managing board member Richard Samans said in "The Future of Jobs."  The findings are taken from a survey of 15 economies covering about 1.9 billion workers, or about 65 percent of the world’s total workforce.

- Bloomberg

There are many other articles of this nature from respected sources and they're easily obtainable via Google.


In discussions, conservatives have said this isn't a concern for fifty years but the facts beg to differ since it's happening right now.  The regulars have already seen documentation of sixty-thousand jobs being replaced by robots at Foxconn but that's far from the only example.  (BBC:  Foxconn replaces '60,000 factory workers with robots')


Do NOT read this as doom and gloom since advance warning precludes doom and gloom so long as people use that time to prepare.  The concern in the Rockhouse is conservatives seem to regard this in much the same way as climate change and it appears the same type of ostrichism is in play.

The reason for presentation of this type of material is due to the economic chaos for failing to prepare for a situation in which there are many people with no jobs and there are no jobs to be found.  Multiple warnings on this matter have been presented previously on Ithaka and I included Bloomberg so this isn't dismissed as Russian propaganda which is sometimes the wont of the rhetorically-challenged.


American researchers are working on developing increasing sophistication in robots as at least some are addressing the potential in this new area of industry.  Humans have never faced such a thing before when you can't fight them; you can't do much of anything when they're non-violent machines which assemble iPhones or some such.  There are much more sophisticated robots and one class of them has proven to be more effective in performing medical diagnostic analysis than humans ... and why not; their vision is better, their touch is infinitely variable, and they never forget.

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