China’s Troubling Robot Revolution

Honestly I don't care what you say. These Chinese people need to take personal responsibility and make themselves more valuable in the global market.

End sarcasm

mobile.nytimes.com...

OVER the last decade, China has become, in the eyes of much of the world, a job-eating monster, consuming entire industries with its seemingly limitless supply of low-wage workers. But the reality is that China is now shifting its appetite to robots, a transition that will have significant consequences for China’s economy — and the world’s. In 2014, Chinese factories accounted for about a quarter of the global ranks of industrial robots — a 54 percent increase over 2013. According to the International Federation of Robotics, it will have more installed manufacturing robots than any other country by 2017.

I've been saying it for a while now. Automation will eliminate the need for human labor soon, very soon. Now couple this with the robot mother that makers better robots and what do we get?

No more jobs for humans.

Now what though? We no longer needs humans involved in the process of making goods so how do we distribute these goods if people can't make money?

We still need a system of capitalism but we also need a system that provides these goods to people since they are no longer required in the process.

a reply to: onequestion

This has been the point of all my financial threads and the need to rethink how we distribute the wealth created by machines through social programs.

Everyone should understand they are only one technological advancement from unemployment.

Without disturbing wealth generated by technology there will be a handful of people living like gods who determine exactly how much welfare the rest of us receive, if any.

Ready for forced sterilization to quell the problem of too many serfs? - A bit of sarcasm mixed with a bit of history.

It will not be very soon, it will take at least 2 decades, likely 4. Hopefully the first real wave of automation that will be very visible are the robotcars, it's up to all those who drive goods or people around that will have to wake everyone up to the reality of having no more work by protesting and raising awareness. People just don't know about all the coming changes.

The good thing is though it'll affect everyone, from the rich at the top to the poor at the bottom, however the top will have a greater chance of survival since they can just build their own completely selfsufficient, maybe even robot operated homes. But even they don't seem to realize what's coming.

a reply to: johnnyjoe1979

2 decades automation has been ending jpbs since the 1940's.

I used to work in a print shop on these big off set presses and some of the automation they had running the paper was 40-50 years old! Granted they still had 2 lines that weren't automated but those lines took 10-15 people to run and the automated lines took 3!

It's here already not the future.

a reply to: Isurrender73
I agree.

I also think we need to look at earth based resources as a whole and manage them for efficiency rather than for profit.

Making everything profit driven isn't working look at our politics and prison system. It's crap. It's a bad social incentive and begets the worst in humans.

originally posted by: onequestion
a reply to: Isurrender73
I agree.

I also think we need to look at earth based resources as a whole and manage them for efficiency rather than for profit.

Making everything profit driven isn't working look at our politics and prison system. It's crap. It's a bad social incentive and begets the worst in humans.

Yes the rate at wich we destroy the environment for profit is definitely unsustainable.

We have doom scientists claiming it's already too late, yet we just keep doing the same things each day. With the amount of climate change doom we hear from politicians you would think they would actually do something about it.

Looks like environmentalist don't pay as well as those who profit off destroying the environment.

a reply to: onequestion

Automated manufacturing has been around for ages. To put someone in the position of producing hundreds of thousands of the same item, day in - day out, is more inhumane than setting up a machine to do it.

Our human creativity and problem solving are something that machines are decades away from achieving.

Perhaps we need to divest ourselves of the idea that income is tied to work output? Perhaps we should redefine 'value' and pay according to that?

To remain unchanging in a changing world is stupidity.

a reply to: onequestion

I agree with mostly everything you've written. But then a thought popped into my head. Great change always has its turbulent beginnings. But we humans haven't gotten this far by worrying about what's coming.

Hear me out, what if this is the start of the sci-fi future world mankind deserves? Where in like 80 years, having a robot will be as common as having a smartphone. I think it would fundamentally change things so that humans won't necessarily depend on a job and serving the mega machine and "The Man" as much as we do now. Maybe the world will be in a more self-sustaining state with what is essentially a guilt-free giant slave labor force to do all the menial tasks by our side.

If we are to survive this, people as a whole HAVE to change. We have to improve the way we live day to day. What our interests are. Essentially, all the people whose jobs have been taken by the machines would have to elevate themselves to greater level of usefulness to society as a whole. I'm not saying it will be easy or moral. But I think mankind will either figure it out, or we'll burn the entire thing down.

Maybe it's time to stop worrying about the Matrix/Terminator and start
to look at it as humans will have time now to start evolving the knowledge they have.

Maybe instead of manufacturing themselves to death use that time and energy to
help other humans in need.

Maybe its time to replace material goods with everyone can have it. Automated workers made it
but everyone can have it.

Maybe over time humans will stop needing to have instant entertainment and
start gathering together.

Maybe start thinking about how the future generations that will inherit this earth can keep it going instead of what we are doing these generations.

I say Automation for all, You know you would have an ISO9000 standard way of doing things. Not like Little Robot Timmy is going to have a bad day and not screw down a bolt all the way and it snaps down the road causing the vehicle to spin out of control, hitting other cars, causing a pile up and everything catching fire, people dieing left and right because the ambulance can't make it through the wreckage. All because little Timmy robot was to busy computing how it's robot wife left it for another robot. One bolt that ruined 10's of families lives.

But since Little Timmy Robot can not think that way it wouldn't happen. instead of the bolt was only screwed in half way, a sensor would go off on Timmy's measurement panel that states the screw did not go in all the way. Little lights would go off and an annoying song would play till a human worker would fix the little robot. production on that line would most likely stop until it was fixed.

a reply to: Vulcanelli

If Capitalism continues as far as Robots are concerned. The sum total of the worlds wealth will migrate into even fewer hands. This will leave the majority to sort out a secondary economic system, because they wont have the capital to complete in the first one. Its really an experiment and nobody has a clue how it will sort itself out. Robots are the true heralds of the Post Industrial age. But on the other hand they are also the non human slaves, that have made human labour redundant. So where is the money coming from to buy the goods that robots make? if nobody has an income, then the Robots are also redundant.

So what if those Georgia guide stones were right and there is a planned population reduction to coincide with the emergence of total automation? That's a scary thought I hope doesn't actually come true and I would love to see an era where humans as a whole benefit from our technologies of convenience. Not just a few of us.