Poll

This is a uniquely informed and diverse group to survey on any question, most definitely this one.  At this point, for whom would you cast your ballot?

Trump
19 (46.3%)
Biden
9 (22%)
Sanders
8 (19.5%)
Booker
4 (9.8%)
Klobuchar
1 (2.4%)

Total Members Voted: 41

Voting closed: March 21, 2019, 04:39:47 PM

Author Topic: 2020 Vision  (Read 124000 times)

eastbound

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Re: 2020 Vision
« Reply #555 on: April 16, 2019, 09:42:53 AM »
half of kids headed to college shd be headed to work, and some shd be headed to tech school

the game of partying, sexing and chilling, while gaming to good grades---bc then one is owed a good job--is lost on me--a total waste

for those who really want to learn stuff and develop intellectually? i am a true believer, and that includes STEM, humanities and arts

if my thoughts were implemented, we'd lose a ton of academic jobs--but we'd also hope to lose a part of the recently swollen, overpaid admin armies that attach to every school with a budget

while adjunct profs get paid pennies, and get no benefits.....
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Bean

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Re: 2020 Vision
« Reply #556 on: April 16, 2019, 10:28:20 AM »
Here is a good exmple of current use of robotics 
https://youtu.be/MVWayhNpHr0

Area 10

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Re: 2020 Vision
« Reply #557 on: April 16, 2019, 11:58:32 AM »
I’ll bet that bricklaying robot doesn’t turn out to be economical for most construction applications. It rather proves my point, actually. You still need someone to program and supervise it, and no doubt the damn thing will break down all the time, requiring a maintenance crew. It didn’t look faster than a human, either. All the guy could offer was that it saved the bricklayer the physical effort of placing the bricks. Unless you were a big company with a lot of very similar builds, it would probably be more trouble than it is worth.

pdxmike

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Re: 2020 Vision
« Reply #558 on: April 16, 2019, 02:23:17 PM »
There's been a trend in construction (for a century or two) towards mechanization and standardization, with more components being put together off-site.  The brick on many buildings has been built panelized indoors in factories for a few decades.  That's where I can see bricklaying robots working, if they don't already.


People are building houses by building entire walls in factories, then shipping them to the site and erecting them in a day or two.  You have ideal conditions doing it that way--no more climbing around in the rain hammering (or nail-gunning). 


I was in a custom window factory recently.  The amount of work a few people can do there is unbelievable, thanks to machines that can say, drill 100 holes in exact locations in the time a guy onsite could drill one.


I'd guess increasing amounts of construction (never all) will be done by increasingly skilled people, with much of it being operating sophisticated machinery assembling components offsite.

eastbound

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Re: 2020 Vision
« Reply #559 on: April 16, 2019, 02:30:46 PM »
humans are expensive--reduce the number of humans, increase efficiency

and i believe efficiency is good--and will be so continually--but gotta help honest hard-working folk who become structurally unemployed as a consequence--help with staying afloat--and help re-enfranchising in good parts of the economy

let the market monster operate as unbridled as possible, but take care those who get spit out--works
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Area 10

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Re: 2020 Vision
« Reply #560 on: April 16, 2019, 05:12:37 PM »
There's been a trend in construction (for a century or two) towards mechanization and standardization, with more components being put together off-site.  The brick on many buildings has been built panelized indoors in factories for a few decades.  That's where I can see bricklaying robots working, if they don't already.


People are building houses by building entire walls in factories, then shipping them to the site and erecting them in a day or two.  You have ideal conditions doing it that way--no more climbing around in the rain hammering (or nail-gunning). 


I was in a custom window factory recently.  The amount of work a few people can do there is unbelievable, thanks to machines that can say, drill 100 holes in exact locations in the time a guy onsite could drill one.


I'd guess increasing amounts of construction (never all) will be done by increasingly skilled people, with much of it being operating sophisticated machinery assembling components offsite.
Yes, of course. But you’ll still need people to fix and alter existing buildings. And you’ll need a whole raft of new jobs in programming, engineering, maintenance etc to build and look after all these new robots.

Bean

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Re: 2020 Vision
« Reply #561 on: April 16, 2019, 07:25:01 PM »
Hey, in Star Wars robots fix robots.  Just sayin’...

But seriously, when we at the dawn of the industrial revolution, no one could have predicted the jobs that would follow.  Of course in the same time frame, the “little ice age” was just concluding and so we were also farming like it was going out of style.

pdxmike

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Re: 2020 Vision
« Reply #562 on: April 16, 2019, 09:10:35 PM »
Yes (to both Area10 and Bean) I don't see construction jobs disappearing, I just see more construction done by increasingly skilled people.  It's already true more than most people realize. 


And if I'm wrong, and half of construction jobs disappear, that'll be more than offset anyway because by then you'll need at least twice as many people working to get the building permits.

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Re: 2020 Vision
« Reply #563 on: April 17, 2019, 05:07:16 AM »
I would counter and say that this change is happening relatively quickly and all around us.  We have combined AI and automation in these examples and that is fine.  A combination of these two has already eliminated the need for humans in most of our manufacturing jobs.  In the US we are producing more than ever (2.3 times more) using 1/3 less people.  Where the labor was expensive enough (read high paying jobs) to justify the investment in automation that has happened. 



Why would you assume that drivers would not be the same?  It works, its better, its coming.  That doesn't mean tomorrow but 15 years from now that chart will look like the one above.  Realtors showing houses, the last of the checkout tellers, warehouse workers.   Yes, the more routine the task, the lower the fruit lies, but this is the case for so many jobs.

This is in large why we have a high employment rate, relative wage stagnation, and an increase in the number of hours worked per individual during this extended period. 

This is all before "real" or more advanced AI has even come to pass. 

The social human element is much more situational than you are imagining.  We have no problem not chatting with a gas station attendant and filling our own tanks (most states).  I know I scan my own groceries (not that the Safeway and Home Depot staff's aren't lovely), that bank teller interaction is not often missed as we deposit checks on our phones, Many forsake the yearly company of their accountant at tax time. Almost everyone skips the entire retail experience (from greeting guy to janitor) to some degree.  We do all see a lot more of our delivery guys, though.  In fact, there are only a few situations where most would actually look forward to human interaction.  Sure, it is nice to say hi to a barrista...if the line is not too long. 

« Last Edit: April 17, 2019, 05:32:53 AM by Admin »

Area 10

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Re: 2020 Vision
« Reply #564 on: April 17, 2019, 05:32:19 AM »

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Re: 2020 Vision
« Reply #565 on: April 17, 2019, 05:52:10 AM »
Hi Area,

I also mentioned Real Estate, Retail, Transportation, Warehousing, Services.  That is, of course, not a complete list as every sector has been impacted.  One issue that complicates that matter is wealth inequality.  A huge portion of the GDP does very little to create jobs for most people.  This means that when high paying jobs (or the majority of whole sectors) that were available to most people dissapear and are not replaced with similar paying jobs, it is a flat out loss. 

Here is the US Real Gross Output by Sector:



Area 10

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Re: 2020 Vision
« Reply #566 on: April 17, 2019, 07:14:25 AM »
Yes. The reason I mentioned GDP was that if that falters significantly then that probably poses a greater threat than AI, because of the effect on taxation. AI could help you maintain GDP even if employment decreases a bit. (But I think that AI will actually increase productivity without impacting much on employment rates, except amongst a few unlucky souls).

But for this to work, we must relate to the earlier discussions about what kind of country you guys want to live in. It is no doubt nicer to live in the US than in some countries, where your survival and mental well-being is constantly under threat. But is it nicer in the US than being a citizen of somewhere like Denmark, for instance, where you can get superb free healthcare, world-class free education, and if you lose your job you will be looked after quite well by the state? Working conditions are some of the best in the world too. This gives the citizens a strong sense of security and well-being that it is hard to quantity financially, but in order in the US to feel that secure you’d have to be very rich. The price they pay for this peace of mind in Denmark is however high basic rates of taxation. But the citizens tolerate that because they don’t feel that their government is fundamentally at odds with their personal freedom, and think that although it might be inefficient at times, this is better than having some venal corporation in charge, trying to extract as much money from them as they can whilst giving less and less in return, so the shareholders can get ever richer that their customers. In Europe there is just not the same level of belief in the motivating utility of greed, or that private companies are always the best way to deliver value and service to the citizen.

The picture you guys paint of living in the US is pretty off-putting to foreigners like me. You seem to distrust your government, and believe that politics has become fundamentally corrupted by money. You describe a country where some random misfortune like illness can leave you destitute, and there will be little sympathy for you or places to turn. You describe a country where the dollar is king, and belief in the possibility of decent people to rise to the top is almost gone. You have elected a leader who displays some truly abhorrent personal qualities (as even acknowledged by his supporters), but it nevertheless seems likely that he will be elected again. And you cling, cognitive-dissonance-like to beliefs about what is good and reasonable in terms of economics (eg. with your healthcare system) despite openly giving evidence of its punitive effects upon you personally. You also seem afraid of the outside world, despite having armed forces that are so ludicrously larger than any other country that it is almost comical.

All this, and yet you seem unwilling to countenance anything that would amount to real change. You aren’t even willing to dip your toe into fresh ways of thinking. Because, it seems, that doing anything except what you are currently doing is regarded as somehow “unamerican”. What a crock of sh*t. If you were judging another country you’d call this a heady mix of learned helplessness and brainwashing.

I hope I am wrong.

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Re: 2020 Vision
« Reply #567 on: April 17, 2019, 08:05:19 AM »
Staying focused for a moment, GDP or "the economy" as a whole can move (and often does) out of step with jobs, wages, hours of most people.  Wealth changing hands between billionaires (for example) has an impact on the GDP but none on most of us.  We live in the world of available jobs, real world wages, etc.  That is where automation and early AI (if that is an acceptable term) have had an undeniable impact.  I am pleased that Mayor Pete has this as a focus point.  Not doing so seems completely out of touch and I believe that will be recognized as a major error in hindsight). I do get that there is no political sexiness to this issue at the moment.

There is a lot of over generalization in the rest of what you have written.  America isn't one guy.  If it was he would be 5'9, 200 lbs, and a Democrat.   But, more accurately it would be a 5'3 170 lb woman, also a Democrat.

We haven't really changed much since we voted Obama or Bush or Clinton into office.  We vote based on the options that are presented.  The Democrats as a whole aren't screwed, The Republicans aren't forever damaged by Trump.  Each time around a new set of candidates will emerge and we will choose from them.  Occasionally the stars will align so that we have only crappy choices...and we will choose from them.
« Last Edit: April 17, 2019, 08:07:32 AM by Admin »

eastbound

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Re: 2020 Vision
« Reply #568 on: April 17, 2019, 08:22:33 AM »
agree, admin, on you theses, and also your defense of americans from generalization

also, much as i have never had problems with efficiency, so long as society takes care of those who end up disenfranchised thru no fault of their own, ai worries me. many americans resent caring for structurally unemployed already--multiply the ranks and

AI may, in fact, not be tenable, under classical american economic approaches--employment may become way less available than now, where a living wage has become much more scarce already, since the trickle up policies that began with reagan/stockman

we shall see---even 60 yo guys like me--this shit is upon us
« Last Edit: April 17, 2019, 08:31:12 AM by eastbound »
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Area 10

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Re: 2020 Vision
« Reply #569 on: April 17, 2019, 10:00:47 AM »
My point was that AI will only be a problem if you follow the same taxation and social/welfare policies as you do now.

 


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