Posted on 08/19/2012 7:23:16 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
At the Philips Electronics factory on the coast of China, hundreds of workers use their hands and specialized tools to assemble electric shavers. That is the old way.
At a sister factory here in the Dutch countryside, 128 robot arms do the same work with yoga-like flexibility. Video cameras guide them through feats well beyond the capability of the most dexterous human.
One robot arm endlessly forms three perfect bends in two connector wires and slips them into holes almost too small for the eye to see. The arms work so fast that they must be enclosed in glass cages to prevent the people supervising them from being injured. And they do it all without a coffee break — three shifts a day, 365 days a year.
All told, the factory here has several dozen workers per shift, about a tenth as many as the plant in the Chinese city of Zhuhai.
This is the future. A new wave of robots, far more adept than those now commonly used by automakers and other heavy manufacturers, are replacing workers around the world in both manufacturing and distribution. Factories like the one here in the Netherlands are a striking counterpoint to those used by Apple and other consumer electronics giants, which employ hundreds of thousands of low-skilled workers.
“With these machines, we can make any consumer device in the world,” said Binne Visser, an electrical engineer who manages the Philips assembly line in Drachten.
Many industry executives and technology experts say Philips’s approach is gaining ground on Apple’s. Even as Foxconn, Apple’s iPhone manufacturer, continues to build new plants and hire thousands of additional workers to make smartphones, it plans to install more than a million robots within a few years to supplement its work force in China.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
I disagree with this statement. I believe there is always resistance to new ideas and new skills.
If the government stop extending the unemployment benefits and thus "enabling" workers with outmoded skills to do nothing... the desire and willingness to learn new skills for higher paying jobs will be there.
We are capable of doing amazing things... because we are Americans.
200 years ago, a guy could make a reasonably decent living using only his musculature. There was an economic demand for just the ability to move things around physically. Perhaps most importantly, there was a need for his services, giving him purpose and something resembling personal self-respect.
As the industrial and technological revolutions have advanced, more and more skill and intelligence has been required, as opposed to just strength. Historically this has been wonderful for society. Most people have been able to use their brains rather than bodies to do stuff.
We have now reached the point where an increasing percentage of the jobs for which there is significant demand are beyond the ability of those who are being displaced. I suspect the present displacement is something around one IQ point per year.
Let's say the present IQ for which the supply greatly exceeds the demand is presently 90, and assume that the one IQ point per year "falling out the bottom" remains constant.
What this means is that we are starting to get into the central range of the population, and every year the number displaced that year will greatly increase, and in 10 years we'll be at IQ 100 and 50% of the population will have no meaningful economic role in society.
After that, the number displaced each year will drop off because we're going down the other slope of the bell curve.
Unfortunately, I suspect the IQ displaced each year is not a simple straight line, it's some sort of exponential curve. Things may get worse a great deal faster than my projections.
BTW, this is the major reason for the increasing economic inequality in the world. Increasing demand and limited supply in the upper reaches, and decreasing demand relative to supply in the lower end.
Exactly. We need to think beyond the demise of the Horse Buggy Whip industry...
Please provide proof.
Two words: Post Office
Yeah, well, the earth has been found wanting. Man kind always seems to work toward it's own demise.
Eventually, man will be forced to figure it all out. The only way for man to remain free is to get back to the soil and care for himself, his family, provide a service for the community, and take care of ONLY the truly needy. He doesn't need a politician, or anyone else, to rule over him.
This is what our founding fathers were trying to tell us. If we allow ourselves to be controlled or indebted to anybody, we become their slaves. We suffer the consequences of our own actions.
It's a little late to repair all the damage we've done now, but the coming, unwanted world economic collapse will do it for us. Not until man kind has lost everything will it be truly happy. The happiness - freedom - will be given once again, but it'll be up to man to keep it.
I for one welcome our new robot overlords.
I agree the government needs to back the heck off and let the private industries do what it does best... create new opportunities.
However, 50% of Americans are of less than average intelligence, and my point is that they are not capable of doing the jobs that continue to be in demand.
For example, millions of people presently drive vehicles as part or all of their job.
Present technology has the potential to automate most driving jobs and I suspect it will move into actual use more quickly than we expect.
What are those millions of people supposed to do? I read one article where the author claimed they could be retrained to write apps for the iPad. Does anybody seriously think the majority of bus or taxi drivers are capable of this?
The vast majority of those capable of working in the "real" high-tech economy are already doing so. Few of those displaced by automation will be capable of going into these fields.
Here's the problem, IMO. For two centuries now, there has been an argument between those who say technological advances destroy jobs, and those who say they create more jobs than they eliminate. Group 2 has to date been, overall, correct.
But this is not an economic law, just the way things have worked out to date. My point is that we may be starting to see conditions in which this law no longer applies. Which means we need to start thinking about what might be needed to restructure a society in which the free market really doesn't work for most of the population any more.
To me it is perfectly obvious that a command economy is not the answer, but what is?
I used to work with a bank of painting robots and they took a considerable amount of attention.
Robots are consistent but if they start doing something wrong they consistently do it wrong. People on the other hand can make corrections midstream without missing a beat.
dude
The luddites would have all of us making our own clothes and boots by hand.
Some were upset and angry with the idea of the division of labor... you know.. I make the heel, you make the laces and someone else puts the pieces together.
The jobs that robots do are probably jobs robots should be doing. Freeing up people to do more important things in an ideal economy. We need to liberate the economy from the grasps of government and set it free!
Proof of what?
That certain minority groups are disproportionately concentrated in the lower IQ range?
Or that any discussion of whether people in lower IQ groups are capable of performing certain jobs immediately deteriorates into cries of racism?
If we can keep the government and Luddites at bay, automation will continue to give us greater access to more products while simultaneously creating NEW job opportunities which yes require new skills and new people to teach those skills.
The sewing machine is automation but should we go back to everyone sewing everything by hand?
The modern printing press has increased speeds from 1 page per 10 seconds to thousands of impressions per hour yet even in an age of diminished hard copy printing more people have more access to more printed material and once again new jobs were created requiring new skills and people to teach those skill.
The killer in all of this has been and always will be those with the government control mindset. The founder knew it and we used to know it until unionized teachers deconstructed our history.
Do you know the percent of the US private sector workforce is in a union?
As I stated in a previous post... I think the government isn't helping matters any with regulations to protect a dying sector or extending unemployment benefits. It only encourages displaced workers to entrench and sit out a while and "hope."
And those extinct manufacturing jobs aren't coming back any time soon.
The big problem is that it takes BRAINS to build an maintain these machines. We still have an education system that is the laughing stock of the world...so can we compete, despite this handicap?
You’ve said enough.
#22-
IQ displacement
problem: Public schools, Media
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