There is a lot of talk about automation
replacing people instead of paying them a $15 minimum wage.
Automation is not by any means simple but people have been preparing for it for a long time.
Lets stalk for a minute about the type of automation, because it’s something almost nobody understands.
Hard automation is a machine that does one thing and one thing only. Now that one thing may be simple, like an automatic toaster- put bread in the top, it comes out buttered toast at the bottom. Yes, this is automation. it could also be complex, like a machine into which you throw plucked, gutted chickens and it separates the meat and the bones and whole breasts and loose meat come out. That is automation as well. And yes, that machine does exist. Hard automation is designed to do a single task, and do it with extreme efficiency. Here’s an example of a single task hard automation machine. All it does, is put the liners in bottlecaps and slit the tamper evident. And this is a slow machine. most are screaming fast.
All hard automation is designed to do something simple. Sometimes they can be modified slightly, but you can’t redeploy that machine to, for instance, install the wheels on a car. Hard automation is difficult to make and usually very limited in it’s scope, but it is very efficient. Soft automation, like robots, is much more flexible; a robot that is welding gas pedal assemblies in March can easily be loading steering wheel hubs into a lathe in May, and injecting sealant into refrigerator doors in September.
The automation you don’t see is already in place many places. Nobody is standing in front of a flattop or a deep fryer in McDonalds, those burgers and fries are already made in a fairly structured way. it’s not exactly fully automated yet, but it is very efficient, and the gap between an efficient human process and an automated process is very, very small.
No, what you’re going to see first is a kiosk where you walk up to a computer monitor and order, and pay, or a cellphone app where you already store your preferences and just text the thing you want to the closest McKing, and your order will be waiting for you when you drive up. it’s already happening; look around. There are already self checkouts in nearly every chain store in North America. And apps that let you order online or from home or from a kiosk in store. The more normalized they become, the fewer $15 employees are needed.
The human touch will be required, at least for the moment, where personalized service is still required. A tailor still has to measure you for your pants, but in the not too distant future body scanners will eliminate that job. A customer service counter is still very useful but many customers would rather deal with a computer terminal than a surly customer service rep. And the customer service reps are already tired of surly customers. The people who run scams on stores will still be able to do so, they’ll just have to be smarter (I know a girl who put herself through college by buying new looking clothes at Goodwill or garage sales, attaching tags to them with security loops, and returning them at places like WalMart with liberal return policies)
The world is changing. Humanity is being dehumanized and marginalized byu people who are vocally “Trying to help” but are in reality cementing the lower classes into permanent dependancy. No thinking person doesn’t understand this.
The way to survive is to be in a job that requires creativity, which automation cannot do, or to have skills that are needed to maintain the machinery of our lives. A $90 tablet computer can be a piece of semi-soft automation that can parrot the same things that $400,000 sociology degree will teach you. Have or get a job that cannot be replaced easily.
28 comments Og | Uncategorized
I am part of the group that is pursuing a form of automation where I work.
It will be done by a robot some day, but I think someday will be after I retire.
They are discussing automated cars now and that is getting closer.
I am reminded of the chines curse, may you live in interesting times.
There have been burger making machines prototyped and displayed – they still require someone like the guy loading the bottle cap blanks in that machine. There are pizza vending machines that just need re-filling. There are more. That wave is just starting to build, and it’s a long way from cresting (it seems to me…). Your bottom line, last two paragraphs, are absolute gold, though.
There’s a new way of thinking that high school kids need to get: getting a college degree doesn’t guarantee a good job and a cushy life. The job that can never be outsourced to Cheap Foreign Labor is installing and fixing those machines – along with your plumbing, air conditioning, etc., etc., etc..
SGB: The burger making machines that are coming are freezer at one end and delivery at the other. The frozen meat is extracted from the freezer, microwave thawed, grilled or fried, has condiments added, thebun is toasted slightly to order, and the burget is assembled and wrapped. By the time you have entered your PIN number for the transaction, the sucker is halfway into your bag. That kindof automation is on it’s way, ansd already being used in $undisclosed locations.
I suspect one of the last jobs that will be taken by automation is heavy equipment operator for road construction. I have no doubt there will be attempts to go there fairly soon, due to the character traits of a fair number of workers in those jobs. However, flexibility to properly deal with ALL the unforseen circumstances on the job on a daily basis will cause much entertainment…
Indeed- that’s a job that wants a human touch, and not just for the unexpected- the issues of safety are bad enough with caged robots and guarded machinery- imagine hundred ton earthmovers wandering around with no intervention.
For hamburgers, check out the Momentum Machine:
http://www.businessinsider.com/momentum-machines-burger-robot-2014-8
And the illegal aliens will drive the earth movers for $7 an hour and the HB1 pakis and Chinese will do the chemical engineering the same way. The Dems keep their jobs w the votes of the former and the global corps love the latter. I hate unions and “free trade” with third world dictatorships is folly. Wish I had a fix.
You and me both, bruddah.
Except those illegal aliens tend to find more ways to create REAL problems than even the current heavy equipment operators with their “Hey, y’all, watch this!!!” mentality. And fines for late completion, rework of unsatisfactory sections, and ruined corporate reputation RAPIDLY outweighs the difference between the $7 illegals and the current rednecks.
No, not really. You’d like to think that, but you’d be wrong. I see that all the time. I never once saw a fikne levied, nor a bad section reworked, nor anyone who gave a damn about their reputation.
Whether or not your job can/will be automated out from under you depends IMO on how far out into the margins of production you work. That is, if what you do takes place in an economically controllable circumstance (a warehouse, factory, engineered construction site, etc), your job is more easily subject to the soft automation Og describes. If, however, the work environment is less economically controllable the demand will be for fewer human employees, each individually competent at as many occupational activities as they are capable of maintaining competency in. Thus, an electrician/plumber (with knowledge of fluid dynamics in multiple mediums) who can braze/weld/soldier (in multiple environments), in both direct and remote applications would be one such example (and one of the most over-worked maintenance techs at my present job pretty much meets that description now – not sure about the “remote applications” yet).
Learn a trade? More like learn several, to at minimum a journeyman level of competency, and probably one or two trades to master level. To include maintaining/repairing soft automatons and their support infrastructure, so writing computer code also.
Easier said than done. The world is loaded with people who thought they’d get a degree in some recession proof allegedly in-demand field only to end up with crushing student debt and a job at Target or Menards. It looks like the economy is going to zig one way, but when your training period is over, employers say “so what” to your certificate as the economy zagged the other way.
Then there’s the Bell curve of human ability. Sure, people 2 SDs to the right of the mean will be able to load up on skills as Brown above suggests (though how will they get out of training to work full time if all they’re doing is learning and then retraining as what they learned becomes obsolete at a more rapid pace), but an economy that can only find jobs for geniuses and has nothing for the average Joe will make for one hell of a country.
Had a client once who eschewed the idea of biz-wide automation with “but what would we do with all the newly unnecessary employees” when I turned on a function that replaced 14 8-hour employees with 4 2-hour ones and was two software changes away from replacing those 4 with a pair of 15-minute remote employees. The answer was “let the machines do the stupid stuff, use the people where creative intelligence and capability adds high value. Let the employees who cannot do anything but the stupid stuff seek new challenges elsewhere.” The net was 600 employees down to <250, eventually to half that. As a side note, IBM has had a couple warehouses that have run without people in the building for a couple decades, and they're not the only ones. Keep an eye on Amazon – when they stop constant hiring for their distribution centers it will be a signal.
RE: Heavy equipment operator – coarse hands for gross dirt moving are cheap, highly skilled hands for finish grading are expensive. GPS has been attached to grader blades for Z-axis control for quite a while; it's not fully automated now, but a few K lines of code and it could be, along with full X and Y axis control and boundary laser failsafes. No reason why final grade finishing couldn't be done in the dark.
That may not be the case in your AO, og. But it is in East Central Florida. They ran a section of I-95 in Brevard County in concrete during the “shovel-ready jobs” feeding frenzy a coupla years ago, and significant portions were ripped up and re-done after inspection. And the contractor was fined. Lane Construction seems to be concerned about fines and reputation, so one of their local supervisors gets sent out to various and sundry of their contracts across the country to clean things up on a regular basis.
Now of course, if the contract awards go to the Right People, as tends to be the case in the hives, then your analysis is indeed correct…
I would guess what you’re talking about was more politics and less about the actual quality of the work.
@ mts1:
“… jobs for geniuses …” Really?
Go ahead and do this for yourself since I don’t expect someone of such erudite critical skills to take my word for anything (nor should anyone, really); enter the search string “electrician training” into google (or whatever) and you too might notice the first entry in response:
Stafford Career Institute
Take any typical teenager who can play World of Warcraft online, sign him/her up for an account at Khan Academy for general ed courses, schedule a recurring cycle of “coding camp” along with the electrician and plumbing courses offered by Stafford (who, remember, are only the first of “X” pages of potential training sources available) and leverage all of that in between WoW game nights over the course of say the ages 12 to 18, and I guarantee you he/she will have 0 difficulty getting on as an apprentice maintenance worker pretty much anywhere on (and if you include some remote vehicle operation experience along the way, potentially off) planet Earth.
Just how much friggin’ genius do you think playing WoW or Civilization really requires?
Improving work skills over the course of on-going employment isn’t exactly rocket science either, you know. Trade unions (not to mention uncounted private and public employers worldwide) have been successfully doing so for a century or some (go look for yourself just how long trade union and guild systems have been in existence).
At most, I’m suggesting a reduction in the degree of occupational skill specialization, a modest modification in secondary education practices and a bit of continuing adult education (admittedly at some expense to the individual’s casual entertainment opportunities). Anyone who can’t do (or learn to do) all of that already isn’t a realistic candidate for any sort of technical work anyway. An average adult looking to train him/her self into employability could almost certainly do enough of the above (pretty much for free) from resources available online today with only a minimum of research and steady application of effort.
I am talking about quality of work. There are specs for road construction that are part of the contract. After the contractor declares (each part of) the work done, inspectors go to the site and pull samples to verify compaction, materials used, and other specified requirements. In East Central Florida, if any of those fails to pass, the section of road is reworked at contractor expense. The contracts call for a “complete by” date, and have a penalty for failure to meet that schedule. Sometimes there is bonus available for getting done before that date, other times not. If the contract award was fair and open, which most of them in this area seem to be, the government holds the contractor to the signed agreement. Even if the completion date slips due to items beyond the contractor’s control, such as weather – think hurricanes as an example.
Now I do recognize that may not be the case in other areas of this country. As I said, I expect that in the hives, who you know decides who gets the contract. And I would be surprised to see any significant penalties for failure to meet contract requirements on those jobs.
YMMV.
Oh, that happens in Chicago all the time, but trust me on this: No contractor makes something under spec knowing he is going to be inspected. Around here, the only people that get inspected are the ones who didn’t pay off, and then they fail the inspection not on quality of work, but on the “Revised” standards, usually made up on the spot by the inspector himself. I doubt there’s anywhere where this happens any differently.
Mr. Brown your second, longer response makes a lot of points that I can appreciate. In the “old days,” (let’s arbitrarily say until 1980) a person would show basic ability, and then be taken on as an apprentice, then wash out before he invested too much time/money or move up in whatever trade he was in, with continuing learning going on as he was earning. It’s how my father learned how to be a pipefitter and his brother an electrician, and they earned as they learned. You learned as you worked, so you got a wife and kids as you kept learning as the company invested in a proven worker.
Nowadays, training is off-loaded onto the potential employee who learns a skill set in hopes of getting hired. Deliver pizza at night and learn X during the day. If the stars align, it works out. If HR is looking for Big Campus grads and looks down on your commuter college or internet school degree, or if the field was open when you enrolled but now is swimming in unemployed grads along with you 4 years later, or if you’ve been in the looking market for 2+ years and they’re only considering fresh grads, you either double down on college debt and pick a new in-demand 4 year degree suggested by the guys who misled you the first time, or settle for two jobs that your training means nothing to. It’s like they expect people to wait until they’re in their 30s to be in their family feeding professions (and I know a good number of people who just keep doubling down on schooling and won’t start their families until they’re in their 40s if they’re lucky to land that foot in the door). I wrongly thought you were advocating this, that continuing training and growing your basket of skill sets = an additional time not yet in the workforce, to sit in a desk yet more months and years like a professional student permanent teenager, with life on hold before beginning your career, and I apologize.
ArcelorMittal’s Steelworker for the Future program, where they train guys off the street to be mill mechanical and electrical techs and have them alternate semesters earning at the mill with semesters in class/lab learning, they estimate as best they can they’ll need X+-3 or so people, and tell Ivy Tech to open a class to train X+-3 students.
Aaron Clarey at Captain Capitalism expounds on this far more intelligently than I can. See what Cappy Cap says. He’s in Og’s blogroll.
I fully agree that no contractor intentionally makes something under spec when he knows he will be inspected. It’s a skills thing, which goes back to my post above about the results of letting illegals do the heavy equipment operator work. A supervisor cannot watch all the people on a job all the time, and it only takes one incompetent to mandate rework.
And for Will Brown and mts, interning is a CRITICAL function for any student. Even for those who DO end up working in their chosen field of study, the actual work frequently has very little direct connection to what they learned in school. While interning will clearly not let YOU do the work until you graduate and prove you are capable, at least while you’re there you get to see what that work REALLY is.
Interning is to some fields what apprenticeship is to others. You don’t get useful skills with a degree, just a head full of facts without context.
Mark: You find me an unskilled operator that has been given the keys to a $450,000 machine, and I’ll give you one of my spare philosophers’s stones. If a guy hires someone unskilled to run his extremely expensive equipment, it’s because skilled operators do not exist. The skilled operator is a tiny fraction of the cost of a job. Sure, you might find an idiot driving a bobcat, but it is highly unlikely that a bobcat operator is doing anything to mess up a roadbed, or a bridge. if something is rejected for “Quality” follow the money. There isn’t an ounce of concrete in the Chicago Metro area that shouldn’t be rejected for quality, and yet it passed inspection just fine.
I keep telling you guys, you need to get in on being a bloated bureaucrat. it’s still a growth industry and it can’t be done by a robot. (it turns out that programming a robot to take long breaks and generally accomplish nothing while it talks a good game about being productive and importnat is harder than it looks).
The problem is, the dog is about to die, and then all the ticks starve.
There will always be money in being able to fix a car, or a toilet, or build an addition, or pave a driveway, or muck out a horse stall, etc. When the ticks all fall off the dog, people will still need to have their toilets fixed.
Sure, you might find an idiot driving a bobcat
The stories one could tell. For some reason, Bobcats seem to be an attractive nuisance.
Lol.
My fallback plan is to be an agricultural consultant. I am going to show farmers how to use a sharp stick to put a hole in the ground, drop a seed into it using a long straw and cover it over with their foot. it will save them lots of time and back-breaking labor rather than doing it on their hands and knees.
You are a renaissance man.