[Why is this in the Pit? You gonna dis the robots? Expect any to fight back and accuse you of fleshism?]
Gee, I didn’t know I was required to square off when I sound off. Hmm, let’s check the rules… wadday know, there ain’t no rules. Look! A shooting star. (Whap!)
[This was the same argument against industrialization.]
Who sez I’m against it? I just mentioned that it is going to happen, sure as death & taxes.
[Industrialization and computerization increases overall wealth.]
Yes.
[Note the ‘in the end’. There will be short term set backs for some folks.]
Yup. It’s the timing and amount I’m thinking about. And I don’t think the phrase ‘short term’ covers it.
For Christmas, if you’ve been very good, you could get an Apple iBook capable of 500 MIPS. Or, an Apple G4 450 MHz capable of 1000 MIPS. Take your pick for around $1600.
The smart guys say that Moore’s law will hold steady for the forseeable future and computer power will continue to double about every 18 months. Assuming prices hold relatively steady, for $1,500 we get computing power capable of:
simple fixed factory robot 1 MIPS 1990
insect brain power 10 MIPS 1994
autonomous camera vision robot 1,000 MIPS 1999
lizard brain power 5,000 MIPS 2005
mouse brain power 100,000 MIPS 2010
monkey brain power 5,000,000 MIPS 2020
people brain power 100 million MIPS 2030
Somewhere around 2015 you will be able to buy little robots that you can give verbal instructions for simple tasks, for about $50,000. Like, unload that pallet of boxes over to that shelf. Drive the van over to the warehouse and pick up six dozen of these. They will be reliable, relatively simple, and have a life span of about three years.
Here in the U.S. we have around 138,000,000 workers, making an average of about $14/hr. Of those jobs, around 28,000,000 are the sort that could be handled by handled by robots that could understand simple commands and tasks.
(This is in no way intended to offend anyone working at a labor job, I spent my time in that world too.)
Each of these workers costs their company around $16,000 a year including taxes & benefits. Over a three year period that’s $47,000, six weeks of vacation, and probably a couple weeks sick time. Between 2010 and 2020 general purpose robots will progressively break that price and downtime barrier.
Even if industrial acceptance lags several years behind, we go from 5% unemployment in 2010 to 25% unemployment by 2025. By 2030, with human level processing power available, most companies would make the move to automate as much of the production work as possible. Of course, they will still need a sales force, management (greatly reduced), and a receptionist. But they will also need custumors. Unemployment levels might hang around 50% or higher by 2035 and stay that way.
[This was the same argument against industrialization. Once machines are making all the textiles, and picking all the crops, what are the manual laborers gonna do?!!]
And the answer is… ?
During the industrial revolution most people went from working on a farm to working in a factory. So what are we going to do next? Face it, not everybody is cut out to be an alpha geek. Even if they were, there just wouldn’t be enough demand to soak them all up.
For the first time ever, a large and steadily increasing percentage of the population will no longer be relevant to production or delivery. From mines to railway, foundry, refinery, mill, factory, delivery truck, warehouse, to retail, less and less people will be needed to make and move the goods. Eventually I expect nearly nobody will be involved.
The kicker is that under the current well established system of private capital ownership, a very small percentage of the people actually own the vast majority of industrial stuff. The rest of us work for them. The whole thing depends on us all making money and swapping things with each other. No job, no money. No money, no swappy.
The same sort of thing happened last time around. Federal military troops were eventually used to put down uprisings of people working at starvation wages. Eventually the laws were changed and the wealth got spread. In the meantime millions led hard and nasty lives.
Sure, 1000 years from now we will all be kicking back around the BBQ, but the road from here to there looks a little rocky. Basically we’re toast.