Tag Archives: automation

December 2014 in Review

At the end of November, my Hope for the Future Index stood at -2.  I’ll give December posts a score from -3 to +3 based on how negative or positive they are.

Negative trends and predictions (-12):

  • When you consider roads, streets, and parking, cars take up more space in cities than housing. (-2)
  • The latest on productivity and economic growth: Paul Krugman says there is risk of deflationary spirals in many countries, and the U.S. economy is nothing to right home about. (-1)
  • There are a few legitimate scientists out there warning of sudden, catastrophic climate change in the near future. (-1)
  • Automation (meaning robots and AI) is estimated to threaten 47% of all U.S. jobs. One area of active research into automation: weaponry. Only one negative point because there are also some positive implications. (-1)
  • Margaret Atwood’s Year of the Flood is a depressing but entertaining reminder that bio-apocalypse is possible. (-2)
  • Before the recent rains, the drought in California was estimated to be a once-in-1200-years event. Major droughts in major food growing regions are not good news, especially with depletion of groundwater, and loss of snowpack and glaciers also in the news. (-2)
  • William Lazonick argues provides evidence that the rise in the gospel of shareholder value correlated with the growth slowdown that started in the 1970s – his explanation is that before that, retained earnings were a cornerstone of R&D and innovation in the economy. Loss of a point because it’s good to hear a dissenting voice, but the economy is still run by disciples of the profits for now. (-1)
  • Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders are warning that the U.S. financial system may still be dangerously unstable. (-2)

Positive trends and predictions (+6):

  • There are some new ideas out there for teaching computer programming, even to young children: Loco Robo, Scratch, and for-profit “programming boot camps”. (+1)
  • You can now get genetically customized probiotics for your vagina. (+1)
  • There are plenty of ideas and models out there for safe, walkable streets, some as simple as narrower lanes. But as I point out, the Dutch and Danish designs are pretty much perfect and should just be adopted everywhere. (+1)
  • I linked to a new video depicting Michael Graves’s idea for “linear cities“. These could be very sustainable ecological if they meant the rest of the landscape is left in a mostly natural condition. I am not as sure about social sustainability – done wrong, they could be like living in a mall or subway station. This was one of my all-time more popular posts. (+1)
  • There are new algorithms out there for aggregating and synthesizing large amounts of scientific literature. Maybe this can increase the returns to R&D and help boost innovation. (+1)
  • There will be several international conferences in 2015 with potential to make real progress on financial stability and sustainability. The phrase “deep decarbonization” has been uttered. (+1)
  • Some evidence suggests that the oceans have absorbed a lot of global warming over the past decade or so, preventing the more extreme range of land surface warming that had been predicted. This is a good short- to medium-term trend, but it may not continue in the long term. (+0)

change during December 2014: -12 + 6 = -6

Hope for the Future Index (end of December 2014): -2 -6 = -8

more on automated data synthesis

Here’s another article from Environmental Modeling and Software about automated synthesis of scattered research results:

We describe software to facilitate systematic reviews in environmental science. Eco Evidence allows reviewers to draw strong conclusions from a collection of individually-weak studies. It consists of two components. An online database stores and shares the atomized findings of previously-published research. A desktop analysis tool synthesizes this evidence to test cause–effect hypotheses. The software produces a standardized report, maximizing transparency and repeatability. We illustrate evidence extraction and synthesis. Environmental research is hampered by the complexity of natural environments, and difficulty with performing experiments in such systems. Under these constraints, systematic syntheses of the rapidly-expanding literature can advance ecological understanding, inform environmental management, and identify knowledge gaps and priorities for future research. Eco Evidence, and in particular its online re-usable bank of evidence, reduces the workload involved in systematic reviews. This is the first systematic review software for environmental science, and opens the way for increased uptake of this powerful approach.

robots robots robots!

Yes, there’s a robot bartender now.

No word on whether this is a bar where everybody knows your name. I suspect not. Here’s a much longer academic study on which occupations are likely to be most affected by computerization/automation in coming decades.

According to our estimates around 47 percent of total US employment is in the high risk category. We refer to these as jobs at risk – i.e. jobs we expect could be automated relatively soon, perhaps over the next decade or two. Our model predicts that most workers in transportation and logistics occupations, together with the bulk of office and administrative support workers, and labour in production occupations, are at risk. These findings are consistent with recent technological developments documented in the literature. More surprisingly, we find that a substantial share of employment in service occupations,where most US job growth has occurred over the past decades (Autor and Dorn, 2013), are highly susceptible to computerisation. Additional support for this finding is provided by the recent growth in the market for service robots (MGI, 2013) and the gradually diminishment of the comparative advantage of human labour in tasks involving mobility and dexterity (Robotics-VO, 2013).

The paper has a detailed appendix where you can look up your specific occupation if you are so inclined. In also has a detailed lesson on the history of technology and labor markets, if you are inclined to read that.

Finally, the Pentagon is also worried about falling behind the curve on automation:

Hagel and DOD officials have been discussing the so-called third offset strategy for months without giving up any specifics as to how they intend to achieve offset innovation. In his speech, Hagel provided a small glimpse into the fields that will attract special Defense Department attention as part of the strategy: “robotics, autonomous systems, miniaturization, big data, and advanced manufacturing, including 3-D printing.”

November 2014 in Review

At the end of October, my Hope for the Future Index stood at -2.  I’ll give November posts a score from -3 to +3 based on how negative or positive they are.

Negative trends and predictions (-6):

  • There is mounting evidence that the world economy is slowing, financial corporations are still engaged in all sorts of dirty tricks, and overall investment may be dropping. Financial authorities are trying to respond through financial means, but the connections are not being made to the right kinds of investments in infrastructure, skills, and protection of natural capital that would set the stage for long-term sustainable growth in the future. (-2)
  • Public apathy over climate change in the U.S. may have been manufactured by a cynical, immoral corporate disinformation campaign over climate change taken right out of the tobacco companies’ playbook. It’s true that the tobacco companies ultimately were called to account, but not until millions of lives were lost. Will it be billions this time? (-2)
  • Glenn Beck has gone even further off his rocker, producing a video suggesting the U.N. is going to ration food and burn old people alive while playing vaguely middle eastern music. One negative point because some people out there might not laugh. (-1)
  • The new IPCC report predicts generally negative effects of climate change on crops and fisheries. The good news is it doesn’t seem to predict catastrophic collapse, but we need to remember that the food supply needs to grow substantially in the coming decades, not just hold steady, so any headwinds making that more difficult are potentially threatening. (-1)

Positive trends and predictions (+6):

  • A lot is known about how to grow healthy trees in the most urbanized environments. But only a few cities really take advantage of this readily available knowledge. (+0)
  • As manufacturing becomes increasingly high-tech, automation vs. employment is emerging as a big theme for the future. The balance may swing back and forth over time, but in the long term I think automation has to win. New wealth will be created, but the question is how broadly it will be shared. The question is not just an economic one – it depends on the kind of social and political systems people will live under in various places. This might be why the field of economics was originally called “political economy”. So I’m putting this in the positive column but giving it no points because the jury is out. (+0)
  • Google is working on nanobots that can swim around in your blood and give an early diagnosis of cancer and other diseases. (+1)
  • Economic slowing is probably the main reason why oil prices are way down. Increased supply capacity from the U.S. also probably plays a role, although there are dissenting voices how long that is going to last. I find it hard to say whether cheaper oil is good or bad. I tend to think it is just meaningless noise on the longer time scale, but you won’t hear me complain if it brings down the price of transportation and groceries for a year or two. (+0)
  • Millennials aren’t buying cars in large numbers. I don’t believe for a second that this means they are less materialistic than past generations, but I think a shift in consumption from cars to almost anything else is a net gain for sustainability. (+2)
  • I discovered the FRAGSTATS package for comprehensive spatial analysis of ecosystems and habitats. This gives us quantitative tools to design green webs that work well for both people and wildlife. Bringing land back into our economic framework in an explicit way might also help. (+1)
  • “Perennial polyculture” gardens may be able to provide food year round on small urban footprints in temperate climates. (+1)
  • A vision for smart, sustainable infrastructure involves walkable communities, closing water and material loops, and using energy wisely. Pretty much the same points I made in my book, which I don’t actively promote on this site;) (+1)

Hope for the Future Index (end of October 2014): -2

change during November 2014: -6 + 6 = 0

Hope for the Future Index (end of November 2014): -2 + 0 = -2

American Made: The New Manufacturing Landscape

NPR has this series called American Made. It has a variety of interesting articles/interviews but there is a common theme. We are making and selling a lot of stuff, and it has a lot of economic value to be captured. But manufacturing is now a tech industry. It is more capital- and technology-intensive all the time, and less labor-intensive. So favoring manufacturing over other industries is not going to be a path to full employment and sharing the wealth with low- and medium-skilled workers like in the U.S. of the 50s and 60s, or the Asia of the 80s and 90s and 00s. By default the value is going to be captured by a small elite who own the capital or have the skills to create and operate the technology, unless we think of something better.

Also related to this topic, be sure to check out this Dilbert.

 

driverless vehicles and displacement of drivers

Here is a continuation of the Economist‘s musings about automation:

The possibility of a world in which a rather large share of the population works as drivers, simply because human labour has gotten too cheap to automate out of the job, should focus minds on the nature of the policy challenge economies are beginning to face. Is work—and the link between work and the earning of an income sufficient to live on—so important to society that we should want millions of people to function as meatware: doing jobs sensors and computers could and would do if only there were not an excess supply of humans needing to work in order to afford food and shelter?

That’s not a rhetorical question. It’s a genuine puzzle that societies will find themselves confronting in coming decades. It will be obvious to many people that the answer is no and just as obvious to many others that the answer is yes. I cannot begin to say which side will win the argument.

The idea is that as automated vehicle technology becomes more effective and inexpensive, it will start to put more drivers out of work. But having more drivers available will reduce wages for drivers, possibly below what the automated technology costs and reducing the incentive for further development of the technology. It’s logical, but this sort of thing must have happened throughout history, and technology tends to win even if it takes a while. Take agricultural technology like diesel-powered tractors – when they got cheaper and more effective, they put enormous numbers of agricultural workers out of work. For the most part, those people didn’t accept lower wages and continue as agricultural workers, they migrated and tried to find better jobs in manufacturing, jobs that were also unfortunately drying up due to globalization and automation. The result, in the U.S. at least, was formation of a (seemingly, so far) permanent new underclass. So not only are these issues about technology vs. jobs, they are about how (whether) the wealth created by the new technology is going to be shared throughout society. In theory, we could retrain people and better educate their children, while also working less and sharing income more broadly. But that doesn’t sound like the American way, does it?

Ryan Avent on Automation

In this Economist podcast, Ryan Avent talks about how automation is leading to a “hollowing out” of the workforce. Basically, the concept is that as computers and machines get better at performing more and more skilled jobs (book-keeping is one example given), there is gradually less demand for the medium-skilled workers who used to do those jobs. High-skilled workers like computer programmers are doing very well, although I presume the automation will gradually creep higher and higher up the chain, so today’s safer jobs will be less safe tomorrow.

At the same time these medium-skilled workers in developed countries are getting squeezed out, developing countries are not benefiting like they used to from their large pools of low-skilled workers as manufacturing becomes more and more automated, and can be done cost-effectively closer to consumers in richer countries.

automation

Longreads has an excerpt from Nicholas Carr’s book The Glass Cage: Automation and Us

The historian Thomas Hughes, in reviewing the arrival of the electric grid in his book Networks of Power, described how first the engineering culture, then the business culture, and finally the general culture shaped themselves to the new system. “Men and institutions developed characteristics that suited them to the characteristics of the technology,” he wrote. “And the systematic interaction of men, ideas, and institutions, both technical and nontechnical, led to the development of a supersystem—a sociotechnical one—with mass movement and direction.” It was at this point that what Hughes termed “technological momentum” took hold, both for the power industry and for the modes of production and living it supported. “The universal system gathered a conservative momentum. Its growth generally was steady, and change became a diversification of function.” Progress had found its groove.

We’ve reached a similar juncture in the history of automation. Society is adapting to the universal computing infrastructure—more quickly than it adapted to the electric grid—and a new status quo is taking shape. The assumptions underlying industrial operations have already changed. “Business processes that once took place among human beings are now being executed electronically,” explains W. Brian Arthur, an economist and technology theorist at the Santa Fe Institute. “They are taking place in an unseen domain that is strictly digital.” As an example, he points to freight shipping. Not long ago, coordinating a shipment of cargo across national borders required legions of clipboard-wielding functionaries. Now, it’s handled by computers. Commerce of all sorts is increasingly managed through, as Arthur puts it, “a huge conversation conducted entirely among machines.” To be in business is to have networked computers capable of taking part in that conversation. Any sizable company has little choice but to automate and then automate some more. It has to redesign its work flows and its products to allow for ever-greater computer monitoring and control, and it has to restrict the involvement of people in its supply and production processes. People, after all, can’t keep up with computer chatter; they just slow down the conversation.