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Dull, dirty, and dangerous (What about agriculture?)
The infographic mentions robots in the food service industry (burger-flipper bot?), but I'm curious about the impact of increasingly intelligent and capable robots in the agriculture industry. Agriculture has become increasingly automated but still relies on a large, low-skilled labor force. While the "skill" level is low and requires little education for a human, the tasks involved (determination of ripeness, harvesting without damage, etc.) have, as yet, remained economically unfeasible to automate. That may not hold true for much longer.
Major cultural and socio-economic shifts have occurred throughout history due to subtle shifts in economic viability. While ethics played a primary role in the abolition of slavery, the fact that share-croppers and paid farmhands cost the plantation owners less for the same amount of production helped hasten slavery's end throughout much of the world. Inventions, such as the cotton gin, also greatly shrunk the need for manual labor. What used to occupy the majority of the population now only occupies 1.6% of the U.S. labor force while America remains a major food exporter.
In American agriculture, specifically, large domestic labor forces have been replaced by migrant workers. To narrow the focus further, and bring us back to the topic at hand, when I was a kid, there was a large migrant worker population working in the nut-tree groves of Northern California, but with the invention of nut-harvesters--invention spurred on by political events and the rising cost of labor--most of their jobs were automated out of existence.
Agriculture remains an occupation characterized by the "three D's" (dull, dirty, and dangerous) where robots are increasingly being employed. We can be concerned about skilled and educated workers being displaced by robotics, but as a number of people have already commented, skilled and educated people will likely find another way to make a living. What happens to the people without skills or education?
I wish I could say I have good answers. It is awfully patronizing to reject technology in favor of employing people in low-skill occupations, just to give them something to do. As others have discussed, displacing large numbers of workers will likely be destabilizing, but once the tipping point is reached where automated labor is cheaper than human labor, the work is going to shift to the robots. If you try to stop that shift, you are forcing people to pay more for goods than they would otherwise. You can try to convince the consumer that they are getting better quality (in other words, they are still getting better value). The argument is little different than the more common discussion of "outsourcing" work to regions where labor is less expensive.
In the long view, humans have always sought to make work easier through the use of machines. Lifting has evolved from using your hands, to a lever, to block and tackle, to a hydraulic jack, to a forklift. What's next, C-3PO's friend, the "Binary Load Lifter"? If a machine can do it faster / better / cheaper (and sometimes all three), why should you?
I would be less concerned about thinking machines taking over skilled labor and more so about the impact to society when robots make the significant, unskilled portion of the planet's population obsolete.
Major cultural and socio-economic shifts have occurred throughout history due to subtle shifts in economic viability. While ethics played a primary role in the abolition of slavery, the fact that share-croppers and paid farmhands cost the plantation owners less for the same amount of production helped hasten slavery's end throughout much of the world. Inventions, such as the cotton gin, also greatly shrunk the need for manual labor. What used to occupy the majority of the population now only occupies 1.6% of the U.S. labor force while America remains a major food exporter.
In American agriculture, specifically, large domestic labor forces have been replaced by migrant workers. To narrow the focus further, and bring us back to the topic at hand, when I was a kid, there was a large migrant worker population working in the nut-tree groves of Northern California, but with the invention of nut-harvesters--invention spurred on by political events and the rising cost of labor--most of their jobs were automated out of existence.
Agriculture remains an occupation characterized by the "three D's" (dull, dirty, and dangerous) where robots are increasingly being employed. We can be concerned about skilled and educated workers being displaced by robotics, but as a number of people have already commented, skilled and educated people will likely find another way to make a living. What happens to the people without skills or education?
I wish I could say I have good answers. It is awfully patronizing to reject technology in favor of employing people in low-skill occupations, just to give them something to do. As others have discussed, displacing large numbers of workers will likely be destabilizing, but once the tipping point is reached where automated labor is cheaper than human labor, the work is going to shift to the robots. If you try to stop that shift, you are forcing people to pay more for goods than they would otherwise. You can try to convince the consumer that they are getting better quality (in other words, they are still getting better value). The argument is little different than the more common discussion of "outsourcing" work to regions where labor is less expensive.
In the long view, humans have always sought to make work easier through the use of machines. Lifting has evolved from using your hands, to a lever, to block and tackle, to a hydraulic jack, to a forklift. What's next, C-3PO's friend, the "Binary Load Lifter"? If a machine can do it faster / better / cheaper (and sometimes all three), why should you?
I would be less concerned about thinking machines taking over skilled labor and more so about the impact to society when robots make the significant, unskilled portion of the planet's population obsolete.
Posted by JJMach
24th Aug 2011