Robots: stealing our jobs or solving labour shortages? - by Martin Ford
tag > Automation
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"Intimacy is redefined as inefficiency."
- Nicholas Carr, from "An android dreams of automation" (2014) -
"Automation is an addiction. Stay in music school kids, play your instruments. Don’t do AI." - Quote from the new generative music album from Dadabots.
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“Let us remember that the automatic machine is the precise economic equivalent of slave labor. Any labor which competes with slave labor must accept the economic consequences of slave labor.” ― Norbert Wiener, Cybernetics: Or Control & Communication in the Animal & Machine
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KFC starts selling fried chicken in China with self-driving "5G" unmanned food trucks
#Comment: Clearly this is the perfect use-case for artificial intelligence, besides killer robots..
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Pope Francis prays for good AI
"We pray that the progress of robotics and artificial intelligence may always serve humankind," reads Francis' intention for November.
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Study Finds Stronger Links Between Automation and Inequality
New research by MIT economist Daron Acemoglu shows that since 1987, automation has taken away jobs from lower-skill workers without being replaced by an equivalent number of labor-market opportunities.
"Automation is critical for understanding inequality dynamics" says Acemoglu, detailing the findings.
Does the US tax code favor automation?
"We find that the U.S. tax system favors excessive automation. In particular, the heavy taxation of labor and low taxes on capital encourage firms to automate more tasks and use less labor than is socially optimal."
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“That which withers in the age of mechanical reproduction is the aura of the work of art. This is a symptomatic process whose significance points beyond the realm of art. One might generalize by saying: the technique of reproduction detaches the reproduced object from the domain of tradition.” - Walter Benjamin
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S Korea unleashes all-out policy assault on virus - ‘Big Brother’ on steroids (Asiantimes)
The Korea Center for Disease Control and Prevention is in charge of the new digital surveillance system. It combines information from 27 public and private organizations including the National Police Agency, the Credit Finance Association, three mobile carriers and 22 credit card firms. This vast collection of big data is amassed, trawled through and analyzed by AI. The system is a comprehensive upgrade to a previous program under which “data detectives” combined CCTV footage, GPS location information, credit card payments and other metrics to track down persons who may have been in contact with the infected person.
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Coronavirus Is Speeding Up the Amazonification of the Planet (onezero)
A woman works at a packing station at the 855,000-square-foot Amazon fulfillment center in Staten Island, New York City, on February 5, 2019. Photo: Johannes Eisele/AFP/Getty Images This Amazonification is already underway. The consumer shift to online retailers away from meatspace malls and boutique shops has been the subject of hand-wringing and prognostication for years, and, if anything, the evolution was moving slower than many feared. Walmart, after all, remained the world’s largest retailer long after fears of Amazon’s dominance had become mainstream. Warehouse automation, a key goal of Amazon, was advancing but not yet leaving humans out in the cold by any stretch of the imagination. Yet Amazon caught up in 2019, and if anything, this coronavirus-fueled surge may accelerate its supremacy over the retail market.
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China's robot industry boosted as demand emerges in fight against coronavirus (GT, 2020)
Intelligent robots in China have made a collective appearance amid the coronavirus epidemic with delivery, medical and disinfection purposes, contributing to prevention and control efforts. Experts say that though intelligent robot technology is still in an initial phase, the epidemic has offered a boost to the robot industry.
Chinese police wear smart helmets to check body temperature in crowds due to Coronavirus
Police in China can now screen out potential coronavirus carriers with the help of futuristic-looking smart helmets. Shenzhen-based Kuang-Chi Technology introduced police smart helmets that can quickly measure body temperature in crowds. The infrared cameras attached to the N901 helmets enable wearers to measure temperature from up to five meters away. They have facial recognition.
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Robotic Self-Replication - by Matthew S. Moses & Gregory S. Chirikjian (unpaywalled)
Abstract: The concept of an artificial corporeal machine that can reproduce has attracted the attention of researchers from various fields over the past century.Some have approached the topic with a desire to understand biological life and develop artificial versions; others have examined it as a potentially practical way to use material resources from the moon and Mars to bootstrap the exploration and colonization of the solar system. This review considers both bodies of literature, with an emphasis on the underlying principles required to make self-replicating robotic systems from raw materials a reality.We then illustrate these principles with machines from our laboratory and others and discuss how advances in new manufacturing processes such as3-D printing can have a synergistic effect in advancing the development of such systems.
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Deutsche Bank To Replace 18,000 Workers With Robots (via)
"The bank's head of operations said that using AI 'massively increased productivity in certain sectors'. Deutsche is pushing to 'automate large parts of its back-office' via a new strategy called 'Operations 4.0', as part of its $6.6 billion savings initiative."
#Comment: This is a shameless, peak bullshit way of announcing corporate collapse and bankruptcy. Long term mismanagement, corruption and criminal activities at a massive scale brought them here - and no fictitious "AI" will fix that.
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Recology adds robotics to produce cleaner plastics
"A West Coast operator installed four artificial intelligence units at its high-tech San Francisco MRF. A company manager explained how the machinery is working in conjunction with optical sorters to boost recovery and reduce contamination."
"I don’t get sick. I don’t need breaks, lunches or days off. I work harder, longer and better than anyone else. I’m more accurate and more efficient than anyone could be. Thanks to my intelligent neural network, I’m capable of learning on the job so I can adapt to changing conditions and variables. Lowering costs & improving productivity"
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Long Beach Container Terminal is using $1.5B to build a fully-automated system by 2021. It will handle 2x the freight volumes than before and cut pollution to help reach zero emissions by 2030: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-05-20/in-middle-of-trade-war-america-s-busiest-port-gets-ready-for-robots
PROWLER.io released a whitepaper that shows how probabilistic modeling can be used to solve the supply chain trade problem posed by the logistics of pooled palettes: https://drive.google.com/file/d/182ulJ9LA580wS3btnzTKzSywzbQdoslH/view
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A primary question to ask when designing automation technology is: "Can this task be accomplished by collaborating with nature (Animals, Insects, Plants, Bacteria, etc.) instead of machines?"
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Vietnam's SOEs adopt Industry 4.0 as SMEs struggle to keep up with tech changes
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Growlink One controllers provide increased performance, capacity, productivity, and security to help meet the growing demands of high density sensors networks and sophisticated equipment control in a modern smart farm.
