Trump's America

[ZRod]

 

Guys... this is why you need an education. People still need to design, program, and maintain these parts and systems. But we're ok letting education flounder because we shouldn't have to pay for our children's future if we don't want to.

Sure not everyone can be a doctor, lawyer, engineer, journalist, scientist, what have you but you're still much more valuable if you have a welding certification, programming background, basic buisness skills, Electrical/plumbing license, or any of a number of skills that can be taught at a post secondary level.

 

While what you're saying is true, it doesn't really address the problem of automation. You only need a relative small number of people to design, program, and maintain the robots. Whether that's 10%, 40%, or 60% of the available work force doesn't matter as the economy will collapse with unemployment numbers of 40%-90%.

You would be shocked at the number of people it takes to design and build a single car model from the studio to the show room. Yes, a lot of it is automated now, but there are plenty of jobs at OEMs and suppliers that will always require the human interface. That won't go away. The buisness case isn't there to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to create robots and then continute to spend thousands to maintain them when you can hire someone for 40k for a year or two.

 

But as automation does move forward people need that education to move out of the sector they are in and find employment else where. See the coal indistry's current struggle and Pittsburgh's resurgence by embracing an alternative to Steele mills.

[zoogs]

I think your examples aren't easy to group together. You talk about electrician/plumbing/welding certs -- non-college routes which are often part of this debate. Then you bring up business skills and computer science backgrounds, which I think are more relevant to 'surviving automation' and almost always require advanced degrees.

 

Really, I think this is a great argument for encouraging people to have college education. Trade job security seems much more tenuous as technology advances (not all of them to be clear, there'll always be a basic level of demand). Also, when they do go or become irrelevant, it's a lot steeper of an uphill climb compared to a college grad in some field who wants to break into programming, or business, for example.

[RedDenver]

 

 

Guys... this is why you need an education. People still need to design, program, and maintain these parts and systems. But we're ok letting education flounder because we shouldn't have to pay for our children's future if we don't want to.

Sure not everyone can be a doctor, lawyer, engineer, journalist, scientist, what have you but you're still much more valuable if you have a welding certification, programming background, basic buisness skills, Electrical/plumbing license, or any of a number of skills that can be taught at a post secondary level.

While what you're saying is true, it doesn't really address the problem of automation. You only need a relative small number of people to design, program, and maintain the robots. Whether that's 10%, 40%, or 60% of the available work force doesn't matter as the economy will collapse with unemployment numbers of 40%-90%.

You would be shocked at the number of people it takes to design and build a single car model from the studio to the show room. Yes, a lot of it is automated now, but there are plenty of jobs at OEMs and suppliers that will always require the human interface. That won't go away. The buisness case isn't there to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to create robots and then continute to spend thousands to maintain them when you can hire someone for 40k for a year or two.

 

But as automation does move forward people need that education to move out of the sector they are in and find employment else where. See the coal indistry's current struggle and Pittsburgh's resurgence by embracing an alternative to Steele mills.

 

The part I've bolded is where we disagree. There are AI being developed right now to design things like custom electronics, cars, and planes. There are AI that can make legal arguments to get you out of a traffic ticket, compose music, and design adaptive HMI customized to each user. The capabilities are rapidly expanding and the costs are going down for automation and that's the crux of the problem.

[funhusker]

Guys... this is why you need an education. People still need to design, program, and maintain these parts and systems. But we're ok letting education flounder because we shouldn't have to pay for our children's future if we don't want to.

 

Sure not everyone can be a doctor, lawyer, engineer, journalist, scientist, what have you but you're still much more valuable if you have a welding certification, programming background, basic buisness skills, Electrical/plumbing license, or any of a number of skills that can be taught at a post secondary level.

+1 from an Industrial Technology teacher.

 

I tell my kids every year, you don't only need to know "how" to do it, you need to understand "why" you do it that way. That alone will make you more valuable than your coworkers.

[BigRedBuster]

People. Automation is not going away. Wake the f#*k up.

 

 

It isn't the evil here. It's either automate or not have jobs.

 

Do you really think that a company in the US can compete paying $20 per hour with no automation against a country paying $5 prr hour with automation?

 

Seriously????

 

When the hell are some people going to wake up?

[funhusker]

I think your examples aren't easy to group together. You talk about electrician/plumbing/welding certs -- non-college routes which are often part of this debate. Then you bring up business skills and computer science backgrounds, which I think are more relevant to 'surviving automation' and almost always require advanced degrees.

 

Really, I think this is a great argument for encouraging people to have college education. Trade job security seems much more tenuous as technology advances (not all of them to be clear, there'll always be a basic level of demand). Also, when they do go or become irrelevant, it's a lot steeper of an uphill climb compared to a college grad in some field who wants to break into programming, or business, for example.

Not necessarily. For example, many factories will take their best machinist, welder, etc... and send them to programming school or have them trained by other programmers. This way the "education" is targeted at that companies systems. A manufacturing company has to train a person no matter what, they might as well train a person that know the processes and techniques first.

 

Kawasaki in Lincoln is a good example of this. We've toured and talked to workers. One of their lead robotics engineers started as a machinist less than 10 years ago (I'm assuming because he looked under 30)

[Moiraine]

People. Automation is not going away. Wake the f#*k up.

 

 

It isn't the evil here. It's either automate or not have jobs.

 

Do you really think that a company in the US can compete paying $20 per hour with no automation against a country paying $5 prr hour with automation?

 

Seriously????

 

When the hell are some people going to wake up?

None of that made any sense as a response to what anyone is posting.

 

No one is saying automation is going away.

 

No one is saying automation is evil.

 

No one discussing it is asleep or ignorant.

 

No one is saying companies should pay $20/hour for manual labor instead of $5/hour for a machine.

 

I have no idea how that got into your head from reading this conversation.

 

 

Some of us think capitalization can't survive automation without changes being made.

[RedDenver]

People. Automation is not going away. Wake the f#*k up.

 

 

It isn't the evil here. It's either automate or not have jobs.

 

Do you really think that a company in the US can compete paying $20 per hour with no automation against a country paying $5 prr hour with automation?

 

Seriously????

 

When the hell are some people going to wake up?

I don't follow, what are you responding to?

[ZRod]

 

 

 

Guys... this is why you need an education. People still need to design, program, and maintain these parts and systems. But we're ok letting education flounder because we shouldn't have to pay for our children's future if we don't want to.

Sure not everyone can be a doctor, lawyer, engineer, journalist, scientist, what have you but you're still much more valuable if you have a welding certification, programming background, basic buisness skills, Electrical/plumbing license, or any of a number of skills that can be taught at a post secondary level.

 

While what you're saying is true, it doesn't really address the problem of automation. You only need a relative small number of people to design, program, and maintain the robots. Whether that's 10%, 40%, or 60% of the available work force doesn't matter as the economy will collapse with unemployment numbers of 40%-90%.

You would be shocked at the number of people it takes to design and build a single car model from the studio to the show room. Yes, a lot of it is automated now, but there are plenty of jobs at OEMs and suppliers that will always require the human interface. That won't go away. The buisness case isn't there to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to create robots and then continute to spend thousands to maintain them when you can hire someone for 40k for a year or two.

But as automation does move forward people need that education to move out of the sector they are in and find employment else where. See the coal indistry's current struggle and Pittsburgh's resurgence by embracing an alternative to Steele mills.

The part I've bolded is where we disagree. There are AI being developed right now to design things like custom electronics, cars, and planes. There are AI that can make legal arguments to get you out of a traffic ticket, compose music, and design adaptive HMI customized to each user. The capabilities are rapidly expanding and the costs are going down for automation and that's the crux of the problem.

You can disagree, that's fine, but there will always be material cost. The programs may be cheap but the the robots aren't made out of plastic. The robots don't fab themselves either. Paying someone minimum wage is cheap. I can shoot you a plastic part for one figure. The robots can run everything but the press parameters, but all the tooling will run you over 6 figures. And currently there isn't enough resolution for those bots to detect some errors and defects on the part that a human can (although that will change in 10 to 20 years I imagine).

[Moiraine]

 

 

 

 

Guys... this is why you need an education. People still need to design, program, and maintain these parts and systems. But we're ok letting education flounder because we shouldn't have to pay for our children's future if we don't want to.

Sure not everyone can be a doctor, lawyer, engineer, journalist, scientist, what have you but you're still much more valuable if you have a welding certification, programming background, basic buisness skills, Electrical/plumbing license, or any of a number of skills that can be taught at a post secondary level.

While what you're saying is true, it doesn't really address the problem of automation. You only need a relative small number of people to design, program, and maintain the robots. Whether that's 10%, 40%, or 60% of the available work force doesn't matter as the economy will collapse with unemployment numbers of 40%-90%.

You would be shocked at the number of people it takes to design and build a single car model from the studio to the show room. Yes, a lot of it is automated now, but there are plenty of jobs at OEMs and suppliers that will always require the human interface. That won't go away. The buisness case isn't there to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to create robots and then continute to spend thousands to maintain them when you can hire someone for 40k for a year or two.

But as automation does move forward people need that education to move out of the sector they are in and find employment else where. See the coal indistry's current struggle and Pittsburgh's resurgence by embracing an alternative to Steele mills.

The part I've bolded is where we disagree. There are AI being developed right now to design things like custom electronics, cars, and planes. There are AI that can make legal arguments to get you out of a traffic ticket, compose music, and design adaptive HMI customized to each user. The capabilities are rapidly expanding and the costs are going down for automation and that's the crux of the problem.

You can disagree, that's fine, but there will always be material cost. The programs may be cheap but the the robots aren't made out of plastic. The robots don't fab themselves either. Paying someone minimum wage is cheap. I can shoot you a plastic part for one figure. The robots can run everything but the press parameters, but all the tooling will run you over 6 figures. And currently there isn't enough resolution for those bots to detect some errors and defects on the part that a human can (although that will change in 10 to 20 years I imagine).

 

 

 

The answer to this is more important than the details:

 

Are there many instances where having a robot/automation increases the number of people required in order to do the job?

 

We can talk all we want about how robots need maintenance and need people to design them, etc. But the main purpose for automation/robots is to either decrease the number of people required to do a job, or do a job that humans aren't capable of, or to make things more uniform.

 

Yes, humans will always be involved. But the goal is always to do things cheaper. There's no point in building a robot to do a job unless it reduces cost, and reducing cost usually means reducing people.

[Landlord]

 

 

 

 

Guys... this is why you need an education. People still need to design, program, and maintain these parts and systems. But we're ok letting education flounder because we shouldn't have to pay for our children's future if we don't want to.

Sure not everyone can be a doctor, lawyer, engineer, journalist, scientist, what have you but you're still much more valuable if you have a welding certification, programming background, basic buisness skills, Electrical/plumbing license, or any of a number of skills that can be taught at a post secondary level.

While what you're saying is true, it doesn't really address the problem of automation. You only need a relative small number of people to design, program, and maintain the robots. Whether that's 10%, 40%, or 60% of the available work force doesn't matter as the economy will collapse with unemployment numbers of 40%-90%.

You would be shocked at the number of people it takes to design and build a single car model from the studio to the show room. Yes, a lot of it is automated now, but there are plenty of jobs at OEMs and suppliers that will always require the human interface. That won't go away. The buisness case isn't there to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to create robots and then continute to spend thousands to maintain them when you can hire someone for 40k for a year or two.

But as automation does move forward people need that education to move out of the sector they are in and find employment else where. See the coal indistry's current struggle and Pittsburgh's resurgence by embracing an alternative to Steele mills.

The part I've bolded is where we disagree. There are AI being developed right now to design things like custom electronics, cars, and planes. There are AI that can make legal arguments to get you out of a traffic ticket, compose music, and design adaptive HMI customized to each user. The capabilities are rapidly expanding and the costs are going down for automation and that's the crux of the problem.

You can disagree, that's fine, but there will always be material cost. The programs may be cheap but the the robots aren't made out of plastic. The robots don't fab themselves either. Paying someone minimum wage is cheap. I can shoot you a plastic part for one figure. The robots can run everything but the press parameters, but all the tooling will run you over 6 figures. And currently there isn't enough resolution for those bots to detect some errors and defects on the part that a human can (although that will change in 10 to 20 years I imagine).

 

 

 

 

That doesn't really matter to what we're actually talking about.

 

Of course human beings will be needed forever. The point of contention is how many of us will be? if 10% of the population is enough manpower to build and maintain the infrastructure of the country or the world due to automation, then what do the other 90% of us do?

[funhusker]

 

 

 

 

 

Guys... this is why you need an education. People still need to design, program, and maintain these parts and systems. But we're ok letting education flounder because we shouldn't have to pay for our children's future if we don't want to.

Sure not everyone can be a doctor, lawyer, engineer, journalist, scientist, what have you but you're still much more valuable if you have a welding certification, programming background, basic buisness skills, Electrical/plumbing license, or any of a number of skills that can be taught at a post secondary level.

While what you're saying is true, it doesn't really address the problem of automation. You only need a relative small number of people to design, program, and maintain the robots. Whether that's 10%, 40%, or 60% of the available work force doesn't matter as the economy will collapse with unemployment numbers of 40%-90%.

You would be shocked at the number of people it takes to design and build a single car model from the studio to the show room. Yes, a lot of it is automated now, but there are plenty of jobs at OEMs and suppliers that will always require the human interface. That won't go away. The buisness case isn't there to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to create robots and then continute to spend thousands to maintain them when you can hire someone for 40k for a year or two.

But as automation does move forward people need that education to move out of the sector they are in and find employment else where. See the coal indistry's current struggle and Pittsburgh's resurgence by embracing an alternative to Steele mills.

The part I've bolded is where we disagree. There are AI being developed right now to design things like custom electronics, cars, and planes. There are AI that can make legal arguments to get you out of a traffic ticket, compose music, and design adaptive HMI customized to each user. The capabilities are rapidly expanding and the costs are going down for automation and that's the crux of the problem.

You can disagree, that's fine, but there will always be material cost. The programs may be cheap but the the robots aren't made out of plastic. The robots don't fab themselves either. Paying someone minimum wage is cheap. I can shoot you a plastic part for one figure. The robots can run everything but the press parameters, but all the tooling will run you over 6 figures. And currently there isn't enough resolution for those bots to detect some errors and defects on the part that a human can (although that will change in 10 to 20 years I imagine).

 

 

 

The answer to this is more important than the details:

 

Are there many instances where having a robot/automation increases the number of people required in order to do the job?

 

We can talk all we want about how robots need maintenance and need people to design them, etc. But the main purpose for automation/robots is to either decrease the number of people required to do a job, or do a job that humans aren't capable of, or to make things more uniform.

 

Yes, humans will always be involved. But the goal is always to do things cheaper. There's no point in building a robot to do a job unless it reduces cost, and reducing cost usually means reducing people.

 

I would agree with this. But my worry is people will delegitimize trade schools because of this thought. From my point of view, it not only states the need to learn a trade, but it emphasizes the importance of taking that "trade school" education seriously and understand the need for growth afterwards.

 

My comment isn't necessarily directed at you, Moirane, but in general: "The world needs ditch diggers too......but some people tend to be faster with a shovel"

[ZRod]

I'm not arguing the purpose of automation. I'm simply pointing out that I don't think many people have an appreciation for the economics of it or the scope of bodies still required for manufacture things.

 

I'm also trying to point out (through my scatter brain previous posts) that we need education to make an intelligent, flexible, and capable work force. Educated people have more opportunities than those who who aren't.

[Making Chimichangas]

Zrod said: ...but the the robots aren't made out of plastic. The robots don't fab themselves...

 

Then explain Skynet!!!

 

HA! Checkmate!

 

[Moiraine]

I'm not arguing the purpose of automation. I'm simply pointing out that I don't think many people have an appreciation for the economics of it or the scope of bodies still required for manufacture things.

 

I'm also trying to point out (through my scatter brain previous posts) that we need education to make an intelligent, flexible, and capable work force. Educated people have more opportunities than those who who aren't.

 

I don't think I've seen any evidence that people don't appreciate that manpower is and still be required. But as I said in my previous post, the goal of machines is to reduce the need for manpower.