Our robotic revolution is only just beginning to gather steam

Robots offer the potential for unlimited economic growth - as well as a helping hand about the house

One of the most fashionable ideas in economics right now is the “end of growth”. This is perhaps only to be expected given the challenges we face, with the barriers to recovery in many advanced economies apparently insurmountable.

One is reminded of John of Gaunt’s soliloquy in Richard II where he laments England’s decline from “scepter’d isle… set in the silver sea” to “like to a tenement or pelting farm… bound in with shame, with inky blots and rotten parchment bonds”. Declinism is very much on the up at the moment, but it is also a cyclical phenomenon; there have been many occasions throughout history when there seemed no hope for the future.

All the same, there are some quite good reasons for believing it might be true this time, and they are argued in highly persuasive terms by one Robert Gordon, a US academic whose thoughts have gone viral on the internet in recent months. Professor Gordon’s big observation is that far from being the norm, longish periods of sustained, per capita income growth are in fact comparatively rare, and are, in virtually all cases, caused by profound technological change.

The modern age has been characterised by three such revolutions. First came steam, cotton spinning, the railways and the other breakthroughs of Britain’s early industrial and agrarian revolutions. After that came mass sanitation, electrification, the motor car, aeronautics, and the jet engine, all driven primarily by tapping into energy-rich hydrocarbons. And more recently we’ve had the breakthroughs of modern computing and communications.

The second of these revolutions was by far the most significant, transforming and improving the lives of ordinary people in ways their forebears could barely have imagined. The third, according to Professor Gordon, has not been nearly so transformational in terms of its impact on labour productivity, and is now fast running up against the law of diminishing returns.

Social media may have its merits, but as far as advanced economies are concerned, it has failed to add significantly to output and wealth. In any case, for Professor Gordon, the easy gains of the IT revolution – back-office automation, supermarket checkouts, and so on – have largely been and gone.

To my mind, this is where his theories break down. Most of those who actually work in computing think the IT revolution has barely begun. The potential productivity gains from smart machines driven by artificial intelligence – or to use the more emotive term, robots – are at least as great as any of the other revolutions.

Indeed, it is probably a mistake to think of these transformational technologies as separate events. A better way to view the march of technology is as a seamless progression of mechanical developments, starting with machinery for labour-saving functions such as lifting water and grinding grain, through to today’s legion of electro-mechanical devices, from the vacuum cleaner to the articulated welding robots that populate the automotive production lines.

The robots are already with us, but they are still in a quite underdeveloped phase. My interest in them was sparked on a visit to Japan a couple of years ago, where I observed a miniature, humanoid-type robot navigate a zigzag, elevated pathway on a small bicycle, using artificially generated sight, co-ordination and balance functions.

It was an impressive feat that would have foxed many biological humans. This robot couldn’t think for itself but it was capable of some highly complex, reactive movements strictly reserved, until now, for those of Darwinian origin.

Japan sees robotics as very much the future, and is investing in its development accordingly. This is not just for economic advancement. Japan also thinks of robots as a viable alternative to mass immigration.

No, seriously. For the notoriously insular Japanese, the idea of a friendly robot in the house to see to your every need is widely thought far preferable to a culturally alien immigrant. As we grow older, and can do fewer things for ourselves, we need servants. An artificial one, bought in much the same way as a car, provides a possibly better, less costly and less intrusive solution than a human one.

These musings are still the stuff of science fiction. We are a million miles away from the sort of fully functioning human robots you see in Ridley Scott and James Cameron movies, but the direction of travel is clear. And we are moving towards this future at a much faster pace than many imagine. Artificial intelligence, from voice recognition to primitive forms of sight and cognitive ability, is coming on in leaps and bounds. These developments have potentially massive macro-economic significance – positive and negative. On the positive side, the march of the robots should progressively free humans from everyday chores. It also creates the potential for virtually unlimited economic growth. The more robots you have, the higher your potential output.

But like all work-saving machinery, robots could also help create mass unemployment, rather in the way that the addition to the global labour force of billions of low-paid workers from previously closed Asian economies has undermined many basic jobs in the West.

Some see this threat in apocalyptic terms. Marshall Brain, a US analyst whose pamphlet Robotic Nation has done much to popularise the idea of an automated future, reckons that the rapid evolution of computer technology over the next decade or two could end up costing around a half of all current US jobs, or something in the region of 50 million full-time positions.

Exaggerated this claim might be, but you get the point. As robots spread ever deeper into the workforce, it is not clear what the humans they displace will end up doing. If it is a life of eternal leisure we are all heading for, some very dramatic changes in political and social models would be needed to accommodate it.

Some of the more negative social consequences of growing automation are apparent in a widening income and wealth divide. Companies are becoming less labour – and more capital – intensive, driving corporate profits as a share of GDP to record levels in many advanced economies. Labour’s share of GDP is shrinking. Yet these are phenomena closely associated with the initial stages of all industrial revolutions. Each one has been accompanied by similar concern about jobs, but ultimately society tends to find ways of sharing the spoils more equitably, and all of them have ended up creating far more employment in new industries than they have destroyed in old ones.

You have to be of a peculiarly pessimistic frame of mind to think the march of technology is going to end up doing us more harm than good. That’s not been the experience to date. In nearly all cases, technology has further eased the human condition. It may not be the most uplifting example to cite, but in the case of warfare, technological advancement has played a positive role, greatly reducing the mass slaughter of past conflicts or acting as a powerful deterrent to hostilities.

A favourite theme in science fiction is that the machines end up cleverer than their creators, and man becomes subservient to, or in conflict with, the robots. Fortunately, that’s one possibility we won’t have to worry about any time soon. But as far as the outer limits of human advancement are concerned – well, I suspect we ain’t seen nothing yet.

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"Ethics" is simply a last-gasp attempt by deist conservatives and
orthodox dogmatics to keep humanity in ignorance and obscurantism,
through the well tried fermentation of fear, the fear of science and
new technologies.

There is nothing glorious about what our ancestors call history,
it is simply a succession of mistakes, intolerances and violations.

On the contrary, let us embrace Science and the new technologies
unfettered, for it is these which will liberate mankind from the
myth of god, and free us from our age old fears, from disease,
death and the sweat of labour.

Rael
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MAELOHIMY

The Elohim Sound

วันอาทิตย์ที่ 6 มกราคม พ.ศ. 2556

[rael-science] Our robotic revolution is only just beginning to gather steam

Our robotic revolution is only just beginning to gather steam

Robots offer the potential for unlimited economic growth - as well as a helping hand about the house

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