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Friday, September 14, 2018

Will Robots Take Most Jobs?

My reply to https://www.quora.com/Will-robots-take-most-jobs


I built my first robot in 1998. I competed in the Mark Tilden’s World Robotics Games in Calgary in 1999, placed 8th in the world at the solar roller (light powered car). I’ve researched, developed, and demonstrated many robots from teleoperation to autonomous with various NIST ALFUS levels of autonomy since then. I am a co-inventor on 8 patents.

Artificial Neural Networks, Bayesian inference, Dempster-Shafer, Mahalanobis, Kalman and extended Kalman filters, Generalized Evidential Processes, Fuzzy inference engines, Cellular Automata. I’ve used a few techniques.
I predicted and warned that Waymo, Uber and other autonomous fleets will not work as promised and will deliver almost unlimited liability from US strict liability statues which is a big risk to shareholders.





I would not encourage you to own those shares nor ride in any autonomous vehicle at this point. They are dangerous more than they should be. If Waymo was as profitable as Google believed then why did they divest?
To answer the question asked, the simple answer is: not the way the experts tell you.

Let me describe it in an analogy.

Suppose that all work in autonomy ( Artificial Intelligence for moving things) could be described as roads. There are two roads to autonomy: the long road and the short road.

The short road is robotic revolution, one disruptive technology that will change everything. The short road is the one on which hopeful scientists promise incredible results to get the money, then deliver barely working systems with some excuses and glossing over of the deficiencies. They sell the sizzle without the steak. Then they move on to the next set of promises, barely acknowledging failure. It is the risky one that has failed countless times since the 1960’s (Stanford’s SHAKEY). Yes, almost 60 years of broken promises.

Now, before some get their backs up at this, that is not to state they aren’t dedicated, educated people doing their best. They are, but most of them aren’t as learned ( erudite, profound systematic knowledge) as they believe. They haven’t read as much as they needed to before they opened their mouths, as in:


First, learn the meaning of what you say, then speak

- Epictetus

Most loud experts have built exactly NO systems - start to finish - upon which they base their considered opinion. CAVEAT EMPTOR

I have designed and built systems that went to Afghanistan. It is not as easy as it might appear.

The reason they are unable to deliver is not productivity, it is that mankind does not have the one vital knowledge, the discovery of the unifying model that explains intelligence. Or, the key component - like the Bernoulli effect for knowledge - that “works like human thought” - whatever that means.
All aviation rests on the lynchpin of lift, the Bernoulli effect underpins all flying things on Earth. AI hasn’t found it’s equivalent yet. There is NO general intelligence algorithm. Anyone that claims that will soon show themselves a fool.
Rodney Brooks wrote about this 10 years ago or so, find the article for yourself if you don’t believe me.
By comparison is the long road. The long road is robot evolution. The long road makes bounded systems with bounded problems just like factory floor automation did 50 years ago. The long road is the less risky, more humble approach but it builds on known solutions to subsets of the entire problem space.

How big is the problem space? Somewhere between zero and Immanuel Kant’s architectonic.

Contrast the two roads with the applications of AI: AI can be applied from static autonomy ( static machines) to robots ( mobile machines).
With static autonomy, one can design a system with almost unlimited memory, power, processing, sensor arrays, and so on. The problem space is reduced to the problem you want to solve.

With mobile autonomy, you need to concern yourself with superset problem space of seeing, thinking, and moving around in the world as well as the problem you want to solve. Except now you have limited power, limited sensing, limited processing. See the delivery problem of the short road?

Unless someone solves AI, this is how autonomy will take jobs: any static task that can be automated and reduce labor will be overtaken by a machine that can work cheaper than a human occupant. Like kiosks at McDonald’s replacing counter staff. This means white collar jobs like accountant and lawyer are MORE at risk of being automated than construction workers and crew hands.
Yes, factories will still move overseas to low-price labor markets. That’s because those jobs are cheaper than robots and Western labor, combined. Nothing stops raw economics.

Paradoxically to what the experts think, expensive jobs are more attractive to automate for startups because there is more money to save. Lawyers, doctors, engineers, psychologists, and yes, even professors should be very worried about their jobs more so that plumbers, welders, and fitters. Fitters need to move to the fitting. Professors can be projected on the screen in room 2332.
Bounded mobile autonomy will work it’s way into mobile jobs, slowly. There already are proven applications like autonomous dump trucks moving by GPS around a mining course, filling and dumping ore etc. because they are bounded problems, the mine owners control the entire route, and the environment is simple.

Slow and nearly static will win the race.

1 comment:

  1. More and more I see and hear of robots doing more and more jobs that humans once did. Most, if not all large companies use robots on the assembly line. In fact, Volkswagen built a plant where robots die everything in it. New Technology will always consist of robots replacing people when it comes to jobs. Companies site various reasons, robots don't miss work, they do the job correctly, if programmed correctly, and do it at a faster pace than a human can. They don't need pensions or vacations, but what companies should have recognized, if they haven't already, is that robots don't buy any products that are manufactured. what's the use of having robots do everything, if there's no one left to be able to afford to buy anything. It's this reason alone, why robots aren't doing more, just my opinion.

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