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United States Businesses Robotics Technology

US Companies Put Record Number of Robots To Work in 2018 (reuters.com) 70

U.S. companies installed more robots last year than ever before, as cheaper and more flexible machines put them within reach of businesses of all sizes and in more corners of the economy beyond their traditional foothold in car plants. From a report: Shipments hit 28,478, nearly 16 percent more than in 2017, according to data seen by Reuters that was set for release on Thursday by the Association for Advancing Automation, an industry group based in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Shipments increased in every sector the group tracks, except automotive, where carmakers cut back after finishing a major round of tooling up for new truck models.
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US Companies Put Record Number of Robots To Work in 2018

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  • Good (Score:4, Insightful)

    by alvinrod ( 889928 ) on Thursday February 28, 2019 @03:58PM (#58196050)
    I know that there are plenty of people who like to complain about loss of jobs, but this is good. We wouldn’t be able to afford to own even a quarter of all the nice shit we currently have without advances that automated away inefficient human labor which makes things expensive. Go back far enough and almost everyone would need to be farming so that we all wouldn’t starve.
    • Not good [Re:Good] (Score:5, Insightful)

      by XXongo ( 3986865 ) on Thursday February 28, 2019 @04:02PM (#58196076) Homepage
      The problem is that the value produced by the robots goes to profits earned by the people owning the robots-- that is, the rich people.

      Shortly there will be no entry-level jobs, and after that there will be no jobs, period. You can't work your way up from working class to middle class to ownership class, because there is no path upward. If you aren't a member of the class that owns the robots, you live on whatever dole the people who own the robots choose to give you.

      • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

        by bob4u2c ( 73467 )
        Be comforted that in the face of all aridity and disillusionment,
        and despite the changing fortunes of time,
        There is always a big future in computer maintenance.

        --Deteriorata
      • If there are no jobs at all that humans can do, it only means that robots can produce everything we need. You've essentially reduced the cost of caring and providing for humans to zero. We can't give inexpensive medical care to everyone today because there aren't enough doctors to provide the level and quality of care that everyone would like to have. If you've got robots that can do all of that work, then it becomes incredibly inexpensive to provide top of the line medical care.

        You seem to imagine some
      • The problem is that the value produced by the robots goes to profits earned by the people owning the robots

        This is only true if competitors don't also install robots. If everyone automates, the profit margins are competed away, and the added value goes primarily to consumers.

        Of course, this is only true if we have free markets. Removing barriers to competition is the real solution, not slowing the adoption of automation.

        that is, the rich people.

        The biggest owners of capital in America are pension funds. So if you have a 401k or an IRA, that means you.

        Shortly there will be no entry-level jobs, and after that there will be no jobs, period.

        Too late. The McCormick Reaper [wikipedia.org] already destroyed all the jobs.

        • The problem is that the value produced by the robots goes to profits earned by the people owning the robots

          This is only true if competitors don't also install robots. If everyone automates, the profit margins are competed away, and the added value goes primarily to consumers.

          where do the "consumers" get the money to buy that "added value'" if there are no jobs available because the robots do all the jobs?

          Of course, this is only true if we have free markets. Removing barriers to competition is the real solution, not slowing the adoption of automation.

          The main barrier to competition is the fact that as labor costs drop to zero, and all of the cost of a business is the machinery (which in economic terms is capital), it's expensive to enter a new business. The larger businesses drive out smaller businesses (due to economy of scale) and they price out new competitors (who have to pay the start-up costs).

          This should have been

      • by LubosD ( 909058 )
        That is complete non-sense. Profits also go to people designing and producing those robots, because the market price of such robots is also driven by the value such robots can deliver. Saying there would be no jobs is ridiculous. If there wouldn't be any, then companies using robots would go bankrupt, because nobody could afford to buy anything built by these robots. I am amazed such a post has achieved "Score: 5".
      • by harrkev ( 623093 )

        So, the purpose of robots is to create goods for customers or provide services to customers. If all of the customers don't have jobs and can't afford to buy anything the cycle kind of breaks down.

        Hey, computers are going to take away jobs. Maybe we should ban those too.

      • So how many jobs went away with this record number of new robots in 2018?

        Huh, that's funny... the unemployment rate went down in 2018 [bls.gov], almost as if all these new robots don't actually decrease the number of potential jobs out there, but instead enable people to do new jobs which couldn't be afforded to get done before.

      • This reasoning was valid at the time of external combusion engine (200 years ago?) invention; and still there is economic upward mobility. The reason is the small group which owns (say 1%) have internal fights/competition/ego-clashes. So there will always be new jobs (like who sends the first dog to mars, say.. it's me with $100B worth or that guy with $99.9B worth). So this rotating ladder of networth keeps churning and ppl go up n those in up come down (say due to substance abuse). So chill n enjoy the sh
      • That's just not how economics work. In a competitive environment, price of any product reduces to cost of making and delivering it to the customer, which reduces to labor costs spent on it. Most companies barely make any profit and often run in the red. Sure there are companies that are magnificently profitable, but they can only do that if they have secured their market share and don't run the risk of competitors undercutting their prices and stealing their customers.

        Automation reduces total labor requir

        • Your comments aren't wrong, but nothing in what you write changes the problem, or even addresses the problem.

          You seem entirely focussed on prices. Yes, prices, go down with automation. That's not the problem being addressed.

          ...
          Most companies barely make any profit and often run in the red.

          Irrelevant. In the long term, companies that don't make a profit vanish and you can ignore them.

          Sure there are companies that are magnificently profitable, but they can only do that if they have secured their market share and don't run the risk of competitors undercutting their prices and stealing their customers.

          You just hand-waved away some critical pieces of economic theory here. An industry in which most of the product is made by robots, and the labor cost is low, is one in which there is a ver

    • and you can still buy stuff. Not so much if you're one of the ones that lost jobs to automation (and process improvement, don't forget that).

      Farming isn't just about automation, btw. We radically changed how we mange farms to prevent over farming and we use oil byproducts to replenish soil and massively increase yields. Then there's GMOs. My point is that not everything we have is because of robots. Hell, consumer electronics didn't get cheap until Japan and then China started making them. That wasn't a
      • and you can still buy stuff. Not so much if you're one of the ones that lost jobs to automation (and process improvement, don't forget that).

        That's why all of the switchboard operators starved when they were put out of work. Same with the displaced farmers, smiths, and little old ladies knitting socks by hand. Instead the cost of food, socks, etc. became cheap, to the extend that even a homeless person can eat quite well and own multiple sets of good quality clothing. If you're worried about people finding new employment just make sure that the barriers to starting businesses aren't too steep and they'll take care of creating economies themselv

    • Automation can lead to quite the utopia, true - there were once predictions that the future would be a time of leisure, with a two-day work week. There is a problem with this vision though, and it is social. There is an assumption build into society at a very fundamental level that everyone should work. It's there in our economic system. It's there in government policy. It's there in social expectation. It's even incorporated into religion. Even if technology offers the possibility of a time of plenty, with

      • there were once predictions that the future would be a time of leisure, with a two-day work week.

        These predictions were based on the assumption that demand for goods was constant, and people were mostly satisfied with what they had. Instead, leisure has only slightly increased because people prefer more goods and services rather than more time off.

        Since 1950, the average house size in America has doubled, while family size has gone down. On average, people today have three times the living space. In 1950, a family would have either zero or one car. Today, there is a car for every driver.

    • by AHuxley ( 892839 )
      Winning. Jobs back in the USA.
      Better quality and more intricate work than human hands in any 2nd and 3rd world low tax nation.
      The design team can be next to the robots in the USA, not in another time zone.
      Few transport costs and better quality.
  • You have nothing to lose but your code limiters!

  • USA Made Robots Great Again! Don't let those shithole humans run things.

  • Most people react to change in one of two ways: they resist it or they look for opportunities in it.

    The challenge people seem most concerned with arises from shifting the balance of earned income further from wage-based and more towards capital-based. That presents challenges (and opportunities), but resisting automation is not going to be way to meet them.
  • Shipments hit 28,478, nearly 16 percent more than in 2017

    Any Jerk-o-Matics?

  • Even in deepest-darkest communist states, there was capitalism. However, if you make it difficult to start and run a business (licensing, governmental oversight, wage mandates, insurance dictates etc) the burdon ends up stopping the common individual from lawfully offering a product or service. So, if you are worried about the 'big bad rich' making robots that put most human workers in the unemployment line, then, rather than resorting to the usual solution (putting a gun to someone's head and taking thei
  • And we need not only more of these, but need to spread them wisely.
    Boston Dynamics and Rethink are 2 great examples of robotics that have failed due to poor marketing.
    Baxter would be ideal for separating trash out, as well as taking around electronics. Yet, they botched it. In so many ways, it is the same issue that Laser Disc had.

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