A spokesperson from Toyota recently said ?birthrates and a rapidly aging population are underscoring concerns regarding the need to secure a stable labor force for the future in order for people to be able to enjoy comfortable standards of living.? Toyota’s vision for that labor force isn’t offshore outsourcing. It is robots.
The statement goes on to say that Toyota will make partner robots that ?have human characteristics, such as being agile, warm and kind and also intelligent enough to skillfully operate a variety of devices in the area of personal assistance, care for the elderly, manufacturing and mobility.? The statement continues, ?since each area requires a special set of skills, Toyota is promoting the development of three different types of partner robots – walking, rolling and mountable – each with its own areas of expertise.?
They’ve employed hundreds of experts and plan on having these bipedal robots milling around our homes by 2010, only five years from today.
We’re constantly criticizing China and other low wage countries because of an un-level playing field. What happens when our 24/7 robots start taking construction jobs? Two questions remain: Will our standard of living increase as much as the decrease due to the lack of jobs? And what will wealth distribution look like after these jobs are gone?
I think our standard of living will increase dramatically. Productivity is going to surge because robots don’t need vacations or healthcare or lunch or even sleep. There will be no robot unions or cost of living wage increases. Walmart prices are cheap because many of the goods are created in China where labor costs are much lower. Now imagine there is no shipping cost (everything we consume will be made in America) and labor costs drop to near zero. The point about shipping isn’t small because if terrorists target our ports, which reportedly is their plan, the cost of foreign goods is going to increase due to increased screening and security at ports. Bin Laden’s plan may backfire, the simple threat of an attack on our ports creates incentive to make products locally which would correct our trade imbalance.
Wealth distribution is another story. The first jobs to go will be in construction and even mechanics will face obsolecense. Grocery store workers are already being replaced with self-checkout lanes in the local supermarket here. Taxes will have to get more progressive as the ranks of the unemployed swell. The rich will get richer, the poor will get richer. Maybe the 40 hour work week will be seen as a relic of our pre-automated past. Globally it’s going to get weird. China is going to suddenly have 300 million people who’ve recently clawed their way out of poverty, used to a higher standard of living, that will be just as angry at low wage American robots as some Americans are at low wage Chinese laborers. They will call for trade embargoes because of an unlevel playing field.
Eventually robots will get cheap enough that even the impoverished will have time to get educated and contribute to their culture. Though I guess “Their” combined with the internet could be considered “our”.
3:49AM… Just got back from the local watering hole/dance place. Maybe it’s just me but there’s something theraflutic about dancing. Maybe I’m just happy because I remembered my blog password and met a girl named Karen and… managed to grab a copy of the new Gorillaz album. It’s good. Went to E3 and bought a Dell 2405FPW which I’ll be reviewing shortly. It’s big, it’s beautiful, it’s wide. I took the above photo at E3, it’s a racing game that was running on a Mac G5 with a GF6800(if you believe the rumors). Frankly I wasn’t that impressed. The graphics were high def, I’m guessing 720p at about 25FPS and the physics weren’t great but it’s early. There’s something to be said for 1080p at 60FPS. How is it that anything interlaced made it into the high definition spec? I guess they didn’t foresee the death of interlacing even though it died in the late 90s in 14 inch monitors. PS3 has 1080p support. Xbox 360 doesn’t. That’s not going to be a small detail in a couple of years. I’ll get some video of the 24” beast online in a day or two. Stay tuned…
Regarding music, it’s on my long list of things to study. What makes a song good? Why is it that we want songs roughly 3 minutes in length? Why is it that song structure is so structured? It has to say something about our attention span and our predictability. Google has new data mining software that can infer new translations based on existing human created translations. There also exists software that can generate catchy tunes based on mathematical breakdowns of past #1 hits. We don’t know why it works but that’s not as important as the fact that it does work. It reeks of emergence. Emergence is my religion by the way. I substitute complexity for faith and it works. If I’m not capable of comprehending complexity then it acts as a separation between reality, which scares me, and some unknown but real ideal. Goethe had something to say about this but he used the torch analogy.
Truth is a torch, but a terrific one; therefore we all try to grasp it with closed eyes, fearing to be blinded. — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Maxims
Interestingly, one of Goethe’s major influences was the bible. I read “Maxims and Reflections” every morning. Trying to develop my own moral code but it’s a derivitave of something entirely mainstream. What does that mean? Time for bed, pardon my insobriety.
Yesterday I wrote about our innate penchant for dishonesty. “I think as a species we became smart enough that self delusion evolved as a survial technique because truth is subject to the law of diminishing returns when applied to philosophy.”
Today I found an interesting article on Scientific American Mind
Byrne and Whiten catalogued many such observations, and these became the basis for their celebrated Machiavellian intelligence hypothesis, which states that the extraordinary explosion of intelligence in primate evolution was prompted by the need to master ever more sophisticated forms of social trickery and manipulation. Primates had to get smart to keep up with the snowballing development of social gamesmanship.
So maybe the main reason our brains are large is because sneakyness is an evolutionary advantage. But the interesting thing for me is the logic of self deception
“The strange phenomenon of self-deception has perplexed philosophers and psychologists for more than 2,000 years. On the face of it, the idea that a person can con oneself seems as nonsensical as cheating at solitaire or embezzling money from one’s own bank account. But the paradoxical character of self-deception flows from the idea, formalized by French polymath Ren? Descartes in the 17th century, that human minds are transparent to their owners and that introspection yields an accurate understanding of our own mental life. As natural as this perspective is to most of us, it turns out to be deeply misguided… Strange as it may seem, consciousness may not do any-thing except display the results of unconscious cognition. “
And here’s the kicker… “Natural selection appears to have cracked the Pinocchio problem by endowing us with the ability to lie to ourselves. Fooling ourselves allows us to selfishly manipulate others around us while remaining conveniently innocent of our own shady agendas… It enables us to lie sincerely, to lie without knowing that we are lying. “
I think that’s why I can’t accept religion. I want to figure out what makes me tick and rejecting evolution isn’t compatible with the view that we might just be verbally gifted apes. Science didn’t have a lot to say about philosophy in the past. Now we’re starting to figure out the brain and soon we’ll have neurologists writing self help books instead of mystics.
I run a website I designed for San Diegans that allows a form of citizen journalism. Users can submit news which I can decide to approve or not based on the content and my judgement. Today a homeless woman submitted some news…
“Good morning Coronado, This story is true & correct. After loosing my great employment due to lies & gossip, I found myself running out of money & sooner than later had lost my wonderful home. After looking for afordable housing I found myself homeless in Coronado. The first week A friend helped me out untill she went on vacation up north. The next evening I found myself looking @ homeless shelters and other options and found that they were all full. Great I said to myself now what do I do? By the grace of God he sent me a very nice man to show me the ropes. Like where to eat, sleep, shower and find employment. So far I have succeded in all aspects except work and sleeping in the street. This man has a home in another country which we did sleep at one evening. What a nice break, with the exception of there was no food but plenty of water. Have you ever had to use the restroom with only water in your system. It makes your insides cramp up worse than starvation. What a country, the riches in the world and so many unfortionates. About 50% are abusers of one thing or another but there are familys and even small babys here in the food line. Once you obtain a card you may take a shower and stay in the day center where they have T.V. showers and a place to stay for 1/2 day so you are not @ risk in the street, being female is very risky. My first evening I was raped, sleeping alone and woke up with some black guy inside of me hurting me. I never saw that person again because I want to report him to the police. I called the rape hotline and that was how they advised me. So @ this point I am here in the day center telling my story waiting for my freind that I trust to come back hopefully with employment so we may rent a hotel with 2 beds and not sleep on that cold cement. Thank god for places to go to but I -KNOW- that when I am able which I forsee next year about this time I wll find funding throught San Diego to open a center in good faith to help women and others like me. Please do not forget those down on their luck and please be human and help your fellow man when you see one. Thank you for paying attention to others in need. VERY TRULY YOURS CHRISTY,HOMELESS”
On the rare occasion that politicians admit the shady dealings necessary to stay in power they talk about political capital. In order to get things done, concessions need to be made. They sacrifice their ideals because it allows some progress. Some say the Libertarian party suffers from an obsession with an adherance to ideals which appears to be true considering their inability to challenge the Republican party.
The McCain Feingold capaign finance reform bill is being attacked by first amendment literalists who aren’t willing, maybe rightly, to concede that concessions have the potential to make the big picture better. Maybe our founding fathers didn’t have all the answers. The first amendment isn’t applicable in a crowded theater if you feel like yelling fire, the first amendment may do more damage than good if it means corruption is inevitable.
The idea that we shouldn’t waver on rights is due to a fear that it’s easier to give up rights than it is to get them back. A fear that’s the result of the corruption that a weaker first amendment could cure. On the other hand, name recognition is more of a problem when media is centralized and therefore expensive. It would be helpful if this new media, bloggers, vloggers, podcasters, etc., would adopt ethical standards that would allow for free political ads based on a lottery system and reject money from any political campaign.
I bought some books on tape. The goal: learn Mandarin Chinese. Why? You ask.
# 1. Mandarin Chinese: 885 million speakers
# 2. English: 402
# 3. Spanish: 332
# 4. Bengali: 189
# 5. Hindi: 182
# 6. Portuguese: 181
# 7. Russian: 145
# 8. Japanese: 127
That’s right, we English speakers make up less than 7% of the world’s population. I already know a little spanglish and for reasons unbeknownst I’m suddenly fascinated with linguistics.
Rough week, trying to quit drinking coffee, having trouble forming sentences. I did manage a chuckle though from this cartoon…
More here.
