The politicians will have to find another cliche

Meet the robots in Amazon's UK warehouses -

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-37114318

And -

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-37106570

" Ford reveals driverless taxi plan."

Which could also be used for lorries and buses.

Also -

Takeaway app Just Eat to test delivery robots -

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-36723089

Moped delivery drivers costs firms around £5 a delivery.

Robot delivery around £1 a delivery.


If this goes on we really will soon need the universal guaranteed income/payment by the government?

Paid for by some sort of robot/technology tax, or society won't have money to spend to keep the whole consumer system going.

That is a given as employment patterns will be less safe than they have been, with more self-employed. But you are also going to see that the old idea of having a career and retiring after 40-50 years vanishes to be replaced by more transient careers/income generating sources - which again would require some form of UBI - to cover the periods when one is changing a career.

I think some form of UBI is vital if we want change to be welcomed rather than resisted. I'd prefer to see some form of political consensus on this rather than political parties making it into an issue to attack certain left-wing parties on. This is not something that's ultimately either left or right wing. I've seen arguments from across the political spectrum supporting it.

From a business perspective, getting in first would potentially give us the most flexible workforce of any first world nation. We're already well up that list compared to many of our EU neighbours, but getting up even higher may help counterbalance some of damage Brexit is going to cause.

Well don't forget I am right of centre when it comes to politics so you will not find me attacking the left for a UBI - but then having been self-employed I know what it is like to not know if you have work the next week (even I was well paid)..


We had one of the most flexible workforce's in Europe - at least until New Labour stamped down on it because there BigCo Consultancy paymasters did not like a little competition - the poor dears (no I have not given leave to my senses and have no sympathy for them whatsoever)

How to build a human -

http://www.eveningtimes.co.uk/entert...out_AI_robots/

http://www.express.co.uk/showbiz/tv-...ona-Synthetics

https://www.thesun.co.uk/video/tv/ch...build-a-human/

Ten years they will be doing easy things along side us, 20 years they will be able to do almost anything we can, 30 years?

"The factory of the future will have only two employees, a man and a dog. The man will be there to feed the dog. The dog will be there to keep the man from touching the equipment."
Warren Bennis

I can't remember exactly when I first heard this quote, and it may not even be his own words, but I have an idea it was when the drive to install 'robots,' automated machinery, in factories, especially car factories was gaining pace.
It must have been a while ago.
Not sure how far into the future he was talking about though.
It hasn't happened yet.

The factory of the future will have only two employees, a man and a dog. The man will be there to feed the dog. The dog will be there to keep the man from touching the equipment.
Warren Bennis

I can't remember exactly when I first heard this quote, and it may not even be his own words, but I have an idea it was when the drive to install 'robots,' automated machinery in factories especially car factories, was gaining pace.
It must have been a while ago.
Not sure how far into the future he was talking about though.
It hasn't happened yet.

Came across this -

https://www.theguardian.com/technolo...rrester-report


“ By 2021 a disruptive tidal wave will begin. Solutions powered by AI/cognitive technology will displace jobs, with the biggest impact felt in transportation, logistics, customer service and consumer services,” said Forrester’s Brian Hopkins in the report."

" By 2021, robots will have eliminated 6% of all jobs in the US, starting with customer service representatives and eventually truck and taxi drivers. That’s just one cheery takeaway from a report released by market research company Forrester this week."

" These robots, or intelligent agents, represent a set of AI-powered systems that can understand human behavior and make decisions on our behalf. Current technologies in this field include virtual assistants like Alexa, Cortana, Siri and Google Now as well as chatbots and automated robotic systems. For now, they are quite simple, but over the next five years they will become much better at making decisions on our behalf in more complex scenarios, which will enable mass adoption of breakthroughs like self-driving cars."


This is going to be bad and 2021 is not very long away, but our governments are doing nothing to prepare for the impact, in 5 years when all this starts to happen we could have major riots unless they put something like a guaranteed minimum income in place to help people.

Another worry is that it will happen about the same time as the impacts from Brexit as well.

I am for robots
Let them do the work, we can just sit back!

Be a sad day when the first advanced AI robot kills a human but claims it was in self-defence or a mistake. Can you imagine a robot on trial for murder? Be quite bizarre!

Make Robots MP's. Oh wait.....

I'm told someone's developing a device that can post several hundred random thoughts a minute on the internet, such as 'What if jellyfish could survive out of water and wanted to eat our jaffa cakes?' and 'What if emulsion paint smelled of macaroni cheese and macaroni cheese smelled of emulsion paint?'. Apparently it's called Project Nutnet. The ramifications if it ever sees the light of day don't bear thinking about.

Tax robots who will respond with "no representation, no taxation".

Those robots deliver shelving to pickers rather than pickers having to go to the shelves. It's genius. It means pickers no longer have to walk 15 miles a day around a vast warehouse to assemble customer orders. The pickers are happy because they no longer have to walk 15 miles a day. Amazon are happy because there's less controversy about pickers health. The customer is happy because it's a much more efficient and speedy service.

Everyone in the loop seems to win but, we know better don't we? Amazon let the robots do the walking and one picker now replaces 100 pickers so 99 people are unemployed. Add to that Amazon being more efficient puts less efficient competitors (those with employees) out of business so there's a few more job centre appointments.

The robots have names btw.

It's not so much Robots as AI that I'm most worried about.

A genuine AI could get rid of most of the Service Industries, who needs Sales Ledger people when there's an Accounts AI interfacing with other suppliers Accounting AI's

Our electronic bidding systems now have done away with a whole department whose job it was to find the best price for goods not out systems just poll all our suppliers in a matter of seconds and have locked in a price and made the purchase which we'll pay automatically

Alternatively, automisation could lead to a Gene Roddenberry type utopia?

Corporation taxes as the cost of production will be so much lower due to increased use of robotics. They will be able to afford increased taxes and achieve the same level of profits.

Of course we will have to switch to a more left wing Government before this can happen.

Doubtful without revolution. Rich people aren't going to just let equality happen.

Did anyone see that advert for Amazon Go Shopping a few weeks ago?
Scan your phone as you enter a shop , whatever you take from a shelf gets added to an online basket and then you walk out of the shop. No tills, no queing and no checkout assistants. Whatever you picked up gets charged to your Amazon account after you leave the shop.

Think of the impact that would have on retail jobs if tech like that became widespread over all the chain stores.

In the next 20 years we could be looking at half the population being out of work from robotics and tech like that.

The government have two options. Universal income, reduced hours for staff, more time spent on creativity, voluntary activities and time with the community and friends, higher taxes for businesses whose costs of production are far lower. Everyone wins and we all get to live in a sort of utopia compared to how things are now.

The other option is a situation where half the population are unemployed and relying on benefits. The Government has no money due to lower taxes so benefits are kept low and so huge swathes of the population are homeless or can't afford to buy food.

This is why universal income has be forced through by the Goverment and capitalism has to fall by the wayside in our long term.

The robots will make and transport everything. The people will either fight each other or just watch. It's happening already.

We will find something more productive to do.

The likely scenario, and this is what we're already seeing in the UK, is lower productivity. The number of people doing low productivity work in the UK has increased since 2008. These are things, like cleaning cars for example, and a lot of other tedious very low skill jobs which tend to be automated (or outsourced) in many other developed economies.

Things will only be automated if it's cheaper to do this than it is to employ people to do it, but those workers won't have any leverage to apply to improve wages or working conditions.

The best thing that governments can do to prevent this is to keep increasing the minimum income rates until these jobs are automated and, as you say, replace this awful mundane work with an income that allows these people to do something more interesting with their lives. Let the machines do the dull stuff.

Capitalism can stay, corporatism must fall to rescue a utopian eventuality from the clutches of the dystopian one. I mean capitalism relies on competition but corporations destroy competition thus braking tenets of capitalism - Profit motive on steroids, they grow so strong, so powerful, not even states dare dictate terms to them.