Book: Robot in the Next Cubicle

“The company, Changying Precision Technology, manufactures mobile phones and at one point employed 650 people to meet operational requirements. Recently, however, the company has replaced 90 percent of its workforce with robots. The change was quite shocking, as productivity rose by 250 percent and defects dropped by 80 percent. Today the company only employs 60 people, the majority of whom are used to monitor and maintain the robots and their control systems. As robotic technology advances, the company foresees reducing its human employee number down to twenty – a mere fraction of its previous workforce.”

The Robot in the Next Cubicle, Larry Boyer, 2018, p. 63.

And there is our endgame: brutal demolishment of the labor workforce. Imagine replicating that kind of robotization throughout the country and throughout the world. That’s a 97% reduction. I don’t know if it would go that high – I think society would break before then and turn into something else – but my 90% estimate of a couple of years ago might not be too far off. Again, I think society and capitalism would break before reaching 90%. And on top of that, add in the climate change that will be sweeping across the world and we are looking at some real serious issues.

The above quote is from a book The Robot in the Next Cubicle I briefly alluded to a couple of posts ago. At the time, I was finding it hard to finish the book because the description of the future was so distressing, with its page after page after page of dire warnings of the direction we were going with technology. There were numerous descriptions of how the robots were so much better, faster, and more accurate. Robots don’t require downtime, healthcare or money.

Exponential Rate

They say the capabilities of robots are improving at an exponential rate, basically a doubling of its power/capability every “x” years.

As an example of what that means, using an example from the author, think about the contrast between linear versus exponential. Sequential linear steps of 1 meter for 30 steps from step 1 means that by step 31, 30 meters have gone by. Exponential steps, where the distance doubles with each step, means that after 31 steps, 1 billion meters will have gone by – basically the equivalent of almost 27 times around the world. In only 31 steps.

To clarify and re-emphasize what most people don’t grasp: You don’t get to the distance of 1 time around the world until roughly the 26th step. Then after the 26th step, the distance explodes from 1 time around the world to 26 times around the world in 5 steps. This means that the impact of technology won’t be felt in the early stages; it’ll be invisible. But then after so much doubling, the impact will start to explode.

Simulations of Exponential Rate

(You want the tab “Stimulate exp loss of jobs” to follow the next set of paragraphs. You will have to use scroll bars to maneuver around.)

Or to put it on a more personal level, here’s a spreadsheet with some simulations on robots exponentially taking over jobs. I played around with a few starting points on what could be the percentage of working population and started from an initial unemployment rate of 3%. The first set of simulations played on robots taking over jobs from a percentage basis: first year is at 1%, second year is 2%, 3rd year is at 4%, 4th year at 8% and so on. The end game is always at 6th or 7th year no matter what your starting unemployment rate. Always.

Then I played around with numbers instead of percentages. I started from robots taking over 1% of jobs and translated that 1% into hard numbers for my example which was 35 million. So from there first year is 35 million jobs taken by robots, year 2 is 70 million jobs, year 3 is 140 million jobs. I played around with the initial unemployment rate and also the number of working population and the end game is roughly 5 to 8 years, with 5 and 8 being the extreme since I had to use extremely high percentage of adults or extremely high initial unemployment. Most of the time, it’s 6 to 7 years.

Next I played with initial robot takeover percentages ranging from .1% to 1% and the years start to vary more. So first year # of robot takeover can have a huge impact on whether it’s 7 years or 10 years. Where are we in the robot takeover? I have no idea.

Finally I played around with the “half-life” of the robot take over. Instead of doubling every year, I played with doubling every 18 months and doubling every 24 months (2 years). Obviously, the longer the half-life, the longer it takes to total takeover. But still, it’s only 10 to 14 years.

Understanding the half-life is key to understanding when the end game is.

To put all of this spreadsheet simulations more viscerally:

Okay, that was a bit more dramatic. And cheesy (I don’t really do videos so it is rather amateurish). The series of simulations in Excel are simplistic simulations. I’m not including the possible effect of new jobs creation, the growth of working population or the impact of cultural resistance. Governments could step in to stabilize society. AI may not succeed in doing creative or human work. There are a host of factors that could impact the direction of this exponential effect. And, it assumes that robot takeover is exponential.

But still. We live in a capitalistic society where everything goes to the shareholders – who are basically just the really wealthy.

Keep this key metric in mind if the takeover is exponential: once robots have taken over 1% of the jobs, then it is only 6 or 7 doublings before all jobs are taken. So if the half-life is a doubling every year, then it will take 6 or 7 years until all jobs are taken. If the half-life is 2 years, then it will take about 14 years.

Where are we in this process? I have no idea.

So what are we gonna do about it?

Roughly the first half of the book was an enumeration of all of the miracles this new technology will bring to the world. The second half of the book was devoted to explaining how we humans can live and thrive in this new world.

The advice given are mostly generalities that quite a lot of other writers have given. Nobody really knows how we are to survive this new world but we all seem to congregate on a few key things that we need to have under our belt.

“ ‘preneurs have the ability to look at issues from a variety of angles…have uncanny sense of how markets fluctuate and regroup, which allows them to pinpoint rising trends with acute accuracy – this sense of navigating through turbulent times only strengthens with practice and experience…at the same time, maintain a laser focus on the inner workings of their business…known for being visionaries who create and identify value”

Ibid. p. 231

So you need to know about the technology as a basic, much like reading, writing and arithmetic, but having a STEM degree will be insufficient.

Also, work on diversifying your skillsets. The broader your knowledge and skills you have in emerging fields, the better your chances of navigating change.

In conclusion

“AI uses the law of large numbers to solve problems and learn, sifting multiple permutations for a solution. All AI problems are, in effect, big data problems involving long strings of ones and zeroes; they are digital. The brain, by contrast, is more analogue in its configuration, processing and problem-solving. Solutions are often condensed down to a small number of learned behaviors or heuristics.”
“…Although artificial intelligence is making huge strides today, it is basically confined to tasks that are analytical in nature….These different approaches to problem-solving are important when defining where humans may have the edge. This appears to be in tasks with high-level reasoning – large logical leaps of imagination rather than repeated small experimental steps. It is in tasks where the focus is on cognition and creativity, rather than production and perception. And it is activities where EQ (emotional quotient) trumps IQ (intelligence quotient), and where social capital is scored as is or more highly than financial capital.”

Ibid., p.106

The hint of what to do lies in that quote: move away from the routine and formulaic towards creativity and social intelligence.