boutons_deux
08-19-2012, 04:37 PM
Skilled Work, Without the Worker
http://mobile.nytimes.com/h/Ucndih5oE6gOFUJ7vdXy02Y8agrylPtMTKAtA6tgZPIj6z8drL T0U2XihV4isB4TLw9DDuUoae6z-CXtlRiHEuf5_YCXEx-rtKWF0DWroswXa_NHS6jKXzdMLeq7FDRVK_Vrmg**.cr
The falling costs and growing sophistication of robots have touched off a renewed debate among economists and technologists over how quickly jobs will be lost. This year, Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee, economists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, made the case for a rapid transformation. "The pace and scale of this encroachment into human skills is relatively recent and has profound economic implications," they wrote in their book, "Race Against the Machine."
In their minds, the advent of low-cost automation foretells changes on the scale of the revolution in agricultural technology over the last century, when farming employment in the United States fell from 40 percent of the work force to about 2 percent today. The analogy is not only to the industrialization of agriculture but also to the electrification of manufacturing in the past century, Mr. McAfee argues.
"At what point does the chain saw replace Paul Bunyan?" asked Mike Dennison, an executive at Flextronics, a manufacturer of consumer electronics products that is based in Silicon Valley and is increasingly automating assembly work. "There's always a price point, and we're very close to that point."
Beyond the technical challenges lies resistance from unionized workers and communities worried about jobs. The ascension of robots may mean fewer jobs are created in this country, even though rising labor and transportation costs in Asia and fears of intellectual property theft are now bringing some work back to the West.
Such advances in manufacturing are also beginning to transform other sectors that employ millions of workers around the world. One is distribution, where robots that zoom at the speed of the world's fastest sprinters can store, retrieve and pack goods for shipment far more efficiently than people. Robots could soon replace workers at companies like C & S Wholesale Grocers, the nation's largest grocery distributor, which has already deployed robot technology.
But American and European dominance in the next generation of manufacturing is far from certain.
"What I see is that the Chinese are going to apply robots too," said Frans van Houten, Philips's chief executive. "The window of opportunity to bring manufacturing back is before that happens."
Some jobs are still beyond the reach of automation: construction jobs that require workers to move in unpredictable settings and perform different tasks that are not repetitive; assembly work that requires tactile feedback like placing fiberglass panels inside airplanes, boats or cars; and assembly jobs where only a limited quantity of products are made or where there are many versions of each product, requiring expensive reprogramming of robots.
But that list is growing shorter.
"We're on the cusp of completely changing manufacturing and distribution," said Gary Bradski, a machine-vision scientist who is a founder of Industrial Perception. "I think it's not as singular an event, but it will ultimately have as big an impact as the Internet."
http://mobile.nytimes.com/article?a=962022&f=19
http://mobile.nytimes.com/h/Ucndih5oE6gOFUJ7vdXy02Y8agrylPtMTKAtA6tgZPIj6z8drL T0U2XihV4isB4TLw9DDuUoae6z-CXtlRiHEuf5_YCXEx-rtKWF0DWroswXa_NHS6jKXzdMLeq7FDRVK_Vrmg**.cr
The falling costs and growing sophistication of robots have touched off a renewed debate among economists and technologists over how quickly jobs will be lost. This year, Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee, economists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, made the case for a rapid transformation. "The pace and scale of this encroachment into human skills is relatively recent and has profound economic implications," they wrote in their book, "Race Against the Machine."
In their minds, the advent of low-cost automation foretells changes on the scale of the revolution in agricultural technology over the last century, when farming employment in the United States fell from 40 percent of the work force to about 2 percent today. The analogy is not only to the industrialization of agriculture but also to the electrification of manufacturing in the past century, Mr. McAfee argues.
"At what point does the chain saw replace Paul Bunyan?" asked Mike Dennison, an executive at Flextronics, a manufacturer of consumer electronics products that is based in Silicon Valley and is increasingly automating assembly work. "There's always a price point, and we're very close to that point."
Beyond the technical challenges lies resistance from unionized workers and communities worried about jobs. The ascension of robots may mean fewer jobs are created in this country, even though rising labor and transportation costs in Asia and fears of intellectual property theft are now bringing some work back to the West.
Such advances in manufacturing are also beginning to transform other sectors that employ millions of workers around the world. One is distribution, where robots that zoom at the speed of the world's fastest sprinters can store, retrieve and pack goods for shipment far more efficiently than people. Robots could soon replace workers at companies like C & S Wholesale Grocers, the nation's largest grocery distributor, which has already deployed robot technology.
But American and European dominance in the next generation of manufacturing is far from certain.
"What I see is that the Chinese are going to apply robots too," said Frans van Houten, Philips's chief executive. "The window of opportunity to bring manufacturing back is before that happens."
Some jobs are still beyond the reach of automation: construction jobs that require workers to move in unpredictable settings and perform different tasks that are not repetitive; assembly work that requires tactile feedback like placing fiberglass panels inside airplanes, boats or cars; and assembly jobs where only a limited quantity of products are made or where there are many versions of each product, requiring expensive reprogramming of robots.
But that list is growing shorter.
"We're on the cusp of completely changing manufacturing and distribution," said Gary Bradski, a machine-vision scientist who is a founder of Industrial Perception. "I think it's not as singular an event, but it will ultimately have as big an impact as the Internet."
http://mobile.nytimes.com/article?a=962022&f=19