Puzzle Financial Advice

February 26, 2017

27/Feb/17 AFR Taxing robots to pay for job losses.

This article in the Australian Financial Review touches on a few key elements of the new technological revolution.

• Massive an drapid job losses from Artificial Intelligence and robots.

• This would cause a massive tax system breakdown - requiring major restructuring of the tax system

• And may require some form of universal basic income because of lack of jobs.

• full article is here http://www.afr.com/news/world/should-robots-pay-us-for-taking-our-jobs-20170226-gulg8m

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Here are some key points

• If that earlier bout of technology-fuelled disruption brought such deep social and fiscal dislocation, then it may pale in comparison to the effects of the latest advances in robotics and artificial intelligence. "The number of jobs lost in 1890-1914 was nothing like today," Mr Mokyr says.

• But a sweeping impost on the fruits of robotics and AI - the driving forces behind expected disruptions such as driverless cars and smart computers capable of replacing many human analysts - would represent a fiscal intervention on an entirely different scale.

• Mr Gates is among the pessimists. "You cross the threshold of job-replacement of certain activities all sort of at once," he said. The result could be the eradication of whole classes of work at the same time - including "warehouse work, driving, room clean-up". Others agree that the impact of job losses will force some form of redistribution through the tax system. "If you compare this to the agricultural revolution and the industrial revolution, it's pretty clear we are moving at four to five times the speed - and those revolutions came with pretty big social dislocation," says Mr Moore. "If you increase productivity but make the distribution of wealth crazily worse, that would not make the world better." The idea of paying a flat stipend to all citizens, called a universal basic income, is one response that has been gaining ground with some economists. Stopping short of that, Mr Gates proposed using robot tax receipts to train workers for the jobs the robots cannot do - particularly in the caring professions, which may offer the best hope for avoiding mass human unemployment.

February 11, 2017

Here is the story's opening:

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Shinzo Abe probably made another attempt to persuade the US to buy bullet trains when he met Donald Trump. But he may have more luck with another Japanese export: robots.

Since Mr Trump's victory last November, shares in Japanese robot-maker Fanuc have risen 20 per cent. Yaskawa Electric recently hit a year high. Factory automation specialists such as Siemens and Emerson have upgraded profit forecasts for 2017.

Plain old dollar appreciation explains some of that movement. But so too does the idea that Mr Trump's "hire American" policy will be a bonanza for robot-makers and automation specialists. Rather than take on US workers on relatively high wages, manufacturers will simply replace cheap labour in emerging markets with robots in the rust belt.

Robots were on a roll even before last year; sales of industrial robots hit a record in 2015. As their dexterity improves, their use is spreading from traditional strongholds such as automotive into consumer industries; Adidas is now using them to make trainers.

But it is premature to conflate Mr Trump's campaign pledges about reshoring manufacturing with a step change in spending on automation. Companies were already reshoring. Low US energy prices, rising wage costs in China and a desire to simplify supply chains have all been factors. Changing tax laws may influence future decisions about where to locate production capacity.

February 08, 2017

The opening of this article is as follows:

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Mini drones sporting horsehair coated in a sticky gel could one day take the pressure off beleaguered bee populations by transporting pollen from plant to plant, researchers said.

Roughly three-quarters of the world’s flowering plants and about 35 percent of the world's food crops depend on animals to pollinate them, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Some of nature's most prolific pollinators are bees, but bee populations are declining around the world, and last month, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service listed a native species as endangered for the first time.

January 31, 2017

AFR article 31/January/2017.

• Woodside Petroleum is to work with NASA to develop teams of robot workers that might do the unpleasant, the untimely, the dangerous and the downright boring work on its offshore oil and gas platforms and in its onshore gas processors. The plan, which is slated for public confirmation later this week and represents a first in the embrace of artificial intelligence for the oil and gas industry, will see NASA work on where and how its Robotnaut 2 technologies might best eventually replace people.

• The disruptive potential of automation to the traditional demographics of the workplace stands as one of the emerging challenges of our working times.

• NASA's robot, which began its life in space as a torso but was given legs in 2014, was developed in alliance with General Motors and the New York listed, Houston-based deepwater oil and gas engineering firm Oceaneering.

• There are an awful lot of jobs on offshore rigs and in liquid natural gas plants that have to be done at unsocial times, in unpleasant climes and in dangerous places. Apparently boss Peter Coleman sees a future where a team of R2 might be clambering around the scaffolding of his offshore rigs or reading the meters of Pluto's flare at 3 o'clock on a stormy Pilbara morning.

• http://www.afr.com/opinion/columnists/woodside-and-nasa-form-an-alliance-to-find-a-place-for-robots-in-big-oil-and-gas-20170130-gu1jod

• http://puzzlefinancialadvice.com.au/AFR/170131_AFR_Woodside_and_NASA_form_an_alliance_to_find_a_place_for_robots_in_big_oil_and_gas.pdf
   

January 31, 2017

Tesla's new Gigafactory that produces volume lithium batteries is highly robotised.

January 31, 2017

Car manufacturing of the future is probably best represented by Tesla's car manufacturing plant. Here is a youtube video of Tesla building the Model S.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_lfxPI5ObM

January 31, 2017

Foxconn is the Taiwanese company that manufactures Apple's iPhones in plants in mainland China. Foxconn once emplyed 1 million workers in its manufacturing plants. It is replacing most of its workers with robots.

• 30/December/2016 "iPhone manufacturer Foxconn plans to replace almost every human worker with robots"

  • http://www.theverge.com/2016/12/30/14128870/foxconn-robots-automation-apple-iphone-china-manufacturing

  • 'Foxconn, the Taiwanese manufacturing giant behind Apple’s iPhone and numerous other major electronics devices, aims to automate away a vast majority of its human employees, according to a report from DigiTimes. Dai Jia-peng, the general manager of Foxconn’s automation committee, says the company has a three-phase plan in place to automate its Chinese factories using software and in-house robotics units, known as Foxbots.

  • The first phase of Foxconn’s automation plans involve replacing the work that is either dangerous or involves repetitious labor humans are unwilling to do. The second phase involves improving efficiency by streamlining production lines to reduce the number of excess robots in use. The third and final phase involves automating entire factories, “with only a minimal number of workers assigned for production, logistics, testing, and inspection processes,” according to Jia-peng.'

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Chinese workers being replaced by robots. Some youtube clips:

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFeMyuGt0mw   "Foxconn replacing workers with robots"

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSlPPvCXOZs  Foxconn Plans to Replace Workers With Machines: Roubini

January 12, 2017

Robots are taking jobs in the developed world AND the developing world. They mary even steal the path to development for emerging countries. Here are a few quotes from this Bloomberg article:- 

• However, building a large manufacturing sector has traditionally been the path emerging economies have taken to raise living standards. Now, robots and other types of automation are a threat to that development model. In November, the United Nations warned two-thirds of jobs in developing countries are at risk.

• German robot maker Kuka AG, acquired last year by China’s Midea Group Co., estimates a typical industrial robot costs about 5 euros ($5.28) an hour. Manufacturers spend 50 euros an hour to employ someone in Germany and about 10 euros an hour in China. 

• China is installing more industrial robots than any other country in the world

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August 30, 2016

Here is the opening of the story:

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If you're prone to fretting about robots eating your job, or the jobs of your kids, get over it.

We will eventually become indistinguishable from robots, says Hiroshi Ishiguro, a professor of robotics at Osaka University. Ishiguro is a pioneer builder of human-like androids and had a cameo role in the 2009 Bruce Willis film Surrogates, in which people lived their lives through remote‑controlled surrogates from the safety of their own homes.

In about 100 years, Ishiguro says, only 10 to 20 per cent of us will actually work. The rest will spend time learning how to interact with ever more complex robots in order to be able to work – or will be cared for by robots when we can no longer learn to work.

Some fear that technological disruption will speed to its logical conclusion and put vast swaths of humans out of a job. In the past, forebodings of this kind have never been realised. It is easier to imagine the jobs that will be usurped by emerging technologies than the jobs that will be created their stead.

June 06, 2016

Here is the story opening:

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Factories in China are replacing humans with robots in a new automation-driven industrial revolution. How will this effect be felt around the globe?

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The Ying Ao sink foundry in southern China’s Guangdong province does not look like a factory of the future. The sign over the entrance is faded; inside, the floor is greasy with patches of mud, and a thick metal dust — the by-product of the stainless-steel polishing process — clogs the air. As workers haul trolleys across the factory floor, the cavernous, shed-like building reverberates with a loud clanging. Sample the FT’s top stories for a week You select the topic, we deliver the news. Select topic Enter email address Invalid email By signing up you confirm that you have read and agree to the terms and conditions, cookie policy and privacy policy. Guangdong is the growth engine of China’s manufacturing industry, generating $615bn in exports last year — more than a quarter of the country’s total. In this part of the province, the standard wage for workers is about Rmb4,000 ($600) per month. Ying Ao, which manufactures sinks destined for the kitchens of Europe and the US, has to pay double that, according to deputy manager Chen Conghan, because conditions in the factory are so unpleasant. So, four years ago, the company started buying machines to replace the ever more costly humans. Nine robots now do the job of 140 full-time workers. Robotic arms pick up sinks from a pile, buff them until they gleam and then deposit them on a self-driving trolley that takes them to a computer-linked camera for a final quality check. The company, which exports 1,500 sinks a day, spent more than $3m on the robots. “These machines are cheaper, more precise and more reliable than people,” says Chen. “I’ve never had a whole batch ruined by robots. I look forward to replacing more humans in future,” he adds, with a wry smile. Across the manufacturing belt that hugs China’s southern coastline, thousands of factories like Chen’s are turning to automation in a government-backed, robot-driven industrial revolution the likes of which the world has never seen.