this post was submitted on 31 Oct 2024
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At the moment it still looks like a technology demonstrator, but with what we saw in this video there are a small percentage of jobs it could likely do today replacing human workers.
My guess is that the task we saw it doing is actually a human job today. The objects being moved from rack to rack were plastic engine covers. The racks are labeled with "Engine covers". That is WAY too specific to be random. My guess is that they worked/are working with an automotive assembly company to identify tasks that humans do today that a robot could do tomorrow. The auto company likely provided the engine cover parts as well as the racks and described the parameters for the job.
Even if you look at the Boston Dynamics robot and say that a human could do that faster/cheaper/better, consider that the robot works 24/7 with no sick days, vacations, or family emergencies. From a purely business perspective, the robot could be a game-changer for the better. From a societal view, this will have serious negative consequences to the people that our society will need to evolve to change for the better.
That's the rub, isn't it? From a society view, having manual labor all done by robots is also a positive game changer, as it protects human health with no loss in standard of living, but because we will just lay people off with no support, it will instead plunge our society into despair.
The automation tax that gates/etc proposed to fund UBI/social support networks is making more and more sense.
I'm all for UBI, but the automation tax is a quagmire.
In this theoretical new tax, tell me what qualifies to be taxed?
Automation tax is a nice idea but a nightmare to try to make in policy. Additionally, it will have a stifling effect on any business efficiency efforts after it exists.
If the tax is based upon workers losing their jobs to automation, it will have a massive knock on effect limiting new hires. A company would be very leery of hiring a worker if they could be accused (and taxed) of automation replacement when that worker is let go.
UBI is needed for power redistribution more than wealth redistribution. Sure, one good reason is the employment displacement from robotics/ai. But a robot tax is far inferior to general income taxes. Beyond your examples, pipes and wires into your home are automation. Machines with human operators are automation as well.
Even if you were to only tax the robot users, what about those who get rich from building yachts for the robot users?
China has a big lead in robotics because nearly all manufacturing is done there. That is there massive competitive advantage in EVs as an example. As a national competitiveness, and consumer prices, measure, incentivizing people to go collect their water from a nearby river, and heating wood from nearby trees, and otherwise committing to full employment through less automated processes, is a massive decline in standard of living.
UBI does let you create your own job. Sales and design will always be needed, even if design is inputs into an AI prompt. Without the disempowerment of warmongering rulership, AI will serve the disinformation and murder needs of that rulership. UBI/freedom dividends funded by taxes on extreme income is the path to make the winners pay for human sustainability instead of human extermination.
Most laws aren't retroactive. If you do the thing before it's illegal, then you skated by. That could very easily be the answer here, especially as most all the physical automation is barely existent. If a company deploys now, they don't pay the tax, but they will when they upgrade models.
As to code automation, same rules apply. Excel macros get by, but I would apply the tax on companies that replace white collar jobs via SaaS or other applications as their core businesses model, or for that line of buisness for vendors that do a lot of things. It would have to be refined as to where you draw the line, but you could.
You'll need to provide your definition of "physical automation" for the purposes of your argument. As it stands that is NOT clear, which is part of the quagmire of all the Automation Tax approaches.
What does this mean? If a company is still running on-prem MS Exchange servers for company email, then the law passes, then the company switches to Office365 for email instead, does your law hit that company with an Automation tax? If so, how would the tax be applied? Amount of spend on Office365? Amount spent on salaries of former MS Exchange administrators? How long would the tax apply? A year? Forever?
What I'm also seeing is that all encumbant companies (shielded from the automation tax because they already put automation in place) would have an advantage forever against existing companies trying to make automation changes (and being hit with the tax).
Another loophole I see is companies completely liquidating or selling to a newly formed company so that there are "no jobs lost to automation, because this company from day 1 has always used automation".
I don't know what this means.
Can you give a concrete example of your Automation tax? Situation before your law goes into place, the law passing, then the Automation tax a company would pay when they make a specific change in your example?
Tons of questions here, but sure I'll give it a go.
Any autonomous or nearly autonomous hardware device would be taxed. Exceptions can apply. Maybe autonomous tractors are not taxed because food is needed, but unemployed farmers also need to be cared for.
As to the code question and m365, maybe, maybe not. It may be reasonable to tax all cloud automation as a whole, or maybe just all SaaS, leaving IaaS and PaaS out of it. Exceptions may apply.
The tax would be on the good or service forever, yes. If you displace human workers with automation, then thry need their basic needs met for human decency, but also so they don't tear society to pieces, justifiably in my mind.
Incumbent companies using automation may have an advantage, but only until they use a new robot or new automation. That advantage goes away if they are stuck 5-10 yr behind to avoid a tax. If they want to keep avoiding it, newer companies using taxed but getting a huge productivity booster will surpass them. That will incentivise them to use the tax producing goods or services and remove any initial advantage.
I think I would also be okay with "no tax until you hit X automations" as well. You clearly can't give tax breaks on employees, as not employing people will be the whole point of this, but you could likely work it out.
The point with factory work is that you don’t need half of what this robot can do if you change the plan of the factory a bit.
So no I don’t think the idea here is for standard factory work.
You're changing the problem that is being solved. The CURRENT work process is to use a human with all the benefits and detriments of a human. The idea would be to drop one of these Atlas robots in without changing the work or work environment. Perhaps there is a more efficient human doing the work from 8am-5pm and only some work needed from 5pm-8am. An Atlas robot would be perfect use case here. You don't have to redesign the work or the environment for a human or robot to switch out to do the same work.
What you're describing is changing the nature of the task or the environment to optimize for a robot.
Boston Dynamics already has that robot. Its called Handle:
As you can see, its a wheeled robot with an arm, but this robot couldn't do the task that the Atlas robot can in the video because it doesn't have the fine motor control or fingers to grasp the engine covers, nor does Handle have the ability to deal with those soft pliable racks where Atlas is placing the covers.
Yep, it's no more than a stress test for a robot to keep it's balance in motion, coupled with some partnership and a nice PR showcase of what it can do in a humanized scenario that we meatbags can relate to.
Moving stuff in a predictable fashion is easily done with forklift\suction cup robots on rails that can ride floors and climb shelves while being powered from the line 100% of time. Iirc Boston Dynamics did such robots too. Making robots carry stuff around on legs sounds like a c/crazyideas material.
What they can do then though is use this amount of R&D to build a robot that does need all of that. From automatic surgery machines to rescue scouts and, yes, killbots. Both rough terrain and sensitive tasks need a self-regulating system to orchestrate the motion in all these motors right.
They said the same about robots in the 80s, particularly automotive industry robots. They were going to turn society on it's ear and it was a non-stop news item for some time.
In 1970 there were 1.5 million UAW auto workers. Today there are 400k. source Yes, UAW membership isn't the only type of auto worker, yes there are other factors that cause auto decline besides robots. However, I challenge you to point to a modern large scale automotive manufacturing factory that doesn't use robots.
To add your last paragraph - today's robot may be worse but next year's robot might not be. And with how far Boston Dynamics (and others) have come in such a short time, it's not hard to imagine that future getting here soon.
Corporations have shown time and time again they fire people by the thousands as soon as it's financially viable and since this tech will be implemented quickly across the industry, those ex-employees won't be able to find work. Governments need to start taking UBI seriously if they don't want to massive civil unrest.
As much as I cringe at the "come and take it" crowd, a lot of them work these at-risk jobs. They will take their anger at their ex-employee and aim it at the government.
Just look at who owns Boston Dynamics and it makes sense.