Robot Productivity and John Maynard Keynes
More than 90 years ago, John Maynard Keynes published [...]
Self Driving Trucks
Changes that happen slowly are changes nonetheless, and a decade-long shift in over-the-road trucking from human drivers to robotic ones will have important consequences.
Supply and Demand for Labor: How the Automation Age Enables the Barbell Economy
Summary. A supply-demand thought experiment uses machinists as an example [...]
Robots really are a big deal
Eli Lehrer made a series of assertions in an opinion [...]
An exciting day
Today is the day: AHiRE announced its existence and mission [...]
Drones Are Not Just Airplanes Anymore
Stars and Stripes reports that the United States Navy has begun testing the world’s largest unmanned ship.The Sea Hunter is an entirely new class of ocean-going vessel.
Bill Gates is With Us!
Multiple organizations, ranging from USA Today to Fortune, are reporting that Microsoft founder Bill Gates endorsed taxrobots most fundamental statement -“When a robot takes a human being’s job, transfer the human’s tax burden to the robot: tax the robot.”
A Place to Start: Save the Cashiers
The Washington Post recently published two articles that effectively illustrate the double edged sword of advanced robotics. Ruchir Sharma’s December 2 opinion piece affirming that “Robots won’t kill the workforce …” conveniently, misses more than half of the issue by showing only the wealth production aspects of robotics.
The Double Edged Sword
The Washington Post recently published two articles that effectively illustrate the double edged sword of advanced robotics. Ruchir Sharma’s December 2 opinion piece affirming that “Robots won’t kill the workforce …” conveniently, misses more than half of the issue by showing only the wealth production aspects of robotics.
Disruption in Manufacturing
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, United States manufacturing employment rose from 1945 to a peak of about 20 million jobs in 1980. It then dropped by about 8 million, or 40%, from 1980 to 2015 while manufacturing output almost doubled. Doubling output while reducing labor by almost half was the result of automation and robotics.
Truckers as an Example
The trucking business is extremely complex and this brief discussion of it is vastly oversimplified but the key points remain: disruption in an industry has major effects years or decades after it occurs; and self-driving trucks and delivery vehicles are about to produce a disruption of unprecedented scale.