Rise Of The Robots

RISE OF THE ROBOTS
Technology and The Threat of a Jobless Future - Martin Ford

 

Este es un libro que me compré el sábado 8 de Octubre de 2016 en la librería Strand en NYC. Cabe señalar, tal como se aprecia en la portada, que viene con un premio al libro del año 2015 por Financial Times:

https://www.ft.com/content/45ea0f60-8d55-11e5-8be4-3506bf20cc2b

"Martin Ford, author of The Rise of the Robots, received the £30,000 Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award at a ceremony in New York."

"The book reflects growing anxiety in some quarters about the possible negative impact of automation on jobs, from manufacturing to professional services. The subtitle of its UK edition warns of “the threat of mass unemployment” and, in the US edition, foresees “a jobless future”."

Básicamente decidí hacer el comentario de este libro porque se relaciona con los temas de mi trabajo y área de especialización que tiene que ver con temas de gestión documental e Inteligencia Artificial.

A medida que voy leyendo el libro voy agregando a este blog los comentarios y los párrafos más valiosos o que más me llamen la atención. 

Capítulo 1 - The Automation Wave

Este capítulo parte con la historia de un robot que acomoda cajas en una bodega y la precisión y complejidad que deben tener los sistemas visuales para realizar dicha tarea. Al final de la historia se manda este comentario:

"If there is one thing the history of information technology teaches, it is that this robot is going to very soon get a major speed upgrade."

Una de las tendencias que se está mostrando en las ferias de alta tecnología y que ejemplifica como se pueden integrar los robots en la vida humana es ésta:

"One of the most remarkable sights at the tradeshow was in the aisles —which were populated by a mix of human attendees and dozens of remote-presence robots provided by Suitable Technologies Inc. These robots, consisting of a flat screen and camera mounted on a mobile pedestal, allowed remote participants to visit tradeshow booths, view demonstrations, ask questions, and otherwise interact normally with other participants. Suitable Technologies offered remote presence at the tradeshow for a minimal fee, allowing visitors from outside the San Francisco Bay area to avoid thousands of dollars in travel costs. After a few minutes, the robots each with did not seem at all out of a human face displayed on its screen place as they prowled between booths and engaged other attendees in conversation."

Ojo con este dato duro, entre 2009-2012 la industria textil norteamericana ha subido un 37% debido a los robots:

"US textile industry was decimated in the 1990s as production moved to low-wage countries, especially China, India, and Mexico. About 1.2 million jobs — more than three-quarters of domestic employment in the textile sector — vanished between 1990 and 2012. The last few years however, have seen a dramatic rebound in production. Between 2009 and 2012, US textile and apparel exports rose by 37 percent to a total of nearly us$23 billion. The turnaround is being driven by automation technology so efficient that it is competitive with the lowest-wage offshore workers."

Hace unos días atrás había visto un video en el que un robot solo hacía completamente una camisa:

http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/robots/a23156/robot-sewbo/

Copio parte del texto del sitio en caso que remuevan el link:

A Robot Can Finally Sew a T-Shirt
Sewbo may be what the garment industry needs to become fully automated.

The garment industry has long resisted automation for one key reason: soft fabric is difficult for robots to handle. Whereas cars and computers are made of rigid metal and plastic, clothing is by its nature malleable. It requires a great level of precision to feed a piece of cloth into a sewing machine and create a straight seam. That's meant that humans still need to manually perform many of the steps in clothing production.

Entre 1980-1990 comenzaron a desaparecer casi todas las textiles en el mundo porque los chinos, indios, pakistaníes, indonesios y mexicanos se llevaron toda la fabricación textil dado que tenían una mano de obra mucho más barata. Luego de este dato duro, aparentemente el futuro de las industrias será favorable sólo para los que posean la mejor tecnología y manejen los mejores robots adhoc.

Es repetitivo mencionar esto, pero Chile en estos momentos debiera empezar a prepararse para los juegos del hambre ya que somos un país que basa su economía en el extractivismo y latifundismo donde no tenemos patentes, ni I+D, ni innovación, ni nada. Sólo nos dedicamos a exportar materia prima. Exportamos átomos y no bits.

The Service Sector

"While the proliferation of vending machines and kiosks is certain to eliminate traditional retail sales jobs, these machines will also, of course, create jobs in areas like maintenance, restocking, and repair. The number of those new jobs, however, is likely to be more limited than you might expect. The latest-generation machines are directly connected to the Internet and provide a continuous stream of sales and diagnostic data; they are also specifically designed to minimize the labor costs associated with their operation."

Es falsa la creencia que producto de la robótica y la automatización, en el futuro, se crearán nuevos trabajos que serán absorbidos por la masa laboral y que ésta tendrá la capacitación correspondiente tal como sucedió durante la revolución industrial. Los trabajos nuevos que surgirán serán menores en cantidad, menores en calidad (part time) y con salarios/compensaciones inferiores, tal como estableceremos a medida que avancemos en la lectura de este libro.

Robots in Agriculture

Algunos drivers de robótica en agricultura:

"Advanced agricultural robots are especially attractive in countries that do not have access to low-wage, migrant labor. Australia and Japan, for example, are both island nations with rapidly aging workforces. Security considerations likewise make Israel a virtual island in terms of labor mobility. Many fruits and vegetables need to be harvested within a very small time window, so that a lack of available workers at just the right time can easily turn out to be a catastrophic problem."

El centro australiano para robótica campestre (ACFR) de la Universidad de Sydney se focaliza en emplear robótica en la agricultura para posicionar a Australia como proveedor principal de alimentos para Asia, a pesar de su relativa escasez de tierra arable y agua fresca. Los robots rondan los campos y sacan constantemente muestras del terreno alrededor de cada planta  y les inyectan la cantidad exacta de fertilizante y agua.

"The historical norm has been for those excess workers to migrate to cities and industrial centers in search of factory work—but as we have seen, those factories are themselves going to be transformed by accelerating automation technology. In fact, it seems somewhat difficult to imagine how many developing countries will succeed in navigating these technological disruptions without running into significant unemployment crises."

Comentario lapidario para los paises en desarrollo cuando se enfrenten a los cambios disruptivos provocados por la robótica ¿cómo se van a enfrentar estas crisis sociales?


Capítulo 2 - Is This Time Different?

Notable el discurso que Martin Luther King dio en Ohio en Junio de 1965:

"There can be no gainsaying of the fact that a great revolution is taking place in the world today. In a sense it is a triple revolution: that is, a technological revolution, with the impact of automation and cybernation; then there is a revolution in weaponry, with the emergence of atomic and nuclear weapons of warfare; then there is a human rights revolution, with the freedom explosion that is taking place all over the world. Yes, we do live in a period where changes are taking place. And there is still
the voice crying through the vista of time saying, Behold, I make all things new; former things are passed away."

"Mirad, hago todas las cosas nuevas, las anteriores perecen"

A este párrafo que copian textual de parte del discurso de Martin Luther King le faltó este texto previo:

"There are all too many people who, in some great period of social change, fail to achieve the new mental outlooks that the new situation demands. There is nothing more tragic than to sleep through a revolution."

Mucha gente no está viendo como se viene la mano.

La frase "triple revolución" proviene de un reporte escrito por un grupo de académicos, periodistas y hombres de tecnología que se llamaron a sí mismos el Comité Ad Hoc de la Triple Revolución. Entre otros en este comité estaba el premio nobel de química Linus Pauling y el que ganaría posteriormente en 1974 el premio del banco de Suecia en ciencias económicas en memoria de Alfred Nobel (mal llamado nobel de economía) Gunnar Myrdal. Las primeras dos revoluciones a las que se refería este informe (armamento nuclear y derechos civiles) estaban indudablemente relacionados con el momento histórico de los 60s. Sin embargo, el grueso del informe versaba sobre la automatización y cybernation lo cual ha sido completamente olvidado.

"The report predicted that “cybernation” (or automation) would soon result in an economy where “potentially unlimited output can be achieved by systems of machines which will require little cooperation from human beings.” The result would be massive unemployment, soaring inequality, and, ultimately, falling demand for goods and services as consumers increasingly lacked the purchasing power necessary to continue driving economic growth. The Ad Hoc Committee went on to propose a radical solution: the eventual implementation of a guaranteed minimum income made possible by the “economy of abundance” such widespread automation could create, and which would "take the place of the patchwork of welfare measures" that were in place to address poverty."

Es importante tener intelectuales y gente que piense en un país ¿no?

En este capítulo el autor plantea las 7 Tendencias Capitales (Seven Deadly Trends) que enumero a continuación y que más adelante comento algunas:

1. Estancamiento Salarial
2. Un mercado laboral plano y un crecimiento permanente en las Empresas
3. Participación de la Fuerza Laboral en Declinación
4. Disminución en la creación de trabajo, Alargamiento en Recuperarse de la Cesantía y Crecimiento en el desempleo de largo plazo
5. Crecimiento en la Inequidad
6. Disminución en los Salarios y Desempleo en los Recién Graduados
7. Polarización y Trabajos de Media Jornada


Disminishing Job Creation , Lengthening Jobless Recoveries,  and Soaring Long-Term Unemployment

Entender bien este gráfico es clave:

"Figure 2.1 shows the relationship between labor productivity (which measures the value of workers' hourly output) and compensation (which includes wages and benefits) paid to ordinary private sector workers from 1948 onward. The first segment of the graph (from 1948 to 1973) shows the way economists expect things to work. Growth in productivity moves in almost perfect lockstep with compensation. Prosperity marches upward and is shared broadly by all those who contribute to the economy. Beyond the mid-1970s, the widening gap between the two lines is a graphic illustration of the extent to which the fruits of innovation throughout the economy are now accruing almost entirely to business owners and investors, rather than to workers."

La figura 2.1 muestra un gráfico de las compensaciones salariales a los trabajadores en USA versus su productividad. Se aprecia claramente en el gráfico que ambas curvas van de la mano hasta principios de 1970. A mediados de los 70s empiezan a desacoplarse ambas curvas y a fines de los 70s ya es claro que dichas curvas nunca más vuelven a juntarse.

La fuente original de esta información puede encontrarse en el sitio web:

http://www.epi.org/publication/charting-wage-stagnation/

http://www.epi.org/publication/understanding-the-historic-divergence-between-productivity-and-a-typical-workers-pay-why-it-matters-and-why-its-real/

"Wage stagnation experienced by the vast majority of American workers has emerged as a central issue in economic policy debates, with candidates and leaders of both parties noting its importance. This is a welcome development because it means that economic inequality has become a focus of attention and that policymakers are seeing the connection between wage stagnation and inequality. Put simply, wage stagnation is how the rise in inequality has damaged the vast majority of American workers."

En resumen, la inequidad ha aumentado producto que a partir de 1970 las compensaciones no van en directa relación con la productividad de los empleados. Este gráfico es materia de análisis en USA y los economistas se rompen la cabeza tratando de explicarlo. Las ganancias se están yendo a los inversonistas y a los dueños en lugar de los trabajadores. Aquí es el momento que aparecen grupos de derecha, defensores del lucro, la propiedad privada, el esfuerzo personal y que los empresarios son los que arriesgan, y un largo etc. En definitiva el típico discurso planfetario que las sociedades neoliberales se saben de memoria y que incluso gente sin educación adhiere porque ya está adoctrinada y repite como caja de resonancia.

"Despite the clarity of this graph , many economists have still not fully acknowledged the divergence between wage and productivity growth"

"A field experiment conducted by Rand Ghayad, a PhD candidate in economics at Northeastern University, showed that a recently unemployed applicant with no industry experience was actually more likely to be called in for a job interview than someone with directly applicable experience who had been out of work for more than six months"

Este gráfico muestra que al mercado del trabajo cada vez le está costando más recuperarse de una recesión reciente.

Según Martin Ford, se debe al efecto de la tecnología

Soaring Inequality

"The divide between the rich and everyone else has been growing steadily since the 1970s. Between 1993 and 2010 over half of the increase in US national income went to households in the top 1% of the income distribution. Since then, things have only gotten worse. In an analysis published in September 2013, economist Emmanuel Saez of the University of California, Berkeley, found that an astonishing 95 percent of total income gains during the years 2009 to 2012 were hoovered up by the wealthiest 1%. Even as the Occupy Wall Street movement has faded from the scene, the evidence shows pretty clearly that income inequality in the United States is not just high—it may well be accelerating."

A partir de 1970 la brecha entre los más ricos (centil follador) y el resto de la gente ha ido acrecentándose sostenidamente. En USA a partir de 1993 más de la mitad de las utilidades que se han incrementado en el PIB de USA han ido a parar los bolsillos del centil follador. Para ser exactos, a partir de 1993 el 51% o más de las utilidades adicionales al GDP van al 1% más rico de la población en USA !!!

Incuso hubo un momento particular en la historia, donde la inequidad fue descabellada, este economista de Berkeley demostró que el 95% de las ultilidades entre 2009-2012 fueron al centil más rico.

"The belief that anyone can get ahead through hard work and perseverance, really has little basis in statistical reality"

Así piensa la mayoría de la gente de derecha y sus conceptos se derrumban ante la estadística abrumadora.

   "There is also an obvious risk of political capture by the financial elite. In the United States, to a greater degree than in any other advanced democracy, politics is driven almost entirely by money.
Wealthy individuals and the organizations they control can mold government policy through political contributions and lobbying, often producing outcomes that are clearly at odds with what the public actually wants. As those at the apex of the income distribution become increasingly detached—living in a kind of bubble that insulates them almost entirely from the realities faced by typical Americans there is a real risk that they will be unwilling to support investment in the public goods and infraestructure upon which everyone else depends.
     The soaring fortunes of those at the very top may ultimately represent a threat to democratic governance. However, the most immediate problem  for most middle -and working- class people is that job market opportunities are broadly deteriorating."

No es un misterio para nadie que el poder económico maneja las leyes mediante el lobby y una serie de negociaciones y tal como dicen los gringos "pay to play". Disiento del último párrafo de este texto y es probablemente por la mentalidad del autor que no concibe en su cabeza sistemas con economías de tipo mixto como en los paises europeos desarrollados ya que en un sistema con mayor equidad el estado a través de sus poderes podría enfrentar de una manera más coordinada esta crisis que se nos viene. Ya conocemos muy bien en Chile lo que pasa en gobiernos neoliberales cuando la elite es dejada a descontrol total: oligopolios, colusiones, estafas, sobornos, lobby descarado, leyes a la medida, se reparten las cuotas y concesiones de todo tipo, no permiten la competencia, autoritarismo, control total de los medios de comunicación, etc.

Polarization and Part-Time Jobs

"A further new problem is that the jobs being created during economic recoveries are generally worse than those destroyed by recessions. In a 2012 study, economists Nir Jaimovich and Henry E. Siu analyzed data from recent US recessions and found that the jobs mostly likely to permanently disappear are the good middle-class jobs, while the jobs that tend to get created during recoveries are largely concentrated in low-wage sectors like retail, hospitality, and food preparation and, to a lesser extent, in high-skill professions that require extensive training. This has been especially true over the course of the recovery that began in 2009."

Además se generan trabajos de menor calidad e incluso de media jornada. Los trabajos bien remunerados del nivel medio son reemplazados con tecnología.

"Routine jobs are eliminated for economic reasons during a recession, but organizations then discover that ever advancing information technology allows them to operate successfully without rehiring the workers once recovery gets under way. Chrystia Freeland of Reuters puts it especially aptly, writing that “the middle-class frog isn’t being gradually boiled; it is being periodically grilled at a very high heat“."

Financialization

"The primary complaint leveled against the financialization of the economy is that much of this activity is geared toward rent seeking. In other words, the financial sector is not creating real value or adding to the overall welfare of society; it is simply finding ever more creative ways to siphon profits and wealth from elsewhere in the economy."

Es lo mismo que digo respecto de los servicios que tanto nos jactamos los chilenos como "cobranzas". Esto no aporta real valor mientras no genere divisas de intercambio. Si lo exportas OK, pasa la prueba de la blancura del valor.

"Economists who have studied financialization have found a strong correlation between the growth of the financial sector and inequality as well as the decline in labor's share of national income"

De hecho en 1950 el sector financiero era el 2.8% de la economía norteamericana pero en 2011 creció a un 8.7%. La rentabilidad del sector financiero subió de un 13% a un 30% en el periodo 1978-1997. Impresionante.

Que duro el comentario: "The financial sector is, en effect, imposing a kind of tax on the rest of economy"

Estos tipos generan una actividad parasitaria al igual que las AFPs que no aportan valor. No puede ser que tengan esas rentabilidades morbosas. Tienen casi la misma rentabilidad de las empresas de inversión que estafaron a miles Chilenos, con la diferencia que estos negocios son completamente legales y validados por la sociedad.

Desde 2005 al 2012 la transacción COMPLETA promedio cayó desde 10 Seg.  a 0.0008 seg. Por esta razón pusieron los datacenters y alta capacidad de cómputo en las proximidades de Wall Street. Los algoritmos automatizados son los responsables de ⅔ de las transacciones (pura especulación).

Politics

¿Por qué a los empresarios y a la elite no le gustan los sindicatos? Aquí está la respuesta:

"In the 1950s, more than a third of the US private sector workforce was unionized. By 2010, that number had declined to about 7 percent. At the height of its power, organized labor was a powerful advocate for the middle class as a whole. The fact that workers were able to consistently capture the lion’s share of productivity growth in the 1950s and ’60s can likely be attributed at least in part to the negotiating power of unions during that period. The situation today is very different; unions now struggle simply to maintain their existing membership."

Me imagino que recuerdan el gráfico de la figura 2.1 del desacople de la productividad de la fuerza laboral versus la compensación. En los 50s y 60s los sindicatos le sacaban la tajada al "LEON" porque más de un tercio de la fuerza laboral en USA estaba sindicalizada. A partir de 1970 eso comenzó a cambiar dramáticamente y hoy no más del 8% de la fuerza laboral está sindicalizado en USA.

Y los votantes de derecha que son pobres, es tragicómica su posición neoliberal. Defendiendo las utilidades morbosas de algunos empresarios inescrupulosos. Dan risa y pena. Son como los sindicalistas gremialistas del Santiago College que luego de una negociación con la empresa lograron que les bajaran a los profesores un 40% su salario 😂😂😂. El resultado fue que el 87% de los profesores votaron que sí la huelga.

Ser UDI y pobre (asalariado) es tener un forado en el cerebro. Debieran existir terapias para esta pobre gente.

Según algunos cientistas políticos hoy la Política es la principal causa de la inequidad, al menos en USA:

"The precipitous decline in the power of organized labor is one of the most visible developments associated with the rightward drift that has characterized American economic policy over the past three decades. In their 2010 book Winner Take All Politics, political scientists Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson make a compelling case for politics as the primary driver of inequality in the United States. Hacker and Pierson point to 1978 as the pivotal year when the American political landscape began to shift under a sustained and organized assault from conservative business interests. In the decades that rollowed, industries were deregulated, top marginal tax rates on the wealthy and on corporations were cut to historic lows, and workplaces were made increasingly inhospitable to union organization. Much of this was driven not by electoral politics but, rather, by continuous lobbying on the part of business interests. As the power of organized labor withered, and the number of lobbyists in Washington exploded, the day-to-day political warfare in the capital became increasingly asymmetric."

Todavía hay personas que creen en el viejo pascuero que no se dan cuenta que esta situación también se vive en Chile. Esto se debe a que la política está secuestrada por el poder económico y el lobby del poder económico de la elite. Esto es un fenómeno mundial. La inequidad crece sin control.

Pobres los que aun creen en la política (y sobre todo los progresistas) en paises neoliberales como Chile, deben estar con espasmos al evidenciar cada vez más que la política está secuestrada por la elite en estos paises (no le cuenten a nadie que Chile es uno de los paises más neoliberales del mundo).

"To some extent, the question here is one of categorization: if a nation fails to implement policies designed to mitigate the impact of structural changes brought on by advancing technology, should we label that as a problem caused by technology, or politics? Regardless, there is little question that the United States stands alone in terms of the political decisions it has made; rather than simply failing to enact policies that might have slowed the forces driving the country toward higher levels of inequality, America very often has made choices that have effectively put a wind at the back of those forces."

Martin Ford responsabiliza a las Tecnologías de la información como una de las principales responsables de la inequidad, pero su misma lectura de: Globalización,  Sector Financiero y Política; demuestran que el lobby de la elite acrecenta la inequidad y que la política se transformó en un facilitador de ésta.

Los gobiernos y las políticas no se manejan solas. La tecnología, robótica, genética, nanotecnología, IA no se mandan solas ... por el momento. Si los robots llegan a tomar el control sería el fin de la historia (Fukuyama-2?)

"While accelerating information technology is nearly certain to have an outsized impact on the future economy and job market, it will remain deeply intertwined with other powerful forces. The line between technology and globalization will blur as higher-skill jobs become more vulnerable to electronic offshoring. If, as seems likely, advancing technology continues to drive the United States and other industrialized countries toward ever higher inequality, then the political influence wielded by the financial elite can only increase. This may make it even more difficult to enact policies that might serve to counteract the structural shifts occurring in the economy."

"Indeed, among practitioners of economics and finance there is often an almost reflexive tendency to dismiss anyone who argues that this time might be different. This is very likely the correct instinct when one is discussing those aspects of the economy that are primarily driven by human behavior and market psychology. The psychological underpinnings of the recent housing bubble and bust were almost certainly little different from those that have characterized financial crises throughout history. Many of the political machinations of the early Roman republic could probably be dropped seamlessly onto the front page of today’s Politico. These things never really change."

Hay muchos que critican estos análisis pesimistas del futuro, pero ahora el tema es diferente.

Esto está yendo más allá de la política ya que se está constatando el hecho que la política está secuestrada por un poder ínfimo de la sociedad llamado elite que va a acrentar en una forma enorme casi discontinua (singularidad) la inequidad en el corto plazo.

Pay Pal co-founder Peter Thiel: "We were promised flying cars, and instead what we got was 140 characters" 😂😂😂


CAPITULO 3 - INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY: An Unprecedented Force for Disruption


"Moore's Law is the best known measure of advancing computing power, but information technology is, in fact, accelerating on many different fronts. For example, computer memory capacity and the amount of digital information than can be carried on fiber-optic lines have both experienced consistent exponential increases."

La mayoría conocemos la ley de Moore, pero a veces obviamos el hecho que no sólo el cómputo es necesario para generar cambios disruptivos en la robótica, también son necesarios los cambios en capacidad de almacenamiento y las capacidades de transmisión de las redes de datos.

"Progress in one area may drive a sudden burst of innovation in another."

Hoy más que nunca existe la oportunidad de innovar, ya que continuamente están aparecendio mejoras y nuevas tecnologías que con mejoras menores pueden generar un tremendo impacto en otras áreas de negocio de la sociedad.

"As information technology marches forward, its tentacles reach ever deeper into organizations and the overall economy, often transforming the way people work in ways that can further its own advance."