pjeby comments on The Robots, AI, and Unemployment Anti-FAQ - Less Wrong

47 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 25 July 2013 06:46PM

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Comment author: Kaj_Sotala 01 August 2013 08:15:10AM 7 points [-]

This bit from Making it in America seems relevant:

Tony explains that Maddie has a job for two reasons. First, when it comes to making fuel injectors, the company saves money and minimizes product damage by having both the precision and non-precision work done in the same place. Even if Mexican or Chinese workers could do Maddie’s job more cheaply, shipping fragile, half-finished parts to another country for processing would make no sense. Second, Maddie is cheaper than a machine. It would be easy to buy a robotic arm that could take injector bodies and caps from a tray and place them precisely in a laser welder. Yet Standard would have to invest about $100,000 on the arm and a conveyance machine to bring parts to the welder and send them on to the next station. As is common in factories, Standard invests only in machinery that will earn back its cost within two years. For Tony, it’s simple: Maddie makes less in two years than the machine would cost, so her job is safe—for now. If the robotic machines become a little cheaper, or if demand for fuel injectors goes up and Standard starts running three shifts, then investing in those robots might make sense.

It only says that the unskilled worker may become unemployed if robots become cheaper and thus more economical, but of course, if the cost for employing the unskilled workers would go up, that would also make the robots a better investment.

Comment author: pjeby 01 August 2013 06:55:46PM 4 points [-]

Thanks! This is a good illustration of my point, i.e., that businesses generally operate at local optima that can be disrupted by minimum wage increases, causing them to seek automation that they didn't use before the local optimum was disturbed.