Are robots hurting job growth?

Baxter costs $22,000, and can be trained to do a new task by a coworker in a matter of minutes. It can also be upgraded like an iPad with new software as new applications are developed.

[Rodney Brooks: And when you're training it...]

Brooks and investors in his new startup, Rethink Robotics, see a potential market worth tens of billions of dollars, and believe that Baxter can help small U.S. manufacturers level the playing field against low cost foreign competitors.

Rodney Brooks: If you're using robots to compete with a simple task that a low-paid worker does in a foreign country you can bring it back here and do that task here.

Steve Kroft: Baxter costs 22 grand?

Rodney Brooks: Yep.

Steve Kroft: How long does he last?

Rodney Brooks: It lasts three years.

Steve Kroft: Three years?

Rodney Brooks: So you can think that as 6,500 hours.

Steve Kroft: I think it works out to about $3.40 an hour?

Rodney Brooks: About that yeah.

Steve Kroft: $3.40, that's probably the wages of the Chinese worker, right?

Rodney Brooks: It's just about right there now.

Steve Kroft: So here you could buy one of these robots and it would be like getting a Chinese worker?

Rodney Brooks: In a manner of speaking.

That strategy has already had some success at Adept Technology, the largest manufacturer of industrial robots in the country with a wide and varied product line. John Dulchinos is the CEO.

John Dulchinos: So this is our flagship product. This is our Cobra robot. This is the class of robot that was used to automate Philips electric shavers.

The robots at the Dutch company's factory in the Netherlands proved to be so efficient and economical, that Philips decided to move its main shaver assembly line out of China and back to Holland.

Erik Brynjolfsson: I think that those workers in China, in India, are more in the bullseye of this automation tidal wave that we are talking about than the American workers.

But even if offshore manufacturing returns to the U.S., most of the jobs will go to robots.

Andrew McAfee: When I see what computers and robots can do right now, I project that forward for two, three more generations, I think we're going to find ourselves in a world where the work as we currently think about it is largely done by machines.

Steve Kroft: And what are the people going to do?

Andrew McAfee: That's the $64,000 question.

Andrew McAfee: Science fiction is actually my best guide because I think we are in that time frame going to be in a very weird, very different place.

It brings to mind Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey," and the rebellious computer robot "HAL". Technologically speaking, we are just about there.

[Dave Bowman: Open the pod bay doors, HAL.

HAL: I'm sorry, Dave, this mission is too important for me to allow you to jeopardize it.]

Everyone agrees that it's impossible now to short circuit technology. It has a life of its own and the world is all in for better or for worse.

[HAL: Stop, Dave.]

We wanted to leave you on this positive note.

Erik Brynjolfsson: One thing that Andy and I agree on is that we're not super worried about robots becoming self aware, and challenging our authority. That part of science fiction, I think, is not very likely to happen.

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[RobotsCreateJobs]

Throughout history, technological advances have served as force multipliers for human productivity. Think about: Archimedes, Gutenberg, and da Vinci. In more recent time, Newcomen with the first economically practical steam engine, Joseph-Marie Jacquard with the loom, Eli Whitney with the cotton gin, George Stephenson with the steam blast engine that led to widespread use of the steam locomotive, Samuel Morse with the first telegraph, or Henry Ford with modern assembly line methods. How many of us today owe our careers and lifestyle to these visionary pioneers?

It is shameful that 60 Minutes would not balance the need to sell a book by Brynjolfsson and McAfee with the reality that robots, and more generally automation, KEEPS JOBS IN AMERICA that would have otherwise already GONE OFF-SHORE. Moreover, they completely miss the good news that JOBS ARE COMING BACK as a result of technology that makes domestic production once again economically competitive with cheap off-shore labor. An informative study, of which 60 Minutes was either unaware or elected to ignore, can be found at:
http://www.ifr.org/uploads/media/Metra_Martech_Study_on_robots_02.pdf

[jstaro]

Not only job growth but product quality! As good as programers are, and they do amaze, sometimes, to many glitches, they aren't experienced innovative trades workers who once produced quality products with little call back as they caught flaws quickly and corrected along, as I said innovative, helped better the product as they collectively produced same!! They don't have the experienced eye nor touch nor ability of a human and never will!!

[momkase]

This will gut the demand side of "supply and demand" out of the way in a hurry. The mind boggles - robots doing away with jobs, people fighting among themselves for basic necessities of life, the rich trading only among themselves, government paralyzed, and everybody armed to the teeth. Eeeehaw! Oh, I forgot, the nuclear bomb button, who controls that? The rich of course, silly me. So, when we revolt, as revolt we probably will once everybody figures out we've been screwed, the rich can bomb us into oblivion. But who wants to live in what's left? Nobody, that's why we're trying to figure out if we can trash another planet. Maybe we'd better rethink and/or think ahead a little harder. Now I have not only a headache but an upset stomach. Egad!

[bdoyle_A3]

Want to read the Association for Advancing Automation's response to the "March of the Machines" segment on 60 Minutes? Click here: http://robotics.org/content-detail.cfm/Industrial-Robotics-News/Automation-Industry-Association-Criticizes-60-Minutes-Segment-%E2%80%98March-of-the-Machines%E2%80%99/content_id/3864

To see the real story in action, come to www.automate2013.com in Chicago January 21-24, 2013!

[JedRothwell]

Here is an excellent book and web site on this topic:

http://www.thelightsinthetunnel.com/

[bundye]

That question doesn't even have to be asked...you know the answer. The question is can they take the place of man?

[yermamma]

It's the foreign robots that are taking jobs away. Can't they be deported.... or unplugged?

[1988JAck]

We had better figure out what humans will do in the future. Corporate heads, the super rich, are looking for every way to replace humans with machines. Machines can work 24 hours, don't need vacations or benefits and don't complain about poor working conditions, not to mention Mr. Big Bucks can but a few more houses if they do without us.

[cedaly68]

I wonder how much robots will buy from these companies? Commerce is a two-way street. If robots control everything, then everything will be free because humans will have no income to buy the things robots produce. But that cannot be right, robots cost money. Corporations won't pay money to buy robots to give products away. It will all balance out at some point in time. The big mantra for this generation and the next is be prepared for hyper-accelerated change.

[jschm2681]

It is called competition. How long do you think a bank would be able to compete without ATMs, which Obama used as a technology feeding unemployment? We need a better education system than the liberals and the NEA have delivered. They turn out people who are only good for inefficient govt jobs if they manage to stay in school. Liberals have controlled the education system indoctrinating generations in big government for 40 years just to protect the NEA union position and power. It has got to change if we want to turn out people who cannot be replaced by a robot.

[crabnebula]

We are only at the beginning of the era in which robots will replace humans in the work force. We are rapidly making ourselves obsolete.

[retiredengineer]

This reminds of a book by Kurt Vonnegut's 1952 "Player Piano" where he writes about factories run entirety by robots.
"Kurt Vonnegut's first novel spins the chilling tale of engineer Paul Proteus, who must find a way to live in a world dominated by a supercomputer and run completely by machines. Paul's rebellion is vintage Vonnegut—wildly funny, deadly serious, and terrifyingly close to reality."
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