Robotic Nation - It's Coming

MarketMasher · Dec 30, 2012

Wasn't there already a sci-fi movie like that?

The Elites use their cronies in gov't to start another World War or start a plague to cull the population - while their resources keep them safely ensconced...

Kind of what WWII and Black Death did....

Robots will be the new slaves.

Mercor · Dec 30, 2012

pretty soon computers will be trading.

pspr · Dec 30, 2012

Quote from Mercor:

pretty soon computers will be trading.
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Trading people?

nonlinear5 · Dec 30, 2012

Quote from Mercor:

pretty soon computers will be trading.
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70% of all trading volume these days is algorithmic.

Tsing Tao · Dec 30, 2012

The movie I, Robot was based off of Asimov's short stories.

nutmeg · Dec 30, 2012

Quote from tomdavis:

About a year ago a local newspaper ran a story on a local business that 20 years ago had 40 employees and had grown to 60 employees since then. The most surprising part of the article was that the company's revenues had grown by almost 500% during that time (while only increasing employees by 50%). Technological leverage allows companies to grow revenues geometrically while adding few if any employees.
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I wonder if payroll/labor costs as a percentage of sales has changed. I doubt it.

Mass production of the automobile has made the car affordable, really? The auto industry uses robots, where did the labor savings go?

Cracks me up, go to Home Depot, a forklift was designed to save labor, they now have a driver and a flag man. If the fork truck could drive itself I'm sure osha would require 2 flag men.

nutmeg · Dec 30, 2012

Quote from nonlinear5:

70% of all trading volume these days is algorithmic.
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I wonder how many people it takes to support one trading computer.

MarketMasher · Dec 30, 2012

Quote from nutmeg:

I wonder how many people it takes to support one trading computer.
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Union rules say they get 2 electron breaks and can discharge whenever they want.

PHOENIX TRADING · Dec 31, 2012

Quote from MarketMasher:

Union rules say they get 2 electron breaks and can discharge whenever they want.
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Well I think Knight taught us they can have fat fingers

AK Forty Seven · Dec 31, 2012

Quote from pspr:

By Marshall Brain

......
The Iceberg

The iceberg looks like this. On that same day, I interacted with five different automated systems like the kiosks in McDonald's:

I got money in the morning from the ATM.
I bought gas from an automated pump.
I bought groceries at BJ's (a warehouse club) using an extremely well-designed self-service check out line.
I bought some stuff for the house at Home Depot using their not-as-well-designed-as-BJ's self-service check out line.
I bought my food at McDonald's at the kiosk, as described above.
All of these systems are very easy-to-use from a customer standpoint, they are fast, and they lower the cost of doing business and should therefore lead to lower prices. All of that is good, so these automated systems will proliferate rapidly.
The problem is that these systems will also eliminate jobs in massive numbers. In fact, we are about to see a seismic shift in the American workforce. As a nation, we have no way to understand or handle the level of unemployment that we will see in our economy over the next several decades.

These kiosks and self-service systems are the beginning of the robotic revolution. When most people think about robots, they think about independent, autonomous, talking robots like the ones we see in science fiction films. C-3PO and R2-D2 are powerful robotic images that have been around for decades. Robots like these will come into our lives much more quickly than we imagine -- self-service checkout systems are the first primitive signs of the trend. Here is one view from the future to show you where we are headed:

Automated retail systems like ATMs, kiosks and self-service checkout lines marked the beginning of the robotic revolution. Over the course of fifteen years starting in 2001, these systems proliferated and evolved until nearly every retail transaction could be handled in an automated way. Five million jobs in the retail sector were lost as a result of these systems.

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Obama mentioned this years ago

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