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this post was submitted on 31 Oct 2024
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At the moment it still looks like a technology demonstrator, but with what we saw in this video there are a small percentage of jobs it could likely do today replacing human workers.
My guess is that the task we saw it doing is actually a human job today. The objects being moved from rack to rack were plastic engine covers. The racks are labeled with "Engine covers". That is WAY too specific to be random. My guess is that they worked/are working with an automotive assembly company to identify tasks that humans do today that a robot could do tomorrow. The auto company likely provided the engine cover parts as well as the racks and described the parameters for the job.
Even if you look at the Boston Dynamics robot and say that a human could do that faster/cheaper/better, consider that the robot works 24/7 with no sick days, vacations, or family emergencies. From a purely business perspective, the robot could be a game-changer for the better. From a societal view, this will have serious negative consequences to the people that our society will need to evolve to change for the better.
That's the rub, isn't it? From a society view, having manual labor all done by robots is also a positive game changer, as it protects human health with no loss in standard of living, but because we will just lay people off with no support, it will instead plunge our society into despair.
The automation tax that gates/etc proposed to fund UBI/social support networks is making more and more sense.
I'm all for UBI, but the automation tax is a quagmire.
In this theoretical new tax, tell me what qualifies to be taxed?
Automation tax is a nice idea but a nightmare to try to make in policy. Additionally, it will have a stifling effect on any business efficiency efforts after it exists.
If the tax is based upon workers losing their jobs to automation, it will have a massive knock on effect limiting new hires. A company would be very leery of hiring a worker if they could be accused (and taxed) of automation replacement when that worker is let go.
UBI is needed for power redistribution more than wealth redistribution. Sure, one good reason is the employment displacement from robotics/ai. But a robot tax is far inferior to general income taxes. Beyond your examples, pipes and wires into your home are automation. Machines with human operators are automation as well.
Even if you were to only tax the robot users, what about those who get rich from building yachts for the robot users?
China has a big lead in robotics because nearly all manufacturing is done there. That is there massive competitive advantage in EVs as an example. As a national competitiveness, and consumer prices, measure, incentivizing people to go collect their water from a nearby river, and heating wood from nearby trees, and otherwise committing to full employment through less automated processes, is a massive decline in standard of living.
UBI does let you create your own job. Sales and design will always be needed, even if design is inputs into an AI prompt. Without the disempowerment of warmongering rulership, AI will serve the disinformation and murder needs of that rulership. UBI/freedom dividends funded by taxes on extreme income is the path to make the winners pay for human sustainability instead of human extermination.