Month: September 2019

Labor Day Rerun: Attack of the Job-Killing Robots

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(This is a 3-part series, link to next post is at the end)

Here’s a new factory for making automobile frames, specifically designed to minimize the need for human labor.  The CEO of the company that built it actually said, “We set out to build automobile frames without people.”

At the start of the process, rough steel plates are inspected by electronic sensors, automatically pushing aside any that deviate from tolerances.  Conveyors take the plates through punching, pressing, assembling, and nailing machines, as well as a machine that can insert 60 rivets simultaneously in each frame.  A set of finishing machines then rinse, dry, spray-paint, and cool the frames.  Aside from a few men moving frames between conveyor belts, the floor routine of the plant requires almost no hand labor.

And today’s robotics and artificial-intelligence advances go far beyond automating routine manufacturing labor and take over the kind of cognitive functions once thought to be exclusive to human beings. Here, for example, is a new AI-based system that displaces much of the thought-work which has been required of the people operating railway switch and signal installations:

The NX control machine is in effect the “brain” of the system. It automatically selects the best optional route if the preferred route is occupied.  It will allow no conflicting routes to be set up. It eliminates individual lever control of each switch and signal.

Pretty scary from the standpoint of maintaining anything like full employment, don’t you think?

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How Air Superiority Over Nazi Germany was Really Won

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I sometimes write history posts on the Quora.com site.  I did that yesterday with  Colonel Hubert “Hub” Zemke’s “Fighter Pilot Conspiracy” in the Combined Bomber Offensive that I’ve mentioned in a previous post here on Chicagoboyz.
This is the cover of Col. Hubert “Hub” Zemke’s book “Zemke’s Wolf Pack” on the exploits of the 56th Fighter Group in the Combined Bomber Offensive.  Zemke is pictured under his P-47D.
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Effectively, starting from July 1943, Zemke organized an expanding mutiny to 8th Air Force commanding General Ira Clarence Eaker’s orders that USAAF fighters stick close to the bomber stream.
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By it’s end, the Zemke’s Mutiny had an international cast of hundreds that included the signals intelligence spooks of the RAF and elements of the following USAAF organizations: the VIIIth & IXth Fighter Commands, three USAAF fighter wings, and a large number of the 8th and 9th Air Force’s fighter groups under those wings and the signals section of 8th Air Force Headquarters AJAX.
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The story of how this came about and ended is at this link:
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https://www.quora.com/Why-were-P-38-fighters-not-used-more-as-heavy-bomber-escorts-in-Europe-early-in-WW2-given-their-2-200-mile-range-and-40-000-feet-ceiling/answer/Trent-Telenko?__filter__=&__nsrc__=2&__snid3__=5139187351

Labor Day Rerun: Technology, Work, and Society

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Here is an intriguing book concerned with the exponential advances in technology and the impact thereof on human society.  The author believes that the displacement of human labor by technology is in its very early stages, and sees little limit to the process.  He is concerned with how this will affect–indeed, has already affected–the relationship between the sexes and of parents and children, as well as the ability of ordinary people to earn a decent living.  It’s a thoughtful analysis by someone who clearly cares a great deal about the well-being of his fellow citizens.

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