Jobs, China and the Robots of Doom... -- AI, AL, CPS, Plan, Soc, Tech, $$$

*
A common concern these days relates to manufacturing jobs going to China. Strangely enough, not many people have been paying attention to a potentially larger trend in the development of basic robotics. No, I'm not talking about traditional assembly line robots, though those are important. Nor am I talking about the recent explosion in service robots.

No, instead I'm thinking about "Fab Labs" and rapid prototyping machines. These are machines capable of taking a wide variety of designs and producing the machines they detail -- or at least all the parts. (Some assembly required.)

The Fab Lab is described in this article in The Economist.

The article notes, "The 'fab lab', as Dr Gershenfeld has nicknamed his invention, is a collection of commercially available machines that, while not yet able to put things together from their component atoms, can, according to its inventor, be used to make just about anything with features bigger than those of a computer chip."

Just think about what that means. If one machine can do that now, how much longer are we going to need our "plastic stuff" and cheap appliances assembled in other countries? Why not use a simple design, with a few parts to snap together at the end, and have most of your consumer items manufactured in your own home town? Especially if future Fab Labs could churn out parts for items in heavy demand in a region (say, Greater Chicago, or the Raleigh-Durham Research Triangle) while dedicated robotic assembly lines put them together.

The article continues, "Among other tools it includes a laser cutter that makes two-dimensional and three-dimensional structures, a device that uses a computer-controlled knife to carve antennas and flexible electrical connections, a miniature milling machine that manoeuvres a cutting tool in three dimensions to make circuit boards and other precision parts, a set of software for programming cheap computer chips known as microcontrollers, and a jigsaw (a narrow-bladed cutting device, not a picture puzzle). Together, these can machine objects with a precision of a millionth of a metre. The fab lab's purpose is to endow inventors—particularly those in poor countries who lack a formal education and the resources to implement their ideas—with a set of tools that can translate back-of-the-envelope designs into working prototypes.

"And it works. In Pabal, an Indian village with a population of 5,000, a dairy farmer's income is tied to the fat content of his cow's milk. Students at the nearby Vigyan Ashram science school are using a fab lab to build a sensor that will give Pabal's farmers a precise measure of that fat content. In Takoradi, Ghana, people have used the labs to produce a cassava grinder, jewellery, car parts, agricultural tools and communication equipment such as radio antennas. Solar-powered items to harness the relentless local sunlight are in the works. In Norway, Sami animal herders—who are among Europe's last nomads—are using fab labs to make radio collars and wireless networks to track their charges. And in Boston (admittedly not part of the developing world, but conveniently near MIT), the residents of a mixed-income housing complex are using one of Dr Gershenfeld's labs to create a wireless communication network."

I should explain at this point that Dr. Win Wenger, whose techniques have been frequently discussed on this blog, has an exercise for quickly developing novel inventions. I haven't used this one myself... in part because I've found using his precursor technique for increasing intelligence, Image Streaming, leads me to spontaneously develop new inventions in my spare time all by itself.

But imagine if you had a group of people who could easily generate new inventions and rough, amateurish designs, and then turn those designs into working prototypes. Imagine the explosion in technological innovation and small business innovation that would be possible. Forget "a Fab Lab in every home." Imagine "a Fab Lab in every town" or "every neighborhood."

Of course, any such development plan would need to be able to teach people how to be effective entrepreneurs -- either selling their inventions or building their own businesses around them. But it's an intriguing notion. And both the inventor's workshop and the business incubator would be worthwhile additions to any community, even on their own.

Also on the subject of automated manufacturing, another article from Betterhumans.Com goes into the Rapid Prototyping Machine -- of which there are many versions. They're all still expensive...

"But Adrian Bowyer of the University of Bath has come up with an idea for dropping their price: put them to work making copies of themselves." Dr. Bowyer plans to get their price down to a few hundred dollars by having them reproduce. The idea being that our products could eventually cost no more than their raw materials and the energy used to create them.

I'd throw in the additional idea that plastics could conceivably be derived from biological (agricultural) products, and that both plastics and metals with low melting points can be recycled -- and might well be recycled by a more advanced version of this machine. So raw materials might not be much of a cost either. Throw in some really cheap alternative energy and the cost of living really goes down.

But in the meantime, it raises the question -- is the jobs problem going to be seen as foreign competition in ten years, or robots doing more and more of the manual labor? Are we going to have to train everybody to handle jobs far more challenging than those our machines handle now? Could the key be valuing people for their full potential? Perhaps putting them to work developing new technologies and innovations? And other new "intellectual properties" such as art, literature and music?


Future Imperative