This has been attributed to an ancient Chinese curse but like many things these days, you can't always rely on its provenance.
Regardless, we are living in very interesting times, on the brink of the greatest change in human history to date.
Apart from the current social upheaval and nationalistic isolationism (whew, big words) we are also changing in technology like never before as we approach the fourth Industrial Revolution.
This is the age of automation and robotics.
A little far fetched I hear you say.
A few years ago I may have agreed with you but then I got a 3d Printer.....
Investigate the world of 3D printing and your worldview changes with it.
For example, I have had my 3D Printer (cost $400.00) for less than a year and while working full time as well as taking holidays and weekends away I have still managed to build this:
So this is something that I have built at home at no great cost in my spare time, just let that sink in.
Now consider that industry is doing this full time with huge budgets and massive resources.
Robotics, automated vehicles, factory automation and AI are here now and the trend is increasing dramatically.
So where does that leave us?
There are a couple of options,
Oppose it and slow down the uptake by forcing industry to use labour intensive techniques and prop it up with artificial barriers like tariffs.
At best a short term gambit as costs will increase and exports will be too expensive, particularly if your market imposes tariffs as well, which is happening now between the US and China.
Alternatively, and it's the only real option, embrace the change and make it work for you.
Adapt society to take advantage, before the technology adapts society in a way you don't want.
If we don't embrace the change then we will become victims of it.
Can we turn back the clock?
Some politicians think we can but how long for and how much damage will it do?
When's the last time you saw someone walking in front of a car waving a red flag as a warning.
Technology is not going away, we need to use it and accept it.
Resistance is futile.
So what happens to the people displaced by the technology?
Now is the time to change our society and include everyone, not just those with a job.
Universal basic income is a great first step.
Doing it through reverse taxation limits it to only those who need it and people who are out of work have a way forward to re-invent themselves with dignity.
Now is the time to change before it's forced on us.
I support a basic income and will be standing for the Australian Senate in 2019 to support this.
May we all live in interesting times.
#basicincome @voteclivemyers
P.S. here is a video that emphasises the point a little more:
Meanwhile on a lighter note I thought this was pretty funny.
This week is the beginning of a new age,at least for me.
I am a founding member of the Pirate Party here in Australia and I've finally taken the plunge having decided that I want to do something to shape the future of our country.
I have put my name forward to stand for the Australian Senate and have been nominated for pre-selection.
This is has now been voted by the membership and I am pleased to announce that I am the successful candidate and will be standing.
Now the hard work begins.
As readers of my blog well know, I am an strong advocate of automation and robotics.
However I am also very aware of the downside of this disruptive technology.
More and more people (particularly lower skilled workers) will be displaced in the workforce as this trend continues and I want our country to be in the forefront to act on this and not spending years playing catch up when it really starts to bite.
As a consequence I will be supporting a Universal Basic Income policy, where every Australian has the right to a guaranteed income with no strings attached which they can use as they wish.
The Pirate Party Australia already has a policy here that has a lot of really good practical ideas on how to implement this and I would take that as a very good starting point to build on if elected.
So.... therefore I am standing for the senate.
Just a note on the effects of technology.
We recently took a trip to San Francisco and were absolutely appalled at the number of homeless people sleeping on the streets. Whole areas are basically full of homeless and for a first world country this is unbelievable and broke my heart to see it.
To be fair, it's not because of automation but is due to tech companies pushing up costs due to skilled workers getting high wages, but the effect is the same. Lower skilled people suffering because of it.
As we live in a wealthy country, now is the time to act before this happens here to the same extent, which it will if government doesn't take action before it's too late.
More news as it happens and please feel free to follow me on twitter @voteCliveMyers
One of the greatest issues facing the world today is the shift by Donald Trump to protectionism.
His stated aim is to return jobs to the US as China has been "stealing" them and "ripping of America" for years.
What he doesn't see, or more likely won't admit to is the fact that these jobs were not stolen but given to China by people exactly like him.
For instance all his (now failed) clothing line were manufactured in China, Indonesia and other countries.
Why?
Because clothing made in the US was too expensive and can't compete.
Now he wants manufacturing (and jobs) to come back to the US.
The only way that can happen is for employees in the US to take lower wages than they get now which means that would be little more than state sanctioned economic slavery.
Alternatively manufacturers can automate and that means faster cheaper production but fewer jobs.
Therefore production can increase but employment (number of consumers with an income) decrease.
So what is the answer to this conundrum?
In countries that really want to address the actual problems and not just appeal to their limited supporter base are stating to seriously discuss the guaranteed universal income.
This is where everyone receives a state income that gives them basic economic security without having to work.
That means that they don't have to work two jobs to make a basic income or run around in circles to satisfy governments that they are actively looking for work.
This has been done successfully in other countries, yes, even in the US under Nixon, and is now resurfacing in many countries.
Personally I don't know if it will eventually work successfully, I think it will but we would be doing all people of the world a huge disservice if we don't discuss or test this in different societies and not just try to turn back the clock to a golden age that never actually existed for everyone.
Outside of the US it's possible that this will get a fair trial.
So, its being discussed but what does it all mean to the recipients?
Does it mean you get to stay home and drink beer all day while watching TV?
Maybe for a few that would be true but consider someone who really wants to look after their family but spend so much time working flat out in one or maybe two jobs top stop their family from starving. This is a trap as they can't risk trying to improve themselves in case they lose the income they have but can barely survive on what they earn.
Give them a guaranteed income and that all changes. They now have time to up skill for a higher paid job or look for a better job without starving or maybe start a cottage industry.
The big thing is, for the first time with this scheme, there are now options.
Without the stigma of being on welfare or starving if you get sick peoples lives have already improved and the only way from there is up unless you choose to do nothing.
In that case society wears the cost and good luck to you.
With automation increasing in all industries everyday this is not really something that can be ignored and any country that does, does so at their peril.
Basically jobs are not coming back, not now, not ever so it has to be planned for as early as possible so it can be proved and implemented in a controlled fashion.
Not a good time for the automated vehicle industry as there have been two fatalities with autonomous vehicles in the past couple of weeks.
Firstly an Uber hit a pedestrian wheeling a bike across road and killed her.
Looking at the video it would be difficult to say if there would have been a different result had the car been driven manually but of course we won't have the full picture until all the reports are in but it will be interesting to get an official verdict.
Little consolation to the pedestrian and her family but road deaths have been happening since the invention of the wheel.
Tesla has lost a second driver when his car hit a barrier and killed the driver.
It has to be said that the collision shouldn't have happened and the result should have been less serious but the barrier had been hit previously and it had lost it's absorbsion quality which made it far worse than it should have been.
Again, speculation is only available at this point until investigations showthe real cause but it must be said that a Tesla is "driver assist" and not fully autonomous, a fact that Tesla is making the most of.
It would be interesting to see a static that compares the number of crashes involving Teslas again and equivalent number of other models to see if the crash rate due to automation is significantly lower, which I suspect would be the case.
Ford has announce the European version of the 2018 Ford Focus with many new driver assist features including:
Cross traffic alert which wars of vehicles in front or behind which is great for backing out of a parking spot where you are between two 4 wheel drives and can't see a thing.
Auto parking
Lane keeping system
Blind spot warning
Sign reading cameras to warn of speed changes or dangers
Adaptive lighting
Auto breaking to 50 KMPH
Distance warning for vehicles in front
Tired driver warning
Considering that these features are all on a car not considered to be the high end of the market shows how far along this technology is and how quickly the tech is gaining traction.
This new Valencia factory, with automation turns out a new car every 40 seconds.
New news on the autonomous front - as it keeps rolling on.
27th February 2018 is when California announced that fully autonomous test vehicles will be allowed on the road without a driver as of April 2nd.
As far as I am aware this is a world first and, barring massive mishaps, will be the first of many cities allowing this as they realise the advantages of being first to get this in place.
An interesting fact about the above video is that the voice is computer generated. It sound pretty real but there are a few give a ways if you listen carefully.
Ford also wants to dominate in the automated control systems and is working on its cloud mobility system which allows cars to talk to infrastructure through an open source platform.
Something that this fledgling industry sorely needs for future growth.
Ford is aggressively pushing the autonomous line and has deep pockets so watch this space...
In an interesting but unrelated activity I, like most other people in the world have been watching the slow motion train wreck of gun violence in the US.
To get a more even view I look at many news sources including NYtimes CNN and Fox news as there are no impartial news outlets in the US that I can see, as everything is polarised along party lines.
Anyway, I digress.
I was looking at fox news and saw an article by an NRA and strong gun ownership supporter who reference the constant comparisons to Australia's successful gun laws.
His article tried to downplay the effects this has had in our country and, most unlike me, I couldn't keep my mouth shut.
I wrote comments about how there has not been a mass shooting in 22 years (since gun laws and buyback) and that the concept of a mass shooting in a school or anywhere else is not even remotely on anyone's radar.
In Australia, at this point at least, it's not an issue in any way shape or form.
Where the surprise came, as this was Fox news, was the number of positive comments and likes I received and no death threats. Evidently most US citizens support gun laws but politicians don't.
I have done more online resarch and it appears most polls tend to confirm this.
Why don't US people vote on issues like this and vote them out?
Glad I live here where I don't have to worry about guns, we have enough problems.
Never in the field of human endeavour has something so stupid yet at the same time totally appropriate been contemplated and then actually achieved.
I refer of course to a Tesla now heading out into space with a dummy in the drivers seat in a space suit, looking really cool with his arm on the windows, just cruisin'.
This is a live feed.
Love the Hitchikers reference on the display...
(semi)Automated vehicle in space, another first.
When you think about it though the number of technological achievements that made this happen are staggering.
1. The heaviest payload ever achieved to space
2. Recovered booster rockets (well nearly all).
3. Fully autonomous ship to land the booster on.
4. The sheer pathos of the payload and the totally appropriate soundtrack that goes with the videos will make Bowie live forever.
This whole thing just makes me tingle.
And as a bonus the flat earthers have to come up with a new theory or more likely will just brand it all as a fake because they can't disprove it. Oh well it takes all types.
When the Tesla eventually goes into a parking orbit I wonder how long it will be before someone finds a way of give it a ticket?
Anyway, back on our world.
I have been fortunate in my job to have been involved in basic testing of a Teleprescence robot that allows sick kids at home or in hospital to interact with their friends in class without leaving their home or even their bed. This is a project by a group in Australia called Missing school.
This is the actual Omnilabs ad for the device.
This is something that could see a lot of use in schools in the near future and a number of Australian schools are currently trialing it.
It's great because the kids who are confined can still participate in the class and interact which can give them more meaning to their lives and an interest while still learning.
Back in my world I'm progressing with my build of the Inmoov robot and have completed the forearm and hand and am now printing every night to get all the plastics ready for when my servos arrive from the US.
This is where I'm at:
The software makes it much easier (Myrobotlabs) than trying to write your own, believe me I've tried (and failed).
I grew up in an era with no TV and now look at what you can do at home.
The Ehang 184 which I have discussed right back in my first blog entry, is now carrying people in China as part of it's advanced testing and expects to have a commercial version of this available this year.
From the video it looks like they now have a two seat version as well.
There appears to be a bit of a war to decide if Uber or Waymo is going to be the leaders in automotive technology and it has gone to court. Industrial espionage and all the juicy ingredients make this a battle to watch.
Meanwhile, back in Oz........
Robotics is a funny old thing.
By that I man it is mostly about perception.
If a robot looks and sounds human then may people think that this is an advanced intelligence that thinks for itself.
Not necessarily so.
I remember writing a program many years ago in basic.
What it did was take any input and turn it back into a question. I called it "Shrink".
I had it ask "what would you like to talk about"?
I then rephrased the input and elicited a response.
I had a list of keywords. If the response didn't have a keyword I would ask "Can you expand on that a little bit?"
This gave the impression that the program was listening and quite often the expansion would elicit a keyword that could get a response.
It wasn't listening as such, but psychiatry works on asking the right questions and having the subject follow their own path and come to their own resolution.
This program did just that.
It wasn't smart but sounded like it was even though it was as dumb as a brick.
It's all about perception.
AI is not sentient, it's just getting a machine to learn.
The dangerous part of that is having a machine make it's own decisions and allowing it to act on it without any control.
For instance, if you had a computer with the power to control every aspect of your environment with total autonomy and then introduced the ability to control your health, then you could have an issue.
For instance you could say " Computer, wipe out cancer in all humans".
Great!.
Maybe not. This is a machine that works on logic not a human with the sum of knowledge accumulated by years of growing and learning without being able to cause a lot of harm.
You have a machine that has total control, "Wipe out cancer"? sure. The logical way is eliminate all humans and the problem is solved!
Not the optimal result from our perspective but an elegant solution nevertheless.
There is no malice in this action and no intelligent response either. Just a machine response.
Coming back to robotics. If you build a robot it is a machine, just like a toaster and just as smart.
But perhaps with the ability to learn. That learning will be a logical response not a human one.
If you have software that controls it then it is just process control with no real smarts and no real danger, unless you let it be dangerous.
A car is a machine with no danger to anyone when it's sitting still. Once you start it and drive off then it has the potential to kill. Humans kill many people every year with cars either accidentally or intentionally and hopefully robotic vehicles will put an end to much of that.
But only if it is intelligently implemented.
Imagine the situation where you have a totalitarian government and they have control of all autonomous vehicles. Dissident? not anymore. Oops sorry his car malfunctioned and drove off a cliff.
My bad, we'll fix the software.
Anyway, back to the humanoid robot.
No matter how human it looks it's still a machine, just like a car and just as safe or dangerous as the controls around it.
I have now built a robotic arm as the first stage of the Imoov project (inmoov.fr) and downloaded the software to make it work using the preconfigured myrobotlab.
It looked really cool when installing, looked like a hacker sequence from a movie with the green text rolling down the screen for ages.
Once I got it installed I found that it is actually voice activated.
I then tried to respond when it asked my name and tried for some time to get it understand that my name was Clive, not hi or hello or any other variant except my name. I even had my wife try and she had no better result.
I then remembered when I worked in Taiwan at one stage no one could understand my Australian accent so I had to put on an American one and then people knew what I was saying.... Such is life.
I tried it on the computer as Cliiiive with the best American accent I could muster and, wouldn't you know it, got it right first time.
So OK..
Being voice activated I thought I would jump right in and after setting a few things up I said to it "close hand". It responded "closing my hand" and lo and behold it did. Cool.
Not to be outdone I said "open hand" and it dutifully did.
Oh the power....
I commented to my wife, "this is quite sophisticated stuff" and to my surprise the computer responded with "Thank you. I try."
So this is my entry into robotic software control. Years in advance of the basic programs I wrote with my first robot arm version only a couple of months ago. No longer will I try and re-create the wheel as this stuff is light years ahead of anything I could do.
So now, my programming skills shown as woefully inadequate, I will push on with the build and play with real software to get a better understanding and keep you posted as it happens.
And have fun in the process.
