Não acredito nestas relações simplistas

Há tempos neste postal, "Reconfiguração", sublinhei:

"Poised to take off in the late 1800s, electricity flopped as a source of mechanical power with almost no impact at all on 19th-century manufacturing. By 1900, electric motors were providing less than 5 per cent of mechanical drive power in American factories.
...
Productivity finally surged in US manufacturing only in the 1920s. The reason for the 30-year delay? The new electric motors only worked well when everything else changed too. Steam-powered factories had delivered power through awe-inspiring driveshafts, secondary shafts, belts, belt towers, and thousands of drip-oilers. The early efforts to introduce electricity merely replaced the single huge engine with a similarly large electric motor. Results were disappointing."

Quando se fala sobre robotização julgo que falta também fazer algum tipo de reconfiguração mental. A maior parte das vezes que leio ou oiço sobre robotização recordo a técnica de manter x variáveis constantes e variar apenas uma:

"Bah... eu aprendi a fazer isto desde a escola primária… 7 variáveis: manter 6 constantes e mudar uma delas. E depois repetir para outra variável e assim sucessivamente.
Vantagens deste método:
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Poucas experiências
Método simples e intuitivo (usado desde a escola primária)
À medida que avançamos na realização das experiências vamos descobrindo coisas acerca do sistema
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Desvantagens deste método:
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Muito sensível a erros experimentais, para remediar usam-se mais amostras, ou seja, repetem-se os testes, o que aumenta o número de testes
Ignora a interacção entre variáveis
Leva a experiências pouco estruturadas"

Quando li "Robótica. A tecnologia que vai revolucionar o mercado de trabalho" a minha mente transformou-se num turbilhão de ideias acerca das interacções.

O texto relaciona robótica e menos emprego. Eu relaciono robótica e menos flexibilidade. Basta recordar:

"In principle, the production of virtually any component or assembly operation could be robotized and moved to high-wage countries—but only so long as demand is great enough, and design specifications stable enough, to justify huge scale and hundreds of millions, if not billions, in upfront investments."

Basta recordar porque é que a VW declinou o pedido inicial da Deutsche Post, ou porque é que a Toyota e a Mercedes estão a reduzir a automatização.

O que digo aqui sobre Mongo? Mais variedade, mais tribos, mais flexibilidade, mais rapidez, ... menos friendly para gigantes e mais pro-independentes.

Assim, não acredito nestas relações simplistas entre robotização e emprego porque descuram o impacte de Mongo no perfil das empresas e da procura.

Têxtil e placas tectónicas

Um exemplo português de utilização da Indústria 4.0 em "Adaptarse o morir: la industria 4.0 vuelve a poner en jaque al textil":

"Tras adaptarse a la deslocalización industrial y sobrevivir a la última crisis financiera y de consumo, el textil encara ahora un cambio de paradigma productivo, que vuelve a poner en jaque su continuidad. Si la tercera revolución consistió en la automatización de los procesos para la producción en masa y en serie, la cuarta consiste en digitalizarlos y gestionar los datos para ganar eficiencia y rapidez, y mejorar la rentabilidad, con series cortas y personalizadas.
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Esta transformación implica replantear de nuevo el modelo productivo de la industria textil y vuelve a redefinir las redes de aprovisionamiento, acercándolas de nuevo. [Moi ici: Outra vez o ranger das placas tectónicas e as oportunidades e ameaças] Esta nueva industria pone en riesgo modelos productivos tradicionales así como los cientos de miles de puestos de trabajo no cualificado, aunque abre el abanico a nuevos perfiles profesionales más técnicos y más creativos. El cambio ha empezado y no hay marcha atrás. Los expertos coinciden: no se puede dar la espalda a la tecnología.
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El futuro
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Ahora, la industria de la moda es capaz de colocar en el mercado un diseño en veinte días con normalidad; con proveedores en proximidad, puede forzar las entregas a diez días. Con la digitalización, ¿por qué no en 24 horas? Y con impresoras 3D, desde la misma tienda, ¿por qué no en quince minutos? Los expertos consultados coinciden en que llegará, sólo falta ver cuándo."[Moi ici: Esta aceleração não se compadece com distância nem com complexidade... aquele "poner en jaque al textil" faz pensar em: será que os gigantes vão sobreviver?]

Tecnologia e salários

Há dias chamei a atenção para isto:

Pede-se aos teóricos sem skin in the game que olhem para as fotos da realidade. Por favor. Veja os empregos criados com curso superior pic.twitter.com/HTL4SdaRr2

— Carlos P da Cruz (@ccz1) June 21, 2017

Agora encontro:

"even more critically, the enabling technology view implies that any improvement in technology should lead to higher wages for all types of workers. But wage declines for low-education workers have been the norm not the exception over the past 30 years in the US labor market. [Moi ici: Acredito que grande parte desta tendência deveu-se à deslocalização?] In particular, the real wages of workers with less high school, high school or some college have all fallen sharply since the early 1970s. The inability of this conical framework to account for the pervasive phenomenon of declining real wages of certain groups of workers is one of its most jarring shortcomings.
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In particular, wages at the bottom, median and the top move very differently over different time periods. Most notably, in contrast with simple skill-biased technological change view, we do not see an opening of the gap between median and bottom wages.
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there is an extended period from the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s where wages at the bottom are increasing more rapidly than wages in the middle of the distribution.
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In contrast to a view based on enabling technologies helping the most highly skilled workers, we see rapid employment growth at the bottom of the wage distribution both in the 1990s and 2000s. The picture that emerges is thus one in which the economy is generating considerably more employment in lower- paid occupations than in occupations in the middle of the wage distribution.
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Finally, we can also verify that this is not just a US phenomenon. The middle-paying occupations have contracted in every European country between 1993 and 2006, strongly suggesting that the employment patterns we are witnessing in the United States are due to common technological trends rather than idiosyncratic US factors.
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In contrast to the standard framework based on enabling technologies, replacing technologies can reduce wages. This contrasts with the predictions of the canonical model we discussed in the previous section. The key is the difference between enabling and replacing technologies.
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• Even with a single type of labor competing against technology or capital, a set of tasks shifting from labor to capital can reduce wages. This effect is further strengthened if there are multiple types of labor, and new technologies directly take away some of the tasks performed by a specific type of labor (for example, semi-skilled manufacturing workers or operators).
• For the same reasons as articulated in the previous bullet point, replacing technologies displace workers, and may cause unemployment.
• If new technologies replace tasks in the middle of the pay distribution, they will cause polarization of employment. Intuitively, these new technologies will take away the middle paying occupations, and thus the overall wage distribution will have a smaller, in some sense ‘hollowed’ middle, causing wage polarization. Interestingly, because workers dislocated by technology from the middle of the pay distribution will compete with others, changes in employment structure may be divorced from wage growth patterns. As a result, we may expect to find faster growth of employment in lower- paying occupations as those dislocated by technology also seek employment in these occupations, which is confirmed by the changes in employment structure shown in the figure below, but this does not necessarily imply faster wage growth in these expanding occupations."

Trechos retirados de "Daron Acemoglu on: Will robots take our jobs?"

Cuidado com a automatização

A propósito de "When Robots Miss the Minutiae":

"But the case for automation isn’t universally clear. For although they may lack certain human foibles, software programs also lack certain human attributes that can be enormously useful in business.
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In time, of course, it’s possible that computers will develop the capacities of empathy, historical understanding, and social awareness that humans have. But it’s clear they are not there yet. And in the meantime, it poses a dilemma. The business of online advertising – as so many others do today – relies increasingly on automation. Insert more people into the process, and the price goes up while the pace of execution declines dramatically. That’s bad for margins. But there are clearly times when leaving the computers to their own devices can lead to results that drive clients to rethink their decisions to do business on a platform in the first place. And that’s even worse for margins."

Recordar "a Mercedes e a Toyota"

O factor descurado

A propósito de "The optimist’s guide to the robot apocalypse" há um factor descurado e que me perturbou sobremaneira a leitura do mesmo.

Será que o tipo de produção, as quantidades a produzir vão ser as mesmas?

Será que a automatização não vai acelerar a democratização da produção? O que por sua vez acelerará a diversidade e aumentará a personalização? O que por sua vez reduzirá o tamanho médio dos lotes? O que poderá reduzir o tamanho médio das empresas grandes?

Mongo e a customização dos carros (parte II)

Parte I.

Este surto de automatização "Businesses Ordered More Robots Last Year Than Ever Before" tem duas leituras:

• Por um lado, o atraso americano a entrar nesta onda;
• Por outro, um sintoma da continuação da paixão americana pelo preço, (Ver "Para recordar..."), quando alemães e japoneses já estão noutra fase.

"North American businesses ordered 35,000 robots in 2016, a 10% increase from 2015, according to a report on Tuesday by trade organization Robotic Industries Association."

"Collaborative rather than oppositional thinking"

Na sequência de:

• Acerca da automatização das profissões;
• "humans and machines will work together";
• O truque é a interacção, a co-criação. Os robots não têm hipótese!

"In 1997, after many advances and setbacks, IBM’s Deep Blue finally bested the world’s greatest player, Garry Kasparov.
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But something strange happened to chess after 1997. Instead of capitulating, its masters rethought their own thinking. The following year, Kasparov opened the first tournament of what has come to be known as Advanced Chess. In Advanced Chess, players are allowed to use a computer to assist them – and the results have been revelatory. Thanks to hardware and software improvements in the years since Deep Blue’s victory, even relatively weak computers now routinely beat Grandmasters at tournament level. But as Advanced Chess has shown, relatively weak computers working alongside human players will wipe the floor with the most advanced supercomputers. Collaborative rather than oppositional thinking has yielded radical advances in chess theory, and opened up whole new areas of play."

Trechos retirados de "What's wrong with big data?"

O futuro da produção chinesa

A propósito de "China’s Factories Count on Robots as Workforce Shrinks":

"China’s appetite for European-made industrial robots is rapidly growing, as rising wages, a shrinking workforce and cultural changes drive more Chinese businesses to automation. The types of robots favored by Chinese manufacturers are also changing, as automation spreads from heavy industries such as auto manufacturing to those that require more precise, flexible robots capable of handling and assembling smaller products, including consumer electronics and apparel.
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At stake is whether China can retain its dominance in manufacturing.
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“China is saying, ‘we have to roboticize our industry in order to keep it,’”"

 Qual era a vantagem competitiva da China?

"In addition, the average hourly labor cost—defined as wages plus benefits—of $14.60 in China’s coastal manufacturing heartland has more than doubled as a percentage of U.S. manufacturing wages, from roughly 30% in 2000 to 64% in 2015, according to Boston Consulting Group, making the country less competitive as a destination for manufacturers."

 A China tem de se "especializar" em trabalhar para o seu enorme mercado interno porque vai cada vez mais perder a vantagem do custo para o resto do mundo.
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Um robot dinamarquês ganha tanto como um robot chinês.

Mongo e a customização dos carros

"Gone are the days when Ford’s factories would turn out cookie-cutter copies of a particular model, truck after truck after truck. The River Rouge Complex here can produce 600,000 variations of the F-150, giving a distinct, made-to-order touch to many of the 1,300 vehicles that roll off its assembly lines daily.
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That kind of variety helps keep demand high for the F-150 — the best-selling truck in the United States for four decades — and that sort of innovation, some think, could help revive American manufacturing.
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Even as automation has bolstered productivity, it has taken a toll on American autoworkers, whose wages flat-lined as their employers shed jobs. Since 2000, U.S. carmakers have trimmed by 30 percent the number of employees in parts and manufacturing, according to federal data.[Moi ici: Quem estará mais avançado, a Ford ou a Mercedes? A Ford ou a Toyota?]
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The flexibility made possible by smarter manufacturing also improves the buying experience for customers, analysts say. Mass customization is the future,
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With that level of specificity, customers have more control over the details in products they buy.
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“A vehicle is really becoming a part of an individual,” Dearborn plant manager Brad Huff said. “So we’ve seen it go from, in this particular vehicle line, being just a tool for work to being a family vehicle. I see that going even further: people putting their own stamp on it.”[Moi ici: Quanto mais investimento pessoal, mais tribos, mais oportunidades para projectos alternativos para micro produções]
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And if carmakers can do it, other manufacturers can, too. Think about custom textiles or electronics, manufacturing analysts say. Companies in scalable industries — those that can generally step up production without sacrificing performance — probably can afford, and benefit from, investment in technology to optimize mass customization."

Trechos retirados de "Is that a robot in the driver’s seat at Ford’s F-150 plant?"

Acerca da automatização das profissões

Em "How Many of Your Daily Tasks Could Be Automated?":

Também sinto que nisto se olha para o futuro com os modelos mentais do passado que ainda são usados no presente. Receio que haja uma viciação do pensamento em torno da eficiência. Sinto que não têm isto em conta...

... quando, por exemplo, escrevem isto "Robot doctors and lawyers? It’s a change we should embrace":

"the second future is very different – the introduction of a range of increasingly capable systems will entirely replace the work of traditional professionals.
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For now, these two futures will develop in parallel. But in the long run the second future will dominate. It will give rise to new ways of sharing expertise in society and will lead to the gradual dismantling of the traditional professions. This is where the latest evidence and thinking leads us." [Moi ici: Já vejo ordens profissionais a apresentar providências cautelares]

Claro que o resultado terá de ser "Jovens receiam perder os seus empregos para robots".
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Sublinho uma frase do Guardian, que nem parece do Guardian:

"The professions exist because they help us to solve problems
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Traditionally, we have trusted doctors to keep us in good health, teachers to educate our children, lawyers to advise us on our entitlements and accountants to manage our finances. They have had knowledge and experience that lay people did not.
Yet this tradition is under siege.
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Our view is that it is precisely the importance of the work that professionals do that should lead us to embrace radical change. The traditional professions are creaking. Affordable access to good quality medical guidance and legal support, for example, is woefully low.
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We expect that many people will find this uncomfortable. The idea that the traditional professions will play a less prominent role in the future will be troubling."

Máquinas farão o lado automatizado, o lado low-cost das profissões, ou o lado que pode ser sistematizado.
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Pessoas e máquinas a trabalhar juntas, como aprendi com Kasparov (aqui e aqui), prestarão o serviço que implica interacção. Onde é que as pessoas podem fazer a diferença?