T-Mobile@home with Competition

Our landline connection to the local telephone company has finally been severed! We are "free at last, free at last!" Well, not quite free - we'll be paying around $12 per month (saving about $25/month) and getting better features.

As I pulled the plug a couple days ago I reflected on the recent comment that mentioned the "ethics-free competition of capitalism". In my lifetime, telephone service has evolved from a "natural monopoly" with a single supplier and limited choice to a vibrant competitive marketplace with a wide variety of service options and prices suitable for nearly everybody. Lots of telephone operators and others lost their jobs, but many more new jobs were created, and, best of all, consumers now have tremendous communications opportunities at reasonable prices.

THE OLDEN DAYS OF MONOPOLY

When I was young, we did not even have a telephone in our Brooklyn apartment. My parents made calls from pay phones. Incoming calls came to the candy store on our block and a kid would be dispatched to fetch us. When we finally got our own phone it was used almost exclusively for local calls because long distance was so expensive. Early in our married life we had a farm in a rural area of New York and experienced the joys of a four-party line.

I remember when the monopoly phone company would not even allow you to connect a "Brand X" phone to their lines because it might "disrupt" service to others - a "phone-y" excuse as we now know. Like all monopolies, the local phone companies provided minimum service, with little efficiency, and used inane "public service" excuses to keep competition out.

THE MODERN ERA OF COMPETITION

Well, along came cell phones, with multiple companies competing against each other and against landline phones. Some of our friends cut their landlines at that point. Then, with the advent of the Internet, and broadband connectivity to most households, along came Internet phone service. More and more of us are cutting our landlines, getting better service at lower prices.

We selected T-Mobile@home because we have T-Mobile cell phones and it is available for only $10/month plus tax and fees (a few bucks, we are not sure yet). Advantages: 1) You get to keep your old landline phone number, 2) all the existing phones in your home ring and can be used to make calls, 3) Your computer does not have to be on to receive or make calls, 4) The speed and voice quality are as good or better than a landline phone, 5) You can use your old answering machine and/or let the T-Mobile system record your voice mail, 6) Unlimited national long-distance is included, 7) Caller ID is included, 8) Call Waiting is included, 9) Call Forwarding is included., and 10) 911 works to alert emergency services to our home address.

We normally leave our old answering machine on and it intercepts and records voicemail normally. When we are away we can turn our old answering machine off and calls will be answered by T-Mobile voice mail -or- we can forward them so any calls to our home phone will ring on one of our cell phones. The only disadvantage of T-Mobile@home is that it fails if the electricity goes down (but that was the case already since all our phones are wireless and the base units need electricity to work) or if the Internet goes down (in which case we can use our cell phones.)

Our local phone bill, with Caller ID but no long-distance or Call Waiting or Call Forwarding, was over $37/month. We expect to save about $25/month once we recover the one-time $35 access fee and $50 wireless router fee.

There are many other Internet phone options if you have broadband service. They range from free to about $25 plus taxes and fees. If you are willing to leave your computer on to receive or make calls, you can sign up for services like Skype for free and make voice and video calls to others, WorldWide, who also have Skype and have mutually registered. Something called Magic Jack costs about $20/year and allows calls to be made and received nationally like a regular home phone. Services like Vonage cost about $25 plus tax and fees and appear to be similar to T-Mobile@home except you do not have to be a T-Mobile customer to qualify.

I expect other cell phone companies will be forced by the competition to offer $10/month home phone via Internet service. However, many cell phone companies are also in the landline business and will be reluctant to do so.

LESSONS LEARNED

The main purpose of this posting is not to "sell" T-Mobile@home, although I certainly recommend it. My purpose is to counteract the media-sponsored idea that competition is somehow evil.

Fair competition - even the "cut-throat" variety - with government serving only to police standards and fair advertising and contracts, is far more responsive to consumers, and more efficient, than monopolies can ever be. Something that is now said to be a "natural monopoly" may, due to technology advances, no longer be so "natural". Beware of claims by monopolies that they are "protecting the public" or "assuring service to poor people or to rural people" or "protecting American jobs", etc. They are usually self-serving, anti-competitive, and, over the long run, bad for everybody, especially the poor and disadvantaged.

Ira Glickstein

Outrageous Texting Charges and "A Beautiful Mind"

Congress is all bent out of shape over outrageous charges for text messages via cell phones. That provides a hook for a discussion of Nobel Laureate John Nash whose work was dramatized in the book and movie A Beautiful Mind. (I've just published a Google Knol on the Nash Bargain concept that earned Nash his fame.)

OUTRAGEOUS TEXTING CHARGES

I believe it costs the cellphone company only a fraction of a cent per text message. They are making excessive profits by charging 20 cents each. Some kids have run up multi-hundred dollar monthly bills by doing hundreds of texts a day.

OK, I agree the per text charge is obscene, so what should Congress do about it?

IMHO, (ALMOST) NOTHING!

I would favor a law or regulation that requires the cellphone companies to charge no more than the package plan cost in any given month. They have unlimited text plans that cost $30 and up a month, so the breakeven point is about 150 text messages a month. If an account uses less than the breakeven number of text messages (or air minutes, etc.) in a given month, they should be charged the per-unit amount. If they use more, the bill should be capped at the lowest available package plan rate. Beyond that, so long as consumers are made aware of the charges in advance, and have the ability to block text messaging if they don't want it, I think the cellphone companies should be allowed to charge whatever they want.

Let the market and a "Nash Bargain" (see discussion below) set the prices according to what the consumers are willing to pay. Texting is not a necessity of life!

(Phone service and text communication -e.g., email- are not monopolies anymore. My wife and I have a T-Mobile cellphone plan where we share 400 minutes per month with free weekend and evening calls. We blocked text messaging since we don't use it. Our landline phone was costing around $35/month so we cut our connection. Our home phones are now connected via the Internet to T-Mobile at Home for which we pay less than $13/month, including taxes and fees, for unlimited calls in the US including caller ID and voicemail.)

AMERICAN PUBLIC HAS TOTAL MISUNDERSTANDING OF COMPETITION IN AN "ELASTIC" MARKET

Our school systems do not teach anything about how prices are set in competitive markets - or even in a monopoly situation. Yes, if some item is a "necessity of life" and there is only one supplier, they can charge whatever they like, which is why we need protection from natural monopolies. If competitors in some market illegally collude to set prices, limit quantities, and divide markets, the government needs to intervene to protect citizens.

However, if people can live without some product or service, the market is "elastic" - meaning the price will vary with the quantity available, according to a "Demand Curve".

Did you ever learn about a Demand Curve in school? Even college? Most people think products and services should be sold at a price that is some reasonably small percentage above the cost of production and distribution. They think that any mark-up in excess of that reasonable percentage is immoral and should be illegal. They think that producers and retailers can inflate their profits as much as they'd like by increasing prices.

They do not understand that, in an elastic market, even a monopoly supplier can often INCREASE profits by DECREASING prices! Indeed, the best way to set prices in an elastic market is to match production quantities with consumer demand. It turns out that both maximizes consumer value and producer profits.

EXAMPLE OF A MONOPOLY IN AN ELASTIC MARKET

Say a company is the only supplier of a unique product that is nice to have but not a necessity of life. What should they charge for it? Should they set the price as high as anyone is willing to pay? Should they set the price to make their profit per unit as high as possible?

It turns out the answer to both questions is NO! They can actually maximize their profits by producing and marketing a quantity of product that is more than the quantity that would yield the highest per-unit profit.

The figures (from my Nash Bargain Advisor Excel spreadsheet) illustrate the situation. The heavy black line is the Demand Curve that indicates how the market price declines from about $12 per unit to $4 when the quantity on the market increases from 10 million to 100 million units. The thin red and blue curves indicate the production Cost Structures per unit for two alternate production facilities, as a function of the number of units produced. A producer (whether a monopoly or not) has to decide the optimum level of capital investment. Capital investment in more automated production facilities will increase initial, non-recurring costs, but may reduce incremental production costs by a sufficient amount to pay back the investment -or not- depending upon the number of units eventually sold and the market price when they are sold.

The heavy red and dashed blue curves indicate the profit per unit as a function of the number of units produced. You might think the maximum overall profit occurs when the profit per unit is maximized, but you would be wrong! The figure below illustrates the overall profit (or loss) for Alpha and Beta alternatives as a function of quantity produced. It turns out that, up to a point, lower market prices lead to greater sales quantities and lower per-unit production costs and that is what yields the maximum profit.

The overall profit for the alternative Cost Structures is maximized with a market quantity of 65 million for Alpha and 62 million for Beta, assuming each is a monopoly in a given market. This corresponds to a market price of $7.20 to $7.36 per unit. If the monopoly produces too few units, say 10 to 14 million, it will get $11.68 to $12 per unit, but will lose money overall. On the other hand, if produces too many units, say over 70 million, there will be a glut on the market and overall profits will go down substantially.


A COMPETITIVE MARKET AND A "NASH BARGAIN"

The insight John Nash brought to Economics and that gained him the Nobel in Economics for 1994 is that the situation is the same for multiple producers in a competitive marketplace. If two or more companies produce the same or similar products in an elastic market, such as Burger King and McDonalds or HP and Acer, it is to their advantage to collectively produce a certain number of units, neither too few nor too many.

If there are too few fast-food restaurants in a given geographic area, they may be able to charge a bit more per burger, but they will sell fewer as potential customers choose to eat at home or to go to full-service eateries. On the other hand, if there are too many fast-food places, they will have to reduce prices drastically to attract customers and their overall profits may decline or turn into losses.

The same is true for PC makers. As production quantities have multiplied, prices have come down sharply and features have improved dramatically. This, in turn, has increased sales to the point of nearly 100% market penetration in the US and other westernized countries. More and more people have at least one PC and some have a desktop plus a laptop, and other families have one for each member of the family. (My wife and I have one desktop plus three laptops between us.) With the economic slowdown, however, there may be too many units on the market and prices may drop to the point where some producers face losses and have to cut back production or drop out of the market.

So, how can competitors in an elastic market adjust production quantities such that they can each make a fair profit? Well, they could collude and fix quantities and prices and divide markets to increase their profits. However, that would be totally illegal!

Using game theory, John Nash came up with a way to reach "equilibrium" without illegal collusion. His solution is for each competitor to use their own Cost Structure and estimate the Cost Structures of competitors and calculate the quantity they should produce, assuming others are rational and will do the same. (The highlighted part of the previous sentence is the most important part. If competitors are not rational, or if they try to "cheat" by producing too many units, the Nash Bargain will not work.)

The Nash Bargain Advisor (see my Knol) calculates the optimal quantities each competitor should produce to maximize their own self-interest, assuming others "cooperate" by doing the same in a rational way. The Nash Bargain Advisor also calculates the consequences if one or more producers "cheat" and over-produce more than their optimal quanitiy, or, if one or more producers under-produce due to miscalculation or disruption in supplies or production facilities.

Ira Glickstein

A Future That Works for Everyone - An optimistic look at a future with unlimited non-human labor

[From John Griffin]

 “A Future That Works for Everyone”

The following is the narrative combined with the graphics for a presentation I (John Griffin) (jagriffin46@gmail.com) gave to The Villages Philosophy Club on April 12, 2019.

I chose today’s topic because, for me, thinking about the future is simply a lot of fun.  And today more exciting things are happening in science and technology than ever before, and I believe those things will change the world in ways that will surprise many people.  I also believe that with the right policy decisions the future can work for all of us.  I will be disappointed if everyone in the room does not leave here today with at least one (and, hopefully, several) interesting ideas that they had not previously considered.

Of course, the future is essentially limitless – involving countless years and countless possibilities.  So, to maintain focus I am going to limit this presentation to the remainder of this century, and mostly to the next 50 years.  Within that time frame I will mainly talk about our future economy, environment, and social structures.  That should be more than enough to fill my allotted time.  Hopefully, I won’t run over too much, but, if you are anything like me, you won’t be bored.  And, of course, those subjects contain enough controversial political and policy issues to support a vigorous discussion.

One subject I don’t plan to dwell on is The Singularity.

The Singularity is that time or event in which machine intelligence has advanced well beyond the human level, and is then capable of creating technologies that may well be beyond human comprehension.  And that is the simple reason I won’t go there.  If the singularity occurs, and it just might (and possibly before the end of this century), then we can only guess at the consequences.

So let’s get started with the first part of any Optimistic Future – The Economy.  Producing all of the things that people need and want is crucial to the well-being of any society, so let’s examine the three fundamental components of a successful economy.

1. Raw Materials

2. The Energy with which to process the Raw Materials

3. The Means to intelligently direct the Energy to the processing of the Raw Materials

Item #3 typically refers to us – the labor force.  We have the intelligence and the manipulators (i.e. our hands) that enable us to bring the Energy and the Raw Materials together for processing.

In other words, Intelligence + Manipulators = Labor.

At this point I will directly state, the one idea that I consider crucial to any discussion of our future economy.  If you leave here today with just one idea, let it be this one.

Well before the end of this century we will be mass-producing skilled labor.

Your first reaction may be: “Wait a minute, how is it that we are going to mass produce people?”  The answer, of course, is that I am referring to intelligent machines – not people.  And by “intelligent machines” I do not mean human-level, self-aware, general-purpose intelligence.  I simply mean machines capable enough to do the specific job assigned to them.  I will often refer to these machines as “robots”, but I don’t want to limit the idea to the common image of machines with two legs and two arms.  They will come in whatever form is best suited to the job at hand.

I believe such intelligent machines are not only possible but inevitable, and I will spend time near the end of this presentation to explain why.  But first I would like you to think about the idea of mass-producing skilled labor and let the consequences sink in.

Consider, for example, the issue of building and maintaining the physical infrastructure in this country – the roads, bridges, power plants, etc.  Everyone agrees that we have done a poor job in this area.  And yet, we just can’t seem to tackle the problem.  Why is that?  Is there a shortage of concrete or steel or copper or any other necessary raw materials or of the energy to process them?  Of course not.  The problem, as usual, comes down to how we will pay for the one thing that always costs the most – labor.  Labor cost is the reason that corporations chase all around the world looking for the cheapest labor - even if the raw materials have to be shipped quite a distance in order reach the labor supply.

Being able to mass-produce skilled labor - whenever and wherever we need it - is a complete game changer.  The resulting economy will make our current economy look like the Stone Age.

But where will that leave those of us who have been the skilled and unskilled labor of the past?  One answer, of course, is that the large majority of us will simply be “unemployed”.

Some will disagree and claim one or more of the following:

1. We needn’t worry since automation has always created more jobs than it destroys.

2. As long as we have problems to solve we will always have jobs.

3. We will always need workers because the more we produce the more people want.

But even if these statements are all true, remember - we will be mass-producing skilled labor.  Creating another job opening may just lead to the employment of another machine.  This means that, to be employed, a human must have skills and value that no machine can offer.  But how have we been doing in our race against the machine?

In 1840, nearly 70% of our work force was involved in the agriculture sector.  Today that sector employs less than 2% and yet it still produces surpluses for export.  Clearly, in agriculture, automation has not produced more jobs that it destroyed.  Many who were no longer needed on the farm moved into the industrial sector.  But, our industrial employment peaked in 1979 at 19.5 million workers.  Think about that.  We hit peak industrial employment 40 years ago!  Today our industrial sector employs less than two thirds of that number.  Some will say that is because we have sent our production overseas and don’t make anything in this country anymore.  You can tell them they are wrong.  Our inflation-adjusted industrial output is over twice that of 1979, and stands today at record levels.  We simply don’t need all the workers we used to employ.  Clearly, in industry, automation has not produced more jobs that it destroyed.  So, if we are no longer needed on the farms or in the factories, where have we found work?  The answer, of course, is that we moved into the services sector which now employs nearly 80% of our workers.  That sector was seen as a refuge from automated machinery because it valued brains over brawn.  But then the cost of computers fell dramatically and many routine service jobs have also been automated.  And, as for total employment, we should not be fooled by the current relatively low unemployment rate.  The more important measure - the labor force participation rate – has been trending down for years.

Economic growth will always depend on creative solutions to problems.  Currently, only humans provide that creativity, and I won’t claim that machines will ever completely replace us.  However, machine capability will continue to increase, and, by the middle of this century, a large, and increasing, majority of us will have no effective role in economic production.  Even if we offered to help out for free, we would just be in the way.

If you are still not convinced by these statements, I invite you to watch a very persuasive TED Talk titled “3 Myths About the Future of Work (and Why They’re Not True). ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2j00U6lUC-c )

So, if we are destined not to be involved in economic production we are left with two questions:

1. What will we do for money?, and

2. What will we do with our time?

The answer to the first question is simple.  We will do what any child of rich parents would do.  We will live off our parent’s money.

But how many people have rich parents?  The answer to that question is also simple, “We all do.”  We are all children of the society that has been built by our parents and grandparents, etc. - going back thousands of years.  And that society is rich!

2018 US GDP = 20.513 Trillion Dollars¹

2018 US GDP per capita = $62,518¹ 

        (20% of $62,518 = $12,504)

2018 US Poverty Threshold for Individuals  = $12,140²

1. Source: IMF

2. Source: US HHS Dept

In fact, if the output of the US economy in 2018 were evenly distributed, each man, woman and child in this country would have received over $62,000.  Think about that!  If we evenly distributed just 20% of that amount, we would put everyone over the official poverty level for individuals in that year.  We would officially wipe out poverty overnight.  And remember, our future economy will be much larger, so there will be far more than that to distribute.

Of course, you can imagine the reaction.  Business owners will say that distributing our GDP in that way is Socialism.  My simple response to that is, “You are mistaken”.

In a Socialist system the people would claim ownership of your company.  We don’t want your company.  You can own it and operate it in any lawful way you wish.  We only require that you recognize that your shiny new company - one that no longer needs our labor, by the way – was built on our mountain, and you need to pay rent.

As you can see, our mountain consists of society’s accumulated physical and educational and legal infrastructure as well as the accumulated knowledge and technology that makes a highly automated economy possible in the first place.  It even includes our military.  After all, it is difficult to run a company if foreign troops are marching up and down Main Street.  If not for that mountain, any company today would be much less prosperous or even non-existent, so it is not unreasonable to ask for rent.

How much rent should we charge?  Society, in its turn, must recognize that a healthy economy depends on the innovation and exceptional effort of a relatively small percentage of our population.  Those innovators will not build on our mountain if we charge too much rent.  Failure to recognize this simple truth is the primary reason socialist economies fail.  Fortunately, our future economy will be big enough for everyone to get what they need, and for most innovators to get enough to motivate them.

Some of you who remember my presentation on Universal Basic Income will have guessed where I am going with these so-called “rent” payments.  Yes, a portion of those rent payments will be distributed as a Universal Basic Income (UBI) to all adult citizens regardless of income or employment status.  The rest will go to building and maintaining our infrastructure mountain.

Some like to call the UBI “free money for everyone”.  I disagree.  It is not free money.  We and our predecessors have already earned it!  Perhaps we should change the initials UBI to UBD (for Universal Basic Dividend) to emphasize that it is payment for society’s previous investments in infrastructure.  There is an excellent TED Talk on this subject titled “How we'll earn money in a future without jobs”, by Martin Ford, the author of the book “Rise of the Robots”.

( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swB7Ivct8d8 )

We come now to the second question:  What will we do with our time?

For all of human history we have had to work to survive, and we have made a virtue of that necessity.  What we did for a living has defined our position in society.  And many of us base our self esteem and our value to society on what we do to make a living.  With a UBI we will, after all of these thousands of years, at last have the freedom to step off that treadmill, and I, for one, say, “It’s about time!”

So what will we do in this brave new world?  If you have a job that you love, and it is still available to you, then just continue what you are doing and the UBI will supplement your income.  If you have a passion that you could not previously indulge, you are now free to follow your heart.  If you have a family or want to start one, you now are free to spend as much time with them as you wish.  If parents are at home with their children, then gang membership and juvenile misbehavior should decline significantly.  With each adult receiving a UBI, there should be an increased feeling of belonging to a larger community.  Crimes due to a feeling of alienation or economic despair should be noticeably reduced.  In addition, an individual will no longer need to enter into an undesirable relationship simply because they need the financial support of another person.  The UBI will provide the freedom to choose the people with whom we associate.

Maybe what you want to do is travel the world, or play golf seven days a week, or ride every rollercoaster in the country.  Whatever your choice - knock yourself out!  Or simply consider the example of The Villages.  With over 3000 clubs, 600 holes of golf and nightly entertainment, if you are bored you just aren’t trying very hard.

In today’s world we can’t imagine everyone being rich.  After all, someone has to do the actual work.  We can’t all just expect to be waited on.  But with unlimited non-human labor, exactly that situation is possible.  For the first time in human history we can live a life free from drudgery without having to rely on the labor of others less fortunate than ourselves.

Now, before I explain why I believe it will be possible to mass produce skilled labor, I would like to spend a little more time describing specific ways that that unlimited labor will change our future.

The Future of Agriculture

I consider this subject to be one of the most fun to speculate on because there is so much room for improvement.  Imagine a future in which all but the most land-intensive crops are grown indoors.  And, by indoors, I don’t mean in one story greenhouses with the sun shining through a glass roof.

Instead, imagine a high rise building at least one acre in size at its base and several hundred feet tall.  Inside are plants growing in trays that are stacked vertically so that a building one acre at its base will house hundreds of acres of plants.  They are receiving all the nutrients they need and nothing more.  No pesticides or herbicides are needed since all plants are inside and not exposed to pests, weeds, fungus, or any other contaminants.  Gone are e-coli contaminations from nearby animal farms.  Gone are exposures to heavy metals found in natural soils.  Gone is exposure to dust and dirt blowing in from heaven knows where.  And, if any contamination should occur, for any reason, the contaminated area can be easily identified and sterilized.  In summary - agriculture as pure as it can be.

No longer will farmers need to worry about poor (or changing) climates, bad weather, water shortages, limited growing season or contamination.  Every crop should be a success.

Each tray of plants will be illuminated by LED lights that emit just the colors needed for optimal growth.

Using only the needed colors will save on energy and heat removal costs.  In fact, current indoor farms are often referred to as “pinkhouses” rather than “greenhouses” because they use a combination of red and blue LED lights.  No water will be lost to evaporation since humidity will be recycled.  The only water leaving the building will be in the harvested crops.  Water usage will, therefore, we reduced by over 90% compared to outdoor farming.  Fertilizer-contaminated outdoor runoff and all of its consequences, such as red tide and algae blooms will be a thing of the past.

Of course, the care of indoor crops will be very labor intensive.  But remember, we will have unlimited skilled labor.  Imagine tiny machines giving round-the-clock attention to every plant.  In fact, the absence of human workers means that more space can be devoted to plants.  And since plants thrive on carbon dioxide, more of it can be added to the indoor atmosphere without concern for whether humans can tolerate it.  With conditions optimized for each plant variety, we can expect many more crops per year, and the output per acre will be unprecedented.

Indoor agriculture also means that crops can be grown in the city where 70% of the people are expected to live by the year 2050.  This will substantially lower shipping costs, and means that crops can be harvested at peak ripeness rather than harvesting early and hoping the crop is ripe when it reaches the consumer.   This will give new meaning to the phrase “fresh to your table”.

In addition to Agriculture I will briefly touch on these other aspects of our future.

The Environment

I just mentioned the advantages of indoor agriculture, but as our economy grows so will the amount of trash it produces.  How will we keep from being buried by that trash?  Imagine large recycling complexes near every population center.  In each complex there will be thousands of machines capable of sorting your trash into any number of categories, even down to pieces the size of a dime.  Such machines will be capable of disassembling manufactured items so the parts can be further sorted.  The recovered material will be processed for reuse or for environmentally safe disposal.  Today such sorting and processing is not feasible due to the cost of labor.  But remember, well before the end of this century we will be mass-producing skilled labor.

Energy Production

Of course, a larger economy will require more energy.  We all hope that renewable sources will continue to fall in price and eventually provide a meaningful percentage of our energy needs.  However, even in a world with unlimited skilled labor, there is no guarantee that will happen.  If it does not, then I would like to mention one of my favorite carbon-free alternatives – nuclear power.  If, by the end of this century, we are finally able to build practical fusion reactors, then the problem of power and safety is solved.  However, if that does not happen, then I believe our best hope lies in new designs for conventional nuclear power plants.  The reason those plants have not been emphasized in recent years is due to two factors: Safety and Cost.  And adding safety measures is one of the primary reasons for cost increases.  But remember, in a world of unlimited skilled labor, the cost equation will be completely different.

Surveillance Technology

The same technology that makes intelligent machines possible will also make it possible to know where everyone of us is at all times.  Such surveillance can be valuable in preventing and solving crimes, and in providing assistance to those in need.  However, that same technology can bring about George Orwell’s “1984”.  Stories are already coming out of China about how surveillance is restricting the rights of individual citizens.  We must, therefore, be very aware that our right to go where we wish and meet with whom we wish is protected by law, not by our ability to sneak around in the shadows to avoid detection.  At some point there will simply be no more shadows to conceal us.  Therefore, we must very jealously guard our legal protections to maintain our rights and freedoms.

The Services Sector

Yes, the services sector – where do we even begin?  Imagine a trip to your favorite restaurant.  You call for a self-driving vehicle which picks you up at home and drops you off in front of the restaurant and then disappears to serve its next customer.  You won’t see it again since a different vehicle will take you home – and, of course, no parking problems.  In fact, parking lots no longer exist.  You order a steak dinner which is prepared exactly as you like it since your preferences are already known to the computer in charge of the kitchen.  The robot preparing your steak monitors its preparation many times per second so that it appears on your plate at exactly the right moment and simultaneously with all of your side items.  The same is true for the food for everyone in your party.  One or more mobile machines then emerge from the kitchen to serve all of you at the same time.  Exotic and labor intensive food items and desserts are no problem since the kitchen has a pantry full of spare machines that will spring to action depending on demand.

Or imagine your home needs maintenance or remodeling.  Just instruct one or more of your household robots to download the latest plumber, electrician or carpenter software and get to work.

Speculating on the kind of society that we can create with unlimited skilled labor can be a lot of fun, and we have only scratched the surface, but time is limited and I did promise to at least attempt to answer a fundamental question.

Will we really be able to mass-produce skilled labor?

  

Once again Labor = Intelligence + Manipulators.  How are we doing on developing the manipulators?  Here is a video from 4 years ago showing some of the entrants in a DARPA competition that was held to encourage progress in robotics.

( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g0TaYhjpOfo )

As you can see there was considerable work remaining to be done.  Here is a video clip from just three years later.  (specifically, 2m 37s to 3m 10s)

( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRHG7YObDuU  )

And another video clip from October of last year.  (specifically, 1m 45s to 2m 09s)

( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDGYGZTpXHY )

As you can see, significant progress has been made in the ability to control robots on the mechanical level.

But the improvements in machine intelligence are even more impressive.

This picture shows an attempt in the 1960s to program a computer to play chess.  Optimism was high, and many believed that within ten years we would have computers as smart as humans.  It would just be a matter of writing some code.  I was in college at that time and was fascinated by computers so I decided to major in Computer Science and be a part of that effort.  Well, it didn’t quite work out according to plan.  A lot of code was written, but the result was nowhere close to human intelligence.  Other researchers tried to emulate what we knew of the human brain by building networks of artificial neurons.  But there, too, the results were disappointing.  It turned out that creating a smart machine was much more difficult than we realized.  The entire field of Artificial Intelligence (aka AI) fell on hard times – a period that has come to be known as the AI Winter.  As for me, I never did find work in AI and spent my career doing other work in the computer industry.

Geoffrey Hinton

And then in 2006 Professor Geoffrey Hinton of the University of Toronto, one of the few remaining neural network researchers, wrote two papers that would serve as the basis for Deep Learning Neural Networks or what is now simply called Deep Learning.  A fascinating account of his perseverance can be found in this newspaper article

( https://www.thestar.com/news/world/2015/04/17/how-a-toronto-professors-research-revolutionized-artificial-intelligence.html ) from the Toronto Star.  And it was announced recently that Professor Hinton and two long-time associates have won this year’s Turing Award for their work in Deep Learning. 

Because of Deep Learning, conventional speech and photo recognition systems that had been tweaked and improved for decades were swept aside essentially overnight.  Deep Learning is responsible for the performance of the Siri and Alexa devices that some of you have at home, and for recent advances in self-driving vehicles.

These developments were noticed by a young British genius named Demis Hassabis, who would co-found a company called DeepMind that would be acquired by Google in 2014.

 Demis Hassabis

DeepMind would explode into the news when they trained a computer to play the game of Go.

Notice, I say they “trained” the computer rather than “programmed” it.  Go is an ancient Chinese game that many consider to be vastly more complicated than chess.  That complexity has foiled efforts to program a computer to play Go.  When programmers would ask Go players how they chose their moves the typical response was that, after many years of play, they had just developed a feel for where to make their next move.  The programmers’ response was, “That’s no help.  How in the world are we going to program a feel for the game?”  But it turns out that that is exactly what results when a Deep Learning system is trained.  It simply develops a “feel” for the training data.  In the case of DeepMind’s Go playing system called AlphaGo, the training data was thousands of games previously played by humans.  The result, as you may have heard, was that in early 2016,  AlphaGo beat the world’s highest rated Go player, in a 5-game match by the score of 4 to 1.

Here is a picture of Lee Sedol winning that one game against AlphaGo.  But the DeepMind team didn’t stop there.  They wondered what would happen if they trained a system that started as a complete beginner - knowing nothing but the rules, and only training by playing against itself - with no access to human games.  The result was a system they called AlphaGo Zero which then played a 100 game match against the system (AlphaGo) that beat Lee Sedol and won by a score of 100 to nothing.  The lesson from that match was that training on games previously played by humans was actually a disadvantage.  AlphaGo Zero trained only by playing against itself and thereby avoided learning the misconceptions and errors that have apparently been present in human games for centuries.

Now, please bear with me just a bit longer as I can’t resist one more example.  Some DeepMind researchers wondered what would happen if they applied their technology to the game of chess.  Once again, they gave their system nothing but the rules, and set it to learning by playing itself.  Now, today’s best conventional chess-playing computer, named Stockfish,

is so good that the current human world champion, Magnus Carlsen

has less than a 2% chance of beating it in any given game.  But after just 9 hours of training, DeepMind’s system had progressed from complete novice to decisively beating Stockfish in a 100-game match.  And the DeepMind system was looking at hundreds of times fewer game positions than Stockfish.  It managed to win because it had developed a superior feel for the positions it did evaluate.  So, if you should ever wonder how it might feel when the Singularity arrives, consider how conventional chess programmers felt when 60 years of their cumulative effort were made obsolete in just 9 hours.

I could go on with many more examples, but I will just say that such results have captured the attention of essentially all leading tech companies, and long suffering AI researchers are being sought after and paid like rock stars.  The results that I have described, and others, are why I believe that skilled non-human labor will be common well before the end of this century.

I, for one, am looking forward to that future.

END OF NARRATIVE

If you desire additional information, I invite you to check out some of the sources on this list:

The Robot Revolution: The New Age of Manufacturing

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HX6M4QunVmA

The Robot Revolution: Automation Comes into Fashion

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OsSDI8wWAyQ

Denver Recycling Center Testing Robotic Sorter

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YCfFFjFkYlc

This Farm of the Future Uses No Soil and 95% Less Water

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_tvJtUHnmU

Geoffrey Hinton: The Godfather of Deep Learning

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAu3jQWaN6E

This Canadian Genius Created Modern AI (Geoffrey Hinton)

(a video describing how modern neural networks came to be)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9RWTMNnvi4

TOP "Four Pinocchios" of 2015 (Washington Post)

The Washington Post just published the "The Biggest Pinocchios of 2015". I don't always agree with the Washington Post, and my selection of 2015 fibs and fibbers wouldn't be exactly the same as their top "Four-Pinocchio Ratings". However, I think their list is well worth considering.

I've divided the Washington Post list into two groups:
A) The better known fibbers and fibs (depicted in the above graphic), and
B) The lesser known fibbers (depicted in the lower graphic).


Here are the liars and lies from the Washington Post piece by Glenn Kessler (direct quotes from the piece are surrounded by quote marks):

DONALD TRUMP
The Donald is credited with three items in the "Biggest Pinocchios of 2015" list (although they say he earned no  fewer than 11 Four-Pinocchio ratings in the past six months).

FALSE>>>“I watched thousands and thousands of Muslims in New Jersey cheer as the World Trade Center fell.”

"Donald Trump falsely and repeatedly asserted that he saw television images of Muslims in New Jersey celebrating the collapse of the twin towers after the 9/11 attacks. Despite repeated debunking of this claim, Trump continued to assert he was correct, even though he could produce no evidence except a handful of news stories that made brief mentions of alleged celebrations — which never could be confirmed."

FALSE>>>“The Mexican Government is forcing criminals, drug dealers and rapists into the United States.”

"... a range of studies show there is no evidence immigrants commit more crimes than native-born Americans."

FALSE>>>“Obama plans to admit 250,000 Syrian refugees.”

Donald Trump first said President Obama planned to admit 200,000 Syrian refugees, a figure conjured out of thin air. Then it became 250,000. But the real figure is 10,000. The United States is only planning to admit 180,000 refugees from all countries in the next two years."

RALLYING CRY PROTESTING POLICE SHOOTINGS OF BLACKS
FALSE>>>“Hands up, don’t shoot.”
"This phrase became a rallying cry for protests after the fatal shooting of a black 18-year-old by a white police officer, Darren Wilson. Witness accounts spread after the shooting that Michael Brown had his hands raised in surrender, mouthing the words 'Don’t shoot' as his last words before being shot execution-style. Democratic lawmakers raised their hands in solidarity on the House floor. But various investigations concluded this did not happen — and that Wilson acted out of self-defense and was justified in killing Brown."

SENATOR HILLARY CLINTON
FALSE>>>“DOMA had to be enacted to stop an anti-gay marriage amendment to the U.S. Constitution.”

"Former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, the Democratic front-runner, defended her husband’s signing of the anti-gay Defense of Marriage Act as a defensive action, to prevent a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage. But there is little evidence in the public record that was the case, even though Clinton claimed 'there was enough political momentum' at the time to amend the constitution. (Clinton later said it only had come up in 'private discussions.')"

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA

FALSE>>>“The Keystone pipeline is for oil that bypasses the United States.”

"Long before President Obama killed the Keystone pipeline project, he made a number of dubious claims about it, including that the pipeline would have no benefit for American producers at all. But the crude oil would have traveled to the Gulf Coast, where it would be refined into products such as motor gasoline and diesel fuel; the State Department said odds were low that all would be exported. Also, about 12 percent of the pipeline’s capacity had been set aside for crude from North Dakota and Montana."

SECRETARY OF STATE JOHN KERRY

FALSE>>>“With Al Gore, I helped organize the first hearings in the Senate on climate change in 1988.”

"Secretary of State John F. Kerry for years has said he organized the first Senate hearings on climate change with then-Sens. Al Gore and Tim Wirth. But that was false. Kerry was not at the pivotal 1988 hearing in the Senate — and neither was Gore, who organized the first hearing in the House in 1981. On top of that, Kerry described witnessing events that did not happen."

SENATOR RAND PAUL

FALSE>>>“A man was put in prison for conspiracy just for having dirt on his land.”

"Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) loved to tell the story of an elderly man sitting in prison for 10 years after being accused of racketeering and organized crime — just for putting dirt on his land. But just about every aspect of Paul’s recounting was inaccurate and misleading. The man, Robert Lucas, was convicted of mail fraud, conspiracy and environmental violations for his role in developing 67 mobile home lots inside federally protected wetlands, building on wetlands without approval and knowingly selling land with illegal sewage systems that were likely to fail."

SENATOR ELIZABETH WARREN

FALSE>>>“Auto dealer markups cost consumers $26 billion a year.”

"Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), pushing for new regulations of loans made by car dealers, cited a figure based on a misleading and dated report from the Center for Responsible Lending, an advocacy group. But then she also wildly mischaracterized the number, as even the advocacy group conceded that the figure includes reasonable compensation owed to car dealers."

SENATOR CHRIS MURPHY

FALSE>>>“Since Sandy Hook there has been a school shooting, on average, every week.”

"Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) made this claim in June, which indicated 128 school shootings since December 2014. The number came from the anti-gun group Everytown for Gun Safety, but its methodology was deeply flawed, including suicides, accidental discharges and so forth. Official government statistics are much lower, indicating the political peril of relying on advocacy groups."

MAYOR RUDOLPH GIULIANI

FALSE>>>“Obama never says the United States is exceptional or great.”

"Former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani (R) asserted that Obama, unlike other Democratic presidents such as Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter or Harry Truman, never said the United States was a great or exceptional country. This was a bizarre claim. We concluded Giuliani must have muted the sound whenever Obama spoke, because there are many examples of Obama saying exactly that."

GOVERNOR MIKE HUCKABEE

FALSE>>>“The science on climate change is not settled because in 1970s we were worried about ‘global freezing.’”

"Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee (R) cited the “covers” of Time and Newsweek to claim global freezing had been a serious concern 40 years ago. But these were not cover stories, just isolated examples of speculative journalism. It was never a serious concern; researchers found that peer-reviewed articles on global cooling were in a distinct minority compared to those concerned with global warming."  

[I (Ira) think this Huckabee Pinocchio is not fully justified and should not be in the top Four-Pinocchio list. See my NOTE below.]

Ira Glickstein

NOTE ABOUT THE HUCKABEE PINOCCHIO: 

The threat of man-made global COOLING perceived in the 1970s was apparently not featured on the covers of Time or Newsweek. So, technically, Huckabee was fibbing when he claimed COVER stories. However, global COOLING was fairly widely reported at the time, including pieces in both Time and Newsweek.  

Here is what the Washington Post RECENTLY wrote about 1970's press coverage of the threat of man-made global COOLING:

Time magazine in 1974 titled an article “Another Ice Age?” and said “climatological Cassandras are becoming increasingly apprehensive, for the weather aberrations they are studying may be the harbinger of another ice age.”

Newsweek, in 1975, ran an article titled “The Cooling World,” which said: “Meteorologists disagree about the cause and extent of the cooling trend…. But they are almost unanimous in the view that the trend will reduce agricultural productivity for the rest of the century.” Newsweek suggested that one solution was “melting the arctic ice cap by covering it with black soot.”

(The Washington Post scooped them both with a 1970 article titled, “Colder Winters Held Dawn of New Ice Age.”)

Furthermore, the threat of excessive cooling due to human activities was considered serious enough to prompt the prestigious National Science Board in 1974 to make serious predictions based upon falling global temperatures experienced during that decade (as I posted to my Blog in 2009).  

Here is a link to the actual 1974 official US Government report that included the following:

 "... growing industrialization and the spread of agriculture introduced increasing quantities of dust into the atmosphere which reduced the amount of solar radiation reaching the earth. ... the cooling effect of the dust particles more than compensated for the warming effect of the carbon dioxide, and world temperature began to fall."

"Several consequences [of colder temperatures] have been observed: ... southward intrusion of sea-ice ... unusually large numbers of severe storms ... development of a calamitous drought belt extending around the world ..."

Finally, here is what I posted to my Blog in 2009

National Science Board Prediction: Global COOLING 

The US National Science Board (part of the National Science Foundation) issued a report titled Science and the Challenges Ahead that makes six interesting science-based observations and predictions. (Three relevant paragraphs from pages 24-25 of the linked document are reproduced here. Click on image to make it larger.)

Direct quotes are indicated by numbered arrows:

1- "Human activity may be involved on an even broader scale in changing the global climate."

2- "During the last 20-30 years, world temperature has fallen ..."

3- "... there is increasing concern that man himself may be implicated, not only in the recent cooling trend but also in the warming temperatures ...

4- "... activities of the expanding human population - especially those involved with the burning of fossil fuels - raised the carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere, which acts as a 'greenhouse' ..."

5- "But simulataneously ... growing industrialization and the spread of agriculture introduced increasing quantities of dust into the atmosphere which reduced the amount of solar radiation reaching the earth. ... the cooling effect of the dust particles more than compensated for the warming effect of the carbon dioxide, and world temperature began to fall."

6- "Several consequences [of colder temperatures] have been observed: ... southward intrusion of sea-ice ... unusually large numbers of severe storms ... development of a calamitous drought belt extending around the world ..."

Oh, I forgot to mention, the report was issued in 1974! (Well before Climategate :^)

The more things change,

the more they remain the same!

Warming, cooling, ... whatever - it is always MAN's fault!

(And, of course, WOMAN's too :^)

Could it be NATURAL CYCLES not within Human Control?

Nope - No grant money in that!

Ira Glickstein