Today, in order to make a completed product, machine automation typically requires a large array of specialized robots that carve out various pieces of raw materials and then put them together in complex factory assembly lines. This is commonly referred to as top-down, subtractive fabrication and due to the high level of production-speed and efficiency, coupled with the relatively low ongoing overhead costs, humans simply cannot compete and have thus been losing their jobs in the manufacturing sector for decades. These current capabilities however represent only the tip of a very large iceberg. The next generation of additive manufacturing is already beginning to emerge and will be even more disruptive.
Additive manufacturing is the process of printing out three dimensional objects. These so-called 3-d printers have the potential to increase efficiency even further in the manufacturing industry because they produce essentially no waste, they are lower maintenance, and overall a lot simpler and more flexible than subtractive manufacturing. All the user needs to do is simply upload some 3-d digital blueprints and the computer prints the object layer by layer from a generic feedstock material. Complicated 3-d shapes that would be extremely impractical if not impossible to create via subtractive manufacturing techniques can now be mass produced with high resolution 3-d printers and computer design software like AutoCad.
The 3-d printers of tomorrow could theoretically print any physical product, given the appropriate feedstock material(s); From simple toy-like objects to more complex objects with electronic capabilities and/or moving parts like phones, cars, or whatever else you can imagine. USC startup, Countour Crafting is developing a construction process to print out entire houses. There are already even bio-compatible prototypes that may one day print viable organs or in-vitro meat from feedstock stem cells. All of these applications fall under the top-down additive manufacturing approach. Bottom-up additive manufacturing however, will be even better still. Mother nature has already mastered this technique. If you’ve ever watched a time lapse video of a plant growing out of a seed or a fetus growing out of an embryo, then you’ve already seen bottom-up additive manufacturing in action. For decades now, scientists have been hard at work attempting to reverse engineer this miracle of mother nature. It may sound like science fiction, but steady advances in miniaturization will, in the not-too-distant future, enable general purpose nanoscale machines that self-assemble objects atom by atom through a process resembling cell division in living things. This is Star-trek-replicator-type technology.
In order for the whole system to work you need four things; an infrastructure to provide the machines with a base supply of raw materials as well as a sustainable recycling system, energy to power the system, and the design blueprints for the object being fabricated. Today many of the resources we use in our products are scarce. For instance, China controls most of the rare earth metals that make up the components in a lot of our high tech gadgets. It’s debatable how rare these metals actually are but nevertheless in the coming years as the wonder material Graphene becomes commercially viable, these seemingly insurmountable scarcity issues will become things of the past.
Graphene is the perfect candidate for a generic feedstock material to supply the fabricator because it is composed of carbon which is super abundant on this planet and thus very cheap. Also the way the atoms are arranged give it some amazing electronic and physical properties not seen in any other natural material. It may also even replace Silicon as the basis of chip manufacturing. As far as energy is concerned, the adoption of automated renewable solar power plants will make energy production costs negligible as well. Efficient recycling systems will keep the system self-sustainable without producing any waste. Lastly, design data will be available via the internet. Now consider the socio-economic implications of these ubiquitous personal nanofabricators.
Because of the abundance of the proposed material and energy resources involved in nanofabrication, there would be little to no overhead required to maintain the system. The most expensive cost associated with production would be the design blueprints. the perceived value of any product would be almost entirely determined by brand name and access restrictions based on intellectual property rights. Monetizing products in this way though will also be a problem as the additive manufacturing revolution will do to matter what the internet and P2P technology did to music. Think about it, you can get most songs now for free through Youtube and torrent sites. The same thing will happen when nanofabricators become mainstream because we are in a sense digitizing matter. The DIY and open source movement will also threaten this business strategy, making expensive brand names less and less important over time.
In other words, the way our economy is set up today will simply be incompatible in a society dominated by advanced machine automation like this. Today our economy is driven by cyclical consumption. Economics 101 stuff, I know but bare with me. employers produce goods and services while providing wages to the employees that work for them. The employees as well as the employers in turn use the money they earn to buy more goods and services from other employers, thus stimulating the economy. Bottom line is, our economy is a cycle that depends on the balance between employers, employees, and how much they consume. Its definitely a skewed balance that heavily concentrates wealth into the hands of top CEOs, as demonstrated in the earlier graphs, but it is a balance nonetheless. This is why the proliferation of advanced machine automation like nanofabricators is such a paradoxical issue.
On the one hand, companies have a propensity to automate as much of their business as possible because it maximizes production efficiency and lowers their overhead costs as opposed to hiring flesh and blood drones like you and me. In a way, machine automation is also good for the end consumer because it produces higher quality goods for cheaper prices. Conversely, if too many humans are displaced by machines then they wont have enough purchasing power to consume the goods and services that the companies produce which would result in a catastrophic collapse of the economy the likes of which we’ve never seen before. Its a catch 22. However, If there’s one thing you can count on, its corporate greed.
Corporations will be hard-pressed in resisting the urge to adopt increasingly robust machine automation technologies. In order to stay competitive with the more innovative early adopters, they will eventually have to follow suit and the unemployment rate will skyrocket. Peoples initial reaction to this is that the jobs that get displaced by machines will create new job oppurtunities for higher skilled, knowledge based positions. This is not much of a viable option. If moores law is any indicator then, knowledge based service jobs will be just as vulnerable to machine automation as production jobs in a relatively short amount of time.
Many people are quick to dismiss the possibility of machines ever becoming as intelligent as human beings. However there are countless examples of narrow AI applications that are already performing functions that people used to think only humans were capable of. The recent landslide victory of IBM’s watson computer system over human Jeopardy champions Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter is a perfect example of this and it is already threatening jobs in various industries, particuarly in the customer service and healthcare sector. IBM Watson may be the catalyst for a whole new generation of machines with analytical natural language processing capabilities that far exceed those of humans. Its descendants will only continue to increase in sophistication and a truly artificial general intelligence may not be too far behind.
Rock-star futurist, Ray Kurzweil estimates that machines will reach parity with human level intelligence and be able to perform any cognitive task by as soon as 2029, at which point it will be able to recursively improve upon its own programming, and evolve into a superintelligence by 2045. as this happens, we will become redundant and the need for human labor will become utterly obsolete. The current system we have today is not sustainable. With the aid of technology, greedy CEOs will eventually cannibalize the system out of existence, which is ultimately a good thing. In order to make it a smooth transition through this revolutionary epoch we need to completely overhaul our economy.
Perhaps once we pass a certain threshold of unemployment percentages, the government will enact some kind of universal base income to keep the economy from collapsing completely. These government checks will not have the same stigma attached to them that welfare has today. They could be ad supported or come from some kind of subsidy. The point is that machine automation will eventually saturate every sector of economy. This coupled with the adoption of abundant renewable resources will obviate the need for any fiat currency and income inequality will eventually be phased out. People will no longer need money as an incentive to contribute to society. Freed from the shackles of mundane wage slavery, people will find time to do the things they are truly passionate about. They will volunteer to create and share new innovations side by side with our machine progeny.
