How Will President Trump Affect Robotics Industry? (Demo)

On November 11, 2016, Oliver Mitchell writes on Robotics Trends:

The Obama administration has prided itself on its relationship with emerging technologies, from hosting White House Science Fairs to the Frontiers Conference this past August at Carnegie Mellon University. This week the administration updated the US Robotics Roadmap that was first initiated in 2009. Henrik Christensen, author of the Roadmap and director of UC San Diego’s Institute for Contextual Robotics, explained that the purpose of the document is to identify the future impact of robotics technology on the country; outline its economic, social, and security needs; and to provide a strategy for addressing various scientific and technological challenges.

As an example, the 2009 version helped build support for the National Robotics Initiative that President Obama announced in 2011 to accelerate the development of next-generation collaborative robots, or “cobots,” that work side-by-side with people (e.g., Baxter and Sawyer). Since then, Christensen said, the initiative has provided about $400 million in basic funding for robotics research and development throughout the United States.

As we say farewell to President Obama, it is important to outline how government can be a force for good in regards to innovation. President-elect Trump might be encouraged to learn that robots today are catalyzing a resurgence in U.S. manufacturing, as 900,000 new jobs have been created over the last six years. According to Christensen, “there is a strong correlation between the growth of robotics in manufacturing and job growth in the U.S.”

To better understand how President-elect Trump might act with the purse strings of the US government, we should look at the last time that a Republican occupied the White House. In 2007, President George W. Bush vetoed a bill to boost federal funding for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) from $29 billion to $30 billion. In a statement released by the White House then, the president decried the Democrat-led Congress for “acting like a teenager with a new credit card.”

By contrast, President Obama’s budget proposal for Fiscal Year 2017, increases NIH spending to over $33 billion to fund a range of biomedical initiatives, including ones in precision medicine, cancer treatment and diagnosis, and brain research. The money, which includes $1.8 billion in mandatory funding, would allow for nearly 10,000 new and competing NIH grants that would support efforts to “better understand the fundamental biological mechanisms that underpin health and disease to improve health and save lives,” President Obama said in the budget proposal. This parallels very well with Vice President Biden’s charge of a moonshot initiative to eliminate cancer all together.

Grants for healthcare robots are critical for the growing population of our nation’s elderly and disabled. According to the Roadmap, over 20 percent of the world’s population has a motor, cognitive, or sensory impairment – and this number will only grow with the aging of the Baby Boomer generation. In Christensen words, “we need to help the elderly stay in their homes … and robots can help us get there.”

DARPA Funding

Another way the government promotes innovation is through the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). DARPA was created in February 1958 by President Dwight D. Eisenhower. Under the Bush administration, DARPA drastically reduced the role of universities in IT research projects it funded and shifted both power and money to corporations. This was a break with a long-standing pillar of the modern computing age, in which government-funds university research that gives rise to multi-billion-dollar industry after multi-billion-dollar industry. In fact, it is quite possible that the Internet might never have been created under the parameters of the Bush administration.

Unfortunately, the Obama administration has kept DARPA funding at the same level ($2.9B) as when President Bush left office (maybe due to the sequester). The spirit of funding has changed as government is now one of the most prolific (non-equity) seed investors in the robotics and artificial intelligence space. One of President Obama’s pet projects is the BRAIN Initiative that aims to “leverage brain-function research to alleviate the burden of illness and injury and provide novel, neurotechnology-based capabilities for military personnel and civilians alike.” In addition, DARPA is working to improve researchers’ ability to understand the brain by fostering advancements in data handling, imaging, and advanced analytics.

The BRAIN Initiative fits into the Roadmap recommendations as another key area for future research is human-robot interaction. Future robots are expected to work in human environments, with interactions ranging from a factory operator supervising manufacturing robots to an older adult receiving care from a rehabilitation robot. Such uses will require interfaces that humans can operate effectively and intuitively, even though they vary substantially in background, training, physical and cognitive abilities, and in their readiness to adopt new technologies. We have already seen new grants to utilize the human brain for both control and machine application design leading to cyborg human augmentation and humanoid innovations.

SBIR Program

A third pillar of funding technology is the grant system of the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program. President Reagan in 1982 passed the Small Business Innovation Development Act to award federal research grants to small businesses, “to provide funding for some of the best early-stage innovation ideas – ideas that, however promising, are still too high risk for private investors, including venture capital firms.”

The SBIR program works across 11 federal agencies to allocate 2.8% of their R&D budgets to these grants. A big question is whether a President Trump will continue to bolster the SBIR grant system to spark greater American-led innovation, or cut it and label it as entitlement spending. Most industrial countries, including China and Germany, have devised robotics strategies to 2020; however, Trump has yet to disclose his opinions on robotics so it is unclear if he will follow the updated Robotics Roadmap.

What we know about President-elect Trump

Robots fit into President-elect Trump’s vision of “Made in America” as they have been proven to be job growth magnets and a replacement to illegal labor. As a more insular federal government takes office, it will need to partner with education to create and train a new 21st century workforce to teach robotic skills for “gray collar jobs.” Gray-collar jobs are somewhere between white-collar office tasks and older factory work that involves operating or supervising machinery (like robots). If they pay living wages, this category could grow as re-shoring increases. In addition, his immigration policy would most probably lead to changes in the H-1B visa program leading to an increased demand for U.S. workers and robots, particularly in agriculture, retail, and hospitality.

Trump also promises to be the “Law & Order” president. According to Christensen, unmanned systems technology developed to satisfy military needs is often well-suited for “dual use” applications in public safety and first-responder situations. Large systems like the Predator are being used to patrol U.S. borders, and smaller drones offer a way to provide real-time intelligence in natural disasters. A President Trump would most likely utilize robots for increased surveillance of utility power lines, pipelines, and other critical infrastructure.

Finally, Trump promises to cut the red-tape of Washington for businesses. Regulatory reform in robotics could be both dangerous as well as embraced by the community. Already we have seen the drone industry slowed by the FAA’s procrastination and the autonomous car sector confused by multiple state laws. A streamlined system that promotes safe innovation could give birth to a rise of new many inventions (including useless Transformers below). In addition, removing investment roadblocks like Sarbanes-Oxley could open up the stagnant IPO market to privately funded robotic companies and providing real liquidity for their investors.

http://www.roboticstrends.com/article/how_will_president_trump_affect_robotics_industry

Gary Reber Comments:

Henrik Christensen, author of the Roadmap and director of UC San Diego’s Institute for Contextual Robotics, explained that the purpose of the document is to identify the future impact of robotics technology on the country; outline its economic, social, and security needs; and to provide a strategy for addressing various scientific and technological challenges.

I think that we need to look at the impact on the country in terms of Who Will Own The Robots used in manufacturing as a non-human means of production? If we do not implement solutions to ensure that EVERY citizen as an individual has the equal opportunity to acquire OWNERSHIP of future wealth-creating, income-producing capital asset formation by the business corporations growing the economy, there will be  hordes of citizens of zero economic value. That is, unless the system can be reformed to empower EVERY citizen to acquire OWNERSHIP in the wealth-creating, income-producing capital assets resulting from technological invention and innovation.

Because non-human productive capital is increasingly the source of the world’s economic growth it should become the source of added property ownership incomes for all. The reality is if both labor and capital are independent factors of production, and if capital’s proportionate contributions are increasing relative to that of labor, then equality of opportunity and economic justice demands that the right to property (and access to the means of acquiring and possessing property) must in justice be extended to all.

Rather than focus on Job Creation, Job Retraining, and a redistributed Minimum Guaranteed Income that holds back technological invention and innovation, our economic policies should focus on wealth-creating, income-producing capital Ownership Creation.

Given that there is no question that robotic technology will continue to expand the productivity and in large measure destroy jobs and devalue the value of human labor, the question that SHOULD be urgently addressed is WHO SHOULD OWN THE FUTURE TECHNOLOGY ECONOMY? Will ownership continue to concentrate among the 1 percent wealthy ownership class who now OWNS America, or will we reform the system to provide equal opportunity for EVERY child, woman, and man to acquire personal OWNERSHIP in FUTURE non-human capital assets paid for with the FUTURE earnings of the investments in our technological future?

The conclusions should surprise no one who is conscious and who has even causally observed the constant shift to non-human productive inputs in the manufacturing, distribution, and sales of products, as well as the delivery of services, that has been occurring during their lifetime. The first burst of this phenomena was the Industrial Revolution. But now we are in an age of technology sophistication that is permeating every sector of industry and our day-to-day lives.

There’s nothing new about machines replacing people, but the rate of replacement is exponential and the result is that productivity gains lead to more wealth for the OWNERS of the non-human factor of production, but for others who have always been dependent on jobs as their source of income, there has been a steady decline to poverty-level labor incomes.

What must be understood (which unfortunately is not understood by conventional economists) is that there are two independent factors of production––human or labor workers and non-human or physical productive capital––productive land, structures, machines, super-automation, robotics, digital computerized operations, etc.

Fundamentally, economic value is created through human and non-human contributions.

Also what needs to be understood is that human productivity has not advanced (our human abilities are limited by physical strength and brain power––and relatively constant), but that the productiveness of the non-human factor of production––productive capital––is the reason that private sector corporations, majority owned by the “1 percent,” are utilizing the non-human factor of production increasingly to create efficiencies and save labor costs. It is the function of technology to save labor from toil and to enable us to do things that otherwise is humanly impossible without non-human input.

The critical question becomes who should OWN productive capital? The issue of OWNERSHIP is unbelievably overlooked by those in academia and politics, as well as by the author of this article. Yet we live in country founded upon private property rights.

Today, large streams of data, coupled with statistical analysis and sophisticated algorithms, are rapidly gaining importance in almost every field of science, politics, journalism, and much more. What does this mean for the future of work?

But what about China and Asia, the place where all the manufacturing jobs are supposedly going? True, China has added manufacturing jobs over the past 15 years. But now it is beginning its shift to super-robotic automation. Foxconn, which manufactures the iPhone and many other consumer electronics and is China’s largest private employer, is on track to install over a million manufacturing robots within three years. Thus, in reality off-shoring of manufacturing will eventually be replaced by human-intelligent super-robotic automation.

The pursuit for lower and lower cost production that relies on slave wage labor will eventually run out of places to chase. Eventually, “rich” countries, whose productive capital capability is owned by its citizens, will be forced to “re-shore” manufacturing capacity, and result in ever-cheaper robotic manufacturing.

“The era we’re in is one in which the scope of tasks that can be automated is increasing rapidly, and in areas where we used to think those were our best skills, things that require thinking,” says David Autor, a labor economist at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Businesses are spending more on technology now because they spent so little during the recession. Yet total capital expenditures are still barely running ahead of replacement costs. “Most of the investment we’re seeing is simply replacing worn-out stuff,” says economist Paul Ashworth of Capital Economics.

Yet, while the problem is one that no one can no longer ignore, the solution also is one starring them in the face but they just can’t see the simplicity of it.

The fundamental challenge to be solved is how do we reinvent and redesign our economic institutions to keep pace with job destroying and labor devaluing technological innovation and invention so not all of the benefits of OWNING FUTURE productive capacity accrues to today’s wealthy 1 percent ownership class, and ownership is broadened so that EVERY American earns income through stock OWNERSHIP dividends so they can afford to purchase the products and services produced by the economy.

None of this is new from a macro-economic viewpoint as productive capital is increasingly the source of the world’s economic growth. The role of physical productive capital is to do ever more of the work of producing more products and services, which produces income to its owners. Full employment is not an objective of businesses. Companies strive to keep labor input and other costs at a minimum. Private sector job creation in numbers that match the pool of people willing and able to work is constantly being eroded by physical productive capital’s ever increasing role. Over the past century there has been an ever-accelerating shift to productive capital––which reflects tectonic shifts in the technologies of production. The mixture of labor worker input and capital worker input has been rapidly changing at an exponential rate of increase for over 235 years in step with the Industrial Revolution (starting in 1776) and had even been changing long before that with man’s discovery of the first tools, but at a much slower rate. Up until the close of the nineteenth century, the United States remained a working democracy, with the production of products and services dependent on labor worker input. When the American Industrial Revolution began and subsequent technological advance amplified the productive power of non-human capital, plutocratic finance channeled its ownership into fewer and fewer hands, as we continue to witness today with government by the wealthy evidenced at all levels.

People invented tools to reduce toil, enable otherwise impossible production, create new highly automated industries, and significantly change the way in which products and services are produced from labor intensive to capital intensive––the core function of technological invention. Binary economist Louis Kelso attributed most changes in the productive capacity of the world since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution to technological improvements in our capital assets, and a relatively diminishing proportion to human labor. Capital, in Kelso’s terms, does not “enhance” labor productivity (labor’s ability to produce economic goods). In fact, the opposite is true. It makes many forms of labor unnecessary.

Because of this undeniable fact, Kelso asserted that, “free-market forces no longer establish the ‘value’ of labor. Instead, the price of labor is artificially elevated by government through minimum wage legislation, overtime laws, and collective bargaining legislation or by government employment and government subsidization of private employment solely to increase consumer income.”

Furthermore, according to Kelso, productive capital is increasingly the source of the world’s economic growth and, therefore, should become the source of added property ownership incomes for all. Kelso postulated that if both labor and capital are interdependent factors of production, and if capital’s proportionate contributions are increasing relative to that of labor, then equality of opportunity and economic justice demands that the right to property (and access to the means of acquiring and possessing property) must in justice be extended to all. Yet, sadly, the American people and its leaders still pretend to believe that labor is becoming more productive.

The 400 wealthiest Americans and the other 1 to 10 percent richest Americans are rich because they OWN wealth-creating, income-generating productive capital assets. The disenfranchised poor and working and middle class are propertyless in terms of OWNING productive capital assets.

Because productive capital is increasingly the source of the world’s economic growth, shouldn’t we be asking the question why is not productive capital the source of added property OWNERSHIP incomes for all? Why are we not addressing how the system facilitates greed capitalism and envy while concentrating productive capital OWNERSHIP among the 1 to 10 percent of the population?

The change that is necessary is to reform the system to provide equal opportunity for EVERY American to acquire wealth-creating, income-generating productive capital assets on the basis that the investments will pay for themselves––and on the same terms that the wealthy OWNERSHIP class now utilizes. They are able to use the investment’s earnings to pay off the capital credit loans used to finance their investments, without having to use their own money or deny themselves consumption.

A National Right To Capital Ownership Bill that restores the American dream should be advocated by the progressive movement, which addresses the reality of Americans facing job opportunity deterioration and devaluation due to tectonic shifts in the technologies of production.

There is a solution, which will result in double-digit economic growth and simultaneously broaden private, individual OWNERSHIP so that EVERY American’s income significantly grows, providing the means to support themselves and their families with an affluent lifestyle. The Just Third Way Master Plan for America’s future is published at http://foreconomicjustice.org/?p=5797.

The solution is obvious but our leaders, academia, conventional economist and the media are oblivious to the necessity to broaden OWNERSHIP in the new capital formation of the future simultaneously with the growth of the economy, which then becomes self-propelled as increasingly more Americans accumulate OWNERSHIP shares and earn a new source of dividend income derived from their capital OWNERSHIP in the “machines” that are replacing them or devaluing their labor value.

The solution will require the reform of the Federal Reserve Bank to create new OWNERS of FUTURE productive capital investment in businesses simultaneously with the growth of the economy. The solution to broadening private, individual OWNERSHIP of America’s FUTURE capital wealth requires that the Federal Reserve stop monetizing unproductive debt, including bailouts of banks “too big to fail” and Wall Street derivatives speculators, and begin creating an asset-backed currency that could enable every child, woman, and man to establish a Capital Homestead Account or “CHA” (a super-IRA or asset tax-shelter for citizens) at their local bank to acquire a growing dividend-bearing stock portfolio to supplement their incomes from work and all other sources of income. Policies need to insert American citizens into the low or no-interest investment money loop to enable non- and undercapitalized Americans, including the working class and poor, to build wealth and become “customers with money.” The proposed Capital Homestead Act would produce this result.

Through Just Third Way reforms, economic growth would be freed from the slavery of past savings (“old money”), while creating a domestic source of new asset-backed, interest-free (but not cost free) money and expanded bank credit to finance new capital repayable out of future savings (earnings). To ensure that OWNERSHIP of future private sector growth and newly created wealth is universally accessible to every citizen, such newly created money and credit would only be available through economic democratization vehicles, administered through the competitive member banks of a well-regulated Federal Reserve central banking system.

Under the first tier, future increases in the money supply (“new money”) would be linked to actual growth of the economy’s productive assets, creating new OWNERS of new capital asset wealth through widespread access to interest-free capital credit repayable with future profits. The Federal Reserve would create (i.e., “monetize”) interest-free credit, with lenders adding their normal markup as service fees above the cost of money. This would establish an unsubsidized minimal rate for financing technological growth. This would provide the public with a currency backed by increasingly more efficient instruments of production, real wealth-producing capital assets, rather than unsustainable government debt.The creation of new money and credit would be non-inflationary and would simultaneously broaden purchasing power throughout the economy. To accomplish this, a key reform is a two-tiered interest policy by the Federal Reserve that would distinguish between productive and non-productive uses of credit.

The second tier would allow substantially higher, market-determined interest rates for non-productive purposes, for which “past savings” would remain available. The Federal Reserve would be restrained from future monetization of national deficits or encouraging other forms of non-productive uses of credit, causing upper-tier credit to seek out already accumulated savings at market rates.

Capital Homesteading would also provide through capital credit insurance a rational way to deal with risk, as well as an additional check on the quality of loans being supported by the Federal Reserve. Capital credit insurance and reinsurance policies would offset the risk that the enterprises issuing new shares on credit might fail to repay the loans. Such capital credit default insurance would substitute for collateral demanded by most lenders to cover the risk of non-payment, thus enabling the poor and others with few assets to overcome the collateralization barrier that excludes poor people from access to productive credit.

Support the Capital Homestead Act (aka Economic Democracy Act) at http://www.cesj.org/learn/capital-homesteading/, http://www.cesj.org/learn/capital-homesteading/capital-homestead-act-a-plan-for-getting-ownership-income-and-power-to-every-citizen/, http://www.cesj.org/learn/capital-homesteading/capital-homestead-act-summary/ and http://www.cesj.org/learn/capital-homesteading/ch-vehicles/.

See the article “The Absent Conversation: Who Should Own America?” published by The Huffington Post at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gary-reber/who-should-own-america_b_2040592.html and by OpEd News at http://www.opednews.com/articles/THE-Absent-Conversation–by-Gary-Reber-130429-498.html.

Support Monetary Justice at http://capitalhomestead.org/page/monetary-justice.

Also see “The Path To Eradicating Poverty In America” at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gary-reber/the-path-to-eradicating-p_b_3017072.html and “The Path To Sustainable Economic Growth” at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gary-reber/sustainable-economic-growth_b_3141721.html. And also “Second Income Plan” at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gary-reber/second-income-plan_b_3625319.html

Also see “Achieving The Green Economy” at  http://foreconomicjustice.org/?p=9082.

Also see “Financing Economic Growth With ‘FUTURE SAVINGS’: Solutions To Protect America From Economic Decline” at http://www.foreconomicjustice.org/9206/financing-future…economic-decline and “The Income Solution To Slow Private Sector Job Growth” at http://www.foreconomicjustice.org/9872/the-income-solut…ector-job-growth.