Joe Dog Software

Total factor productivity measures residual growth that cannot be explained by production inputs. Its level is determined by the efficiencies of labor and capital in production. Huh? What are you talking about? Basically, it’s a measure of productivity attributed to technological or organizational improvements. Then why didn’t you say that?

As you can see in this chart Your JoeDog cooked up with FRED, total factor productivity has leveled since the late 1990s. In other words, the pace at which humans are replaced by robots has slowed during the Internet Age. More people lost jobs to automation in the 80s and 9os than lose them now. That’s comforting … I guess.

So all the angry monkeys pecking CAPLOCKED rants about automation in the comments sections are simply displaying ignorance. Automation isn’t their foil – it’s bumbling economic stewardship.

There’s no reason to believe that employment won’t return to its 1990s levels if policy makers either increased aggregate demand or made labor scarcer, i.e., spent money or enacted labor laws. Unfortunately the people George Carlin referred to as “the owners of this country” oppose both measures. Blame them, not robots.

Some are concerned that self-improving artificial intelligence will destroy the world. Stephen Hawking thinks it could destroy mankind. Elon Musk recently tweeted, “I hope we’re not just the biological boot loader for digital superintelligence.” The Guardian thinks they will disrupt jobs while leaving humans physically unharmed.

The idea is this: we build robots with smart digital brians. Those robots use those brains to build even smarter brains. Once they achieve recursive improvement, robot intelligence will rapidly advance. The most advanced species on the planet won’t a species at all – it will be a line of super intelligent robots. Welcome to the technological singularity.

People fear these machines will one day turn on humans and destroy mankind. That could occur in one of two ways: 1.) They intentionally destroy us or 2.) They unintentionally destroy us.

The first scenario requires a goal. To intentionally destroy us, robots must want to destroy us. They’ll need a test case to measure improvement. “This feature kills better than the old one.” Computers don’t feel emotions. They’re not driven by love or hate. If they’re driven to kill humans it’s only because we programmed that feature in the first place. We could be that stupid, but this seems improbable.

The second scenario seems more likely. Self-improving artificial intelligence could be programmed to reverse global warming. When the robot is ready to go-live with its fix, it better have it right or it could render the planet inhospitable to life. In other scenarios, they could deprive humans of resources as they work tirelessly to achieve a goal.

But what if robots achieve something akin to emotion? If they can set their own goals or follow their own “interests”, then who knows where this technology will go. They may devote resources to solving math problems or they might hunt humans for sport. Either way, if technology destroys humanity, we’ll have only ourselves to blame….

It’s generally accepted that the contemporary world is more technologically advanced than the ancient one. The Etruscans may have dreamed of space travel, but they were unable to transport themselves to Schenectady, New York, let alone the moon. Yet we can’t be too smug. Sure we carry the Internets in our pockets and heat our meals in seconds, but we can’t touch ancient Rome when it comes to concrete.

Throughout the Mediterranean basin, there are ancient harbors constructed with 2000 year old Roman concrete that remain more or less is perfect functioning condition. And as we gaze about the remnants of the ancient world, we see aqueducts, roads and buildings that have survived remarkably well over time. When we compare these structures with our own, we find contemporary concrete sadly lacking.

Roman concrete was superior to our own and now scientists understand why:

The secret to Roman concrete lies in its unique mineral formulation and production technique. As the researchers explain in a press release outlining their findings, “The Romans made concrete by mixing lime and volcanic rock. For underwater structures, lime and volcanic ash were mixed to form mortar, and this mortar and volcanic tuff were packed into wooden forms. The seawater instantly triggered a hot chemical reaction. The lime was hydrated — incorporating water molecules into its structure — and reacted with the ash to cement the whole mixture together.”

The Portland cement formula crucially lacks the lyme and volcanic ash mixture. As a result, it doesn’t bind quite as well when compared with the Roman concrete, researchers found. It is this inferior binding property that explains why structures made of Portland cement tend to weaken and crack after a few decades of use, Jackson says.