The Rise Of The Robot Economy

A New Epoch of Social Revolution

Welcome to the RoR

Elon Musk’s OpenAI Project

Elon Musk has been described as the real-life inspiration behind the superhero character of Tony Stark from the Ironman movie franchise. He is the CEO and founder of SpaceX, and co-founder of Tesla Motors and PayPal, among other things. He has … [Read More...]

On the Origin of (Robot) Species

This post originally appeared on the University of Cambridge 's Research News site: Researchers have observed the process of evolution by natural selection at work in robots, by constructing a ‘mother’ robot that can design, build and test … [Read More...]

The Robo Brain Project

The Robo Brain Project is a multi-university, open-source project to create a massive online knowledge-base which robots around the world can connect to in order to share what they have learned with each other — a kind of Wikipedia for … [Read More...]

IBM’s Watson

  IBM's term for Watson is Cognitive Technology — think of what that terminology implies. Cognition refers to the psychological result of perception and learning and reasoning. Perception, learning, reasoning, this is a really big deal if we … [Read More...]

Rethink Robotics

Photo of Baxter courtesy of Rethink Robotics Forget losing jobs to China or Mexico, this guy works for about $1 an hour and can be employed at that price right here in the United States. Although best suited to a limited range of tasks Baxter and … [Read More...]

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Economic Theory

Oxford University: The Future of Employment

The following except is from the abstract of an in-depth study done by Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael A. Osborne on the susceptibility of various occupations to computerization. You may be interested in seeing where your line of work falls on their scale. As a machinist, I come in at number 358 with … [Read More...]

Robots Are Us: Some Economics of Human Replacement

This is a link to the National Bureau of Economic Research's website.  There is a working paper here which you can download for a mere $5. I include it here as an example of the type of work being done from a neoclassical perspective on the subject of technological unemployment. Working Paper … [Read More...]

Robot Economics Part 1: Tugan-Baranovsky

Can capitalism survive without workers? This was the question posed by Russian economist Mikhail Tugan-Baranovsky (1865-1919),  best known for his history of economic crises in England, and for his influence on the development of modern business-cycle theory. His efforts to prove that … [Read More...]

Robot Economics Part 2: The Basic Equations

What follows is a crash course for those unfamiliar with Marx’s economic formulas.  Those of you already familiar with this nomenclature may prefer to skip over to the page explaining simple reproduction schemes here. For any capitalist enterprise the following formula applies: The Constant … [Read More...]

Robot Economics Part 3: Simple Reproduction

Now that we are familiar with the basic formula of a capitalist enterprise, c+v+s=w, we can begin to explore how this relates to the economy as a whole. Marx's reproduction schemes, models of the economy moving through an economic cycle, derive from Quesnay's tableau économique, and are subjected … [Read More...]

Robot Economics Part 4: Robot Reproduction

Imagine two companies in fierce competition with each other. Both manufacture the same commodity and this commodity is in high demand. The first company retains an entirely human workforce. The second uses automation as extensively as possible. They have robots to load and unload the machines, … [Read More...]

Machine Shop Economics: Part 2

In this post we'll follow our aspiring capitalist, Mr. C, as he sets out to hire employees for his new machine shop. Our goal is to learn something of the true nature of the capitalist relations of production. According to modern economic theory Mr. C is going to have to pay his employees the … [Read More...]

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News and Opinion

World Economic Forum 2016 Agenda

Still not convinced that the Rise of the Robots will trigger a significant socio-economic disruption? Consider this statement from the World Economic Forum about the theme of their 2016 meeting in Davos, Switzerland: Over 2,500 leaders from … [Read More...]

MIT Technology Review: Who Will Own the Robots?

MIT Technology Review has published an excellent series of articles about the effects that general-purpose disruptive technologies will have on our economy. This link is to their latest piece, "Who Will Own the Robots?" It is a well-written and … [Read More...]

Jeremy Rifkin

In this video Jeremy Rifkin discusses how the internet is bypassing the capitalist market and facilitating the emergence of the Collaborative Commons. Although traditional market employment is going down due to technological change, Rifkin is … [Read More...]

Interview with Neil Gershenfeld

Is the Star Trek replicator about to become a reality? A machine which will build anything we request, molecule by molecule? Yes, according to Neil Gershenfeld, director of MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms. In this interview, first broadcast on Fareed … [Read More...]

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