Another step forward in humanoid robotics with the announcement today of the HRP-4 from the Japanese robotics firm Kawada Industries. This is an upgrade to their previous humanoid robotics offerings. Check out the video of it's capabilities below.

This video brings to mind some things I have been thinking about for a while now. Workers in Europe and America need to understand that in the next 50 years their employment is going to be constantly under fire caught in a pincer between automation and outsourcing to lower cost countries. It will not be long now at all before robots such as this will be doing menial work for us such as moving objects, cleaning, working at cash registers, etc... New jobs will be created in the robotics sector and perhaps in other soft skill sectors like business management and project management for corporate management of outsourced teams. However the big question is will the number of jobs created in these new industries be enough to offset the losses in the lower skilled jobs and will those workers in the lower skilled jobs be able to adapt to the new economic reality they find themselves in. My thinking is that there will be a new larger underclass that is more or less permanent and that the gap between rich and poor will grow larger than any time in recent memory. And if there is not planning for this situation now it will result in some form of societal upheaval. 

I am sure many economists would say have faith in this creative destruction process that is simply part of capitalism. And perhaps I should, perhaps I am just being unnecessarily fearful of this very likely future. But it really is hard to imagine how after the outsourcing of manufacturing jobs in the 70s 80s and 90s, the outsourcing of many knowledge worker jobs in the 00s, combined with the rapid improvements in automation technology that these events will not have serious long term consequences for the developed worlds workers.

My thinking is that there will need to be programs put in place to deal with this new permanent underclass. I think we are heading for a future in wich greater than 10% unemployment is the new norm and I think that it could go much higher. There will simply be much less demand for human workers than what we have seen in the past. In a meta sense this is a boon for humanity in the respect that much of that menial work should not have to be done by humans at this point anyway. The problem lies in the transition upheaval and the winners and losers category. The wealthy I.E. entrepreneurs, management, engineers, marketers etc.. will largely benefit from new levels of wealth and leisure time so for them it will be a great thing. However the lower skilled workers last bastion of employment (low end service jobs) will disappear forever and never come back. There has to be some programs in place to deal with this new permanent situation. I don't see how a democracy can survive long term with greater than 10 percent unemployment with little or no social safety net as we have here in the United States of America there will be consequences.