Credit: Voodoo Manufacturing

Automation is coming? No, its already here

While the current administration focuses on bringing jobs back to the United States from China and Mexico, the real threat to job loss already resides within our borders.

Gary Vaynerchuk was so impressed with TNW Conference 2016 he paused mid-talk to applaud us.

According to a study by two Ball State University professors, 87 percent of all manufacturing jobs lost from 2000 to 2010 werent due to globalization, butrobots.All told, some five million fewer manufacturing jobs exist todaythan in 2000, a problem government leaders are mostly ignoring.TNW alum Martin Bryant likened it to recklessly putting their heads in the sand when describing politicians views on automation.

Brooklyn-based Voodoo Manufacturing offersa peek into whatthis future could look like.

The 3D printing company consists of nine printers mounted on server racks, a track where a robotic arm harvests finished plates, and a plate hopper that feeds new, clean plates to the robot as needed. This is forward thinking, as 3D printing isnt laborious, per se, but it does require human intervention.

Unfortunately for most humans,these are exactly the types of menial jobs best handled by robots.

Whether you choose to embrace it is up to you, but theres no denying its coming. Humans simply cant match robots in outputat scale.

Today we have about a 30- to 40-percent utilization rate of our factory, explainedVoodoo Manufacturing CPO Jonathan Schwartz. Were hoping to push that to 90- to 95-percent over the next three-to-five years.

This sort of efficiency before the automation age was unheard of. Now, itsnot only a possibility, its a near-certainty. And its hard to blame a company aiming to cut costswhile improving output. Business, after all, isnt charity, and global competition is making it harder to compete than ever. If robots offer an edge, businesses are likely to take it.

But maybe were focusing on the wrong things.

Once we let the cat out of the bag, which we assuredly did in the push toward automation, its not something we can undo. While we attempt to write off job loss to globalization a petty tactic used to distract, not inform maybe its time to recognize the true cause. And onceunderstand where our jobs are going, maybe then we can put our collective heads together to find out a solution for a newly unemployed workforce.

Its time to adapt, to create a future thats both cognizant of whats coming while impervious to the fear-based rhetoric that surrounds it. Automation is a good thing, or it will be at some point. There will be hurdles, and we will overcome them. But the conversation cant get underway, at least not in an impactful way, until we quit trying to shove the cat back into the bag.

As for the solution, I dont have one. But automation is coming, andits time we stop pretending we can stop it. Its time to leap, while at the same time figuring out what this new landing area looks like.

Bring on the robots.

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The solution to automation-related job loss starts with admitting it's happening - TNW