Depth report

　　

Are we approaching a dramatic scene in economic history? Before the development of agriculture, the global population (and the size of the world economy) doubled approximately every 250,000 years. After mankind gained the power of agricultural production, the scale of the global economy has doubled approximately every 900 years. After the Industrial Revolution, global economic growth accelerated again. Since World War II, the global economy has doubled approximately every 15 years. The above data was compiled by Robin Hanson, an economist at George Mason University in Virginia, based on historically based estimates given by multiple economic historians.

    If a similar degree of step change occurs again, the global economy may double between now and Christmas. Although this is hard to imagine, it is also hard to imagine before the industrial revolution. The few believers who have no lack of imagination in this scene hope that an economic "singularity" will appear. Hansen is one of them, and Ray Kurzweil, a computer scientist and author of The Singularity Is Near, is perhaps the most famous of them.

    The singularity is the point in time that humans no longer develop new technologies, but new technologies themselves develop new technologies. They will develop new technologies at a speed far beyond our imagination. After the singularity, our civilization will be under the control of cyborgs, or brains uploaded to the cloud, or genetically enhanced super creatures, or other things that can quickly improve their own intelligence. The economy of the future may consist of rapid interactions between artificial intelligences. The idea that the global economy may double every few weeks is no longer so unimaginable.

    However, it is one thing to imagine such a future, and another to believe that such a future is coming. Many economists point out that productivity growth has been sluggish for a long time, and this seems hard to be regarded as a prelude to a transformative economic takeoff. Far from accelerating economic growth in advanced economies, it seems that additional stimulus is needed to prevent it from coming to a complete halt.

    Recently, economist William Nordhaus (William Nordhaus) published a research paper aimed at making a verdict on this controversy. Nordhaus proposed a series of test schemes that we can use to discover the upcoming singularity, in order to find evidence that computing power has changed the productivity of the economy or changed the goods we are enjoying.

    Nordhaus’s first test is on the demand side. Is it possible that products prone to singularities such as games, movies, and computers will eventually absorb most of our expenses?

    So far, the answer to this question seems to be no. Due to the collapse in prices, the proportion of expenditure on such products is declining. If this trend continues, unlimited digital goods will become the exquisite frosting on the economic cake. Our economic growth rate will be in line with the slowest-growing sectors, and we will be constrained by improvements in the productivity of common products such as food, housing, and transportation. After all, smart phone applications can't be eaten.

    Perhaps the real revolution in computing power is how we produce these ordinary products. So, the second test is obviously whether the productivity of the United States is accelerating. the answer is negative.

    Other tests examine the importance of investment goods in the economy. If the singularity is coming, one might expect that investment goods will become very cheap and determine economic output. Are the average prices of investment goods (including computers and software, but also buildings and machinery) falling faster relative to wages? The answer is no. So, relative to the economic output of the United States, how has the capital stock changed? Is it rising rapidly? The answer is also no.

    So far, there are not many signs of singularity coming in these data. However, several tests did show this trend. For example, the proportion of U.S. national income flowing into capital rather than labor is increasing, albeit not very quickly. This is a phenomenon that robots are expected to see when they march into human affairs. In the capital stock, the proportion of information assets such as software and intellectual property is increasing-although this proportion is still only 6% or 7%. Nordhaus believes that these two tests mean that the singularity is still decades away. And his other tests all point in the completely opposite direction.

    Having said that, people who believe that the singularity is coming may complain that conventional economic statistics do not do a good job of measuring some new products and services. For example, mobile phones will be bundled with dozens of free products: flashlights, satellite navigation, alarm clocks, and so on.

    Nordhaus admits all of this. However, Nordhaus also happens to be one of the world's top authorities for measuring the value of commodities whose conventional statistics are invalid. He conceived a variety of rough estimation methods-such as the time people spend on digital goods such as e-mail. However, none of this has shown any signs of change.

China becomes the world's largest buyer of industrial robots

    As labor costs rise and competition with other emerging economies intensifies, Chinese manufacturers are turning to technology to increase productivity. Once known as the "world factory", China has become the world's largest buyer of industrial robots.

    In 2013, China purchased one-fifth of the world's robots, surpassing Japan for the first time. According to the latest data from the International Federation of Robotics (IFR), China purchased 36,560 industrial robots last year, an increase of 60% year-on-year. Japan purchased 26,015 robots last year, and the United States ranked third with 23,679 robots purchased. From 2008 to 2013, China's robot purchases increased by 36% annually.

    The growth in China's demand for robots is mainly driven by large multinational manufacturers, especially the automobile manufacturing industry. According to the research of the management consulting firm Solidiance, China has the world's largest automobile industry, and the demand for robots in this industry accounts for 60% of the country.

    According to reports, global robotics companies such as ABB of Switzerland, Fanuc of Japan, and Kuka of Germany have invested a lot of resources in the Chinese market to catch up with China's rapid automation trend. In 2011, Foxconn, an Apple foundry manufacturer, announced that it would take more than three years to build a "millions of robot army" to replace workers' repetitive manual operations.

    Dieter, head of Solidiance Asia Pacific, said that Japan is still the leader in global robot manufacturing, and six Japanese companies have sold about half of China's robots. In contrast, the combined market share of China's four largest robot manufacturers is only 5%.