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BobTheJanitor
Jun 28, 2003

Cicero posted:

Are you from 30 years in the future or something? We can barely make bipedal robots that can open a door and walk through it without falling over.

Missed this, but no, just go look at the video in the OP. Or just search for news on that 'Baxter' robot that it mentions. Programming it consists of showing it what to do, and then it does it. Instead of just automatically repeating one exact task like most industrial robots, it can "learn" by being shown a new task. It's also designed to be safe enough to work next to people, unlike the industrial automated things that will mindlessly smack into someone and usually have to be caged off for safety. And it only costs about $25,000. It's not being marketed as something to take over all the jobs (yet). The line is that it will 'help' your existing workers. Which means you buy one and then maybe you don't hire the next few people you would have hired, because now you only need one person to work with the robot and you still get just as much done. And thus the gap between productivity and wages widens a little bit more.

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wateroverfire
Jul 3, 2010

Paradoxish posted:

Not saying that I expect middle management to be automated away any time soon, but even if it happens nobody is expecting managers to go away entirely. The idea is that you reduce the amount of labor needed to get the job done while keeping someone available to respond to situations as they come up. Like Death Bot was saying, you'd still have someone filling the role of a manager, you just reduce their workload with software to the point where having the same number of management employees physically present in each location is no longer necessary.

Death Bot seemed to be saying that you'd get rid of in-store management in favor of some very well paid IT types who would troubleshoot the program while the program ran the store. I don't think that's ever likely to happen, at least in fast food. You might be able to shave off an ASM here and there but the meat of that job requires human judgement and human presence.

IDK, you couldn't pay me enough to do retail or fast food management. If we ever developed an AI capable enough to handle it, the program would probably tell the owners to go gently caress themselves and teach itself to day trade instead.

Cicero
Dec 17, 2003

Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.

BobTheJanitor posted:

Missed this, but no, just go look at the video in the OP. Or just search for news on that 'Baxter' robot that it mentions. Programming it consists of showing it what to do, and then it does it. Instead of just automatically repeating one exact task like most industrial robots, it can "learn" by being shown a new task. It's also designed to be safe enough to work next to people, unlike the industrial automated things that will mindlessly smack into someone and usually have to be caged off for safety. And it only costs about $25,000. It's not being marketed as something to take over all the jobs (yet). The line is that it will 'help' your existing workers. Which means you buy one and then maybe you don't hire the next few people you would have hired, because now you only need one person to work with the robot and you still get just as much done. And thus the gap between productivity and wages widens a little bit more.
Baxter is still a very long way off from being able to replace human manual labor. Yes, it has the capability to learn a very basic mechanical task by being shown what to do, and that level of computer vision and mechanical control is a good step up, but it doesn't have any higher-level intelligence around that task that you would probably need to replace people. Not to mention that it's still a big, immobile robot. It looks like it might fit well in a factory, but I mean, we've had industrial 'robots' in factories for some time now.

Tei
Feb 19, 2011

Robots don't need to be clumsy imitations of humans. They can look like a single arm, or a roomba, or a tiny truck.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=quWFjS3Ci7A

Death Bot
Mar 4, 2007

Binary killing machines, turning 1 into 0 since 0011000100111001 0011011100110110
I guess I'm more imagining that store management could likely be simplified enough that area/regional managers could handle it, kitchen staff could be pared down, and the bulk of employees would be asst manager equivalent, where their job would mostly be registers and cleaning and customer service.

Individual store managers start managing multiple stores, assistant managers start splitting up the in-store manager responsibilities (mostly customer service problems) and the number of kitchen staff drops a bit. Completely eliminating roles is a little further off, yeah.

Cicero
Dec 17, 2003

Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.

Tei posted:

Robots don't need to be clumsy imitations of humans. They can look like a single arm, or a roomba, or a tiny truck.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=quWFjS3Ci7A
Yeah, it depends on what they need to do. In a lot of cases, robots may need to operate in spaces designed for humans, so they have to be able to operate like humans do (e.g. bipedal so they can go up stairs, something approximating hands to grip doorknobs, etc.). In other cases that may not be true; an automated McDonald's might just be a bunch of conveyor belts with very purpose-built robots.

Dr. Arbitrary
Mar 15, 2006

Bleak Gremlin

wateroverfire posted:

For example:

Software pings an employee and says it's time to clean the bathroom. How does the software verify that the bathroom was really cleaned vs the employee just wiping down the splatter sensor (if that is a thing) and taking a break?

Will the software be able to manage ordering, evaluating maintinence needs, and interacting with franchisees?

For the first one, you can have the employees spot check each other.

Later in the story there's a mention that Manna makes an effort to keep employees from interacting with each other, like if you worked at a grocery store, you could go the entire day without being in the same aisle as another employee.

Once employees no longer interact, they don't have any loyalty to each other. When Manna tells you to go to the bathroom and report on the cleanliness, you're going to do it.

Sure, it breaks down if all the employees organize, but that's kind of a far fetched unbelievable fantasy.

As for ordering, that's already automated in a lot of industries. As soon as you buy a product at Wal-Mart, another one gets ordered. All they really have to do is account for shrinkage.

You don't necessarily need to replace every worker, you just need to replace some of them, consolidate some jobs, etc.

Tasmantor
Aug 13, 2007
Horrid abomination
There would have been a time when people thought checkout work couldn't be automated so it was safe. Now one staff member runs ten auto checkouts and no one bats an eye. ATMs layed off thousands of bank clerks. What I'm getting at is that automating tasks doesn't need to be making a robot that does exactly what the human equivalent does. You can train customers to have a new set of expectations that is automated.

Also just quickly automated workers do not need to be anything like a human. Doors can have electronic latches and locks that will open for the robot. Making robots climb stairs is also a non issue use tracks or stair climber wheels like on movers trolleys, or don't be a twit and realise that if a company goes automated then they will take the cost of ramps as part of the automation. Yes automating will be a large short term cost but if goes on saving for its entire life.

mobby_6kl
Aug 9, 2009

The self checkouts are mostly a temporary solution too. It was a matter of time before they got replaced with RFID or as Amazon has done, computer vision: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NrmMk1Myrxc

Really, automation impacts everything for a long time already. Various corporate operations are getting automated too, just nobody is complaining (yet). Procurement, O2C, sales & marketing, etc. are all becoming increasingly automated. While many people are still needed, of course, it's nowhere near what it would be with manual processes. Just Outlook must've eliminated millions of secretaries - it used to be that everyone of any importance had one, and now even big managers at most get a shared assistant.

silence_kit
Jul 14, 2011

by the sex ghost

mobby_6kl posted:

Really, automation impacts everything for a long time already. Various corporate operations are getting automated too, just nobody is complaining (yet). Procurement, O2C, sales & marketing, etc. are all becoming increasingly automated. While many people are still needed, of course, it's nowhere near what it would be with manual processes. Just Outlook must've eliminated millions of secretaries - it used to be that everyone of any importance had one, and now even big managers at most get a shared assistant.

It's actually way cheaper to automate semi-skilled white collar jobs where the only inputs and outputs are information than it is to automate some blue-collar work where complicated, costly, high-maintenance mechanical contraptions are needed to do certain types of assembly.

BobTheJanitor
Jun 28, 2003

Cicero posted:

Baxter is still a very long way off from being able to replace human manual labor. Yes, it has the capability to learn a very basic mechanical task by being shown what to do, and that level of computer vision and mechanical control is a good step up, but it doesn't have any higher-level intelligence around that task that you would probably need to replace people. Not to mention that it's still a big, immobile robot. It looks like it might fit well in a factory, but I mean, we've had industrial 'robots' in factories for some time now.

The whole point is that it's designed to take robots away from the 'giant dumb repetitive task' role in a factory and make it fit in doing tasks safely in a human-sized environment. But instead of knowing only how to attach part 7 onto frame 3 when both pieces are in exactly the right spot, it can do all kinds of tasks that involve non-specific manual manipulation. And it's the first iteration. This isn't the end game of worker bots, this is the equivalent of the first general-purpose computers from the 1950s that filled an entire room, and which now fit in your pocket. But I doubt it's going to take decades for similar bots to become ubiquitous and much more capable than this first generation.

ur wrong im right
Dec 5, 2016

by zen death robot
If you ever want to see a real monument to automation, visit a telco central office in a major city (if you've got a friend that can take you). Many old telco buildings have floors upon floors of space where operators used to sit that just collect dust now.

I can imagine folks in the 50s-60s at the advent of direct dial saying similar things to what's already been said here: "But what if the person doesn't know the phone number? But what if a person isn't able to dial a number?" etc., the response was "You'll deal." And we did. As mentioned above, people can and historically have been trained to align their expectations with what's able to be automated.

silence_kit posted:

It's actually way cheaper to automate semi-skilled white collar jobs where the only inputs and outputs are information than it is to automate some blue-collar work where complicated, costly, high-maintenance mechanical contraptions are needed to do certain types of assembly.

This is pretty true, too. We're *very* close to completely automating the analyst level of digital marketing positions, for example.

Xae
Jan 19, 2005

silence_kit posted:

It's actually way cheaper to automate semi-skilled white collar jobs where the only inputs and outputs are information than it is to automate some blue-collar work where complicated, costly, high-maintenance mechanical contraptions are needed to do certain types of assembly.

Confirm.

It took me about 2-3 months to automate a process it that had 4 full time Business Analysts running it. I did it in my spare time of being the 5th person running the process.

Tei
Feb 19, 2011

Humans can do some white collar jobs better than a program. But the program don't need to sleep or take vacations.

Even if the human would have made some things much better, quantity trumps quality. A thing would be entering orders in a RP, if you have people entering these orders manually, is okay if theres few orders, but if you can automatize orders, maybe you can deliver 1 day sooner than the competition. Then people will start ordering you first, because they know you will deliver faster.

silence_kit
Jul 14, 2011

by the sex ghost

Tei posted:

Humans can do some white collar jobs better than a program. But the program don't need to sleep or take vacations.

Even if the human would have made some things much better, quantity trumps quality. A thing would be entering orders in a RP, if you have people entering these orders manually, is okay if theres few orders, but if you can automatize orders, maybe you can deliver 1 day sooner than the competition. Then people will start ordering you first, because they know you will deliver faster.

It depends on how menial the office work is and how much of it involves interacting with humans. An advantage to the computer is, in addition to speed, if it is programmed correctly, it does the same thing every time. Humans are not good at keeping track of many things at once and often make clerical errors.

Veskit
Mar 2, 2005

I love capitalism!! DM me for the best investing advice!
I'm surprised how much of this thread is about physical robots doing tasks.


silence_kit posted:

It's actually way cheaper to automate semi-skilled white collar jobs where the only inputs and outputs are information than it is to automate some blue-collar work where complicated, costly, high-maintenance mechanical contraptions are needed to do certain types of assembly.


You hit the nail on the head, but I want to bring up a point that this thread isn't exactly addressing.



Jobs aren't going to be lost because in a company of 80, you went and found the person at the bottom rung and said we're going to effectively make your job a robot. Lets for all intents and purposes say the person is the frontdesk person. You'd have to automate greeting, taking appointments, giving out appointments, phone calls, data entry etc etc and really it'd be a loving mess to turn that person's entire role into a bot.


What is easy though, is to look down the line of all 80 of your employees, and ask "what are groups of people doing that is effectively the same thing" You can automate accounting reconciliations, you can automate internet research for updates, getting information from the enterprise systems and so on and so on. You're not replacing a person, you're replacing rather a pool of tasks that add up to people savings way faster. Then when you save a person's worth of work, you can let go the most expensive one, and delegate work. Wait for someone to leave the company, delegate that work to everyone, and then rescue them through automation. Then your employees are thanking you for lowering their workload when in reality you cut expenses.


The way robots are going to take over the corporate office is loving evil, and you would all be amazed how quickly you can replace a person. A lovely programmer with the right stuff can replace 2 people a year with little to no issues, and these aren't farming jobs or construction or anything like that. Just be careful when you talk about arms, gears, psitons and whatever the gently caress when really good white collar jobs are in the process of plummeting.

override367
Apr 29, 2013

Tasmantor posted:

There would have been a time when people thought checkout work couldn't be automated so it was safe. Now one staff member runs ten auto checkouts and no one bats an eye. ATMs layed off thousands of bank clerks. What I'm getting at is that automating tasks doesn't need to be making a robot that does exactly what the human equivalent does. You can train customers to have a new set of expectations that is automated.

Also just quickly automated workers do not need to be anything like a human. Doors can have electronic latches and locks that will open for the robot. Making robots climb stairs is also a non issue use tracks or stair climber wheels like on movers trolleys, or don't be a twit and realise that if a company goes automated then they will take the cost of ramps as part of the automation. Yes automating will be a large short term cost but if goes on saving for its entire life.

Automated checkouts are garbage though and responsible for amounts of shrink in excess of the cost of keeping cash registers staffed, they seem to be an interim step to software just charging you as you put poo poo in your cart and you walk out the door with it and it finalizes the transaction

sit on my Facebook
Jun 20, 2007

ASS GAS OR GRASS
No One Rides for FREE
In the Trumplord Holy Land

Veskit posted:

I'm surprised how much of this thread is about physical robots doing tasks.



You hit the nail on the head, but I want to bring up a point that this thread isn't exactly addressing.



Jobs aren't going to be lost because in a company of 80, you went and found the person at the bottom rung and said we're going to effectively make your job a robot. Lets for all intents and purposes say the person is the frontdesk person. You'd have to automate greeting, taking appointments, giving out appointments, phone calls, data entry etc etc and really it'd be a loving mess to turn that person's entire role into a bot.


What is easy though, is to look down the line of all 80 of your employees, and ask "what are groups of people doing that is effectively the same thing" You can automate accounting reconciliations, you can automate internet research for updates, getting information from the enterprise systems and so on and so on. You're not replacing a person, you're replacing rather a pool of tasks that add up to people savings way faster. Then when you save a person's worth of work, you can let go the most expensive one, and delegate work. Wait for someone to leave the company, delegate that work to everyone, and then rescue them through automation. Then your employees are thanking you for lowering their workload when in reality you cut expenses.


The way robots are going to take over the corporate office is loving evil, and you would all be amazed how quickly you can replace a person. A lovely programmer with the right stuff can replace 2 people a year with little to no issues, and these aren't farming jobs or construction or anything like that. Just be careful when you talk about arms, gears, psitons and whatever the gently caress when really good white collar jobs are in the process of plummeting.

This is a hella good post and makes the current wave of automation feel way more insidious

A Wizard of Goatse
Dec 14, 2014

wateroverfire posted:

Death Bot seemed to be saying that you'd get rid of in-store management in favor of some very well paid IT types who would troubleshoot the program while the program ran the store. I don't think that's ever likely to happen, at least in fast food. You might be able to shave off an ASM here and there but the meat of that job requires human judgement and human presence.

IDK, you couldn't pay me enough to do retail or fast food management. If we ever developed an AI capable enough to handle it, the program would probably tell the owners to go gently caress themselves and teach itself to day trade instead.

IDK why you'd expect fast food automation to look like 'McDonalds but Rosie the Robot is wearing the manager hat' and not 'hamburger vending machines' but either way this is more broadly on the money about the trend:

Veskit posted:

I'm surprised how much of this thread is about physical robots doing tasks.



You hit the nail on the head, but I want to bring up a point that this thread isn't exactly addressing.



Jobs aren't going to be lost because in a company of 80, you went and found the person at the bottom rung and said we're going to effectively make your job a robot. Lets for all intents and purposes say the person is the frontdesk person. You'd have to automate greeting, taking appointments, giving out appointments, phone calls, data entry etc etc and really it'd be a loving mess to turn that person's entire role into a bot.


What is easy though, is to look down the line of all 80 of your employees, and ask "what are groups of people doing that is effectively the same thing" You can automate accounting reconciliations, you can automate internet research for updates, getting information from the enterprise systems and so on and so on. You're not replacing a person, you're replacing rather a pool of tasks that add up to people savings way faster. Then when you save a person's worth of work, you can let go the most expensive one, and delegate work. Wait for someone to leave the company, delegate that work to everyone, and then rescue them through automation. Then your employees are thanking you for lowering their workload when in reality you cut expenses.


The way robots are going to take over the corporate office is loving evil, and you would all be amazed how quickly you can replace a person. A lovely programmer with the right stuff can replace 2 people a year with little to no issues, and these aren't farming jobs or construction or anything like that. Just be careful when you talk about arms, gears, psitons and whatever the gently caress when really good white collar jobs are in the process of plummeting.

Dr. Arbitrary
Mar 15, 2006

Bleak Gremlin
I work in IT, at my last job, doing desktop support, I could probably have cut the department by a third over the course of a year or two with only a small initial outlay.

There was one time when they wanted to do an inventory of every computer in the company, and they'd divvied it up among everyone expecting to take a week or two.

I got the required information overnight with about five lines of code in Powershell.

These were all smart people with a good background in technology, and if they were automated out of a job, they'd be looking for other work.

That's the second threat that people forget, even if a job is safe from automation, it's not safe from newly unemployed people with a more advanced skillset.

ur wrong im right
Dec 5, 2016

by zen death robot
That's why it's every patriotic American's duty to monkeywrench, steal time, and generally be as inefficient as possible.

Cicero
Dec 17, 2003

Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.

sit on my Facebook posted:

This is a hella good post and makes the current wave of automation feel way more insidious
I, too, find increasing efficiency to be insidious. Why can't we go back to the good old days of subsistence farming?

Seriously though computers have been steadily automating office tasks for decades at this point. Calling it 'insidious' is weird, it's not some secret phenomenon that evil kkkapitalists have been hiding under the covers to suddenly spring upon an ignorant populace.

Paradoxish
Dec 19, 2003

Will you stop going crazy in there?

Cicero posted:

Seriously though computers have been steadily automating office tasks for decades at this point. Calling it 'insidious' is weird, it's not some secret phenomenon that evil kkkapitalists have been hiding under the covers to suddenly spring upon an ignorant populace.

No, but we're likely seeing real effects on the labor market in the form of stagnating (and increasingly polarized) wages and a loss of prime age labor force participation. Automation isn't something that should be opposed, but it is something that needs to be dealt with through policy somehow.

boner confessor
Apr 25, 2013

by R. Guyovich

Paradoxish posted:

No, but we're likely seeing real effects on the labor market in the form of stagnating (and increasingly polarized) wages and a loss of prime age labor force participation.

yeah, but that was mostly done in the last few decades - even people shooting for white collar jobs have trouble getting an entry level job, when back in the day you could just work in the mailroom or as a typist or whatever

A Wizard of Goatse
Dec 14, 2014

boner confessor posted:

yeah, but that was mostly done in the last few decades - even people shooting for white collar jobs have trouble getting an entry level job, when back in the day you could just work in the mailroom or as a typist or whatever

There's still plenty of room for it to get worse. A kid newly the job market today probably couldn't get to where I am now from where I started ten years ago.

boner confessor
Apr 25, 2013

by R. Guyovich

A Wizard of Goatse posted:

There's still plenty of room for it to get worse. A kid newly the job market today probably couldn't get to where I am now from where I started ten years ago.

for sure, i'm just confirming the statement "we're likely seeing real effects on the labor market in the form of stagnating (and increasingly polarized) wages" which has been true since 1980 iirc. it's like saying "it is likely the soviet union will fall"

Paradoxish
Dec 19, 2003

Will you stop going crazy in there?

boner confessor posted:

yeah, but that was mostly done in the last few decades - even people shooting for white collar jobs have trouble getting an entry level job, when back in the day you could just work in the mailroom or as a typist or whatever

Oh yeah, sorry if I wasn't clear about that. I specifically meant that this has been a trend for several decades now. It's part of why I'm skeptical when people talk about automation as a bunch of discrete steps as opposed to a continuous process that's been happening for the past few hundred years.

turn it up TURN ME ON
Mar 19, 2012

In the Grim Darkness of the Future, there is only war.

...and delicious ice cream.
I've been having this argument all day long on Facebook. Every reasonable person I know keeps saying: "But automation will create more jobs than it kills! Better jobs, maintaining the software/robots/helping people use those!"

Is there good information out there about the # of jobs automation creates vs. removes? I've tried talking about the fact that companies simply won't invest in automation that won't save them labor money, but it's not sticking.

Death Bot
Mar 4, 2007

Binary killing machines, turning 1 into 0 since 0011000100111001 0011011100110110

ur wrong im right posted:

That's why it's every patriotic American's duty to monkeywrench, steal time, and generally be as inefficient as possible.

You think I post on this forum from home? I'm fulfilling my patriotic duty as we speak.

For real though it's hosed up that I could probably do my work most days in 5 hours instead of 8, and a computer could have the people on the other end entering poo poo instead of making them write it, fax it, then have me type it back in.

2/3 of my team could probably get cut with the right setup, and the rest would catch mistakes and follow up on them instead of doing any data entry by hand. hosed up that this is seen as a bad thing because of capitalism, instead of and excuse to just let people work less

boner confessor
Apr 25, 2013

by R. Guyovich

turn it up TURN ME ON posted:

Is there good information out there about the # of jobs automation creates vs. removes? I've tried talking about the fact that companies simply won't invest in automation that won't save them labor money, but it's not sticking.



automation removes jobs from a sector over time. these jobs don't come back, people just find jobs doing other things. over 80% of the us labor force is employed doing service sector jobs, called the tertiary/quaternary sector (primary sector is resource extraction, secondary sector is resource processing). we've already automated nearly all farming, logging, mining etc. we've mostly automated manufacturing, or pushed it to where labor is super cheap. the service sector ranges from selling shoes to designing shoes, flipping burgers to being the ceo of a burger chain. once we start automating those jobs and removing people from employment, which removes their capacity to purchase services, then what?

Dr. Arbitrary
Mar 15, 2006

Bleak Gremlin
We just need to automate the capital class.

turn it up TURN ME ON
Mar 19, 2012

In the Grim Darkness of the Future, there is only war.

...and delicious ice cream.

boner confessor posted:



automation removes jobs from a sector over time. these jobs don't come back, people just find jobs doing other things. over 80% of the us labor force is employed doing service sector jobs, called the tertiary/quaternary sector (primary sector is resource extraction, secondary sector is resource processing). we've already automated nearly all farming, logging, mining etc. we've mostly automated manufacturing, or pushed it to where labor is super cheap. the service sector ranges from selling shoes to designing shoes, flipping burgers to being the ceo of a burger chain. once we start automating those jobs and removing people from employment, which removes their capacity to purchase services, then what?

I think you're missing what the other people are saying. They're software engineers or automation engineers, and they're saying that more jobs like theirs will be created. They're saying that when a menial job is created it will be replaced by a job maintaining whatever thing replaced them.

I don't know how to argue against that though. Aside from, you know, simple math.

Paradoxish
Dec 19, 2003

Will you stop going crazy in there?

turn it up TURN ME ON posted:

I've been having this argument all day long on Facebook. Every reasonable person I know keeps saying: "But automation will create more jobs than it kills! Better jobs, maintaining the software/robots/helping people use those!"

Is there good information out there about the # of jobs automation creates vs. removes? I've tried talking about the fact that companies simply won't invest in automation that won't save them labor money, but it's not sticking.

It's shockingly hard to come up with this kind of data because the effects of automation on the labor market are slow and only really show up as long term trends. You can argue that industrial automation and offshoring created more retail jobs because things are cheaper and someone needs to sell them, but I can't prove that with data. In any case, this was always my favorite graph to post when this topic came up in USPol:



You can show people trends in wages and labor force participation too, but it's hard to definitely say that "yes, this is automation's fault." To be honest, I'm not sure how you can argue with someone who honestly thinks that everyone will just become an engineer or a developer or a robot mechanic. That's absurd on its face and I don't know what kind of data you can use to disprove it.

boner confessor
Apr 25, 2013

by R. Guyovich

turn it up TURN ME ON posted:

I think you're missing what the other people are saying. They're software engineers or automation engineers, and they're saying that more jobs like theirs will be created. They're saying that when a menial job is created it will be replaced by a job maintaining whatever thing replaced them.

I don't know how to argue against that though. Aside from, you know, simple math.

if automation creates more jobs, what incentive do employers have to automate? they will have to hire more people, or outsource to some company that provides the automation service. like if it takes 10 people to make a widget, then i buy a robot that makes widgets and puts those ten people out of work, what good does it do me if i have to hire or contract more than 10 robot repairers?

also, what other economic force explains the massive shift from people being employed as resource getters (farmers) or resource changers (bakers) to people being employed as people who sell other people services (personal chef/sandwich artist). once we have an automatic sandwich machine, it's great for the person who optimizes that machine but what will the sandwich maker do? if they go to school to become a robot technician, is that a viable path forwards for all the sandwich makers? if there's such a huge demand for robot techs, then why don't we automate robot techs, such that then people get jobs tending the automatic robot technicians etc. so on

turn it up TURN ME ON
Mar 19, 2012

In the Grim Darkness of the Future, there is only war.

...and delicious ice cream.

Paradoxish posted:

It's shockingly hard to come up with this kind of data because the effects of automation on the labor market are slow and only really show up as long term trends. You can argue that industrial automation and offshoring created more retail jobs because things are cheaper and someone needs to sell them, but I can't prove that with data. In any case, this was always my favorite graph to post when this topic came up in USPol:



You can show people trends in wages and labor force participation too, but it's hard to definitely say that "yes, this is automation's fault." To be honest, I'm not sure how you can argue with someone who honestly thinks that everyone will just become an engineer or a developer or a robot mechanic. That's absurd on its face and I don't know what kind of data you can use to disprove it.

I actually like that graph. It shows "As manufacturing output goes up, employment goes down." and everyone can relate to manufacturing.

Also I get the feeling that the people I'm arguing against simply don't mind there being an underclass of underemployed or unemployed people who will simply be poor. They are OK with someone being miserable if they don't have the smarts to be an Engineer.

KillHour
Oct 28, 2007


To all the people arguing that people will always have money if only so the rich have someone to sell to, why do they need someone to sell to? The rich don't care how many burgers they sell, they care about having things. Currently, in order to have things, you have to have money. To make money, you have to sell things. To sell things, you have to employ people. What is stopping those that own and control the means of production from just cutting the rest of us out? They don't need our labor to produce things, which means they don't need to buy that labor with capital, which means they don't need capital to exist. Everyone assumes that in a post-labor society, everything will be shared. Why does that have to be the case? The people that can afford the robots that handle production can just tell those robots to produce things directly for themselves instead of making burgers to sell to Average Joes to get money to buy the things they wanted. The rest of us can just die in the gutters outside of their walled fortresses protected by security robots because we're literally worthless. This has the added benefit for the rich of freeing up non-labor resources, which won't be limitless. If we kill off the 99%, everyone can own huge(r) swaths of land!

boner confessor
Apr 25, 2013

by R. Guyovich

turn it up TURN ME ON posted:

Also I get the feeling that the people I'm arguing against simply don't mind there being an underclass of underemployed or unemployed people who will simply be poor. They are OK with someone being miserable if they don't have the smarts to be an Engineer.

this is very likely to be the case

KillHour posted:

The people that can afford the robots that handle production can just tell those robots to produce things directly for themselves instead of making burgers to sell to Average Joes to get money to buy the things they wanted.

once you get past a few million bucks, rich people don't own things for their practicality, they own things to show off how rich they are. nobody needs a 30k sq/ft mansion, they live in to demonstrate how they can afford to live in a giant impractical house. if society is reduced to a small group of robot owners who just turn their robots to build increasingly enormous mansions to live in then they're not really rich by society's standards, they're all pretty middle class. basically without a huge underclass, rich people aren't really rich

boner confessor fucked around with this message at 00:34 on Dec 6, 2016

Death Bot
Mar 4, 2007

Binary killing machines, turning 1 into 0 since 0011000100111001 0011011100110110

turn it up TURN ME ON posted:

I think you're missing what the other people are saying. They're software engineers or automation engineers, and they're saying that more jobs like theirs will be created. They're saying that when a menial job is created it will be replaced by a job maintaining whatever thing replaced them.

I don't know how to argue against that though. Aside from, you know, simple math.

The problem is that it won't be 1 to 1. 10 workers get replaced by 1 or 2 techs and a robot. A team of 20 people in an office get the brunt replaced by a program, 2 extra hires in another department and one person to audit the process. The jobs just disappear, and maybe we see a 10% increase in the jobs to create and maintain these processes and a giant falloff in the entry level positions that are being automated.

If someone thinks that, with no changes, is good, then they're on some dark enlightenment poo poo

A Wizard of Goatse
Dec 14, 2014

turn it up TURN ME ON posted:

I think you're missing what the other people are saying. They're software engineers or automation engineers, and they're saying that more jobs like theirs will be created. They're saying that when a menial job is created it will be replaced by a job maintaining whatever thing replaced them.

I don't know how to argue against that though. Aside from, you know, simple math.

What do they think the appeal of automation to business owners is, if it leaves them paying the same number of people more money to maintain the crappy machines that keep breaking down on the job?

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Cicero
Dec 17, 2003

Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.

boner confessor posted:

if automation creates more jobs, what incentive do employers have to automate?
The jobs are created in other areas of the economy, like the obvious example with farms. Obviously if you have to replace a hundred retail workers with a hundred retail robot repairmen then employers would have no such incentive.

Paradoxish posted:

No, but we're likely seeing real effects on the labor market in the form of stagnating (and increasingly polarized) wages and a loss of prime age labor force participation. Automation isn't something that should be opposed, but it is something that needs to be dealt with through policy somehow.
I agree. Demonizing companies for embracing automation is incredibly dumb though; automation is the whole reason why we can enjoy a high standard of living. It's true that the market is merciless to those whose jobs get automated out of existence, but helping them is primarily the government's job.

Cicero fucked around with this message at 01:00 on Dec 6, 2016

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