Do We Need Humans For That Job? Automation Booms After COVID: AP News

[appalachiablue]

AP News, Sept. 5, 2021.

Ask for a roast beef sandwich at an Arby’s drive-thru east of Los Angeles and you may be talking to Tori — an artificially intelligent voice assistant that will take your order and send it to the line cooks. “It doesn’t call sick,” says Amir Siddiqi, whose family installed the AI voice at its Arby’s franchise this year in Ontario, California. “It doesn’t get corona. And the reliability of it is great.” The pandemic didn’t just threaten Americans’ health when it slammed the U.S. in 2020 -- it may also have posed a long-term threat to many of their jobs.

Faced with worker shortages and higher labor costs, companies are starting to automate service sector jobs that economists once considered safe, assuming that machines couldn’t easily provide the human contact they believed customers would demand.

Past experience suggests that such automation waves eventually create more jobs than they destroy, but that they also disproportionately wipe out less skilled jobs that many low-income workers depend on. Resulting growing pains for the U.S. economy could be severe. If not for the pandemic, Siddiqi probably wouldn’t have bothered investing in new technology that could alienate existing employees and some customers. But it’s gone smoothly, he says: “Basically, there’s less people needed but those folks are now working in the kitchen and other areas.”

Ideally, automation can redeploy workers into better and more interesting work, so long as they can get the appropriate technical training, says Johannes Moenius, an economist at the University of Redlands. But although that’s happening now, it’s not moving quickly enough, he says. Worse, an entire class of service jobs created when manufacturing began to deploy more automation may now be at risk. “The robots escaped the manufacturing sector and went into the much larger service sector,” he says. “I regarded contact jobs as safe. I was completely taken by surprise.”

Improvements in robot technology allow machines to do many tasks that previously required people -- tossing pizza dough, transporting hospital linens, inspecting gauges, sorting goods. The pandemic accelerated their adoption. Robots, after all, can’t get sick or spread disease. Nor do they request time off to handle unexpected childcare emergencies. - More...

https://apnews.com/article/technology-business-health-coronavirus-pandemic-d935b29f631f1ae36e964d23881f77bd



- 'Food Runners': A customer pays for her lunch using her cell phone at Bartaco in Arlington, Va. The restaurant is using an automated app for ordering and payments. Instead of servers they use "food runners" to get orders to tables. "I like it," says Bowers of the automation, "it was easy. I'm a flight attendant so as long as automation doesn't come for my job I'm ok with it." Sept. 2, 2021.

[Slammer]

1. saying nothing

"I like it," says Bowers of the automation, "it was easy. I'm a flight attendant so as long as automation doesn't come for my job I'm ok with it."

First they came for the fast food workers and I said nothing because I wasn't a fast food worker.

Then they came for the mimes. And hell yes, I said something.

I didn't want them to think I was a mime!

[appalachiablue]

3. ++ 'As long as I'm ok, screw everybody else'...what a pal?!

.. "The consequences could fall most heavily on the less-educated women who disproportionately occupy the low- and mid-wage jobs most exposed to automation -- and to viral infections. Those jobs include salesclerks, administrative assistants, cashiers and aides in hospitals and those who take care of the sick and elderly..."

[jimfields33]

4. I thought that was an awful thing for her to say.

I will say that drive through window employees did get a bad deal. They were given crappy microphones that nobody could understand. These new AI machines are high tech. Any wonder they work better?

[Jim__]

2. They're using electronic line callers at the US Open this year.

They say the device is never wrong. But, the only check on the device is the device, so it agrees with itself 100% of the time.

I'm fine with automation. But, we seriously need to re-think the economy and change the way we distribute resources.

[kiri]

5. robots in abortions

Robots, or "robotic assisted surgery", are increasingly used in medicine. Even in abortions. In a trial in a 'secret' clinic, women often said the robot was "less embarrassing" than a human doctor, especially if a man. The robot never let a tool slip, had greater accuracy in a D&C procedure, and seemed to cause less pain.

[PatrickforB]

6. "it was easy. I'm a flight attendant so as long as automation doesn't come for my job I'm ok with it

Geez. What a cold thing to say. Almost sociopathic.

On the other hand (and I can say that since I'm an economist - that's an economist joke - look it up if you want), I will say that many jobs like fast food attendants are not able to be filled because literally no one wants to do them. They are usually jobs that are physically hard, mentally and emotionally taxing, have unpredictable hours, no benefits, and very low pay. People just aren't exactly lining up for jobs like this.

I have noticed this, though: posted annual wage levels for jobs in restaurants and hotels have gone up several thousands of dollars in my region because people won't work in these jobs any more unless pay improves. And they still cannot find people.

I have an esteemed colleague who tells me that businesses are in the process of 'solving' for being unable to fill open positions. Either they will:

1. Relocate somewhere where that type of talent is more prevalant (if feasible).

2. Hire people from out of state and work them remotely (if feasible).

3. Invest capital in artificial intelligence and robotic technology to fill functions they cannot staff.

4. Raise wages and increase benefits if they must, AND/OR offer signing bonuses.

[Skittles]

7. that sounds like something a repuke would say

f*** her