Who Needs Humans? (About robots taking people's jobs)

[AngryAmish]

"Amid all the job losses of the Great Recession, there is one category of worker that the economic disruption has been good for: nonhumans.
From self-service checkout lines at the supermarket to industrial robots armed with saws and taught to carve up animal carcasses in slaughter-houses, these ever-more-intelligent machines are now not just assisting workers but actually kicking them out of their jobs.
Automation isn’t just affecting factory workers, either. Some law firms now use artificial intelligence software to scan and read mountains of legal documents, work that previously was performed by highly paid human lawyers.
“Robots continue to have an impact on blue-collar jobs, and white-collar jobs are under attack by microprocessors,” says Edward Leamer, an economics professor at UCLA’s Anderson School of Management and director of the UCLA Anderson Forecast, a survey of the U.S. and California economies. Leamer says the recession permanently wiped out 2.5 million jobs. U.S. gross domestic product has climbed back to pre-recession levels, meaning we’re producing as much as before, only with 6 percent fewer workers. To be sure, robotics are not the only job killers out there, with outsourcing stealing far more gigs than automation."


I have been thinking about this for a long time. Many people still work with their bodies but that is getting less and less. What happens to the half of the population that has below 100 IQ? Think about it. There are already cars that can drive themselves. What about trucks? Airplane pilot - that job is almost fully automated. Doctor? Expert systems do a better job of diagnosis.

I'm middle aged and I'll have a job until I retire (I hope). But I do have a roomba and have cut back on the cleaning lady already.

[HopeHoops]

1. They do have cars that can park themselves, but a Roomba is worthless other than as a cat toy.

For some weird reason, cats seem to love riding around on them. Okay, okay - I can understand the videos of the cats that are swatting a dog whenever the Roomba gets them close enough. That makes sense.

[Xipe Totec]

2. Cars will be a lot smaller and cheaper once they eliminate the passenger compartment nt

[HopeHoops]

4. Maybe, but most of the SUV's I see have one occupant - the driver yacking on the cell phone.

[Xipe Totec]

6. If robots take over jobs, the occupant number will drop to zero. nt

[HopeHoops]

7. Don't count on it.

[Xipe Totec]

8. Why not? who's gonna hire the bozo yakking on the cell phone?

[HopeHoops]

9. Most of them don't seem to be employed anyway - just out driving and yacking.

[Xipe Totec]

10. That's nice. So where's the money coming from?

[HopeHoops]

13. Who the fuck knows. I see a lot of morons who can't tie their own shoes getting out of Beemers.

I'm serious about the "can't tie their own shoes" thing - seems to be a trend to have the laces dragging all over the place now.

[TexDevilDog]

3. Assist robots suck

At GM it use to take large strong men to build cars, now assist robots allow GM to use weaker women for the jobs.

/sarc

[fredamae]

5. Robots currently pay No Taxes

Their "owners" should have to pay taxes on their behalf. Another small(?) contributor to the lower receipts of Revenue is automation.

[HopeHoops]

11. That's a GREAT idea - maybe it would help get rid of those stupid self-checkout things.

On the plus side, one of the local K-Marts had self-checkouts for about six months and then they disappeared. I asked about it and the manager told me they were losing too much inventory because people were just putting shit in bags without scanning the items and it took more man-power to help people figure out why the things weren't working right than it did to just run registers. So, they got rid of them.

I've walked out of stored because of those things. The local Giant has them and usually has normal HUMAN-OPERATED registers open as well. On one occasion, I had about a half-cart full of stuff. There were no human-operated registers available and since I didn't have any frozens or colds in the cart, I just left the cart near the registers and told someone at the service desk exactly why I was leaving it there. Call me a dick if you want to, but those things are an abomination. It is bad enough that we've surrendered to pumping our own fucking gas.

[AngryAmish]

16. I;m shy. I love the self-checkout.

[The2ndWheel]

12. It's pretty much already a world for our technology

We're increasingly just along for the ride. It's not people that travel at 60mph. It's not people that communicate instantly across the globe. You have to accept progress for what it is, whether it helps you or not, and try to adapt to it. As the title says, you aren't needed. You're not particularly needed to get the job done. You're not necessarily needed to consume. There are plenty of people on the planet. You're not only competing against those other people, but now you're regularly competing directly against advanced technology, which you most likely had no say in creating to make your life easier. It's no longer about you sharpening a stick to make your day a little less stressful. It's more about you being extracted from the equation, and then having to keep up.

[LiberalEsto]

14. Kurt Vonnegut predicted this almost 60 years ago

in his novel "Player Piano".

[Modern_Matthew]

15. I work in a major retail store. Crosstraining is a lot of jobs as well.

We can do more with less employees because they're training us in all areas of the store.

[NNN0LHI]

17. At the factory I worked at just about every job taken by a robot was replaced by a ...

... skilled tradesman who made more money than the job that was replaced to work on the robots when they broke down.

I started out as a production worker and then went through an apprenticeship to become a skilled tradesman working on such equipment there.

Don

[WinkyDink]

18. Remember this if you are tempted to "Self-Check-out".

[RickFromMN]

19. If corporations are persons, why can't robots be persons?

When will the SCOTUS give robots the right to vote?

[DavidDvorkin]

20. The question is when, not if

And the answer is, "Probably sooner than we think."

[mmonk]

21. This country could use some humans.