Technology Automation

[Smokey Deza]

This has been on my mind for quite a while, and I can't help but think that within the next several decades there will be serious unemployment issues.

The transport industry, if I'm not mistaken, employs more people than any other industry. Driverless cars work, make less error than human drivers. They don't get tired, text on their phones, shout at their kids on the backseat. So how long before companies replace their HGV drivers with an automated driving system?

You could have a fleet of vehicles running 24/7 with nothing to pay but petrol and maintenance. No more paying drivers to sleep in their cabs. Seems like a no brainer to me.

The self checkout thread is one of countless examples. Once you would have 20 employees sat at a supermarket checkout. Now you have one employee overseeing 20 cashier machines.

And my colleagues laugh at me. "Our job will never be automated, it's too complicated". There's nothing complicated about punching codes in at certain times. A macro or bot could quite easily do this faster and more accurately than any human could.

So why the disbelief? Are people scared or just ignorant? Or am I totally missing something?

 

[Mynight]

Scared and ignorant most likely.

I imagine there's very few jobs that can't be automated. Maybe not at this point but as tech gets more advanced more people are in trouble.

Building/designing the robots would be a pretty safe job .

Edit: what do you do as a job that resolves around "punching in codes at certain times"?

 

[d_brennen]

Building/designing the robots would be a pretty safe job .

Until they turn on you. We've all seen the movies and it is a known fact that scifi is decades ahead of reality, but uncannily accurate

 

[Mynight]

Until they turn on you. We've all seen the movies and it is a known fact that scifi is decades ahead of reality, but uncannily accurate

Good shout .

Right I guess everyone is inevitably screwed .

 

[Deus Ex]

I wonder what professions cannot be replaced.

 

[Diddums]

Mine.


No machine could ever be the **** I can be

 

[estebanrey]

Sigh, read about the Luddites OP.

In short, they said the same thing in the early 1800s about machines taking over from humans in the mills.

200 years later we still have jobs.

 

[arknor]

Sigh, read about the Luddites OP.

In short, they said the same thing in the early 1800s about machines taking over from humans in the mills.

200 years later we still have jobs.

I give it 20 years before trucks are driving themselves you know what would be awesome a delivery truck that drives to your house sends you a taxt message with a code you get outside open a locker on the vehicle retrieve your goods.
The end of being carded !!!

I think theres already a robot that can load and unload pallets in a warehouse enviroment the whole freight industry will be robotic then probably agriculture


Theres not really that many jobs a robot can't do better than a human anymore and the cost is constantly falling

I think this is the robot that learned how to cook from youtube videos

 

[dowie]

and if we go back in time at one point most of the population worked in agriculture, feudal serfs growing food to feed themselves and pay taxes, prior to that we barely had a society as people spent so much time just hunting and gathering food

what about the mill workers put out of work by machines, the introduction of steam power, railways etc... that whole industrial revolution thing...

it is a bit short sighted to assume that removing the need for labour in some areas will lead to less things for people to do to provide a product/service/earn money

the more routine/mundane things that get automated the better as less of the population is spending time just trying to provide for basic needs such as food, shelter etc.. fortunately today we don't need to have many people employed in agriculture

 

[Mr Badger]

This idea of new, alternative roles being created to replace real jobs is all very well, however there are only so many Frappuccino makers that the market can support. Well, until they bring out a robot that can do the job, at which point that number will rapidly approach zero...

 

[estebanrey]

This idea of new, alternative roles being created to replace real jobs is all very well, however there are only so many Frappuccino makers that the market can support. Well, until they bring out a robot that can do the job, at which point that number will rapidly approach zero...

The mistake people keep making (as the Luddites did) is that world already has all that is to be invented so machines taking over from current human roles means a reduction is employment scope. You are doing the same.

The Luddites had no concept of what a "Programmer" was, or an "HGV Driver".

There are job roles we simply can't conceive right now, there are technologies we can't conceive right now. As technology takes over human roles, new roles appear in their place.

All technology does is give humans more time to concentrate on other areas, this includes businesses.

 

[Mr Badger]

The mistake people keep making (as the Luddites did) is that world already has all that is to be invented so machines taking over from current human roles means a reduction is employment scope. You are doing the same.

The Luddites had no concept of what a "Programmer" was, or an "HGV Driver".

There are job roles we simply can't conceive right now, there are technologies we can't conceive right now. As technology takes over human roles, new roles appear in their place.

All technology does is give humans more time to concentrate on other areas, this includes businesses.

Admittedly my comment was a bit tongue in cheek, however you may be underestimating the huge changes that could be around the corner when technology gets to the point where it can replace a significant chunk of the current workforce.

I'm pretty certain the following has been circulated before and seems to put it quite well:

 

[radderfire]

This has been on my mind for quite a while, and I can't help but think that within the next several decades there will be serious unemployment issues.

The transport industry, if I'm not mistaken, employs more people than any other industry.

If you are talking about the UK, then the largest employer is the NHS.

I think there are already serious unemployment issues. However, I don't think automation will have that much impact.

https://twitter.com/iotattack/status/558938351387295744

 

[dowie]

This idea of new, alternative roles being created to replace real jobs is all very well, however there are only so many Frappuccino makers that the market can support. Well, until they bring out a robot that can do the job, at which point that number will rapidly approach zero...

but thats the point - we want to reduce those sorts of roles, that is a good thing...

assuming that an existing role that probably could be reduced/replaced is going to be an alternative to other existing roles that will be reduced/replaced is a bit flawed

we've already seen technology improve over time and the jobs people do change, I really don't see the issue - the issue seems to occur just in the minds of people who can't envisage that there are always other things to do...

I mean the web didn't exist until the early 90s and now a whole bunch of roles are based around it, the IT industry as a whole is fairly new

Did we have social workers in victorian times? We had a lot of factory workers and industry was far less efficient....

As for replacing a whole chunk of the workforce - so what... like I pointed out before at one point most people spent their days farming, it isn't a huge issue that most people are not working in fields today

 

[norm]

delivery truck that drives to your house sends you a taxt message with a code you get outside open a locker on the vehicle retrieve your goods.
The end of being carded !!!

It's fraught with legal issues, like any other robotic device that operates in the public domain. Who do you appoint blame to? How secure is it?

I'm sure terrorists would love an automated van they could pack full of explosives and remotely drive to a location in the country and detonate at their will.

 

[Tunney]

We should do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living. It is a fact today that one in ten thousand of us can make a technological breakthrough capable of supporting all the rest. The youth of today are absolutely right in recognizing this nonsense of earning a living. We keep inventing jobs because of this false idea that everybody has to be employed at some kind of drudgery because, according to Malthusian Darwinian theory he must justify his right to exist. So we have inspectors of inspectors and people making instruments for inspectors to inspect inspectors. The true business of people should be to go back to school and think about whatever it was they were thinking about before somebody came along and told them they had to earn a living.

True words.

 

[Mr Badger]

It's fraught with legal issues, like any other robotic device that operates in the public domain. Who do you appoint blame to? How secure is it?

I'm sure terrorists would love an automated van they could pack full of explosives and remotely drive to a location in the country and detonate at their will.

Years a go people were speculating that criminals might use drones (possibly guided by GPS) to smuggle drugs. Those advance concerns about the possible misuse of the technology don't seem to have stopped this becoming a reality.

 

[norm]

Drones are what I consider a homebrew technology, you can't really stop that. The tech is nothing special really, model aircraft were available decades ago that could carry similar payloads, it's simply the affordability of drones and the increased sophistication that makes them a popular choice now.

The trouble begins when you have autonomous tech that has the power to cause serious damage, which is why I think we won't see the likes of pilotless passenger aircraft for decades to come.

 

[GreatAuk]

I reckon most things people do these days could be automated - it's just a matter of when it becomes economical. Things like automated check-outs at supermarkets have become commonplace rather quickly, I don't think it'll be too long before the floors are mopped automatically too...

Visiting a car factory was an awesome experience for me - the body shop in particular was an almost overwhelming sea of robotic appendages welding panels together (after being stamped out automatically and carried round the factory by robotic trolleys following pre-set paths).... The thing is that this kind of automation is actually really old, but because it only has to interact with humans in such well defined ways that the humans involved might as well be robots too it's really not that difficult to implement, just expensive. Also the psychological barriers to implementing it are lower because the general public doesn't have to interact with it in the way they'd have to interact with a robotic cleaner.

Stuff like self-driving cars really impresses me, as the car actually has to interpret inputs and decide on an output in a way that's much closer to how humans think... Hard to judge how quickly the tech will be ready for general release, but I reckon when it is it will become commonplace remarkably quickly and soon it won't turn any more heads than automatic supermarket checkouts do.

I don't see more creative jobs and those requiring interpersonal communication being replaced any time soon though (he says...)

 

[drunkenmaster]

Automation is a huge and terrifying thing, people are pretty self delusional and not future thinking. Politically pretty much everyone will throw away the future to win for the now. Climate change is starting to get to a tipping point of serious long term consequences but politicians can't win a campaign saying we have to spend hard now on renewable energy and hit companies hard for polluting because some other politician will take the other stance, get all the money from business to run a campaign and win. People are ill educated and read the bitesize nonsense they hear and the ones spending the most money to get such nonsense out there wins.

Automation is the same situation as climate change, there is no winnable stance on this politically. Companies can save money doing it, less workers, less workers rights, workers needing pesky things like food breaks and sleep. What do politicians say, we need to move to a society that focuses not on greed but star trek like personal improvement. Becoming smarter, working 20% as much as they do now, sharing jobs, learning, reading, exercising, travelling in the spare time and letting robots take over many many jobs. Again resistance would be everywhere, people hate being poor but love the dream of being richer than everyone else so like a system that allows them to have a chance of being better than everyone else. Those who already have more money than everyone else don't want a system that would level everyone out.

Software can be written by robots, is in places, research can be done by robots, design can be done by robots, lots of things can. A huge number of jobs will disappear.

Self driving cars are the obvious one, people don't think about it too much but worldwide the number of jobs involved in distributing all goods, food being the most obvious and important one, is massive. Self driving cars will offer massive savings in costs to shipping companies and will cause 10's of millions of job losses world wide, 100's of millions most likely. There will be massive union fights over job losses worldwide, but while one company can't fire it's staff another new company will pop up having no staff to begin with, start shipping with self driving cars and take everyone else's business so those guys lose their jobs anyway.

One of the biggest problems in manufacturing is most robots are limited to one or a very small range of jobs, they are big, expensive and not very versatile meaning hundreds are needed for every single little stage. But as robots get better, more programmable, produced in larger numbers because rather than 10 for one specific part of say a car factory you now build 1000's and each one can do almost every stage now you get dropping costs and more flexibility. They can be used in more areas, tasked to new jobs as things change, we get to a point they are more viable in more industries to a larger degree while costs drop. As robots continue to improve the number of industries they will work well in will increase exponentially.

Automation in most industries is going to cause huge losses of jobs globally and politicians won't plan for the future by design of the system, they have to promise you what you want now, they can't tell you we have to make big hard expensive changes to plan for a future that is completely different because no one wants to hear it.

When this happens, who knows, it's obviously happening to some degree now, self driving cars/lorries will be a huge industry that will certainly fall to it. Politicians could fight it but the companies that will save money by automating production or whatever it is are the ones that pay for politicians to get elected so nothing will change there. Will it cause huge problems in 5 years, 20 years, 40 years, I don't know, it will cause a massive problem at some point though.