[HN Gopher] Automation is reaching more companies ___________________________________________________________________ Automation is reaching more companies Author : geox Score : 66 points Date : 2022-01-18 19:57 UTC (3 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.wired.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.wired.com) | marcodiego wrote: | Some people point many factors as a "need" for basic income. | Automation is one of them. Without basic income, robots (as an | analogy for automation) will benefit only its owners. | giantg2 wrote: | How does the economics look for that? It would seem many would | be disincentivized to work, which would raise wages in order to | attract work, which would make the basic income worth less. | nickpp wrote: | An additional problem is that without "wage signals" many | would work on various useless things instead of on what the | society needs to be done. | dragonwriter wrote: | UBI doesn't eliminate wage signals. | nickpp wrote: | It does for the vast majority who will choose to happily | live under the UBI level. | medvezhenok wrote: | If the vast majority quit their jobs to take UBI instead, | the wage to UBI ratio would go up, since employers would | have to pay more to attract the workers that have | alternatives. So some of the people would be lured back | to the job market because of increased wages. The job | market would find a new equilibrium (with wages likely | higher than they are now). Prices would also go up, but | likely not enough to completely offset the UBI (since | velocity of money will increase - we're redistributing | wealth from those with low propensity to spend to those | with a higher propensity). | | Basically, what we had during the pandemic was a mini-UBI | experiment (even though it was not universal). Wages at | the low end went up - exactly what you would want to see | under a successful UBI program (because of giving people | alternatives). Unfortunately, we funded this one via | deficits (hence why the rich also got richer). If it was | funded via a tax, we'd see the lower end wages increase, | and the upper middle/upper class get squeezed a bit | (which is completely intentional). | | The last effect would likely trigger a voting backlash | (since upper-middle/upper class folks have lots of voting | power), but it's still UBI working as intended | nickpp wrote: | I believe you are describing inflation. That is, indeed | one of the possible outcomes of UBI (negating it in the | process) and is what we actually got helicoptering money | during the pandemic. | dragonwriter wrote: | > It does for the vast majority who will choose to | happily live under the UBI level. | | Even if the vast majority did make that decision (which I | don't think is plausible under any UBI that would be | sustainable in even the very short term in the near | future) it would eliminate wage signals it would be a | _result_ of shifted wage signals, and the response of the | market to those signals. | yunwal wrote: | Wages would presumably raise prices only in industries that | can't be heavily automated. As a result, industries that are | automatible will have lower prices, while industries that | require human labor will have inflated prices. In the end, | those who make close to minimum wage are probably better off, | since they can afford more of the automated things, and those | who automate things are probably better off since they have | more people to sell to. Those who are well off but don't | automate things will probably be about even, since they'll | need to pay more for human labor, but will receive UBI and | automation benefits. | giantg2 wrote: | This doesn't make sense to me. | | Rising wages means more competition over the same | resources, leading to inflation. Even inflation in some | industries/products will affect the CPI. | | Where would the UBI come from? Presumably it would be from | those who automate. This means your claim of lower prices | will likely be marginal - the people need to support | themselves whether they or a robot does the work. So UBI | would mostly offset. | gremlinsinc wrote: | UBI would hopefully come from land-value taxes. This has | been debated a lot and seems to be one of the best | methods. Another would be making every American turn in | their bank accounts into a single account, and slap a | limit on how much you can have in there.... whether | that's 50 million or 20 billion... piss off the | billionaire class for sure, but who cares. | | Inequality shouldn't be that out of whack anyways and | having a max speed on it could encourage better equality. | | Personally if I had UBI I'd work more on side-projects | and try to get some recurring income coming in...I'm | still trying to do that but it's harder w/ all the | distractions of doing client/freelance work..and the | depression when I can't meet bills because I'm having a | ADHD poor-motivation month, or anti-social-can't be | bothered w/ marketing to find new clients month... both | of which seem like every month since the Pandemic | began... | | I'd hope a lot more people would actually go into science | fields and do research when they can afford to go to | school and have a guaranteed home and basic | necessities... | | Honestly a utopia to me would see 95% of kids becoming | scientists and technologists, the rest in the arts... and | everything else being automated and we work on solving | things like aging, space travel, and climate change. | dragonwriter wrote: | > Wages would presumably raise prices only in industries | that can't be heavily automated | | If it is funded by eliminating the preference for non-labor | income in taxes by bringing up taxes on other income (which | also itself reduces the incentive to automation created by | premium taxes on labor), that's not true. | ksec wrote: | >It would seem many would be disincentivized to work | | If you want Netflix, eating out at a restaurant, playing | Games or any sort of entertainment? If you want a life, you | need to work. There is nothing disincentivized against work | unless those people want to live like zombies. | giantg2 wrote: | I think that's something we can't claim or know without the | actual UBI proposal. | | If it's half the price to run a robot compared to using a | human, then jobs can be eliminated even if the people want | to work. | | I hate my job. If they started a UBI that actually covered | all the basics - food, housing, healthcare, etc... I would | quit and I'm not even in a low paying job. | gremlinsinc wrote: | I love coding, I hate coding for others. I want an UBI | for selfish reasons so I can work on side-projects full- | time until I find something that 'sticks' and so I can | work on building a homesteading community w/ other like- | minded people when I can afford some land. | ksec wrote: | I think the difference is Quality of Life. For example, I | consider 1 loaf of bread per day and 1 block of butter | per month. Living inside a 6m2 room. | | That is what I would considered as basic. It is suppose | to keep you alive. Not for you to afford meat, fruit or | coca cola. Housing enough to keep you warm and sleep. Not | enough space ( hardly any at 6m2 ) to let you move | around. And this means workers would have to be treated | better now they have an option to quit without begging | for food on the table. | gremlinsinc wrote: | Perhaps it should be enough for everybody to get a tiny | home or a few for larger families... or Yurts... so maybe | it front-loads a bit of the costs into | building/infrastructure -- land/lots and building | supplies... so you get like 80k worth up front, then just | a food card for groceries after that... eventually they | work in healthcare too... | | It'd have to be some sort of partnership w/ govt and | localities to workout making it so people who need homes | the most have easier access to them, by freeing up the | land, so they don't need to relocate across country or so | it doesn't seem like they're being put in concentration | camps or something horrible like that... If I live in a | rural town, they need to do something to ensure there's | homes for everyone who wants one there somehow. If they | need to buy or lease land and throw up some 30k yurts, so | be it... | | On the bright side those who pay higher rents will | probably pay less as there will be a lot more rentals | available. | giantg2 wrote: | Yet that's largely not what is being proposed. | dragonwriter wrote: | > How does the economics look for that? | | Compared to means-tested aid with duplicative bureaucracy to | that which already exists for income taxation? Depends on a | number of factors, including whether you find it by closing | the gap between labor and non-labor taxes so that you aren't | punishing people for hiring, whether and how you adjust | minimum wage in light of it, how you set the level of basic | income relative to productive capacity, whether you index it | to a revenue stream divided among the eligible population, or | target a constant real income level, or set the level by some | other means, etc. | mountainriver wrote: | I donno, we already have automation doing a lot of things | today. Lack of work is only due to lack of imagination and | tools like this make us more capable than ever. | | The universe is infinitely complex and large, there is plenty | for people to do. | giantg2 wrote: | "Lack of work is only due to lack of imagination" | | How so? It seems one needs capital to start new things, time | to use their imagination (as opposed to seeking necessities), | and then customers able to pay for whatever the new thing is. | I think there are tons of constraints in feasibility. | danielmarkbruce wrote: | I think he's saying something approximately like: there are | likely jobs we can't think of yet that will pop up. They | always have. | | Imagine if you went back in time 200 years and explained | how current farming and current manufacturing work, and | explain that's how it will work in 200 years time. A | reasonable person would likely assume hardly anyone was | working in this future state, that there would be no jobs. | pizza234 wrote: | This is indeed the description of the "Lump of labor" | fallacy1. | | 1=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy. | giantg2 wrote: | To a certain extent that is true. But it matters where | those jobs are eliminated. Usually the jobs that replace | lower jobs or offset the automation are higher level. Do | we actually believe that everyone in society is able to | work the higher level jobs? I would think the jobs would | need to align to the population's potential. | pizza234 wrote: | To a certain extent, high level jobs of today are low | level jobs of tomorrow. Imagine what one can do today | with just a mobile phone, compared to what could be done | 50 years ago. | | Nobody could translate in all the languages 50 years ago; | today, anyone do it, without any particular cognitive | requirement. | giantg2 wrote: | That's actually eliminated/reduced the needs for | translators. The jobs replacing it are much fewer and | higher skilled (software dev). | | So the _tasks_ in your example are easier, but the easier | _jobs_ have been eliminated or replaced with harder jobs. | danielmarkbruce wrote: | Yep, totally agree with what you are saying. It is | fundamentally uncertain. I do believe there are more jobs | than we realize which aren't capable of being automated - | things where there is a lot of diversity in the tasks | required to do the job. Consider a real estate broker - | no single task is rocket science, but there are perhaps | 100 individual things a broker needs to be able to do. | It's not going to be automated away. These 'highly | diverse task' jobs are very common. | gremlinsinc wrote: | you could totally automate a real estate broker... a | drone or android could easily show you a place, and maybe | there's another person at a call-center who's showing 15 | homes/hour, but that displaces 20 brokers/agents.... | | Or you could just realize that real estate is a broken | industry and why does there even need to be a broker at | all... List your home yourself, have software that does | the rest... | | I mean, lawyers, doctors, software programming, can | easily be placed in the next 20 years. All fast-food, | grocery, freight(depending on self-driving cars, or | perhaps better train systems that have direct to store | delivery).. | | I look forward to the day when only 5% of the population | is employable, because we'll have to figure out someway | to live post-scarcity or just let people starve, but if | 5% work, 5% then are consumers too...and that leaves out | a lot of power, control, and economic potentiality. | quickthrower2 wrote: | Maybe we will end up with rich company owners buying nfts | from ordinary people who use the money to buy the rich | company owners products. | dragonwriter wrote: | > Without basic income, robots (as an analogy for automation) | will benefit only its owners. | | With basic income, that's still true. | | With fair (rather than preferentially lower) taxes on capital | income, that potentially changes, whether or not you have basic | income; funding BI with it is just a way of making sure that | the taxation isn't redirected back to benefit the same elites. | anonporridge wrote: | I conceptualize a UBI as a dividend, where every citizen has | exactly one nontransferable ownership share of the nation state | and has the right to share in it's profit. | nickpp wrote: | You can get that today by simply buying into one of the many | low cost ETFs available following the S&P500 index. No need | to wait for the State to do it for you. | sharkjacobs wrote: | > every citizen has exactly one nontransferable ownership | share of the nation state | | > buying into one of the many low cost ETFs available | following the S&P500 index | | There are some pretty big differences between these | nickpp wrote: | There is an even bigger difference in that one exists and | works today while the other requires a huge experiment in | the way modern society works. | judge2020 wrote: | A better analogy is that you already an ownership share | in the nation state with citizenship - you have voting | rights, a court system that works for you, you benefit | monetarily by having a secure military and police force | (thus not needing to directly pay for bodyguards or | protection from some sort of mafia). | dragonwriter wrote: | > You can get that today by simply buying into one of the | many low cost ETFs available following the S&P500 index | | No, you can't get an _equal share with every other citizen_ | that way, especially if you are a lower-class worker | without substantial surplus income. | nickpp wrote: | Yes, it's not equal and not free either. But we have it | working _today_. | dragonwriter wrote: | > Yes, it's not equal and not free either. But we have it | working today. | | I mean, it's literally _not_ working, even a little bit, | for the vast majority of the people who would be net | beneficiaries under a UBI. This is "let them eat cake" | levels of out-of-touch. | nickpp wrote: | The greatest mass-pulling out of poverty I personally | witnessed in my lifetime was when the communist states of | Eastern Europe moved to capitalism. More of that, please. | anonporridge wrote: | Assuming you're not living as a poverty level wage slave | and regularly have to choose between buying food and | medicine, then sure. | nickpp wrote: | Indeed, getting people out of poverty is a different | issue, an issue no redistribution system has solved yet. | beaconstudios wrote: | That's just objectively not true - welfare systems stop | people from becoming homeless or starving in the street | all the time. | | Libertarianism/neoliberalism is the ideological model | that doesn't care about the poor - social democracy isn't | perfect but it is an improvement over just letting people | die. | nickpp wrote: | It's not about caring, it's about results. Capitalism is | the only system that pulled both countries and people out | of poverty, because it's the best system at motivating | people to create value. | | Redistributing systems are naturally demotivating. The | balance is being tried indeed but it's a slippery slope | in a democracy where people just learn that they can vote | more money in their pockets. | beaconstudios wrote: | Social democracy is still capitalism, it just redirects | some taxes into a welfare program. | | If eliminating poverty is the end goal then we need a | safety net for those who fail. | dragonwriter wrote: | > Social democracy is still capitalism | | It's still capitalism in much the same way that | capitalism is still feudalism. | beaconstudios wrote: | Given that capitalism describes a mode of production, it | literally is still capitalism. Capitalism is not | feudalism in that serfdom is not the primary working | relationship between classes in capitalism - though Yanis | Varoufakis seems to think that we're headed that way. | dragonwriter wrote: | > Given that capitalism describes a mode of production, | it literally is still capitalism | | Given that redistributive taxation and benefit systems | labelled "social democracy" designed specifically to | mitigate the adversity that provides the whip behind the | capitalist mode of production modify both the property | system and the mode of production that together are | labelled "capitalism", social democracy literally is | _not_ capitalism. It retains substantial elements of the | property system of, and it 's mode of production has | important similarities to that of, the system for which | the term "capitalism" was coined (as does that system | with pre-capitalist aristocratic systems), but it's not | the same system. | | It's not Marxist socialism, either, and I know Marxists | like to deny that any system that isn't pre-capitalist | that fails to be Marxist socialism can be anything other | than capitalism-under-a-different-name, but that's a | giant false dichotomy. | beaconstudios wrote: | A mixed economy still has private property and the | capitalist-worker class dynamic, still experiences the | crisis cycle - so it's still capitalist, it's just a | better form of it. If your qualifying rules for | "capitalism" require no welfare system whatsoever, then | capitalism hasn't existed in the West for at least 100 | years. | | Bearing in mind that I'm using "capitalism" as a | descriptor, not a snarl word. The snarl one is | "neoliberalism" ;) | nickpp wrote: | And being a democracy, the welfare beneficiaries will | then repeatedly decide to increase those "some taxes" | thus demotivating the taxed to work. | | We've seen countless state welfare programs growing out | of control and eating more and more funds and we are | nowhere near eliminating poverty. | | You'd think that if it was just a matter of throwing | money at the problem, we would have solved it by now. | beaconstudios wrote: | I'd love to know where this has actually happened. It | seems to me that this idea is often trotted out as a | conservative scare tactic. | | I'd also like to know how you think we should maximise | people's happiness and wellbeing. Because that's my | primary interest, and economic productivity is valuable | insofar as it enables that utility maximisation. | nickpp wrote: | Taxes are rising around the globe in developed countries. | Also red tape and regulations which are a different type | of "tax" with the same result: demotivating value | creators. | | You can't maximise happiness by definition. Happiness is | fleeting, a peak, it exists only through comparison to | our regular state. Evolution made sure of that, or | we'd've stopped evolving. The only way to cheat it is | with drugs. | | I want to maximise humankind's potential instead. Gain | infinite knowledge, spread through the stars. I think | that is a much more worthwhile goal than happily dying | out on a small planet at the edge of the galaxy. | beaconstudios wrote: | I don't mean happiness like the temporary pleasure state. | I mean the minimisation of undesired suffering and | maximisation of freedom for all people to pursue their | preferences. | | I don't think "potential" is worth anything if it isn't | used to benefit people and make their lives better. The | imperium from 40k has much greater technology and planet | span than us but it's deeply dystopic - I'd rather live | here than there. | nickpp wrote: | I also think minimising suffering and maximising freedom | are worthwhile goals. I just don't think user the State's | power is the way to get there. | | But I believe becoming multi-planetary is imperative and | urgent for mankind. The dangers while all of us are on | the same planet are simply too great to sit and enjoy the | view. | beaconstudios wrote: | I'm an anarchist so I'm inclined to agree with you about | state power - but in terms of relative goodness, a social | democracy is demonstrably better than a neoliberal state. | I can say that from experience of Conservative rule in | the UK - essential public services just get worse and the | savings are collected in the pockets of the already- | wealthy. | | I do agree about becoming multiplanetary too, but if | we're talking about existential risk then climate change | is the most urgent one and we need state power and | institutional change to avert that one. | nickpp wrote: | Don't judge governing systems using a small number of | countries, try to look at more. For example, with their | work ethic maybe Nordics can arguably make Social | Democracy work, but would it work in say Bulgaria? | | The only way to solve climate change is through | technological evolution. I see almost zero progress with | policy changes. BTW, we wouldn't even be in this mess if | would've completed the previous energy tech transition | from hydrocarbons to nuclear as planned. What stopped us? | Politics. | beaconstudios wrote: | You need a taxable base to implement social democracy - | so yeah you'd need a functioning economy in order to fund | social services, and Bulgaria is, AFAIK, pretty corrupt. | But solving corruption is a political issue. | | We'd also need to move off of ICE cars, and it was the | car industry that tried to suppress that. Also the fossil | fuel industry that puts out propaganda against new forms | of energy - capital and the state are in alliance. Some | parties can be better (left wing ones) but there's a ton | of propaganda against them by corporations too. | shadowgovt wrote: | It is entirely possible that a system that has worked | well in the past finds itself in need of replacement or | significant modification due to circumstances it has | created. Monarchy was useful for pulling disparate tribes | into larger nations via conquest. Government private land | granting incentivized rapid expansion of a colonial | people across lightly-defended foreign territory, which | was then conquered and parceled up. | | But when there is no more land to grant, what happens? | When there are no more tribes to conquer, what happens? | | When there is massive abundance and most of it is owned | by 1% of the population... What happens? | | > Redistributing systems are naturally demotivating | | ... to the people who end up with less. They seem to be | motivating to the people who end up with more. | [https://singularityhub.com/2020/05/18/here-are-the- | results-o...] | | In a country where 1 in 100 people own a total of 40% of | the nation's total wealth, a back-of-the-napkin guess | strongly suggests the net motivation of spreading that | wealth around would be positive. | dahart wrote: | Its interesting you keep using the word 'redistribution' | for social services, when capitalism is by definition a | redistribution from the poor to the rich. It's also | demotivating for people to be trapped in poverty while | their employers' relative slice of the pie is growing | year by year. Capitalism may well have slightly | democratized the wealth generation process compared to | some authoritarian regimes, and some economies have | increased average standard of living while doing well | under Capitalism, it's not all bad, but there is | certainly lots and lots _and lots_ of room to improve. | It's also interesting to put the onus on the poor to be | motivated, in a system designed by the rich that begins | to fail, and we take corrective action, if our | unemployment goes too low. | gremlinsinc wrote: | I conceptualize it as a cryptocurrency w/ single identity, a | max wallet amount (10 million perhaps -the rest is taxed | 100%), and a utilization score...basically where those who | make more transactions and hold less in their wallet get more | UBI paid into it... then there just needs to be a mechanism | to make the coin 'stable' to where 1 coin is about a loaf of | bread... it'd need to maybe have separate account types | though and gets a little murky around how businesses accept | the coin.... and how that plays into the max-limit (goal | being to limit inequality..and basically have a max un- | equalness, where you've essentially "won the monopoly game" | and now you can go out and help others win too...). | mikewarot wrote: | If only they hadn't sabotaged the Universal Basic Income that | Richard Nixon proposed back in the 1970s, this would be pretty | much good news, instead of more to worry about. | itisit wrote: | I think UBI will be necessary at some point, but I'm not | thrilled with the idea of millions of us spending all their | waking hours on Netflix and DoorDash. | zippergz wrote: | Honest question: why? If the things that need to be done in | society are getting done, why does it matter what other | people spend their time on? | nickpp wrote: | Because a society in which everything that needs to be done | is getting done - is stagnating. A progressive society | always discovers (or invents!) new things needing to be | done. And somebody needs to do those things. | fuzzer37 wrote: | > Because a society in which everything that needs to be | done is getting done - is stagnating | | Is that really the worst thing in the world? In an age | driven by hyper consumerism and buying new shiny iPhones | and other gadgets, do we really need to do more? Can't we | just be happy with our accomplishments as a human race | and just enjoy? I for one would welcome a stagnant | society. | nickpp wrote: | Maybe us or other citizens of the West can be happy and | enjoy our immensely affluent life styles but the great | majority of the population of this planet is far from | this level and quite eager to reach it. The planet cannot | support that. | | Also, humanity's eggs are currently all on one basket - | we're one major cataclismic event from complete | obliteration. | | No, the challenges ahead require us to keep evolving, we | cannot afford to stagnate. | dragonwriter wrote: | > I think UBI will be necessary at some point, but I'm not | thrilled with the idea of millions of us spending all their | waking hours on Netflix and DoorDash. | | Why would eliminating the benefit cliff produced by means- | tested welfare result in fewer people working for income | above the basic support level? Reducing the _disincentive_ | for additional work on top of minimum support is a major | motivation for moving to BI from means-tested welfare. | whynotminot wrote: | Are you thrilled with the idea of more creative output being | a result of UBI? | | There's a lot of great stuff that could happen if people | weren't chained to wage slavery and could lean on UBI to | pursue passions. Sure there will be people that sit on their | ass and do nothing, but there will also be people who use | their new found freedom to create great things that wouldn't | have happened otherwise. | | I'd also like to point out that even the most radical UBI | proponents aren't pushing for a truly substantial benefit. | Most of the proposals I've seen are payments that would be | near poverty level if it was treated as a sole income for any | length of time. | nickpp wrote: | I am willing to bet that most people will choose to do | nothing. It's being human after all to simply conserve your | energy. | | And most of the ones pursuing their passions will do | redundant, useless crap like countless blogs and TikTok | videos. | | We are the result of evolution and without evolutionary | pressure we will fail. | heavyset_go wrote: | We have not escaped evolutionary pressures, and I'll | argue that DNA-based life as we know it will never be | able to escape them. Mutations will happen and selection | will happen, even if those selection pressures fluctuate. | | As natural life, everything we do is inherently natural. | kunai wrote: | It always amuses me to see futurists with no experience | in biology or life sciences and a master's in CS try to | extrapolate the future of humanity and society. Some of | the worst trends in modernity are based around | unqualified individuals with platforms trying to impose | their will of the future on the masses (think Elon and | his ridiculous tunnels, billionaires building "smart | cities" in the desert, etc) | nickpp wrote: | Think ideologs pushing equality of outcome because that | is "fair". | vagrantJin wrote: | > We are the result of evolution and without evolutionary | pressure we will fail. | | Dubious assumption indeed. | brimble wrote: | Unless UBI's crazy-high, it's still going to be plenty | appealing to work to have money for entertainment, | travel, social signaling, better services/opportunities | for your kids, to attract mates, et c. I have exactly no | idea where people worried about some mass refusal to work | _at all_ are coming from. | nickpp wrote: | Personal experience. With just a little money I would | never work - just stay home, smoke weed and play games | all day. | another_story wrote: | What part of useless jobs in a contrived economic system | which forces people to grind their life away futily | trying to get ahead is related to evolutionary pressures? | majormajor wrote: | Compared to today, where we do useless crap like making | $5+ coffee cups or sort JIRA tickets or move numbers | around from one database to another? | | The assumption that a company cranking out an iPhone | every year is inherently "better for the evolution of | humanity" than more people writing or making videos is | one I'd question. | | Evolutionary pressure seems to mainly create animals that | focus more plainly on food and reproduction than modern | humanity, after all! | tomrod wrote: | Except the tasks you name are manufacturing organizing, | and preparing for workload. These are required tasks for | a firm to meet their demand, even divorced from all other | context and embedded in your specified tooling. | majormajor wrote: | They are "required" in that they are useful to the | business. | | I'm suggesting that "useful to a business" is currently | over-prioritized compared to "useful to an individual." | (And yes, it's driven by consumers, but if one's basic | needs were met _without_ working 8+ hours a day, maybe | those individuals would have different preferences.) | | And I think the claim that it's _evolutionary necessary_ | for us to have today 's model of firms and full time | employment is particularly out there. | evox wrote: | > And most of the ones pursuing their passions will do | redundant, useless crap like countless blogs and TikTok | videos. | | As opposed to the army of software engineers developing | the platforms to post said useless crap? | paxys wrote: | What exactly is good about meaningless, repetitive labor for | 8 hours a day? | nickpp wrote: | You can do repetitive, meaningless work while on UBI as | well. For example I plan to smoke weed and play video | games. | qualudeheart wrote: | Why not something more spiritually fulfilling? | nickpp wrote: | Why DO? | | Weed and games are fun. Spiritually fulfilling work is | fun until about 10%, then you have to document the code, | write tests, do marketing, answer support and so on... | paxys wrote: | The difference is you are doing what you want, rather | than needing to do it to survive. | nickpp wrote: | Yes, but then I do things that are not necessary for our | society leading to its decay and eventual complete | failure. | ubercow13 wrote: | What you were doing before is still happening, if it was | automated. Any small benefit you produce for society when | you're taking a break from smoking weed is a net positive | for society compared to if you still had to spend all | your time robotically doing your meaningless old job. | nickpp wrote: | I do not think we'll ever manage to automate | _everything_. The more we automate, the more stuff to be | done we'll discover or invent. Not the old job, but many | new ones. | AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: | Clearly the solution is to force people into meaningless toil | instead. | nickpp wrote: | It's not meaningless is someone else is willing to pay you | a wage to do it. It may be repetitive, boring and crappy, | but it has a meaning for the employer. | bsder wrote: | The Dole gave us Harry Potter, you know. It also gave us | Oasis. I'm sure that Britons can give you lots more examples. | | Given that most creative output comes from a very small | number of people, releasing even a tiny fraction of those | people from the basic drudgery of life should result in a | cultural explosion. | | I would even argue that it would significantly help our | current political problems. A lot of political discourse is | driven by people who have unstructured idle time--retired or | unemployed. UBI would allow people who currently have to | struggle to support themselves to engage with the political | system. | nickpp wrote: | People on welfare still have the motivation, the need to | improve their lot. UBI, being so... universal, would rob us | of that motivation. | | Besides, don't artists need the struggle to create? Isn't | best art born of pain and suffering? Isn't the artist soul | a tortured one? | namrog84 wrote: | I believe the answer is no. | | I dont have sources but I've read studies of the creative | output of people who only do work when feeling inspired | creative motivated and whatnot vs those who do purely out | of discipline and habit. And even same people in | different moods. And there is no discernable difference | in output. Its a feel good assumption but you don't need | any of those things to create beautiful things | VictorPath wrote: | I'm not thrilled with dividends and profits expropriated from | the surplus labor time of those of us who work and create | wealth by the 1%r heirs spending millions on ski slopes in | Aspen, Zermatt or beaches on the French Riviera. | libraryatnight wrote: | I know this is anecdotal, I know it doesn't matter. But I | just have to say, I watch more TV and order more food when | I'm working. When I take a long break, I tend to cook meals, | bake bread, work in my yard, and work on side projects. When | I'm working I'm too tired at the end of the day to cook, I | order in, and I'm too tired to work in my yard, I watch | Netflix. | SllX wrote: | > The robot arm performs a simple, repetitive job: lifting a | piece of metal into a press, which then bends the metal into a | new shape. And like a person, the robot worker gets paid for the | hours it works. | | So they hired Bender Bending Rodriguez. Fair enough. | | More seriously, seems like the job market is in a perfect storm | for more robots to be hired in workers' steads. They're not | subject to "vaccine or testing mandates", in fact they won't even | get COVID, they're not going to unionize, and they're not going | to quit on you. | LinuxBender wrote: | _they're not going to unionize_ | | This assumes we keep them just complex enough for the job. If | computer scientists and developers make Bender too smart or | cloud connect them, they may decide to hold a union vote. There | was a trial in the science fiction show Star Trek the Next | Generation to decide if Lt. Commander Data _an android_ had | rights and he won. Curious how far away such a scenario might | be. | SllX wrote: | At this point my bending friend, that's still a hypothetical | that remains in the "believe it when I see it" phase of | development. | phkahler wrote: | >> They're not subject to "vaccine or testing mandates", in | fact they won't even get COVID, they're not going to unionize, | and they're not going to quit on you. | | No, but in this article they are being rented by the hour. Once | you become dependent on them, their price will go up to | whatever some outside company wants it to be - probably a bit | above minimum wage and that's only in places where the work | area hasn't yet been redesigned with the robot in mind. This | will be danger until the robots become more of a commodity | item, but that may eventually happen. | SllX wrote: | Maybe, but at this point in time I have no reason to think | that the robot market will be uncompetitive and insulated | from other sectors of the economy. Robot-rentals only need to | be cheaper than the cost of the employee and deliver the same | or approximately the same value to be competitive. | | Wages are also not the only cost of employees. | dragonwriter wrote: | > More seriously, seems like the job market is in a perfect | storm for more robots to be hired in workers' steads. They're | not subject to "vaccine or testing mandates", in fact they | won't even get COVID, they're not going to unionize, and | they're not going to quit on you. | | And, unlike labor with payroll tax, you don't pay special | supplemental taxes on automation rental. | SllX wrote: | Knew I forgot something! | | Although I should at least point out that while true now, | there's nothing inherent to robots that insulates them from | this. Tax policy is a human choice, so while not paying | payroll taxes is an advantage for hiring a robot over a | person today, that doesn't stop human governments from | enacting robot taxes. | maigret wrote: | They can get viruses though | rdtwo wrote: | Robot managers are the future. Low value work isn't worth using | robots for | breadzeppelin__ wrote: | > Does not compute. Please phrase your standup response in the | form of "Yesterday I _____. Today I will _____. I have ____ | blockers." | anonporridge wrote: | https://marshallbrain.com/manna1 | [deleted] | anonporridge wrote: | True until it isn't. | rdtwo wrote: | The promised that AI would replace dangerous work but instead | it ruthlessly manages disposable workers till they get | damaged and then disposes off them because that's cheaper | than actually automation. | giantg2 wrote: | Perhaps they will have more "company culture" than human | managers. | rdtwo wrote: | More obedient and ruthless | giantg2 wrote: | AKA company culture | nickpp wrote: | Minimum wage laws make using humans for low value work illegal | though. | rdtwo wrote: | Ai to monitor hire and fire workers at amazon is basically | this. | TechoChamber wrote: | So I worked on robots for a fair bit of my career before quitting | because the reality just didn't mesh with the hype. I've worked | on self-driving cars, computer vision applications for automated | surveillance, physical robots for warehouse automation similar to | what is being described in this article, and more. | | This is ignoring all the problems with these systems. Workplace | injuries are completely ignored, and I have _never_ worked | somewhere with a physical robot that did not harm someone at some | point, no matter how seriously safety was taken. The reality is, | with current tech (which is always improving!) that robots are | more dangerous - full stop. | | https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-54355803 | | It talks about the simplicity of these systems which is true, but | the problem is they're so simple something as weird as changing | the color of the box can completely break the system with no | resolution. I made up that example because I can't talk about | real things that broke the workflow for warehouse automation | companies due to NDAs, but they were equally stupid. Basically if | you wanted to change _anything_ then the robot usually had to be | scrapped and redesigned, which costs millions and takes months or | even years. | | It mentions the theoretical gains of using cheaper robots to | replace expensive labor, and this is how these systems are sold | to everyone who has never really worked with robots. Speaking for | the robotics company, the upfront cost of the robot was usually | more than they ever recouped from revenue. When you factor in the | cost of maintenance (these robots are monitored by people that | make a lot of money), not to mention the R&D then it never turned | a profit. Speaking for the warehouses, they would frequently | complain about the robots breaking, the inability to get work | done, and the biggest complaint was "it's worse than the humans | it's supposed to replace." | | The technology just isn't there yet. I don't know when it will | be. If you are interested in research then robotics is a | fascinating field. If you are trying to make money by solving | real problems that aren't subsidized by VC then it's demoralizing | as hell. Most robotics companies never make a good product. | Amazon has Kiva Systems which work great, but you'd be surprised | that most of their competitors still never figured out how to | have positive margins on their products. iRobot had the Roomba | which is still going strong with lots of competitors. There are a | handful of companies that sell robotic arms that make money. | There are a handful of companies that sell sensors that make | money (a lot less than you'd think). There are contracts you can | get with the military that usually go nowhere. Rodney Brooks, who | cofounded iRobot, failed with his cobots approach at Rethink | Robotics. There are lots of other failures I haven't mentioned as | well. | | Robots have a long way to go before they're seriously competing | with humans. | petra wrote: | //Amazon has Kiva Systems which work great, but you'd be | surprised that most of their competitors still never figured | out how to have positive margins on their products. | | Interesting. | | Why is that? | TechoChamber wrote: | I'm slightly limited by what I can say, but it mostly comes | down to three things. Amazon has more scale, better vertical | integration, and their tech actually works better. | hourislate wrote: | What a boon for small businesses. Standing at a punch press is | not only tedious but can be dangerous work. That person who did | that could spend their time inspecting the stamped parts, loading | the material and supervising the robot instead of wearing | themselves out doing a repetitive task. Automation doesn't have | to replace the complete manufacturing process, just the easy | parts. | phkahler wrote: | >> That person who did that could spend their time inspecting | the stamped parts, loading the material and supervising the | robot instead of wearing themselves out doing a repetitive | task. Automation doesn't have to replace the complete | manufacturing process, just the easy parts. | | Automation always reduces labor costs. If the company wants to | spend the savings on a human doing something else that's an | option, but the notion that automation creates more jobs is | false. | henryfjordan wrote: | > the notion that automation creates more jobs is false | | This is true in the first-order analysis but history has | shown that people with free time will find a way to use their | newfound time to create new industry. It wasn't all that long | ago that >50% of people were farmers. We don't have 50% | unemployment now that we have mega-combines and all the other | machinery that has made it so <1% of people need to farm. We | won't have 50% unemployment when the robots come to do | factory jobs and drive trucks. | deelowe wrote: | Those bits can be pretty easily automated as well. | giantg2 wrote: | Ostensibly, if those are necessary jobs, then they are already | staffed. | msoad wrote: | It's so fascinating that physical labor seems to be the main | concern when it comes to robots doing it better/cheaper than | humans. If anything, we know that automation is coming after | office desk jobs first. Those jobs are much easier to automate. | Language models can read a manuscript and spit out a | summary/judgment with much better my friend that has read so many | books and evaluate book projects. The "robot" has read more | books, can memorize more of the manuscript as it reads it and | does it much much much faster. | | Maybe publishing houses are not comfortable replacing her with an | AI but it will eventually happen. | usui wrote: | I disagree on the order of things. Both are equally on the | chopping block. | | Physical labor has reasons to be focused first compared to | office jobs because as a society we've scaled that up far more | (more jobs that involve physical labor than office jobs/those | that don't), all that physical labor and scale comes at a large | cost, and physical labor is at times easier to automate | compared to office work. You can decompose the steps of | delivering food to a table or lifting a box and dropping it | down somewhere else. Naturally, we've converged to optimize for | simplicity when it comes to physical labor because people in | physical labor don't like wasted effort or operations that | change all the time, whereas office jobs can have many | conditional branches unpruned. | kmeisthax wrote: | We've been automating away office jobs for a lot longer than | we've been putting ML in robots to automate factory work, | though. | | For example, the way business mail used to work was that the | bureaucrat in question would record their message onto a tape, | and then send that tape off to a special department full of | typists to actually turn that voice recording into a letter. | That whole concept is not only gone, but it's such a foreign | idea that it sounds like something you'd write for a dieselpunk | novel. The moment we started putting computers on people's | desks, we expected everyone to know how to type. Same thing | goes for a lot of other office tasks, which are now comfortably | managed by software suites we literally call "Office". | | That being said, the new wave of machine-learning powered | automation scares me. Not because I'm worried that my job will | be taken by software, but because said software will barely | work. For factory jobs, the risks are obvious; that's why we | put these robots in cages[0]. However, these office jobs are | still making critical decisions that will increasingly be | handled by automation. We already know how much having to deal | with Google sucks; and they are pretty much addicted to | automating away all their support staff. In your manuscript | example, it could be that the ML model just starts burying | specific genres of book or books with specific types of | characters in them, for stupid reasons. | | [0] Or if you're Amazon, you put the workers in cages, because | Dread Pirate Bezos hates them. | A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote: | <<Not because I'm worried that my job will be taken by | software, but because said software will barely work. For | factory jobs, the risks are obvious; that's why we put these | robots in cages[0]. However, these office jobs are still | making critical decisions that will increasingly be handled | by automation. | | Just to build on this a little. Even if they do work, general | population will have little to no understanding on how they | work. They will be little black boxes that govern our daily | lives with little to no way to correct it if things go awry. | As much as I am amazed by what ML can do already, we need | some basic customer facing documentation on how it is | supposed to work. | oceanplexian wrote: | > Not because I'm worried that my job will be taken by | software, but because said software will barely work. | | If said automation works like most corporate initiatives I've | been a part of, it'll require 5 employees to implement, | update, and maintain for every 1 that it saves, meanwhile | costing millions of dollars per year to some vendor for a | support license. Some workers might be let go but they were | on the chopping block anyway. A few years later the whole | thing is scrapped and the cycle starts over again. | dogman144 wrote: | There are a few publishing companies in NYC that pitch | manuscript ideas and ghost writers are hired to write it. | Currently a profitable company, only works around cookbooks and | logical book ideas that AI could pick up (what's trending on | google, etc), but either way it's coming. | gigel82 wrote: | RPA is definitely a rapidly growing market; look at UIPath's | meteoric rise, or the things coming out of Microsoft like Power | Automate. | danvoell wrote: | Agree. Robotics get the bad rap because it can physically be | pointed at vs. an AI in the cloud. Robots mostly take redundant | physical labor whereas software is taking the cush jobs away. | anonporridge wrote: | https://marshallbrain.com/manna1 | ksdale wrote: | I think you're right about automation coming for office jobs, | but it's not that odd that physical labor would be the focus, a | couple hundred years ago, like 95% of people worked in | agriculture, and automation is the reason only 1% of people do | today. It's harder to suss out how many factory jobs have been | automated away compared to how many are just being done | elsewhere, but a lot of factory labor has been automated as | well. | | It's almost like automation is coming for office jobs because | it already claimed the low-hanging fruit elsewhere. | another_story wrote: | I think your last assumption is correct. Agriculture, | textiles, automobiles, and food production (not restaurants) | have all seen significant automation, while office jobs have | actually increased. | UnpossibleJim wrote: | You don't even have to think about the eventuality of | replacements. Just look at the realities of telephone work in | modern societies: | | https://www.nber.org/papers/w28061 | newhouseb wrote: | 100%. | | Even before you need language models, though, there's an insane | amount of "digital manual labor" that involved people shuttling | files around and validating / cross referencing data in ways | that would be done far more correctly and efficiently by | software. In my opinion, low code tooling threatens many more | jobs than AI does in the short term. | mxuribe wrote: | > ...low code tooling threatens many more jobs than AI does | in the short term. | | THIS 100%! | Msw242 wrote: | I don't buy it. Low code can make ICs much more productive, | but you don't fire the other three... They have a ton of | institutional and domain knowledge. You just find things | for them to do that wouldn't have been worthwhile without | the leverage that came from low code. | majormajor wrote: | This seems like one of those problems where the last 5% is | going to take 99% of the effort and time. | | A lot of people would be out of jobs if data was truly | interchangeable, and there were robust ways of formatting | data that would work for everything people wanted to do, and | software was bug-free and exported/imported perfectly every | time, but... even something "standard" like date/time data is | all sorts of hard to have people and their systems actually | do correctly in a general way. | judge2020 wrote: | This is how competition is snuffed out - the companies that | realize this have already completed the switch or have | started it and they'll be the ones to outlast all their | competitors that have fallen behind with slower processes. | lumost wrote: | This has been true for as long as people have written | software. We eliminate ops with clouds, assembly with | compilers, code with libraries, software with SaaS and | platforms. | | What makes low-code/no-code different from everything else? | ModernMech wrote: | I dunno, the job of customer service phone rep seems like it | should be easy to automate, and they've been attempting to do | so for decades, but how many people get absolutely frustrated | with such systems? | jjoonathan wrote: | Is the customer service rep meant to serve you or make you go | away? Sometimes it's the latter. I wouldn't be so sure it's a | bug. | nojito wrote: | This doesn't make much sense at all. | | Excel is a great example of how new technology created more | jobs than it destroyed. | deeg wrote: | Is this really much different from regular automation? It's a | robot that performs a menial, simple task. Feels like click bait | to me. | | Edit: new title is much better. | monkeydust wrote: | Every time I read one of the 'automation' pieces I think of the | book Manna. If you haven't read it do so, great and short read | available here: | | https://marshallbrain.com/manna1 | antoniuschan99 wrote: | I've been watching a lot of factory tour videos (most are in | China) on YouTube. Especially the electronics kind. I notice that | the ones pre-2015 are full of humans and now it's a lot more | machines. | | On one hand, automation will help bring back manufacturing | competitiveness in the West because the capital expenditure is | going down (been looking into getting a dobot mg400 which is like | $4k) and labour is essentially $0. On the other hand, what will | happen to all the low cost labour in the developing nations? Such | as the migrant workers in China? | | Forget about here in North America where UBI is a possibility - I | think we can agree UBI is not possible in low income countries. | | One thing about all this is that Trades or service jobs such as | salons - I don't see that being automated anytime soon. | | Btw whenever the topic of Amazon workers comes up I think about | the movie Nomadland. Check it out if you haven't watched it yet. | dahart wrote: | > I think we can agree UBI is not possible in low income | countries. | | This got me wondering, what is the best analysis of whether UBI | is feasible economically for a given country? How low is too | low? Does it boil down to something like the difference between | average per capita income and average per capita GDP? Or | something else; is it possible to afford UBI even if GDP is | lower than personal income? | giantg2 wrote: | Time to discuss the paradigm shift in how people, especially the | ones traditionally in these low paying jobs are supposed to | support themselves in the next generation. | nsxwolf wrote: | "Deploying the robot allowed a human worker to do different | work, increasing output" | | Sounded like this was win/win here. | giantg2 wrote: | Possibly, but doubtful if we view the full effect. It says | that it eliminates the need to hire new workers. What is the | next generation to do if the jobs don't exist? | nsxwolf wrote: | Were they even planning on hiring more workers? And if the | robot job scales to 2 robots, isn't it also possible that | the other job scales to 2 humans? | hourislate wrote: | Seed the Solar System. | giantg2 wrote: | Let's talk about realilistic stuff. Do you think that | minimum wage workers are suited for being astronauts? | Maybe a small subset can be trained for it, but many | probably cannot. | hellisothers wrote: | The article also quotes them as saying they're not going to | lay people off but also probably not going to hire more | employees given this option so future workers are left out. | And I imagine that position won't age well as they may not | backfill people who leave if not actively lay people off | sooner than later. | forinti wrote: | There's plenty of work to do: maintaining public infrastructure | (buildings, parks, gardens, etc) and taking care of people | (sick, elderly, disabled, young). | | I guess we will have a lot more public sector jobs. | giantg2 wrote: | That sounds like a snowball problem. Not only will the | government need to pay UBI, but also these other jobs. How to | pay for it? | lou1306 wrote: | * Tax the machines (and/or the increased profits coming | from automation) | | * Some people who receive an UBI that covers their basic | needs may do some of these jobs for a lower wage than the | current one | treeman79 wrote: | Genera idea is that goods and services get ever cheaper. | | If your not overly picky (beans and rice) have gotten so cheap | that world hunger is already a solved problem. Distribution | less so. | | If you can setup a Von Neumann machine that worked In the | middle of the desert. eventually you could have hundreds of | cities ready for move in. So very cheap. | giantg2 wrote: | Yet people need housing and healthcare, which is ever | increasing in price. | treeman79 wrote: | Those are both problems of government over regulation. | giantg2 wrote: | I partly agree, but not completely. | | In the case of healthcare, it's partly the cost of | technology - a generation ago there were no MRIs, drugs | were less complex, etc. The quality and outcomes have | massively improved in many areas. | | Even with housing, you have material costs and labor | costs. Everyone talks about density, but if someone isn't | working with a UBI, then they can live in the middle of | nowhere. Most of the housing issues are really a personal | choices and labor location. | jimkri wrote: | I have a feeling they are going to be shifts to have people | either level up wiht their technical skills and work on | advanced problems and some people who cannot level up but can | still be used in lower level data work where automation is | really difficult. | anonporridge wrote: | https://archive.is/1UJcQ ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-01-18 23:00 UTC)