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There are people at Starbucks who genuinely enjoy creating those new pumpkin flavored concoctions. It's jobs for which no person enjoys doing that need to be au

There are people at Starbucks who genuinely enjoy creating those new pumpkin flavored concoctions. It's jobs for which no person enjoys doing that need to be automated, like taping up the same packing box 600 times a day.

secstate 10y ago
That's fair enough. But a lot of business spends a lot of hours creating a value proposition for it's employees. That turns this idea into a self-fulfilling prophesy sort of work environment.
Grishnakh 10y ago
I'm sure if you look hard, you can find some people who (would) genuinely enjoy taping up boxes too, generally among people who are mentally challenged. But like the baristas, these jobs will eventually be automated because it'll be cheaper and more efficient to do so than to have humans doing them. If I'm buying crap online from Amazon, I'd rather save money and have my boxes packed by a robot than pay someone to do it, and similarly, if I'm buying a drink, I'd rather save some money and have a robot make it for me, and be much more likely to have a consistent product (human-made coffee/tea drinks are notoriously inconsistent in quality; some baristas suck, and even good baristas make mistakes). Personally, I think the only real reason to have human workers in our automated future is to have some human contact. So there's no reason to have human baristas: those people stand behind a counter and I may or may not be able to interact with them, depending on how the establishment is laid out. But if I go to a café and sit in a comfy chair and order a drink, I'd rather have a cute college girl bring it to me than a robot. So basically, until femmebots are invented and perfected, the big value that humans can provide that robots and automation cannot is sex and socialization. And if they ever invent AI robots that look and act just like people, it's all over for humans because the robots won't have our annoying flaws.

secstate 10y ago

That's fair enough. But a lot of business spends a lot of hours creating a value proposition for it's employees. That turns this idea into a self-fulfilling prophesy sort of work environment.

Grishnakh 10y ago

I'm sure if you look hard, you can find some people who (would) genuinely enjoy taping up boxes too, generally among people who are mentally challenged. But like the baristas, these jobs will eventually be automated because it'll be cheaper and more efficient to do so than to have humans doing them. If I'm buying crap online from Amazon, I'd rather save money and have my boxes packed by a robot than pay someone to do it, and similarly, if I'm buying a drink, I'd rather save some money and have a robot make it for me, and be much more likely to have a consistent product (human-made coffee/tea drinks are notoriously inconsistent in quality; some baristas suck, and even good baristas make mistakes). Personally, I think the only real reason to have human workers in our automated future is to have some human contact. So there's no reason to have human baristas: those people stand behind a counter and I may or may not be able to interact with them, depending on how the establishment is laid out. But if I go to a café and sit in a comfy chair and order a drink, I'd rather have a cute college girl bring it to me than a robot. So basically, until femmebots are invented and perfected, the big value that humans can provide that robots and automation cannot is sex and socialization. And if they ever invent AI robots that look and act just like people, it's all over for humans because the robots won't have our annoying flaws.