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> Humans are agressively being eliminated from as many business models as possible. Well that's true, where they don't add value. What's the difference betwee

• e_d_e_v 9y ago
  When I worked in the movie box, that was not at all true. People would come in and ask about the movie. How long was it, whether it was any good, should they see another one instead? We gave them real answers. Just because you have a minimum wage job doesn't mean you're a bump on a log. If you've lost sight of the value of basic human interaction with anyone not baked into your caste, I pity you, even if you are in the majority. Also, 99% of movies today are crap, so there's not much to talk about.
  • cracell 9y ago
    I would find this super annoying while waiting in line to buy tickets. If that's a service that makes sense to have theaters can always keep it. One staffed line for people that want to chit chat and automated kiosks for people like me who just want to buy a ticket.
    • dexterdog 9y ago
      My local big theater has exactly that
    • tedmiston 9y ago
      Doesn't every theater have automated ticketing kiosks now?
  • cbanek 9y ago
    Like I said in my original comment, even if the people are great, they are usually doing a very boring repetitive job. And even if they aren't a "bump on a log," many employers these days honestly want them to be. (liability, efficiency) They really want a robot that is cheaper, not a person. There are so many rules about what an employee can and should do now, especially for lower level jobs. What they can say, how they can say it, what abilities they have to resolve customer problems, if they should interact with the customers at all, etc. I honestly think the whole demise of customer service is the result of this. People feel in a double bind because they aren't allowed and aren't supposed to help customers. Or if they can, they aren't rewarded for it and take a greater risk by doing it. People can do much greater things, be more helpful, be more friendly, and generally add value - if their employer would allow and reward it. But most are just looking at profit, and speed from entry to exit, and a lot of customers are too.
    • ethbro 9y ago
      I'd argue that those companies that have squeezed the humanity out of their workers are the first ones getting dislocated by the market. E.g. Blockbuster being bankrupt and our local independent video store doing just fine. Or McDonald's vs Waffle House. If you play was "we can provide a worse service for less" then yes, you're going to get steamrolled by automation. If your business is run around adding value (like informative parent of yore in the ticket booth), then your value is going to increase until strong AI (if that ever happens). Assuming people like talking to humans. Sometimes I wonder about the HN crowd...
      • cbanek 9y ago
        I think you hit it on the head - it depends on the service being provided, and how the people relate to providing it. Some people like talking to humans, some don't. It often changes as well. But for incredibly basic mundane transactions, I'd lean on the "I don't like talking to humans." But it's also slower to talk to humans, and generally there is a line, making it again slower. If I have to add travel time in there, that's a factor. So if the person at the end doesn't add at least some positive value (other than just doing what I need done), I'd rather go the faster way. Also, if a company is squeezing the workers and not the market, that probably means that company is having trouble no matter what the workers are doing.
  • cujo 9y ago
    > 99% of movies today are crap, so there's not much to talk about So it's true now, then. > If you've lost sight of the value of basic human interaction with anyone not baked into your caste, I pity you, even if you are in the majority. This seems a bit extreme. I assume you don't use ATMs, auto-bill pay, or automatic check deposit then either? Because you clearly value human interaction at all possible avenues? Perhaps people's "need" for interaction as they go about their day is somewhere in the middle.
  • brandonmenc 9y ago
    > When I worked in the movie box, that was not at all true. People would come in and ask about the movie. How long was it, whether it was any good, should they see another one instead? We gave them real answers. Your smartphone gives you all of these answers now.
    • wavefunction 9y ago
      Perhaps it's a matter of trusting the person behind the counter over your smartphone.
      • Erik816 9y ago
        Why trust one random person (who may not have even seen the movie you are interested in, share your preferences, or be particular insightful) when you can have the aggregate wisdom of everyone who has seen the movie and cared enough to rate it?
        • jimbokun 9y ago
          Why trust the waiter over Yelp?
          • kefka 9y ago
            Oh yes. BaaB - blackmail as a business.
            • weaksauce 9y ago
              Side question... Is there anything better than Yelp?
              • majormajor 9y ago
                Knowing people in real life.
  • paulddraper 9y ago
    > 99% of movies today are crap Survivorship bias. They always have been.
    • coldtea 9y ago
      "Things are always the same" fallacy. No, there are periods that are artistically more fruitful and interesting that others, and the history of art knows and documents several of them.
      • brownbat 9y ago
        > there are periods that are artistically more fruitful and interesting that others, Sure, but the claim was just that there have always been bad movies. Here's a test: If there's some year you know of where bad movies were exceptionally rare, let us know. Then we'll see if we can provide counterexamples.
        • jfoutz 9y ago
          My pick for year is 1878. I'd love to see your examples. But really, how do you quantify good? Taste is subjective. The original Transformers move is a great example. I didn't like it. but i believe 14 year old me would have absolutely loved it. It's similar to the statistics about Word users only use 5% of the functionality of Word. But everybody uses a different 5%. I guess if you want to go by money, i'm going to pick 1939. I'd guess about $18,000,000 in production expenses, and about $240,000,000 in box. [1] (arbitrarily assigning 1,000,000 to the unlisted numbers, but keeping the box at $0 for unlisted numbers) Seems like a pretty good ROI. (although i think of, Gone with the wind, Mr Smith goes to washington, and the Wizard of Oz as subjectively good. 25% is a pretty good percentage) Kind of a fun exercise poking through the years. 1997 was a standout, but everything i looked at had memorable and fun movies. I don't think any year would hit that 25% mark though. [1] http://www.the-numbers.com/movies/year/1939 http://www.the-numbers.com/movies/year/1939
          • brownbat 9y ago
  • maverick_iceman 9y ago
    Was this in planet Earth or somewhere else? I've been to over 1000 movies and have never seen it happening with me or anyone else.
  • dsacco 9y ago
    There was probably a nicer way to make that point without attacking the parent's awareness of "the value of basic human interaction." For what it's worth, I didn't infer any value judgement about caste in the comment.
    • 1_2__3 9y ago
      I did and think the reply's tone was perfectly reasonable given the parent comment's dismissiveness. Yeah I do like interacting with people. Even "minimum wage workers" who last time I checked were still people.
      • douche 9y ago
        That's fine. Some of us are already maxed out on our low budget of human interaction and craze cold, mechanical, impersonal efficiency. Dealing with error-prone, chatty human beings is not fun for some of us, when they simply serve as an obstacle to what we need.
      • dsacco 9y ago
        Sure, but my point is that he never said they're not people. I believe you're reading something in it that isn't really there. It feels like you're unfairly mischaracterizing what was actually said, which was rather neutral. Some people (myself included) appreciate minimum wage workers as humans and still want the efficiency that comes with automation. It's a mixed bag. When I'm at CVS I would rather have actual cashiers. At a movie theater I'd rather have a ticket machine.
    • deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
  • saulrh 9y ago
    When and where did that happen? Every time I've been to a movie theater in the last fifteen years, it's had a ten-person line and everybody was in get-in-get-out mode. I can see value in moving the people in the box sideways into a reviewing-and-recommending role, but that's a sideways move as a result of the current role disappearing.
  • hkmurakami 9y ago
    It's like the (independent) bookstore employee. They probably make minimum wage but they are interesting to talk to, are up to date on the latest great books, and really do add to the value of the store.
• darpa_escapee 9y ago
  > Someone in a movie box isn't going to tell you about the movie, or have a conversation about it with you. They are there to take the most basic info (movie, time) and money, and give you a ticket. It's also always done thru a thick bit of glass that makes communication sometimes difficult if not painful. This has not been my experience at all. People who work at theaters get discounted, if not free, tickets to movies and have often watched the featured movies themselves. They get to see how often people walk out, ask for a refund or praise a film. They can relate to your tastes and make recommendations based off of them. They can tell you if a movie isn't a great date flick and suggest another. > Honestly, do we really like interacting with the people with minimum wage jobs? Not really. Most people seem to prefer the automated checkout, ordering on their phone, etc. Speak for yourself. There is nothing more aggravating to me than self-checkout, it is slow, it is often buggy and I don't like having to scan, punch in codes and bag things myself. I hate having to wait for a manager's approval to apply a coupon or finish checkout because the machine decided I did something wrong and won't let me fix it. Hell is having $20 a machine won't accept. I prefer being able to speak with the people who are going to submit or prepare my order, because I can ask questions or customize what I want. I cannot do that with an app or touch screen menu. > Most of these people also are not thrilled about their jobs and be lazy, or do a bad job Again, speak for your own experiences.
  • DougBTX 9y ago
    > This has not been my experience at all. FWIW it matches my experience. I can't think of a time I've gone to the cinema not already knowing which film I'm there to see, so it wouldn't cross my mind to ask for recommendations.
    • sqeaky 9y ago
      Dealing with unhappy minimum wage workers seems to be the default to me as well. My theater experience sounds like yours. As for minimum wage cashiers, I would rather use the self checkout. Most cashiers can't be bothered to puts things like eggs anywhere except directly under gallons of juice. I am not trying to beat them up, most are clearly hard working and decent people. But they are people who are being replaced by more efficient, cheaper an more reliable machines. Except for the part where I have to bag my own eggs, but I won't crush them, because I paid for them.
• adamsea 9y ago
  You kinda missed the whole point of the OP, which was, if people don't add value to a business, how will said valueless people put food on the table and participate in society?
  • coldtea 9y ago
    If many of those people don't have money to "put food on the table and participate in society" who will be able to pay any business for anything?
    • hn_throwaway_99 9y ago
      People who can participate (those with the skills necessary to manage more complex systems as he states in his blog post). The scary part is it looks like wealth will be increasingly concentrated, and more and more people will fall to a level where what we consider basic needs in modern society (food, shelter, education and health care) will no longer be attainable. As the author points out, "it will be messy": Those societies usually don't end well.
      • coldtea 9y ago
        >People who can participate A diminishing pool of people to pay for stuff, not only hurts businesses profits, but also diminishes the pool of rich people (who make their money off of selling products, houses, services, etc to the masses).
    • wu-ikkyu 9y ago
      Bingo! If humans are continually replaced by robots without being given an income subsidized by the benefits of automation, in the long run, the robots will have to be shut down because the humans can longer pay for the products!
      • sqeaky 9y ago
        You are missing a great deal of suffering in the middle. Decent hard working people can start dying long before the robots must shut down.
• choward 9y ago
  > On the other hand, the fancy waiter will make recommendations. Will tell you about other things, and is generally part of the ambiance and experience of eating out. I only need the waiter to tell me this because I have no idea what the food with end up looking like. Just put pictures of items on the menu. Problem solved. Now it get to order what looks best.
  • goatherders 9y ago
    Good grief. Ordering food by appearance is like deciding music is good because the artist has purple hair or a painting is beautiful because the canvas smells like cotton.
    • waqf 9y ago
      Please enlighten us with your wisdom as to what reasons for liking a piece of art are acceptable, and what reasons are unacceptable. To put it another way, when you walked into the restaurant you committed to paying a premium for one sensory experience or another. Why not the visual?
      • omginternets 9y ago
        I think his point is that there's more to food than the way it appears in a picture, and a human being can add a lot of insight into the selection process.
  • fra 9y ago
    For some restaurants, unveiling the food is a big part of the experience and photos would ruin a lot of the fun. E.g. Atelier Crenn in SF
• contras1970 9y ago
  > Someone in a movie box [...] is practically a useless annoyance > Honestly, do we really like interacting with the people with minimum wage jobs? Not really. This may not be substantive enough for HN guidelines, but you know what? Ewwwww!
• justinator 9y ago
  You write as though you've never held a minimum wage job. Have some compassion for those people who are working hard for almost nothing. Sometimes, it isn't their first choice, or it's their only choice. I would suggest a better experience is had when you give respect to the (say) service industry worker you engage in a transaction with.
  • Taek 9y ago
    Maybe we should be working on better ways to get the poor educated and integrated with modern society as opposed to making them dependent on jobs which take all of their time, don't pay nearly enough, and block any and all opportunity for a way out because there's no free time or disposable income.
    • Eyas 9y ago
      We should also work on better ways to equip society to have skills that are more "valuable" in the modern high-tech world, absolutely. The incompassioante charge made by the gp is still fair, I think: Saying these workers provide "no value" is too business-focused and incompassioante. Yes, these workers provide little value in terms of profit to the business, but looking at societal value at a larger scales, these jobs do have value (to the workers, to their families, to the local businesses and landlords they can now make business with using their wages, to homelessness, crime, hunger, etc.). Simply replacing these workers with technology is a net negative for society if we don't do what you suggested. The free market thinking that the poor deserve to be fired because their skills are no longer competitive, can be, I think, a privileged and incompassioante position.
      • cbanek 9y ago
        It's not that they don't provide any value, it's that their value isn't competitive anymore. We could be talking about automation or outsourcing, and it would be the same - labor (especially unskilled) is generally getting cheaper. For outsourcing, there is different labor than us that is benefiting, and that's good. That allows them to prosper and buy food and have a life. We also have robots, which are basically virtual slaves that only benefit their owners. Overall, you could say that there would be an overabundance of labor then. And we hit this before, with the industrial revolution, and new waves of technology in general. What about all the human telephone operators? Or the candle makers? Maybe it really is different this time. Maybe it's not. Nobody really knows for sure. It sounds uncompassionate, but these are the same forces that drive down prices so everyone can shop happy at walmart (which I do too). Providing cheaper living is great for everyone as well, and nobody remembers that when talking about fewer people working.
• irrational 9y ago
  I know what you are saying, but I can't help wondering where teenagers will get their initial job experience if most minimum wage jobs go away.
• Sir_Substance 9y ago
  >Honestly, do we really like interacting with the people with minimum wage jobs? You're naive if you think this will only impact minimum wage jobs. Paying humans is usually about 30-50% of a companies operating expenses. With less humans you can shave even more percentages off by reducing office space or insurance premiums of applicable. This might be starting with robot barista arms manipulating coffee machines, but it's really quickly going to make it to lab workers manipulating samples. Where it goes from there depends more on the software than the hardware, but it's really not a stretch to assume that shortly after we replace truckers, we're going to replace pilots and sea captains as well. We're racing towards a decision. We can allow the automated cargo ships that will soon manage all global trade to be owned by a small cabal, or we can nationalize these systems and use the value they create to support our most disadvantaged populations.
  • ryanwaggoner 9y ago
    Flight crews and ship crews will be enhanced by automation, thus reducing those jobs, but they won't be replaced completely. The liability, safety, and economics situations are completely different from drivers. The cost of a crew to ferry an oil tanker around the world is a rounding error. The cost of two pilots on your flight is similar, and in both cases, you want someone there when things go wrong anyway.
• ryandrake 9y ago
  > On the other hand, the fancy waiter will make recommendations. Will tell you about other things, and is generally part of the ambiance and experience of eating out. I don't see the distinction. With all due respect to waitstaff (it's a tough job), the function is just begging for automation. An order-and-payment-taking tablet embedded into the table would be so much more efficient: 1. No need to wait for staff to come by, and then do the whole "drinks then wait, then food then wait" dance. Instead, just present a full page description of the food plus a picture, and an "order" button that you tap. You can even order more later if you'd like, without having to summon a waiter. Done. 2. No need to wait for staff to notice you're done eating and need the check. The total is right on the tablet, and it has a card reader. That would be great. Would probably cut the entire time suck that is restaurant dining by at least 1/2.
  • dahdum 9y ago
    What you described seemed pretty common when I visited Japan. For those in the Bay Area a Japanese chain Yayoi opened in Cupertino and Palo Alto. You order entirely on the iPad. You do have to pay at the desk on your way out, but they just type in your table number you pay with Square. No tipping allowed so it feels so smooth and simple.
  • sqeaky 9y ago
    What you are describing would be great for chain restaurants like Chile's or Olive Garden, but for something sufficiently high end the people involved really matter. If you shift your view up a few notches there are many places where real intelligence and dynamicness is required that we can't yet automated. Having a wine expert or a unique expert chef as part of the experience is part of high end dining. Consider one of those mid to high end Japanese steak houses where there they throw shrimp across the room into someone's mouth. Or a more midwestern steakhouse where you can talk with a person who butchered the steak. Or one of the new microbreweries where can can talk with the brewer about some new experiment has has and look at the brewing equipment right there. None of these make sense to automate, until we get strong AI.
    • rubber_duck 9y ago
• deleted 9y ago
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• ensignavenger 9y ago
  While I agree with your statement on the movie theatre ticket counter, I would say that I enjoy talking to the cashier at walmart. I usually ask how they are doing, I might ask about their name if it is an interesting name, or complement them on something. Some cashiers end up being short and don't seem to want to talk, but I often have great interactions. Granted, Walmart pays more than minimum wage, but I don't think it matters.
  • cbanek 9y ago
    I think it does, actually. In-N-Out burger pays more than minimum wage, and I'd say it's some of the best customer service at a fast food place. Paying that bit more means they can be choosy and pick the best people.
• Turing_Machine 9y ago
  "On the other hand, the fancy waiter will make recommendations. " The fancy waiter will recommend whatever the owner of the restaurant wants him to recommend, because that is his actual job. He is employed to maximize the dollar value of food and liquor sold. Now, there are limits to this. A good restauranteur isn't going to sell you inedible crap, and a good waiter isn't going to recommend it, because that will hurt the restaurant's long-term profitability (and in the short term, probably result in a bad tip for the waiter). Nonetheless, it's wise to keep in mind that the waiter is working for the restaurant, not you. If you have any friends who've worked in fancy restaurants, ask them about some of the strategies waiters use to encourage a large bill (and thus, a large tip).
  • tedmiston 9y ago
    > The fancy waiter will recommend whatever the owner of the restaurant wants him to recommend, because that is his actual job. He is employed to maximize the dollar value of food and liquor sold. This is a limited way of looking at the value of a waiter — I think this is a common misconception. A good waiter knows to listen to what you want and make recommendations based on that. Anytime a waiter recommends mostly or only the most expensive things, I trust them less and they lose the potential to be a great waiter even if the service is otherwise good. The waiter is not really working for the restaurant because the amount of their pay that comes from the restaurant directly is very low. In a restaurant with tips that comprises most of the waiter's income, and since the amount you tip is voluntary, really the server is working for the customer to earn a good tip.
• mikekchar 9y ago
  On the other hand, I live in Japan -- land of vending machines. I often have a choice between going to a convenience store or getting the exact same thing from a vending machine. I go to the convenience store and I do enjoy talking to the person there if they aren't too busy. Obviously not everybody will be like that (I suspect I'm turning into one of those "old people" for whom they manage to keep the bank teller windows open for a few hours a day...) But I just want to point out that this isn't as straight forward as it seems. And, if my suspicion is true, with an ageing population society may actually swing in the direction where they prefer more human contact than less in their every day lives.
• js8 9y ago
  > One of them is practically a useless annoyance, and the other one is part of the experience. You make an interesting point, and I want to remark to it - this is why I don't think the problem is just automation, but in fact social inequality. You can always employ people to take care of a small, privileged class of people. The extent to which society does this is completely cultural choice. I heard of comparison, in Brazil, several procents of households have a maid (or multiple), where in Sweden, less than half percent of households have one.
• ciconia 9y ago
  > Honestly, do we really like interacting with the people with minimum wage jobs? Not really. It's sad how this socially destructive mindset has washed first over the US and then over the rest of the globe. The money religion has won. I'm lucky to live in the French countryside, where solidarity is still a guiding principle for social interaction. The cinema in the closest town is run by a not-for-profit organisation, and the people who work there are volunteers (and tickets cost 3€ for adults). Likewise, our village feasts, meant to raise money for our small primary school, are organised by volunteers. Everyone contributes according to their abilities for the common good. I'm not French and have only recently moved here, and I'm really impressed with the way people here take matters in their own hands and create social and economic value by volunteering.
  • Chris2048 9y ago
    Are the people volunteering to ryn the cinema also desperate immigrants struggling with their paychecks? If not, you're wondering why the starving don't eat cake.
  • mercer 9y ago
    May I ask where in the countryside (approximately), or more importantly how you got there and also got here? I'm seriously looking into leaving the city life for the first time ever, and I'm curious to hear what others did and what their experience was.