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It seems interesting to me, that computers seem to be taking on managerial roles and humans are left with manual labor. The robot knows how to tell a human to f

It seems interesting to me, that computers seem to be taking on managerial roles and humans are left with manual labor. The robot knows how to tell a human to fix a problem but doesn't know how to restock the shelves itself. Similarly, in warehouses, computers tell humans what to do, and the human's job is basically just to grab things. In the end, the robot is already higher on the ladder than the humans.

panopticon 9y ago
Reminds me of this story: http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm I always thought it was amusing when people said it would replace burger flippers and the like. Why? They're cheap, and that's relatively expensive/difficult to automate. The slightly higher paid manager though? Ripe for automation.
- timthelion 9y ago
  "The girls liked it because Manna didn't hit on them either." Interesting story. I'll be sure to read it.
- ryuker16 9y ago
  Same here....I suspect it's middle and lower managers that will be first to be obliterated. Cashiers don't simple run the register, they do other stuff. Janitors fix stuff and carry heavy boxes, etc. Managers and supervisors? Overpaid if they're doing the above or doing something can be automated.
- gowld 9y ago
  > They're cheap, and that's relatively expensive/difficult to automate. that's a weird thing to say, because burger flippers ARE automated -- 99% of the work of making a McDonald's burger is already automated, only the remaining hard-to-automate 1% is left for the humans.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
PeachPlum 9y ago
Managers make decisions when the information is equivocal. That is very hard to replace. Resource allocation and unequivocal decisions are for the machines to help us with. If, as a manager, you do more of the latter: be afraid
- timthelion 9y ago
  > If, as a manager, you do more of the latter: be afraid As a gardener, I have never feared a robot that could pull weeds. As a home-maker I have never feared a robot that could wash dishes. As an inventor, I have never feared a robot that could draft diagrams. And yet those people who are at the mercy of the market fear, and this is why, I believe that capitalism is headed for either disaster or elimination. Capitalism has created a problem which does not exist. Post-scarcity is only a problem in capitalism.
  - castle-bravo 9y ago
    ... because only capitalism has made post-scarcity possible.
    - timthelion 9y ago
      The monarchies of the late 19th century were technologically advanced, but that did not stop Europe from adopting democracy in the 20th century. The monastic system was the main scientific institution for over a milenia, both in Europe and China. Only an ignorant person argue that this system developed no new technologies. You say "only capitalism", but what are you comparing capitalism to? In the past 200 years, capitalism has been the only economic institution in the world, how do you know that other institutions would have been incapable of technological advancement? If your point is to compare capitalism to state socialism, then you would be far off the mark. The USSR was extremely technologically advanced. The hunger was due to other problems, mostly having to do with Stalin intentionally creating famines in order to weaken insurgency. "Is has been proposed that the Soviet leadership used the man-made famine to attack Ukrainian nationalism, and thus the man-made famine may fall under the legal definition of genocide.[57][58][54][59][28][60] " https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor#Causes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor#Causes I am not promoting state socialism though. I would like a future in which each person/family unit/group of friends owned a small amount of land, and robots that would help them. Quite the opposite of state socialism. In state socialism, wealth is concentrated in the hands of the government. State socialism is basically monopolistic capitalism, and I believe that the two systems share many problems. I want the distribution of wealth, not its concentration.
sbinthree 9y ago
More like: humans who program the robots > the robots > humans who are instructed by the robots.
otras 9y ago
Reminds of me of the Warren Bennis quote: The factory of the future will have only two employees, a man and a dog. The man will be there to feed the dog. The dog will be there to keep the man from touching the equipment.
zanny 9y ago
Its not that we cannot build robots that restock shelves, it is that shelves are designed for humans to stock. And emulating the range of movement and dexterity of human hands and the sensory data we get when interacting with such shelves is really expensive, rather than prohibitive. Especially to maintain. Think of all the fine motor joints you would need in such a robot that could break all the time (like how fragile human fingers are). But how else are they supposed to stock individual bottles of maple syrup with weird handles while stocking jars or bags of flour a shelf over? In situations designed for robots, like Amazon warehouses, they don't have a problem stocking shelves as long as the range of required behavior is much more restricted so the instrumentation can be more rugged and less articulate.
- apendleton 9y ago
  The newer Amazon warehouses actually provide a nice example of some further refactoring to make at least parts of the stocking and picking more automate-able, in that the shelves all move and he humans stay stationary. Fingers are still hard, but moving across a warehouse is easy, so may as well shave off that piece of the task.
- cr0sh 9y ago
  It'd probably be better to design standard packaging and automated shelving systems that could be easier for robots to stock. Even better? Make the shelves robots themselves, so they could re-arrange themselves as needed, and go and "fill up" for stocking in the back, etc...
simplify 9y ago
It's not too different from a static type system. Humans are great at general problem solving, but computers are better at precision (but only when you can precise measure something).
davito88 9y ago
I think this could be said for many technologies: the cashier scans barcodes, the cook at McDonalds flips burgers when the alarm goes off, the anesthesiologist or pilot watches gauges...
- timthelion 9y ago
  And Uber tells the drivers where to go.
  - ronilan 9y ago
    Near my house, 4 red octagons with a simple white drawing command humans to stop and cooperate.
    - timthelion 9y ago
      I don't understand what you mean.
      - linkregister 9y ago
        Stop sign. I don’t think it’s a good analogy.
        the-dude 9y ago
        In South Africa, these are literally called robots. edit: was too fast, sorry. Traffic lights are called robots in SA.
        eric_h 9y ago
        Specifically a four way stop, and I'm not sure I agree that it isn't a good analogy. It's an autonomous system (traffic laws) commanding human behavior.
        timthelion 9y ago
        Actually, I think that anarchists would tell you it is a great analogy. They would claim that we are being controlled by a system of laws, a system which is like a computer program written by novice programmers who do not know how to debug, and who paid no attention to the finer details. That not only is the legal system like a robot which controls us, but it is like a stupid, primitive, and brutal robot which controls us.
tlb 9y ago
Counting inventory and generating pick lists isn't really "managerial". The word usually means managing people, which still requires human judgement.
jasode 9y ago
>The robot knows how to tell a human to fix a problem but doesn't know how to restock the shelves itself. [...] computers tell humans what to do, and the human's job is basically just to grab things. Yep. There's a name for that observation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moravec%27s_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moravec%27s_paradox

panopticon 9y ago

Reminds me of this story: http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm I always thought it was amusing when people said it would replace burger flippers and the like. Why? They're cheap, and that's relatively expensive/difficult to automate. The slightly higher paid manager though? Ripe for automation.

timthelion 9y ago
"The girls liked it because Manna didn't hit on them either." Interesting story. I'll be sure to read it.
ryuker16 9y ago
Same here....I suspect it's middle and lower managers that will be first to be obliterated. Cashiers don't simple run the register, they do other stuff. Janitors fix stuff and carry heavy boxes, etc. Managers and supervisors? Overpaid if they're doing the above or doing something can be automated.
gowld 9y ago
> They're cheap, and that's relatively expensive/difficult to automate. that's a weird thing to say, because burger flippers ARE automated -- 99% of the work of making a McDonald's burger is already automated, only the remaining hard-to-automate 1% is left for the humans.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

PeachPlum 9y ago

Managers make decisions when the information is equivocal. That is very hard to replace. Resource allocation and unequivocal decisions are for the machines to help us with. If, as a manager, you do more of the latter: be afraid

timthelion 9y ago
> If, as a manager, you do more of the latter: be afraid As a gardener, I have never feared a robot that could pull weeds. As a home-maker I have never feared a robot that could wash dishes. As an inventor, I have never feared a robot that could draft diagrams. And yet those people who are at the mercy of the market fear, and this is why, I believe that capitalism is headed for either disaster or elimination. Capitalism has created a problem which does not exist. Post-scarcity is only a problem in capitalism.
- castle-bravo 9y ago
  ... because only capitalism has made post-scarcity possible.
  - timthelion 9y ago
    The monarchies of the late 19th century were technologically advanced, but that did not stop Europe from adopting democracy in the 20th century. The monastic system was the main scientific institution for over a milenia, both in Europe and China. Only an ignorant person argue that this system developed no new technologies. You say "only capitalism", but what are you comparing capitalism to? In the past 200 years, capitalism has been the only economic institution in the world, how do you know that other institutions would have been incapable of technological advancement? If your point is to compare capitalism to state socialism, then you would be far off the mark. The USSR was extremely technologically advanced. The hunger was due to other problems, mostly having to do with Stalin intentionally creating famines in order to weaken insurgency. "Is has been proposed that the Soviet leadership used the man-made famine to attack Ukrainian nationalism, and thus the man-made famine may fall under the legal definition of genocide.[57][58][54][59][28][60] " https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor#Causes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor#Causes I am not promoting state socialism though. I would like a future in which each person/family unit/group of friends owned a small amount of land, and robots that would help them. Quite the opposite of state socialism. In state socialism, wealth is concentrated in the hands of the government. State socialism is basically monopolistic capitalism, and I believe that the two systems share many problems. I want the distribution of wealth, not its concentration.

sbinthree 9y ago

More like: humans who program the robots > the robots > humans who are instructed by the robots.

otras 9y ago

Reminds of me of the Warren Bennis quote: The factory of the future will have only two employees, a man and a dog. The man will be there to feed the dog. The dog will be there to keep the man from touching the equipment.

zanny 9y ago

Its not that we cannot build robots that restock shelves, it is that shelves are designed for humans to stock. And emulating the range of movement and dexterity of human hands and the sensory data we get when interacting with such shelves is really expensive, rather than prohibitive. Especially to maintain. Think of all the fine motor joints you would need in such a robot that could break all the time (like how fragile human fingers are). But how else are they supposed to stock individual bottles of maple syrup with weird handles while stocking jars or bags of flour a shelf over? In situations designed for robots, like Amazon warehouses, they don't have a problem stocking shelves as long as the range of required behavior is much more restricted so the instrumentation can be more rugged and less articulate.

apendleton 9y ago
The newer Amazon warehouses actually provide a nice example of some further refactoring to make at least parts of the stocking and picking more automate-able, in that the shelves all move and he humans stay stationary. Fingers are still hard, but moving across a warehouse is easy, so may as well shave off that piece of the task.
cr0sh 9y ago
It'd probably be better to design standard packaging and automated shelving systems that could be easier for robots to stock. Even better? Make the shelves robots themselves, so they could re-arrange themselves as needed, and go and "fill up" for stocking in the back, etc...

simplify 9y ago

It's not too different from a static type system. Humans are great at general problem solving, but computers are better at precision (but only when you can precise measure something).

davito88 9y ago

I think this could be said for many technologies: the cashier scans barcodes, the cook at McDonalds flips burgers when the alarm goes off, the anesthesiologist or pilot watches gauges...

timthelion 9y ago
And Uber tells the drivers where to go.
- ronilan 9y ago
  Near my house, 4 red octagons with a simple white drawing command humans to stop and cooperate.
  - timthelion 9y ago
    I don't understand what you mean.
    - linkregister 9y ago
      Stop sign. I don’t think it’s a good analogy.
      - the-dude 9y ago
        In South Africa, these are literally called robots. edit: was too fast, sorry. Traffic lights are called robots in SA.
      - eric_h 9y ago
        Specifically a four way stop, and I'm not sure I agree that it isn't a good analogy. It's an autonomous system (traffic laws) commanding human behavior.
      - timthelion 9y ago
        Actually, I think that anarchists would tell you it is a great analogy. They would claim that we are being controlled by a system of laws, a system which is like a computer program written by novice programmers who do not know how to debug, and who paid no attention to the finer details. That not only is the legal system like a robot which controls us, but it is like a stupid, primitive, and brutal robot which controls us.

tlb 9y ago

Counting inventory and generating pick lists isn't really "managerial". The word usually means managing people, which still requires human judgement.

jasode 9y ago

>The robot knows how to tell a human to fix a problem but doesn't know how to restock the shelves itself. [...] computers tell humans what to do, and the human's job is basically just to grab things. Yep. There's a name for that observation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moravec%27s_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moravec%27s_paradox