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>I already choose to book my holidays with machine rather than human assistance, pay for my groceries via machine rather than human It's funny you should menti

>I already choose to book my holidays with machine rather than human assistance, pay for my groceries via machine rather than human It's funny you should mention this. My last job was at an OTA (online travel agent). They started out with a website to book holidays and an intent to streamline the crap out of the process catering to individuals like yourself. They hired a skeleton call center staff to deal with unforeseen problems with an intent to rely upon them as little as possible. Over time they realized that a lot of people were calling up to do bits and pieces of the booking over the phone that they could have done online. Initially they tried to steer them back to the website but they realized that they were mostly dropping out of the sales funnel. It turned out a lot of people actually wanted to talk to a human when spending $1,500 on a holiday. Shocker. So, they changed tack and ramped up call center staffing, advertised a free phone number on the every page and let people essentially decide themselves where in the sales funnel they wanted to talk to a human - the whole way through or, like you, not at all. This company had a really smart approach in other areas too about when to use automation and when not to. >For the moment I pay humans to do some things like cleaning You say that as if there has been a multitude of advances in home cleaning technology since the 1950s. I'm skeptical of the notion that Roombas took anybody's job or that I'm about to get a toilet cleaning robot any time soon.

lmm 9y ago
> It turned out a lot of people actually wanted to talk to a human when spending $1,500 on a holiday. Shocker. I'm surprised, and I wonder what the age breakdown of those people looks like. > I'm skeptical of the notion that Roombas took anybody's job It must have on the margin, surely? I was on the fence about getting a cleaner for a long time; it wouldn't've taken much to push me into not doing so (and many of my friends in similar circumstances, some of whom have Roombas, don't). > or that I'm about to get a toilet cleaning robot any time soon. Toilet cleaning will probably be one of the last things to go as the worst-case scenario there is pretty bad, but I read some interesting blog posts a year or two back about a robot that can pick up clothes from the floor and run a laundry cycle (with the help of a QR code sticker on the washer). I don't expect a robot to replace a human cleaner immediately, but I do expect the gradual automation of more and more domestic cleaning tasks, which will push more and more people across the line where it doesn't make sense to hire a human cleaner.
- crdoconnor 9y ago
  >I wonder what the age breakdown Skewed, but not skewed towards the elderly nearly as much as you clearly think it was. Not everybody is like us. >It must have on the margin, surely? Not necessarily. It might just mean that, on balance, people who were never going to employ a maid in the first place live in slightly less filthy houses. >Toilet cleaning will probably be one of the last things to go as the worst-case scenario there is pretty bad I can't actually see any evidence that anybody's even trying. It's not like driverless cars where we're being told every year that they're, like, 5 years away tops. Who is even working on this? As far as I can tell, nobody.
  - lmm 9y ago
    > Not necessarily. It might just mean that, on balance, people who were never going to employ a maid in the first place live in slightly less filthy houses. But, like, there's no massive discontinuity in how likely people are to employ a cleaner (is there)? I'd expect that distribution to be a bell curve like anything else, with lots of people on the margin (and I'm pretty sure I was one of them), and the introduction of the Roomba shifts where that line is slightly. > I can't actually see any evidence that anybody's even trying. It's not like driverless cars where we're being told every year that they're, like, 5 years away tops. Who is even working on this? As far as I can tell, nobody. I'm not aware of anyone working on toilets, but I think that's the highest hanging fruit. You already mentioned Roombas, and I mentioned LaundryBot or whatever it's called; I'd expect us to progress gradually from there to things like dusting, window cleaning, oven cleaning and toilets in that order or close to it.
    - crdoconnor 9y ago
      >But, like, there's no massive discontinuity in how likely people are to employ a cleaner (is there)? I'd expect that distribution to be a bell curve like anything else Even if it was a bell curve (and I see no reason why reality ought to be that neat), there's no reason to suppose it doesn't just lead to slightly cleaner houses rather than fewer maids. > You already mentioned Roombas, and I mentioned LaundryBot Roombas are singularly unimpressive as a means of cleaning your house (I know of nobody who actually owns one, and the reviews on amazon are... only really impressiveif you are without stairs and have a pet hair problem). Googling laundrybot gives me some japanese thing invented in 2015 that costs $280,000 and, product-wise, doesn't seem to have gone anywhere since then. It's almost as if the automation hype isn't matching reality. I wouldn't be surprised if in 20 years time nothing has really changed in this space either. Roombas came out in 2002 - 16 years ago. Significant potential I'll be dead by the time a robot that can clean my toilet exists and I'm not exactly old.

lmm 9y ago

> It turned out a lot of people actually wanted to talk to a human when spending $1,500 on a holiday. Shocker. I'm surprised, and I wonder what the age breakdown of those people looks like. > I'm skeptical of the notion that Roombas took anybody's job It must have on the margin, surely? I was on the fence about getting a cleaner for a long time; it wouldn't've taken much to push me into not doing so (and many of my friends in similar circumstances, some of whom have Roombas, don't). > or that I'm about to get a toilet cleaning robot any time soon. Toilet cleaning will probably be one of the last things to go as the worst-case scenario there is pretty bad, but I read some interesting blog posts a year or two back about a robot that can pick up clothes from the floor and run a laundry cycle (with the help of a QR code sticker on the washer). I don't expect a robot to replace a human cleaner immediately, but I do expect the gradual automation of more and more domestic cleaning tasks, which will push more and more people across the line where it doesn't make sense to hire a human cleaner.

crdoconnor 9y ago
>I wonder what the age breakdown Skewed, but not skewed towards the elderly nearly as much as you clearly think it was. Not everybody is like us. >It must have on the margin, surely? Not necessarily. It might just mean that, on balance, people who were never going to employ a maid in the first place live in slightly less filthy houses. >Toilet cleaning will probably be one of the last things to go as the worst-case scenario there is pretty bad I can't actually see any evidence that anybody's even trying. It's not like driverless cars where we're being told every year that they're, like, 5 years away tops. Who is even working on this? As far as I can tell, nobody.
- lmm 9y ago
  > Not necessarily. It might just mean that, on balance, people who were never going to employ a maid in the first place live in slightly less filthy houses. But, like, there's no massive discontinuity in how likely people are to employ a cleaner (is there)? I'd expect that distribution to be a bell curve like anything else, with lots of people on the margin (and I'm pretty sure I was one of them), and the introduction of the Roomba shifts where that line is slightly. > I can't actually see any evidence that anybody's even trying. It's not like driverless cars where we're being told every year that they're, like, 5 years away tops. Who is even working on this? As far as I can tell, nobody. I'm not aware of anyone working on toilets, but I think that's the highest hanging fruit. You already mentioned Roombas, and I mentioned LaundryBot or whatever it's called; I'd expect us to progress gradually from there to things like dusting, window cleaning, oven cleaning and toilets in that order or close to it.
  - crdoconnor 9y ago
    >But, like, there's no massive discontinuity in how likely people are to employ a cleaner (is there)? I'd expect that distribution to be a bell curve like anything else Even if it was a bell curve (and I see no reason why reality ought to be that neat), there's no reason to suppose it doesn't just lead to slightly cleaner houses rather than fewer maids. > You already mentioned Roombas, and I mentioned LaundryBot Roombas are singularly unimpressive as a means of cleaning your house (I know of nobody who actually owns one, and the reviews on amazon are... only really impressiveif you are without stairs and have a pet hair problem). Googling laundrybot gives me some japanese thing invented in 2015 that costs $280,000 and, product-wise, doesn't seem to have gone anywhere since then. It's almost as if the automation hype isn't matching reality. I wouldn't be surprised if in 20 years time nothing has really changed in this space either. Roombas came out in 2002 - 16 years ago. Significant potential I'll be dead by the time a robot that can clean my toilet exists and I'm not exactly old.