7 ms·

Don’t Fear the Robots: Why Automation Doesn’t Mean the End of Work

35 points by andrewl 8y ago

maxxxxx 8y ago
This all makes sense but all the trends are going the other way. Unfortunately.
Verdex_3 8y ago
Where I'm at, well meaning authority figures, who tend to be greater than 10 years older than me, like to talk about the benefits of withdrawing from technology for a period of time. A technology "cleanse" if you will. I'm not just interested in electronics and programming languages. I'm also interested in mathematics and the history of science and technology. Science and technology not just in this century but in the previous ones. The evolution of writing systems is fascinating. Check out the Hebrew or Phoenician alphabets. You can almost see them being scratched into clay by some sort of knife. Or look at the cursive writing of the founding fathers of the United States and then look at the writing instruments of the day. They ask me to stop using technology. Just take a break. And I immediately wonder if they want me to stop reading. Stop writing. Mathematics also has a fascinating development. And it also has quite the impact in how I think and analyze problems. Am I supposed to stop thinking all together when I go on my technology cleanse? Isn't the objection to technology that it stops you from thinking. Similarly, people fear automation because it's a new form of technology, but they also ignore all of the exotic technology that they regard as baseline. The absolute primitive limit was once cutting edge. And no doubt was feared in its own day. Yes, new technologies can be used to cause you personal pain. But that's also the case for old technologies. You shouldn't seek to stop progress, but rather stop those who are making progress from externalizing their failures such that they are paid for by those who will not share in the successes.
- mnctvanj 8y ago
  Tech can be a fine thing, yet there is also something to say about spending more time walking on trails in the woods (for example). Maybe the well-meaning elders are talking more about restoring a balance of activity and time-spent. As I age I see the importance of that more and more.
  - crooked-v 8y ago
    On that walk you're still recklessly indulging in the technology of shoes and clothing.
- michrassena 8y ago
  I've noticed this as well. People often refer to smart phones, or electronic technology in general with the blanket term "technology." They don't seem to have an equivalent term for the rest of the technology that permeates modern life like the water in the metaphorical goldfish bowl. In other words, technology which has been taken for granted and seen as essential. It's not so different from when I see a post on Reddit or even HN stating that its author is currently taking a break from social media, mostly in reference to Facebook or Twitter, but which is what these forums are as well. On the whole, it's not too different from various back-to-nature philosophies that have been in vogue at one time or another. There must be an exception, but I don't recall anyone roughing it to the point of giving up clothes and campfires while still having money in the bank. What is the source of the notion that there is something corrupting or corrosive about new technology which is not perceived in established technologies? Is it merely the speed of societal change is being outpaced, and people want a way to take a breather and catch up?
- gowld 8y ago
  You are misunderstanding ambiguous words. "Take a break from technology" means to take a break from interacting with technology, especially video screens and information technology, not take a break from using technology as tools. Also "news fasts" are commonly recommended. Information diet is analogous to food diet. Taking an occasional fast and making more conscious choices about consumption is healthy.
eli_gottlieb 8y ago
But I want the "end of work" to happen!
- mathnmusic 8y ago
  Seriously. Leisure, not jobs or production, ought to be the goal of our economic policies.
  - good_sir_ant 8y ago
    This was a Keynesian idea, and it did not manifest, nor will it manifest. People will only work for leisure if they value leisure. What's changed over the past century is that we have more choice in what that leisure is should we choose to do it. Output is essential. Automation will increase our output and free more people from manual work. Will the transition be smooth? not likely. But it will be better. None of these jobs would automate if the automation wasn't worth it overall.
lovich 8y ago
Automation should lead to the end of work. The end result should be that everything we want is produced for us and humans wony be forced to do labor, at which point we can focus on doing what we _actually_ want to do.
- krapp 8y ago
  But we live in capitalist societies, and humans will still be required to pay rent for their survival, despite not being able to exchange their labor for the necessary capital. How often has automation in the past led to the unemployed leading lives of intellectual pursuit and luxury? Never. Typically those made surplus to requirement are left to scrape by in meager poverty, as has happened in the American rust belt and Appalachia, because automation has lowered their value in society to be barely worth the cost of keeping them alive. We need to prepare for that, rather than hoping for a utopian, post-scarcity fantasy that isn't going to happen.
  - JoeAltmaier 8y ago
    Unless we make it happen. By instituting a UBI for instance. Or expanding human rights to include food and shelter. "Who will pay for all this?!" is the usual outcry. Ignoring the very premise that automation has taken over the role of producing all this. Its a circular argument that has roots in the Protestant Work Ethic (independent of Capitalism) where "If I have to work, they everybody has to work dad gum it!"
    - krapp 8y ago
      >Unless we make it happen. By instituting a UBI for instance. Or expanding human rights to include food and shelter. In the US, that's going to be a difficult sell. States threatened to secede over the ACA and that was nowhere near as "socialist" as a universal income or right to food and shelter would be. It could happen, but it seems like it would take a serious social and political upheaval, and the winds currently seem to be blowing in the other direction entirely. I hope it doesn't take something on the scale of the Great Depression to bring it about.
dmortin 8y ago
Automation won't mean the end of work, but if robots take over the simpler jobs then lots of people will be out of work who won't be able to find new work. There will still be jobs requiring higher education, but not as many as many simple jobs are eliminated. You need less robot maintainers than garbage men. One high skilled worker does the job of many low skilled ones and if robots do the low skilled jobs then low skilled workers won't find other low skilled work.
- nradov 8y ago
  Show me a robot that can pick up litter on the side of a road or repair a leaking irrigation pipe. Some jobs that seem simple are actually extremely hard to automate.
  - dmortin 8y ago
    Maybe they can't do all jobs, but it can be still a problem if they take other jobs. E.g. if self driving cars can be perfected then you'll need much less cab drivers and truckers. Or if they invent cleaning robots which can clean malls and shops then lots of cleaners will be out of job. So the robots won't have to take all the simple jobs, because if they take a lot of them then those changes will still cause serious social problems.
dzdt 8y ago
I don't buy the historical argument at all: "in the past technology improvements haven't reduced employment, so there is nothing to fear." The analogy is humans now are to AI as 19th century horses were to the internal combustion engine. For centuries technological advance just increased the demand for horsepower. But when a better, cheaper substitute was developed, demand for horse work dropped rapidly and never recovered. As soon as there is an AI that can perform better and cheaper than unskilled human labor, the change will come fast.
- lovich 8y ago
  Additionally, unemployment wasn't increased long term. In the short term, however, unemployment would rise drastically and suddenly and destroy people's lives. The Luddite movement for instance wasn't a group of people against technology in general. They we're against being put out on the street to starve while factory owners got rich because new machines were invented. That sort of rioting and destruction can easily happen again if we take a "tough shit" attitude to people who lose their jobs en masse to technological improvements
  - jjoonathan 8y ago
    That sort of rioting and destruction (namely, the election of Donald Trump) did happen again because we took a "tough shit" attitude to people who lost their jobs en masse to competition from free trade. Unfortunately, I don't think the lesson was learned, because people mostly just demonize the displaced workers by calling them racists, bigots, and nazis so that they don't have to confront the fact that the magnifying lens of creative destruction might fry them next -- and their families and friends and children and town and any adjacent industry they might attempt to flee to. On one hand, that's such a terrifying prospect that it's hard to blame people for wanting to avoid the thought of it, but on the other, we really, really need to find a way to address this, because it's a recurring theme that at best won't go away and at worst... well, I don't want to think about that either.
    - naravara 8y ago
      >people who lost their jobs en masse to competition from free trade. Globalization wasn't really why they lost their jobs. The old jobs left, but they could have had new jobs if we had something resembling an industrial strategy and a progressive monetary policy. We underinvested in literally every job-creating public good from education to infrastructure since the Reagan era. We decided we could make up for it by putting working people in debt and slashing taxes on unearned (investment) income until it asymptotically approaches zero. Any time the economy gets hot enough that wages might rise, the Fed starts screeching about inflation and hits the brakes on the economy. We've gone out of our way to make sure that people who need to work for a living be as desperate as possible.
frgtpsswrdlame 8y ago
A future society where everybody still works maybe isn't utopia but it doesn't seem so bad and neither does a future society where nobody works. What seems really terrible is a society where there's only enough jobs for some fraction of the population. There's no economic law that there's always more new jobs than old jobs and I don't believe we're going to hit some magical AI take-off point so I think this middle ground is probably the more likely future and it's going to take a painful reorganizing.
- dmortin 8y ago
  The question is what kind of standard of living can be provided for people who can't get a job in this future? If they can live at an acceptable level (which can have differing interpretations!), then it's the better case. But if non working people can only be provided some minimum sustanence then those who work will be the elite, because they will be able live on a higher standard of living than the rest and this could lead to some serious social tensions.
  - frgtpsswrdlame 8y ago
    I'm not sure that it's actually okay to have a permanent underclass as long as their conditions are 'acceptable.'
chiefalchemist 8y ago
> "Evidence does not show that rapid automation is here, or even that it is just around the corner." I finished the paragraph this sentence started and closed the browser tab. I don't come to NH to read fiction, especially not bad fiction.
autoTomato 8y ago
What a tone deaf load of shit. Here's the deal. Automation should mean the end of compulsory status as an employee. It should mean that we no longer need to fear poverty and homelessness, simply because we weren't feeling the bullshit rat race. It should mean that we can have a place to live, food to eat, clothes to wear, medicine to cure ailments, because production and accounting for such necessities is automatic. Automation should mean that we get to take on the jobs we enjoy, or at least try to. Automation should mean that we get to throw the full weight of ourselves at our passion. Automation should NOT mean: We don't write your paycheck, so out in the cold with you. That's not how automation should work.
- alexbeloi 8y ago
  Lots of things should be one way and aren't. See racism. The point of these discussions is proposing on the how of making should into does.
Animats 8y ago
Not the end of work, but the end of the American working class. The present is a huge number of people just barely making it, or not making it. The American future is more of that. Huge numbers of old poor people with no pensions. This is inevitable, since we now have a huge number of working age people with no pensions. If the policy changes the author outlines are needed to avoid this, we're in big trouble. Because they are nowhere near happening.
BagOfDrunkMice 8y ago
Hang on, I must have missed a meeting while busy building the robots. Firstly, we still have to work after all of this? And secondly, when exactly was it agreed that leisure is the enemy? Someone really should have let me know. On a more serious note, this article is thrown into sharp relief if you follow it with David Graeber's essay "On the phenomenon of bullshit jobs" - https://libcom.org/library/phenomenon-bullshit-jobs-david-graeber https://libcom.org/library/phenomenon-bullshit-jobs-david-gr... Quick! Look busy!
thx4allthestuff 8y ago
While the robot masters may have won the intellectual battle, we can at least feel safe that they completely lack our vibrant culture and quaint charm. Worst case scenario, we'll have jobs being human furniture (snacks and whatnot on our scantily clad forms), but at least we'll still be getting that paycheck. I don't think things are quite as grim as they seem, there are plenty of jobs left for humans to do as long as other humans exist. Stuck in a box guy, needed (admittedly demand has dropped), artists, explorers, more diggers for the Big Pit that the robots want us to make... the list goes on.

35 points by andrewl 8y ago

This all makes sense but all the trends are going the other way. Unfortunately.

Where I'm at, well meaning authority figures, who tend to be greater than 10 years older than me, like to talk about the benefits of withdrawing from technology for a period of time. A technology "cleanse" if you will. I'm not just interested in electronics and programming languages. I'm also interested in mathematics and the history of science and technology. Science and technology not just in this century but in the previous ones. The evolution of writing systems is fascinating. Check out the Hebrew or Phoenician alphabets. You can almost see them being scratched into clay by some sort of knife. Or look at the cursive writing of the founding fathers of the United States and then look at the writing instruments of the day. They ask me to stop using technology. Just take a break. And I immediately wonder if they want me to stop reading. Stop writing. Mathematics also has a fascinating development. And it also has quite the impact in how I think and analyze problems. Am I supposed to stop thinking all together when I go on my technology cleanse? Isn't the objection to technology that it stops you from thinking. Similarly, people fear automation because it's a new form of technology, but they also ignore all of the exotic technology that they regard as baseline. The absolute primitive limit was once cutting edge. And no doubt was feared in its own day. Yes, new technologies can be used to cause you personal pain. But that's also the case for old technologies. You shouldn't seek to stop progress, but rather stop those who are making progress from externalizing their failures such that they are paid for by those who will not share in the successes.

mnctvanj 8y ago
Tech can be a fine thing, yet there is also something to say about spending more time walking on trails in the woods (for example). Maybe the well-meaning elders are talking more about restoring a balance of activity and time-spent. As I age I see the importance of that more and more.
- crooked-v 8y ago
  On that walk you're still recklessly indulging in the technology of shoes and clothing.
michrassena 8y ago
I've noticed this as well. People often refer to smart phones, or electronic technology in general with the blanket term "technology." They don't seem to have an equivalent term for the rest of the technology that permeates modern life like the water in the metaphorical goldfish bowl. In other words, technology which has been taken for granted and seen as essential. It's not so different from when I see a post on Reddit or even HN stating that its author is currently taking a break from social media, mostly in reference to Facebook or Twitter, but which is what these forums are as well. On the whole, it's not too different from various back-to-nature philosophies that have been in vogue at one time or another. There must be an exception, but I don't recall anyone roughing it to the point of giving up clothes and campfires while still having money in the bank. What is the source of the notion that there is something corrupting or corrosive about new technology which is not perceived in established technologies? Is it merely the speed of societal change is being outpaced, and people want a way to take a breather and catch up?
gowld 8y ago
You are misunderstanding ambiguous words. "Take a break from technology" means to take a break from interacting with technology, especially video screens and information technology, not take a break from using technology as tools. Also "news fasts" are commonly recommended. Information diet is analogous to food diet. Taking an occasional fast and making more conscious choices about consumption is healthy.

eli_gottlieb 8y ago

But I want the "end of work" to happen!

mathnmusic 8y ago
Seriously. Leisure, not jobs or production, ought to be the goal of our economic policies.
- good_sir_ant 8y ago
  This was a Keynesian idea, and it did not manifest, nor will it manifest. People will only work for leisure if they value leisure. What's changed over the past century is that we have more choice in what that leisure is should we choose to do it. Output is essential. Automation will increase our output and free more people from manual work. Will the transition be smooth? not likely. But it will be better. None of these jobs would automate if the automation wasn't worth it overall.

lovich 8y ago

Automation should lead to the end of work. The end result should be that everything we want is produced for us and humans wony be forced to do labor, at which point we can focus on doing what we _actually_ want to do.

krapp 8y ago
But we live in capitalist societies, and humans will still be required to pay rent for their survival, despite not being able to exchange their labor for the necessary capital. How often has automation in the past led to the unemployed leading lives of intellectual pursuit and luxury? Never. Typically those made surplus to requirement are left to scrape by in meager poverty, as has happened in the American rust belt and Appalachia, because automation has lowered their value in society to be barely worth the cost of keeping them alive. We need to prepare for that, rather than hoping for a utopian, post-scarcity fantasy that isn't going to happen.
- JoeAltmaier 8y ago
  Unless we make it happen. By instituting a UBI for instance. Or expanding human rights to include food and shelter. "Who will pay for all this?!" is the usual outcry. Ignoring the very premise that automation has taken over the role of producing all this. Its a circular argument that has roots in the Protestant Work Ethic (independent of Capitalism) where "If I have to work, they everybody has to work dad gum it!"
  - krapp 8y ago
    >Unless we make it happen. By instituting a UBI for instance. Or expanding human rights to include food and shelter. In the US, that's going to be a difficult sell. States threatened to secede over the ACA and that was nowhere near as "socialist" as a universal income or right to food and shelter would be. It could happen, but it seems like it would take a serious social and political upheaval, and the winds currently seem to be blowing in the other direction entirely. I hope it doesn't take something on the scale of the Great Depression to bring it about.

dmortin 8y ago

Automation won't mean the end of work, but if robots take over the simpler jobs then lots of people will be out of work who won't be able to find new work. There will still be jobs requiring higher education, but not as many as many simple jobs are eliminated. You need less robot maintainers than garbage men. One high skilled worker does the job of many low skilled ones and if robots do the low skilled jobs then low skilled workers won't find other low skilled work.

nradov 8y ago
Show me a robot that can pick up litter on the side of a road or repair a leaking irrigation pipe. Some jobs that seem simple are actually extremely hard to automate.
- dmortin 8y ago
  Maybe they can't do all jobs, but it can be still a problem if they take other jobs. E.g. if self driving cars can be perfected then you'll need much less cab drivers and truckers. Or if they invent cleaning robots which can clean malls and shops then lots of cleaners will be out of job. So the robots won't have to take all the simple jobs, because if they take a lot of them then those changes will still cause serious social problems.

dzdt 8y ago

I don't buy the historical argument at all: "in the past technology improvements haven't reduced employment, so there is nothing to fear." The analogy is humans now are to AI as 19th century horses were to the internal combustion engine. For centuries technological advance just increased the demand for horsepower. But when a better, cheaper substitute was developed, demand for horse work dropped rapidly and never recovered. As soon as there is an AI that can perform better and cheaper than unskilled human labor, the change will come fast.

lovich 8y ago
Additionally, unemployment wasn't increased long term. In the short term, however, unemployment would rise drastically and suddenly and destroy people's lives. The Luddite movement for instance wasn't a group of people against technology in general. They we're against being put out on the street to starve while factory owners got rich because new machines were invented. That sort of rioting and destruction can easily happen again if we take a "tough shit" attitude to people who lose their jobs en masse to technological improvements
- jjoonathan 8y ago
  That sort of rioting and destruction (namely, the election of Donald Trump) did happen again because we took a "tough shit" attitude to people who lost their jobs en masse to competition from free trade. Unfortunately, I don't think the lesson was learned, because people mostly just demonize the displaced workers by calling them racists, bigots, and nazis so that they don't have to confront the fact that the magnifying lens of creative destruction might fry them next -- and their families and friends and children and town and any adjacent industry they might attempt to flee to. On one hand, that's such a terrifying prospect that it's hard to blame people for wanting to avoid the thought of it, but on the other, we really, really need to find a way to address this, because it's a recurring theme that at best won't go away and at worst... well, I don't want to think about that either.
  - naravara 8y ago
    >people who lost their jobs en masse to competition from free trade. Globalization wasn't really why they lost their jobs. The old jobs left, but they could have had new jobs if we had something resembling an industrial strategy and a progressive monetary policy. We underinvested in literally every job-creating public good from education to infrastructure since the Reagan era. We decided we could make up for it by putting working people in debt and slashing taxes on unearned (investment) income until it asymptotically approaches zero. Any time the economy gets hot enough that wages might rise, the Fed starts screeching about inflation and hits the brakes on the economy. We've gone out of our way to make sure that people who need to work for a living be as desperate as possible.

frgtpsswrdlame 8y ago

A future society where everybody still works maybe isn't utopia but it doesn't seem so bad and neither does a future society where nobody works. What seems really terrible is a society where there's only enough jobs for some fraction of the population. There's no economic law that there's always more new jobs than old jobs and I don't believe we're going to hit some magical AI take-off point so I think this middle ground is probably the more likely future and it's going to take a painful reorganizing.

dmortin 8y ago
The question is what kind of standard of living can be provided for people who can't get a job in this future? If they can live at an acceptable level (which can have differing interpretations!), then it's the better case. But if non working people can only be provided some minimum sustanence then those who work will be the elite, because they will be able live on a higher standard of living than the rest and this could lead to some serious social tensions.
- frgtpsswrdlame 8y ago
  I'm not sure that it's actually okay to have a permanent underclass as long as their conditions are 'acceptable.'

chiefalchemist 8y ago

> "Evidence does not show that rapid automation is here, or even that it is just around the corner." I finished the paragraph this sentence started and closed the browser tab. I don't come to NH to read fiction, especially not bad fiction.

autoTomato 8y ago

What a tone deaf load of shit. Here's the deal. Automation should mean the end of compulsory status as an employee. It should mean that we no longer need to fear poverty and homelessness, simply because we weren't feeling the bullshit rat race. It should mean that we can have a place to live, food to eat, clothes to wear, medicine to cure ailments, because production and accounting for such necessities is automatic. Automation should mean that we get to take on the jobs we enjoy, or at least try to. Automation should mean that we get to throw the full weight of ourselves at our passion. Automation should NOT mean: We don't write your paycheck, so out in the cold with you. That's not how automation should work.

alexbeloi 8y ago
Lots of things should be one way and aren't. See racism. The point of these discussions is proposing on the how of making should into does.

Animats 8y ago

Not the end of work, but the end of the American working class. The present is a huge number of people just barely making it, or not making it. The American future is more of that. Huge numbers of old poor people with no pensions. This is inevitable, since we now have a huge number of working age people with no pensions. If the policy changes the author outlines are needed to avoid this, we're in big trouble. Because they are nowhere near happening.

BagOfDrunkMice 8y ago

Hang on, I must have missed a meeting while busy building the robots. Firstly, we still have to work after all of this? And secondly, when exactly was it agreed that leisure is the enemy? Someone really should have let me know. On a more serious note, this article is thrown into sharp relief if you follow it with David Graeber's essay "On the phenomenon of bullshit jobs" - https://libcom.org/library/phenomenon-bullshit-jobs-david-graeber https://libcom.org/library/phenomenon-bullshit-jobs-david-gr... Quick! Look busy!

thx4allthestuff 8y ago

While the robot masters may have won the intellectual battle, we can at least feel safe that they completely lack our vibrant culture and quaint charm. Worst case scenario, we'll have jobs being human furniture (snacks and whatnot on our scantily clad forms), but at least we'll still be getting that paycheck. I don't think things are quite as grim as they seem, there are plenty of jobs left for humans to do as long as other humans exist. Stuck in a box guy, needed (admittedly demand has dropped), artists, explorers, more diggers for the Big Pit that the robots want us to make... the list goes on.