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Why is it socially correct to not automate? I’m genuinely curious to hear this point of view. I don’t believe unskilled labor (or minorly skilled labor) has a

Why is it socially correct to not automate? I’m genuinely curious to hear this point of view. I don’t believe unskilled labor (or minorly skilled labor) has a right to a job anymore than a very skilled laborer does. There’s a reason why cement trucks were created when you could (and can) still mix cement by hand. It’s wildly inefficient at a certain project scale, and I hold the same view for other items. I’d love to know why you feel it’s socially wrong to push forward automation.

icantdrive55 8y ago
"Why is it socially correct to not automate?" Because we (USA) have a terrible social safety net. Wanna get philosophical; At what point do you regulate automation? When most people are homeless, and jobless? I guarantee doctors, and lawyers using their lobby groups (AMA, and ABA), are quietly working on the day their jobs will be affected. Why not blue collar workers? Hell we have the tech to ticket every automobile that runs a red light, or parks illegally. Why don't we just put up cameras everywhere. It would certainly be efficient? Tech is ripe for automation. It will come, and it will be ugly. The Rockstars will always have jobs, but the rest of you will be looking at a section 8 housing list--that's been closed for 10 years. RIP Jim Fox. (Died a few moths ago while homeless. He was involved with Word Star.) I am all for an admendment that regulates automation/AI.
zorkw4rg 8y ago
I assume people are against automation because it leads to more unemployed. In the future we will probably have most manual labor automated by robots and have massive amounts of people without jobs, no healthcare, barely surviving at all in terrible conditions. But you know, its all their fault of course, they could've just learned to code!
- brogrammernot 8y ago
  I think the fear is exaggerated, automation has been happening throughout the history of mankind. Should we not have vehicles because it put the horse/buggy drivers out of a job? Have cars made by hand and not by more efficient, safer automation because it puts people out of work? I completely understand & respect that viewpoint that this does not all happen in a vacuum so the people working manual labor likely did not get or have access to the same opportunities as those "who learned to code". Who is to say that the automation opens room for better-paying jobs or leads to innovations in health-care that make universal health care more affordable to tax-payers so it can get passed into legislation? There's negative consequences of slowing automation as well.
  - zorkw4rg 8y ago
    we never had a boston dynamic robot doing a backflip though. But I guess that's kind of my point, advances in robotics/AI/AGI can't be compared with the invention of the car, but that's exactly the argument that's going to justify a never seen before degree of poverty of masses of people. Stopping or even slowing automation is though of course completely pointless on multiple levels, if a company isn't going to automate, their competitor will (and drive them out of business), if a country decides to legislate against automation another country will not, in the global economy its a futile effort. Furthermore there really is no reason for people to "work" at all, if machines can do the same why not let people do what they want to do, instead of pointlessly enslaving humanity forever, that sounds pretty evil.
  - mpjme 8y ago
    I used to hold the same viewpoint - automation is nothing new - but this video by Kurtzgesagt (more specifically the statistics cited in it) convinced be is that automation actually IS different this time (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSKi8HfcxEk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSKi8HfcxEk). The big difference is that automation now replaces jobs at a pace that is faster than we can create them. The whole video is good but the particularly interesting stats are at the ~8:00 minute mark.
- dmead 8y ago
  basically. assuming your last line is sarcastic.
dmead 8y ago
sorry for the late response. I really feel that it would do a lot of good in the world to hold back at least some automation of robot type jobs. We as a society need a bigger lead time in the education and social development areas to just expect large swaths of the population to sit around with nothing to do. Granted, that is the ultimate goal of a would-be post scarcity economy. Unless we're switch to space communism and get matter replicators soon this will only result in social strife.

icantdrive55 8y ago

"Why is it socially correct to not automate?" Because we (USA) have a terrible social safety net. Wanna get philosophical; At what point do you regulate automation? When most people are homeless, and jobless? I guarantee doctors, and lawyers using their lobby groups (AMA, and ABA), are quietly working on the day their jobs will be affected. Why not blue collar workers? Hell we have the tech to ticket every automobile that runs a red light, or parks illegally. Why don't we just put up cameras everywhere. It would certainly be efficient? Tech is ripe for automation. It will come, and it will be ugly. The Rockstars will always have jobs, but the rest of you will be looking at a section 8 housing list--that's been closed for 10 years. RIP Jim Fox. (Died a few moths ago while homeless. He was involved with Word Star.) I am all for an admendment that regulates automation/AI.

zorkw4rg 8y ago

I assume people are against automation because it leads to more unemployed. In the future we will probably have most manual labor automated by robots and have massive amounts of people without jobs, no healthcare, barely surviving at all in terrible conditions. But you know, its all their fault of course, they could've just learned to code!

brogrammernot 8y ago
I think the fear is exaggerated, automation has been happening throughout the history of mankind. Should we not have vehicles because it put the horse/buggy drivers out of a job? Have cars made by hand and not by more efficient, safer automation because it puts people out of work? I completely understand & respect that viewpoint that this does not all happen in a vacuum so the people working manual labor likely did not get or have access to the same opportunities as those "who learned to code". Who is to say that the automation opens room for better-paying jobs or leads to innovations in health-care that make universal health care more affordable to tax-payers so it can get passed into legislation? There's negative consequences of slowing automation as well.
- zorkw4rg 8y ago
  we never had a boston dynamic robot doing a backflip though. But I guess that's kind of my point, advances in robotics/AI/AGI can't be compared with the invention of the car, but that's exactly the argument that's going to justify a never seen before degree of poverty of masses of people. Stopping or even slowing automation is though of course completely pointless on multiple levels, if a company isn't going to automate, their competitor will (and drive them out of business), if a country decides to legislate against automation another country will not, in the global economy its a futile effort. Furthermore there really is no reason for people to "work" at all, if machines can do the same why not let people do what they want to do, instead of pointlessly enslaving humanity forever, that sounds pretty evil.
- mpjme 8y ago
  I used to hold the same viewpoint - automation is nothing new - but this video by Kurtzgesagt (more specifically the statistics cited in it) convinced be is that automation actually IS different this time (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSKi8HfcxEk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSKi8HfcxEk). The big difference is that automation now replaces jobs at a pace that is faster than we can create them. The whole video is good but the particularly interesting stats are at the ~8:00 minute mark.
dmead 8y ago
basically. assuming your last line is sarcastic.

dmead 8y ago

sorry for the late response. I really feel that it would do a lot of good in the world to hold back at least some automation of robot type jobs. We as a society need a bigger lead time in the education and social development areas to just expect large swaths of the population to sit around with nothing to do. Granted, that is the ultimate goal of a would-be post scarcity economy. Unless we're switch to space communism and get matter replicators soon this will only result in social strife.