5 ms·

I was struck by this when I went to visit Shanghai in 2002. I was sitting beside a recent MBA grad who was originally from China. We got to talking. At one poi

I was struck by this when I went to visit Shanghai in 2002. I was sitting beside a recent MBA grad who was originally from China. We got to talking. At one point in the conversation he asked me a hypothetical question about how I would design a system to determine traffic conditions. I responded with an answer laying out cameras at intersections and software to make sense of the video. He responded that in China they’d just put a person at every intersection who would send a text message to a team of humans who would update a webpage. It drove home the point to me that labour was so abundant and cheap there that you could often throw more bodies at the problem instead of writinf software... and probably solve the problem better.

fouc 8y ago
It's an open secret that AI startups in Silicon Valley are using human labor initially to mimic the AI component. There's still a lot of room for automation with human labor.
- azurezyq 8y ago
  I have a friend who's running an ads optimization startup. His words: "We are an artificial intelligence company, in which "artificial" comes first and "intelligence" comes second... He's running two divisions, one employs experienced "ads buyers", one tries to tune models to catch up with the former. :P
starky 8y ago
China is interesting from this respect, there are so many people, and it is in the government's best interest to keep the citizens employed and happy and therefore there is a lot of "useless" jobs like the one you mention. The first time I visited I was shocked at the number of people employed to man the tollbooths and the number of people working in every restaurant until I realized why.
- reaperducer 8y ago
  it is in the government's best interest to keep the citizens employed and happy and therefore there is a lot of "useless" jobs like the one you mention. What is useless to one man is a lifeline to another. I saw a documentary on NHK, and one of the points it made is that there are millions and millions and millions of people in China who need a job — any job — just to put food on the table. These are people who are so poor and poorly educated that they don't even know how to write their own names. Signatures are done with a fingerprint in red ink. This one guy was so very happy to be employed full-time clearing sidewalks. With a broom made of twigs during the warm months, and with the same broom made of twigs to slowly clear deep snow in the cold months. But he was employed, by an organization that will pay him regularly and won't cheat him on his wages. So he's grateful to be better off than most of the other people he knows.
  - whatshisface 8y ago
    Those people don't need jobs, they need money. If your system is autocratic enough to just "create" jobs out of nothing, it could also give everybody a stipend. That's just not how they want to do it.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
    - tw04 8y ago
      Some people need a task, not everyone has the desire to pursue artistic endeavors. It's part of the reason you see trust fund babies that are borderline useless human beings. They've got everything in the world besides a reason to get up in the morning...
    - azurezyq 8y ago
      Employment helps social stability but money-only doesn't. While stipend for low-incomers also exists in China, gov really wants more people earn a living through working. IMO, the benefits are: 1. It puts people into time schedules, not floating around. 2. Makes them integrated into a "work community". 3. These jobs still help, not purely "created". 4. Employer will have some insurances and coverages. Over years I agree that many jobs diminished with the introduction of machines (vacuum trucks, etc.). It would be a tough job for the government to find more positions in this kind.
- Spooky23 8y ago
  It’s useless because you don’t think of social cost because you’re probably a middle class professional. We’re all a type of factory drone optimizing capital allocation. End of the day, our policy of exporting value from the United States will come home to roost. When I was a kid in the 90s, you worked at fast food or restaurants and often hung out there too. Now most of those jobs are filled by more easily exploitable immigrants, and slowly but surely those jobs are attriting away too. Who will be buying stuff in 30 years?
- ehnto 8y ago
  You could think of the job as the means to distribute wealth and keep people happy, and getting a task done is just the means to that end. In the scenario where we replace them with software that wealth travels upward instead of downward along the social and wealth ladder and you have citizens with nmidle hands. Normally I would say investment in infrastructure is a good way to make that happen but China is no slouch in that regard either. They just have an unfathomable amount of people.
- darkstar_16 8y ago
  It's the same here in India too. People manning toll booth, security at malls, airports and other seemingly useless tasks that can be automated easily, are kept on because a) it's cheaper, and b) employment
  - rangibaby 8y ago
    Japan too. Maybe it's an Asian thing
rqs 8y ago
Well, our city (far smaller than Shanghai) has installed few devices to monitoring traffic jam many years ago, probably because nobody actually wants to take stand beside a road for a whole day as a carrier. It's very interesting point, but not just because abundant and cheap I think. I was discuss a potential business model with my boss years ago for fun. It's about a breakfast deliver service. My point was, if we have enough data, then we can optimize the process so we can deliver all the breakfasts in the time window (to make sure people can get their breakfasts once they wake up in the morning, and the food itself is still in the "best by" time when they enjoying it) My boss ask me back "Why would you think those delivery staffs cannot figure it out by themselves?" Sometime we just forgot how flexible and intelligence human labors can be, and that level of flexible and intelligence is something current automation still can't bring to the real world.
tvanantwerp 8y ago
Funny, because I was in a tier 2 or 3 Chinese city a couple of months ago and there were cameras at every single intersection!
titanix2 8y ago
It's actually the way they do it in Japan too, so it's not only a labor cost problem that is at play.

fouc 8y ago

It's an open secret that AI startups in Silicon Valley are using human labor initially to mimic the AI component. There's still a lot of room for automation with human labor.

azurezyq 8y ago
I have a friend who's running an ads optimization startup. His words: "We are an artificial intelligence company, in which "artificial" comes first and "intelligence" comes second... He's running two divisions, one employs experienced "ads buyers", one tries to tune models to catch up with the former. :P

starky 8y ago

China is interesting from this respect, there are so many people, and it is in the government's best interest to keep the citizens employed and happy and therefore there is a lot of "useless" jobs like the one you mention. The first time I visited I was shocked at the number of people employed to man the tollbooths and the number of people working in every restaurant until I realized why.

reaperducer 8y ago
it is in the government's best interest to keep the citizens employed and happy and therefore there is a lot of "useless" jobs like the one you mention. What is useless to one man is a lifeline to another. I saw a documentary on NHK, and one of the points it made is that there are millions and millions and millions of people in China who need a job — any job — just to put food on the table. These are people who are so poor and poorly educated that they don't even know how to write their own names. Signatures are done with a fingerprint in red ink. This one guy was so very happy to be employed full-time clearing sidewalks. With a broom made of twigs during the warm months, and with the same broom made of twigs to slowly clear deep snow in the cold months. But he was employed, by an organization that will pay him regularly and won't cheat him on his wages. So he's grateful to be better off than most of the other people he knows.
- whatshisface 8y ago
  Those people don't need jobs, they need money. If your system is autocratic enough to just "create" jobs out of nothing, it could also give everybody a stipend. That's just not how they want to do it.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - tw04 8y ago
    Some people need a task, not everyone has the desire to pursue artistic endeavors. It's part of the reason you see trust fund babies that are borderline useless human beings. They've got everything in the world besides a reason to get up in the morning...
  - azurezyq 8y ago
    Employment helps social stability but money-only doesn't. While stipend for low-incomers also exists in China, gov really wants more people earn a living through working. IMO, the benefits are: 1. It puts people into time schedules, not floating around. 2. Makes them integrated into a "work community". 3. These jobs still help, not purely "created". 4. Employer will have some insurances and coverages. Over years I agree that many jobs diminished with the introduction of machines (vacuum trucks, etc.). It would be a tough job for the government to find more positions in this kind.
Spooky23 8y ago
It’s useless because you don’t think of social cost because you’re probably a middle class professional. We’re all a type of factory drone optimizing capital allocation. End of the day, our policy of exporting value from the United States will come home to roost. When I was a kid in the 90s, you worked at fast food or restaurants and often hung out there too. Now most of those jobs are filled by more easily exploitable immigrants, and slowly but surely those jobs are attriting away too. Who will be buying stuff in 30 years?
ehnto 8y ago
You could think of the job as the means to distribute wealth and keep people happy, and getting a task done is just the means to that end. In the scenario where we replace them with software that wealth travels upward instead of downward along the social and wealth ladder and you have citizens with nmidle hands. Normally I would say investment in infrastructure is a good way to make that happen but China is no slouch in that regard either. They just have an unfathomable amount of people.
darkstar_16 8y ago
It's the same here in India too. People manning toll booth, security at malls, airports and other seemingly useless tasks that can be automated easily, are kept on because a) it's cheaper, and b) employment
- rangibaby 8y ago
  Japan too. Maybe it's an Asian thing

rqs 8y ago

Well, our city (far smaller than Shanghai) has installed few devices to monitoring traffic jam many years ago, probably because nobody actually wants to take stand beside a road for a whole day as a carrier. It's very interesting point, but not just because abundant and cheap I think. I was discuss a potential business model with my boss years ago for fun. It's about a breakfast deliver service. My point was, if we have enough data, then we can optimize the process so we can deliver all the breakfasts in the time window (to make sure people can get their breakfasts once they wake up in the morning, and the food itself is still in the "best by" time when they enjoying it) My boss ask me back "Why would you think those delivery staffs cannot figure it out by themselves?" Sometime we just forgot how flexible and intelligence human labors can be, and that level of flexible and intelligence is something current automation still can't bring to the real world.

tvanantwerp 8y ago

Funny, because I was in a tier 2 or 3 Chinese city a couple of months ago and there were cameras at every single intersection!

titanix2 8y ago

It's actually the way they do it in Japan too, so it's not only a labor cost problem that is at play.