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Due to the Covid-19 lock down, my company was forced to accelerate our automation program. We did in months what we had originally planned to do in years. As we

Due to the Covid-19 lock down, my company was forced to accelerate our automation program. We did in months what we had originally planned to do in years. As we are able to open our operations center further, it's clear that we'll be providing fewer jobs than we did before. At least some part of that is the result of automation. I can't help but think this same pattern is playing out at other companies right now.

JumpCrisscross 6y ago
> Due to the Covid-19 lock down, my company was forced to accelerate our automation program This sounds like the centre of the distribution catching up to the frontier moreso than the frontier advancing.
- Zaskoda 6y ago
  Sort of. We do have unique problems to solve given the nature of our products. But to some degree, you are correct. We would have eventually done it to scale, but right now we did it to survive.
- biddlesby 6y ago
  To be fair, "the centre of the distribution catching up" is exactly the fear that the article is criticising. The fear isn't that one company is going to make some huge leap in AI - it's more about what happens if that leap gets adopted en-masse by the whole economy. I think the OP's comment is very relevant.
bsder 6y ago
And how many restaurants now have online ordering who would never have had online ordering without being forced to? However, even before Covid, McDonald's was rolling out touchscreen kiosk and app ordering. So, there has definitely been automation in that sector. The paper is ... kinda odd ... because its methodology considers machine operators (injection molding machine operators, lathe and machining center operators, etc.) to be some of the most automatable. That's a pretty laughable idea to anyone who has tried to run one of those machines. Yeah, 20 hours of training got me to the point I can run a CNC mill. However, I wouldn't say I'm good at it. I touch off incorrectly probably 1 in 20 times--which likely blows a part and breaks an end mill. I sometimes don't leave enough clearance to the vice jaws--which certainly breaks a mill and possible damages the machine itself. I think it was NYC CNC on YouTube that had a whole video of the various fails he's had with CNC milling machines over time. Anyone who has used a CNC cringes at that video because we have all done exactly the same things.
- xyzzyz 6y ago
  > That's a pretty laughable idea to anyone who has tried to run one of those machines. That’s not laughable in the slightest to anyone who knows history of machining. There are fewer and fewer machine shops, and at the same time the machining centers are becoming more and more sophisticated. Sure, operating CNC mills requires significant expertise, but so did manual machining. We used to have hundreds of thousands of machinists in this country, making various parts for cars, household appliances etc. Now it’s all factory made. Just because some existing process requires expertise, doesn’t mean that we cannot come up with a new process that will not need that skilled operator as a step.
  - bsder 6y ago
    > Just because some existing process requires expertise, doesn’t mean that we cannot come up with a new process that will not need that skilled operator as a step. However, completely wiping out a process (replacing sheet metal fabrication with plastics) is not particularly "automation" of said process. You've just changed where the expertise is rather than automated it away. Replacing injection molding machine operators with 3D printing machine operators is automation because it makes some people go away/requires less expertise.
ashtonkem 6y ago
This kind of thing happens all the time; a crisis in economic terms forcing companies to aggressively pursue cost savings measures that never go away once the economic constraints are lifted. A similar process happened with oil rigs, where automation was available, but only pursued once the price of oil crashed. Those jobs also never came back.
- ncmncm 6y ago
  During the last crash, in 2008, my employer at the time, Aspera (since bought out by IBM), boomed as customers moved to cut costs. The customers replaced shipping disk drives (or, in DoD's case, boxes of analog videotapes!) with transferring files over fiber and satellite links. NYT switched from reading stories aloud over bad phone connections to transferring files via satphone. This displaced fedex package handlers and mailroom personnel, and stenographers. In DoD's case, a physical library of surveillance drone videotapes, and everybody schlepping tape cartridges, was replaced with a remote-accessible video library. Nowadays digital video is streamed to Nevada and Utah in real time, and copied off there. Similar stories apply for numerous other customer industries. These were all permanent changes. Aspera grew to a hundred-some employees in 2014, but must have displaced thousands. Does this count as automation?
  - raxxorrax 6y ago
    Certainly yes in my opinion. My current employer had a curiously very successful corona-quarter and building a solid backorder because we cannot have everyone in production right now. We automate everything we can and still employ more and more people. We often think manufacturing when speaking about automation, but I think administration will be affected most (you won't automate anything if you fired your internal IT department). We also build a fairly sci-fi robot to populate circuit boards for parts that cannot be fitted by reflow soldering. Great device to show off but the soldering women are just plainly faster and less error prone. And we have quite a high wage level. But sales planning, accounting, reporting will be mostly automated at some point. Our own in-house production is steadily growing even with additional support by machines. Of course it is bad if people out of job have no alternative. I think there should be state support for such cases instead of artificially keeping an industry alive.
kaybe 6y ago
It really makes me sad that jobs are seen as inherently valuable. The way you phrase it, 'provide jobs', feels like jobs are something needed. Of course, in the current setup, this is true, but there are so many boring and hard jobs (worked by people who are yet poor) that we shouldn't mourn once we manage to get rid of them. I want an economy where we can celebrate automation and distribute the profits evenly.
- som33 6y ago
  >I want an economy where we can celebrate automation and distribute the profits evenly. Not going to happen under capitalism. Look at the numbers, they are pretty horrifying. https://whorulesamerica.ucsc.edu/power/images/wealth/Net_worth_and_financial_wealth.png https://whorulesamerica.ucsc.edu/power/images/wealth/Net_wor... https://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html https://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html
  - mc32 6y ago
    Do you think it has a chance of happening in Vietnam or North Korea under communism?
    - omginternets 6y ago
      No, the parent poster does not have Vietnam, nor North Korea, nor even communism in mind. You know this, and we know you know this.
      - mc32 6y ago
        Fair enough, so not capitalism, not communism. What political system might be capable of meeting these requirements? Is it the political equivalent of unobtanium or vaporware? Im not trying to be a smartass; I want to know what the answer might look like. It doesn’t have to be a treatise. Just something consistent with a chance at succeeding with non-ideal people.
TuringNYC 6y ago
A similar thing happened post 2001-bubble-pop and post 2008. Post 2001, there was a huge shift to offshore models, ticketing-workflow models, and a shift to a blossoming open source environment. Post 2008, there was another huge shift to more flexible infrastructure models, and to automation. Companies are often reluctant to restructure workforces, even when there are potential efficiencies available. Economic crises provide an "opportunity" for them to right-size.

JumpCrisscross 6y ago

> Due to the Covid-19 lock down, my company was forced to accelerate our automation program This sounds like the centre of the distribution catching up to the frontier moreso than the frontier advancing.

Zaskoda 6y ago
Sort of. We do have unique problems to solve given the nature of our products. But to some degree, you are correct. We would have eventually done it to scale, but right now we did it to survive.
biddlesby 6y ago
To be fair, "the centre of the distribution catching up" is exactly the fear that the article is criticising. The fear isn't that one company is going to make some huge leap in AI - it's more about what happens if that leap gets adopted en-masse by the whole economy. I think the OP's comment is very relevant.

bsder 6y ago

And how many restaurants now have online ordering who would never have had online ordering without being forced to? However, even before Covid, McDonald's was rolling out touchscreen kiosk and app ordering. So, there has definitely been automation in that sector. The paper is ... kinda odd ... because its methodology considers machine operators (injection molding machine operators, lathe and machining center operators, etc.) to be some of the most automatable. That's a pretty laughable idea to anyone who has tried to run one of those machines. Yeah, 20 hours of training got me to the point I can run a CNC mill. However, I wouldn't say I'm good at it. I touch off incorrectly probably 1 in 20 times--which likely blows a part and breaks an end mill. I sometimes don't leave enough clearance to the vice jaws--which certainly breaks a mill and possible damages the machine itself. I think it was NYC CNC on YouTube that had a whole video of the various fails he's had with CNC milling machines over time. Anyone who has used a CNC cringes at that video because we have all done exactly the same things.

xyzzyz 6y ago
> That's a pretty laughable idea to anyone who has tried to run one of those machines. That’s not laughable in the slightest to anyone who knows history of machining. There are fewer and fewer machine shops, and at the same time the machining centers are becoming more and more sophisticated. Sure, operating CNC mills requires significant expertise, but so did manual machining. We used to have hundreds of thousands of machinists in this country, making various parts for cars, household appliances etc. Now it’s all factory made. Just because some existing process requires expertise, doesn’t mean that we cannot come up with a new process that will not need that skilled operator as a step.
- bsder 6y ago
  > Just because some existing process requires expertise, doesn’t mean that we cannot come up with a new process that will not need that skilled operator as a step. However, completely wiping out a process (replacing sheet metal fabrication with plastics) is not particularly "automation" of said process. You've just changed where the expertise is rather than automated it away. Replacing injection molding machine operators with 3D printing machine operators is automation because it makes some people go away/requires less expertise.

ashtonkem 6y ago

This kind of thing happens all the time; a crisis in economic terms forcing companies to aggressively pursue cost savings measures that never go away once the economic constraints are lifted. A similar process happened with oil rigs, where automation was available, but only pursued once the price of oil crashed. Those jobs also never came back.

ncmncm 6y ago
During the last crash, in 2008, my employer at the time, Aspera (since bought out by IBM), boomed as customers moved to cut costs. The customers replaced shipping disk drives (or, in DoD's case, boxes of analog videotapes!) with transferring files over fiber and satellite links. NYT switched from reading stories aloud over bad phone connections to transferring files via satphone. This displaced fedex package handlers and mailroom personnel, and stenographers. In DoD's case, a physical library of surveillance drone videotapes, and everybody schlepping tape cartridges, was replaced with a remote-accessible video library. Nowadays digital video is streamed to Nevada and Utah in real time, and copied off there. Similar stories apply for numerous other customer industries. These were all permanent changes. Aspera grew to a hundred-some employees in 2014, but must have displaced thousands. Does this count as automation?
- raxxorrax 6y ago
  Certainly yes in my opinion. My current employer had a curiously very successful corona-quarter and building a solid backorder because we cannot have everyone in production right now. We automate everything we can and still employ more and more people. We often think manufacturing when speaking about automation, but I think administration will be affected most (you won't automate anything if you fired your internal IT department). We also build a fairly sci-fi robot to populate circuit boards for parts that cannot be fitted by reflow soldering. Great device to show off but the soldering women are just plainly faster and less error prone. And we have quite a high wage level. But sales planning, accounting, reporting will be mostly automated at some point. Our own in-house production is steadily growing even with additional support by machines. Of course it is bad if people out of job have no alternative. I think there should be state support for such cases instead of artificially keeping an industry alive.

kaybe 6y ago

It really makes me sad that jobs are seen as inherently valuable. The way you phrase it, 'provide jobs', feels like jobs are something needed. Of course, in the current setup, this is true, but there are so many boring and hard jobs (worked by people who are yet poor) that we shouldn't mourn once we manage to get rid of them. I want an economy where we can celebrate automation and distribute the profits evenly.

som33 6y ago
>I want an economy where we can celebrate automation and distribute the profits evenly. Not going to happen under capitalism. Look at the numbers, they are pretty horrifying. https://whorulesamerica.ucsc.edu/power/images/wealth/Net_worth_and_financial_wealth.png https://whorulesamerica.ucsc.edu/power/images/wealth/Net_wor... https://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html https://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html
- mc32 6y ago
  Do you think it has a chance of happening in Vietnam or North Korea under communism?
  - omginternets 6y ago
    No, the parent poster does not have Vietnam, nor North Korea, nor even communism in mind. You know this, and we know you know this.
    - mc32 6y ago
      Fair enough, so not capitalism, not communism. What political system might be capable of meeting these requirements? Is it the political equivalent of unobtanium or vaporware? Im not trying to be a smartass; I want to know what the answer might look like. It doesn’t have to be a treatise. Just something consistent with a chance at succeeding with non-ideal people.

TuringNYC 6y ago

A similar thing happened post 2001-bubble-pop and post 2008. Post 2001, there was a huge shift to offshore models, ticketing-workflow models, and a shift to a blossoming open source environment. Post 2008, there was another huge shift to more flexible infrastructure models, and to automation. Companies are often reluctant to restructure workforces, even when there are potential efficiencies available. Economic crises provide an "opportunity" for them to right-size.