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We are already seeing Flippy the burger flipping robot taking over jobs originally meant for humans. The technology for Flippy is only getting cheaper and bette

We are already seeing Flippy the burger flipping robot taking over jobs originally meant for humans. The technology for Flippy is only getting cheaper and better, the quality of human labor is already at its most optimal point and is only getting more expensive due to laws passed. Now, you could make Flippy the robot illegal, and maybe x number of businesses would eat the cost of the more expensive workers. But something else will suffer as a result, and I would argue it would involve price, efficiency, quality, and compliance...

entropicdrifter 6y ago
Or you could make an automation tax and use it to fund UBI
- Stupulous 6y ago
  You could only use it to help fund UBI, unless UBI is significantly less than minimum wage. If the price of buying the robot and running it plus automation tax exceeds what you would spend on employing people at minimum wage, businesses would just keep employing people.
  - chc 6y ago
    That sounds like a win-win scenario. In cases where robots can do things so efficiently that no human could compete when the minimum wage is a living wage, robots will can do the jobs and anyone who could only have done that job will be OK. In cases where it's cheaper to pay people a living wage than to have robots do it, people can work for a living wage.
  - aidenn0 6y ago
    That ignores productivity gains. When automation makes things cheaper, it lowers the living wage.
- refurb 6y ago
  How would an automation tax work? Every time a job is eliminated, add a tax? How much? What if there is further improvement in automation but no further job loses? Does the tax go up? What if it's a new industry and companies jump right to automation and skip jobs? Do they pay the tax? How much?
- imtringued 6y ago
  That makes no sense. Just implement a wealth tax because robots increase inequality and make their owners wealthy.
Ekaros 6y ago
That's not very good argument. As we are where we are now because our productivity has increased insanely since invention of agriculture... If burger flipping robot is more productive than human, we should replace all humans with such robots.
- cogman10 6y ago
  There's a lot of blind faith in "New jobs will appear as old ones are obsoleted". That's certainly has been true, but I don't think it's absolutely always going to be true. Further, what we've seen is that primarily low skill high wage jobs have been replaced with high skill jobs. This is evidenced by the fact that you simply can't make a good living off a high school degree. Based off this https://www.careerprofiles.info/careers-largest-employment.html https://www.careerprofiles.info/careers-largest-employment.h... How many of those jobs are in danger of being automated? Cashiers, food preparation, freight, Customer service representatives (I know, you're thinking no way, but a lot of effort is going into AI chatbots to cut down on CS requirements). accounting (In fact, this is what I'm working on), order fillers, Truck drivers What happens to the millions when those jobs are slowly eroded away? It's easy to cheat and say "Something else will probably come up" but I simply don't think that will continue to happen in the next 10->20 years. There's only so much productivity we can utilize. What happens when we've saturated? Unemployment. I don't think any nation is really well equipped at this point to handle large portions of their workforce being automated away. Sure, the standard of living will go up for everyone with jobs. However, that will be less and less of the population as time goes on. This is why programs like UBI and universal healthcare are important. Without them, things are going to be pretty bleak for a lot of people (even with them, and a constant population growth, things won't look good).
  - curryst 6y ago
    > There's only so much productivity we can utilize. What happens when we've saturated? Unemployment. There's only so much productivity we can utilize _at a given price point_. It's possible wages could fall instead, although there's definitely a floor to that. That's one of the interesting implications of UBI; it would theoretically make it easier to find free or close to free labor. I still don't think it would be plentiful, but I would guess there will be an uptick in the number of people like amateur astronomers who will sit and watch the sky at night for free.
giantrobot 6y ago
Fast food has always been about efficiency, consistency, and streamlining. If Flippy has existed in 1961 when Roy Kroc bought out McDonald's it would have been a fixture in every location. Making fast food isn't a job "meant for humans", it's a job humans perform for the legal minimum of pay. The moment fast food chains can replace humans with Flippy without a PR backlash they will do so without hesitation.
- CarbyAu 6y ago
  Even with a PR backlash, providing the sums work out correctly. I have no doubt it'll happen, just a matter of when. I like the idea of humans not having to do trivial work. But I am concerned as to whether as a society we'll transition to "more leisure without reduction of living standards" or "higher competition to make ends meet, with the 'failures' being cast aside". So far it is the latter.
asdff 6y ago
Some jobs are too dynamic for automation. Every shift means a unique set of tasks with unique sets of variables, even if they are routine tasks, and it gets very expensive to design and support an automated solution that will continually adapt to changing conditions and replace human creativity and plasticity. I think back to my minimum wage job working as a grounds keeper at a golf course. To the uninformed, it seems like a perfect space to deploy a roomba with knives and never hire a groundskeeper again. I can tell you that this high tech course would sooner burst into flames than maintain playable conditions for a golf season. For a groundskeeper, the generalized routine is the same, cut the same greens and teeboxes every morning with a shotgun start and the fairways and rough every other day or so, but how you cut those sections changes by the day, even by the minute over the course of a dynamic weather event. What angle you cut, how high or low the cutting surface should be, whether or not the grass is slightly slippery that day and would require more focus with the mower to maintain a straight line, how the grass was cut yesterday and the day before are all variables that an experienced greensmower accounts for subconsciously and instantly. Then you might have a drought which changes how the grass should be cut, or a rain storm which might require a lot of emergency drainage work to keep irrigation equipment functional or to preserve the playing surface before you could even begin regular cutting, which would be with extreme care given the rain soaked earth (you might even opt to roll rather than cut). A comprehensive automated solution for many jobs is exceedingly complex and highly custom, which could really add up in pricier engineer-man-hours and service contracts, versus having your own maintenance shop hidden on the course and hiring a low skilled crew to operate that equipment. It's so much easier to tell a human to cut grass than to spend 100x the man hours maintaining an automated solution that continually captures all the variability of that dynamic job.

entropicdrifter 6y ago

Or you could make an automation tax and use it to fund UBI

Stupulous 6y ago
You could only use it to help fund UBI, unless UBI is significantly less than minimum wage. If the price of buying the robot and running it plus automation tax exceeds what you would spend on employing people at minimum wage, businesses would just keep employing people.
- chc 6y ago
  That sounds like a win-win scenario. In cases where robots can do things so efficiently that no human could compete when the minimum wage is a living wage, robots will can do the jobs and anyone who could only have done that job will be OK. In cases where it's cheaper to pay people a living wage than to have robots do it, people can work for a living wage.
- aidenn0 6y ago
  That ignores productivity gains. When automation makes things cheaper, it lowers the living wage.
refurb 6y ago
How would an automation tax work? Every time a job is eliminated, add a tax? How much? What if there is further improvement in automation but no further job loses? Does the tax go up? What if it's a new industry and companies jump right to automation and skip jobs? Do they pay the tax? How much?
imtringued 6y ago
That makes no sense. Just implement a wealth tax because robots increase inequality and make their owners wealthy.

Ekaros 6y ago

That's not very good argument. As we are where we are now because our productivity has increased insanely since invention of agriculture... If burger flipping robot is more productive than human, we should replace all humans with such robots.

cogman10 6y ago
There's a lot of blind faith in "New jobs will appear as old ones are obsoleted". That's certainly has been true, but I don't think it's absolutely always going to be true. Further, what we've seen is that primarily low skill high wage jobs have been replaced with high skill jobs. This is evidenced by the fact that you simply can't make a good living off a high school degree. Based off this https://www.careerprofiles.info/careers-largest-employment.html https://www.careerprofiles.info/careers-largest-employment.h... How many of those jobs are in danger of being automated? Cashiers, food preparation, freight, Customer service representatives (I know, you're thinking no way, but a lot of effort is going into AI chatbots to cut down on CS requirements). accounting (In fact, this is what I'm working on), order fillers, Truck drivers What happens to the millions when those jobs are slowly eroded away? It's easy to cheat and say "Something else will probably come up" but I simply don't think that will continue to happen in the next 10->20 years. There's only so much productivity we can utilize. What happens when we've saturated? Unemployment. I don't think any nation is really well equipped at this point to handle large portions of their workforce being automated away. Sure, the standard of living will go up for everyone with jobs. However, that will be less and less of the population as time goes on. This is why programs like UBI and universal healthcare are important. Without them, things are going to be pretty bleak for a lot of people (even with them, and a constant population growth, things won't look good).
- curryst 6y ago
  > There's only so much productivity we can utilize. What happens when we've saturated? Unemployment. There's only so much productivity we can utilize _at a given price point_. It's possible wages could fall instead, although there's definitely a floor to that. That's one of the interesting implications of UBI; it would theoretically make it easier to find free or close to free labor. I still don't think it would be plentiful, but I would guess there will be an uptick in the number of people like amateur astronomers who will sit and watch the sky at night for free.

giantrobot 6y ago

Fast food has always been about efficiency, consistency, and streamlining. If Flippy has existed in 1961 when Roy Kroc bought out McDonald's it would have been a fixture in every location. Making fast food isn't a job "meant for humans", it's a job humans perform for the legal minimum of pay. The moment fast food chains can replace humans with Flippy without a PR backlash they will do so without hesitation.

CarbyAu 6y ago
Even with a PR backlash, providing the sums work out correctly. I have no doubt it'll happen, just a matter of when. I like the idea of humans not having to do trivial work. But I am concerned as to whether as a society we'll transition to "more leisure without reduction of living standards" or "higher competition to make ends meet, with the 'failures' being cast aside". So far it is the latter.

asdff 6y ago

Some jobs are too dynamic for automation. Every shift means a unique set of tasks with unique sets of variables, even if they are routine tasks, and it gets very expensive to design and support an automated solution that will continually adapt to changing conditions and replace human creativity and plasticity. I think back to my minimum wage job working as a grounds keeper at a golf course. To the uninformed, it seems like a perfect space to deploy a roomba with knives and never hire a groundskeeper again. I can tell you that this high tech course would sooner burst into flames than maintain playable conditions for a golf season. For a groundskeeper, the generalized routine is the same, cut the same greens and teeboxes every morning with a shotgun start and the fairways and rough every other day or so, but how you cut those sections changes by the day, even by the minute over the course of a dynamic weather event. What angle you cut, how high or low the cutting surface should be, whether or not the grass is slightly slippery that day and would require more focus with the mower to maintain a straight line, how the grass was cut yesterday and the day before are all variables that an experienced greensmower accounts for subconsciously and instantly. Then you might have a drought which changes how the grass should be cut, or a rain storm which might require a lot of emergency drainage work to keep irrigation equipment functional or to preserve the playing surface before you could even begin regular cutting, which would be with extreme care given the rain soaked earth (you might even opt to roll rather than cut). A comprehensive automated solution for many jobs is exceedingly complex and highly custom, which could really add up in pricier engineer-man-hours and service contracts, versus having your own maintenance shop hidden on the course and hiring a low skilled crew to operate that equipment. It's so much easier to tell a human to cut grass than to spend 100x the man hours maintaining an automated solution that continually captures all the variability of that dynamic job.