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Managers, not workers, are losing jobs to AI and robots: study
- AntiImperialist 6y agoI was listening to Andrew Yang on the JRE podcast a few days ago and I found out that his entire political platform is built on automation taking away manual jobs, specifically truck driving jobs. Truck driving jobs aren't going anywhere, not in 10 years, not in a 100 . Neither is that of plumbers, electricians or many such skilled labors. Most programmers will lose their jobs before any of that happens.
- derwiki 6y agoWhy do you categorize self-driving trucks with robotic plumbers? A quick search shows very real options for self-driving trucks.
- mytailorisrich 6y agoIndeed. I think jobs like plumber, electrician, etc are actually the safest there are in term of automation. But self-driving trucks, especially long-haul ones that drive mostly on motorways between warehouses are likely near the top of the list of replacement by self-driving vehicles.
- kbos87 6y agoAgreed. Plumbers, electricians, and other complicated/messy jobs will probably see some minor efficiency gains, but won’t be replaced by automation in any foreseeable future I can imagine.
- i_haz_rabies 6y agoSafest in terms of automation, sure, but the poorer society gets as more and more jobs are automated, the fewer skilled trades will be needed.
- danaris 6y agoI'm not sure why society getting poorer means fewer plumbers and electricians will be needed... Provided you're not actually talking about poor people just dying off in large numbers, we'll still have roughly the same number of households, which means the same number of sinks to unclog and outlets to wire. I suppose it might be true that fewer people will be able to afford the services of skilled professionals, but that's not at all the same as saying that fewer will be needed...
- i_haz_rabies 6y agoNot being able to afford a service and being dead is functionally the same thing from the service provider's perspective.
- lotsofpulp 6y agoLink to options for self driving trucks? I don’t see any when I search.
- derwiki 6y agohttps://www.vox.com/recode/2020/7/1/21308539/self-driving-autonomous-trucks-ups-freight-network https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/7/1/21308539/self-driving-au... > TuSimple is hardly the only company working to making fully automated shipping a reality. Several companies, including Aurora, Daimler, and Embark Trucks, are competing for a slice of the future of self-driving freight trucks. Alphabet-owned Waymo confirmed on Tuesday that it will be expanding its own self-driving trucking routes throughout the American Southwest and Texas, following previous tests in Arizona, California, Michigan, and Georgia
- lotsofpulp 6y ago“Real options” means available to purchase, in my opinion. None of those are ready for any truck company to replace their drivers with.
- derwiki 6y agoGotcha, sounds like a miscommunication. I meant real as in, people are working on it and it’s not vaporware. In the same way that I don’t see autonomous plumbing companies when I search.
- scollet 6y agoI actually see plumbers getting highly specialized as the infra gets more sohpisticated. Automation in that regard is probably a later iteration of the automated household where now we have auxillary vacuums, embedded iot light controllers, and so forth.
- AntiImperialist 6y agoOne can also search for lizard people and alien takeover which may seem just as "real" to some, but fully automated trucks that will replace drivers is not happening.
- delfinom 6y agoLmfao, long haul drivers are very much on the chopping block this decade. Every major logistics corporation is lining up to snap up self driving trucks between warehouses. Short-haul/local drivers however yes, they will continue to exist for now due to the additional complexity preseneted by everyone and their mom's loading dock being all kinds of differently designed, often in ridiculous ways.
- killtimeatwork 6y ago> Every major logistics corporation is lining up to snap up self driving trucks between warehouses. Of course they're lining for it, but if no one delivers L5 autonomy trucks, then they'll still be stuck with drivers.
- lotsofpulp 6y agoI’ve been hearing about self driving cars since I was a kid a few decades ago. I have yet to see any evidence of a self driving vehicle that can handle anything other than the simple roads of sunny AZ or CA. Show me one that can handle a snow squall or heavy rain or missing signs and lane markers and construction zones, and I might think it’s possible this decade. Otherwise, I assume there’s a lot of work to be done.
- derwiki 6y agoHow does Pittsburgh strike you? https://venturebeat.com/2019/04/26/5-companies-are-testing-55-self-driving-cars-in-pittsburgh/ https://venturebeat.com/2019/04/26/5-companies-are-testing-5... (Maybe they’ll finally figure out the belt system /s)
- lotsofpulp 6y ago> meaning that they’re capable of performing all driving functions autonomously under certain conditions, and they drive on public roads mostly during weekdays (both during the day and at night) with occasional testing on weekends “only during favorable weather conditions.” Since they don’t advertise being able to drive in less than ideal weather, I assume it means they can’t yet.
- aynyc 6y agoThat’s not his entire platform. If anything, UBI is his main platform.
- AntiImperialist 6y agoI'm guessing you haven't listened to the JRE podcast episode then?
- Ekaros 6y agoI can see long distance high way truck driving jobs on set routes going away. That scenario is relatively simple to automate. That is moving goods from one big hub to an other. On other hand the last delivery leg likely will stay human. On other hand I do agree that skilled labour jobs in maintenance and renovation jobs aren't going very soon. Then again in new buildings automating these jobs with good design or even pre-build components is not impossible eventually.
- golemiprague 6y agoThen why we still got train drivers? Trains are automated in many places but they still use drivers
- wing-_-nuts 6y agoOh you sweet summer child. Truck drivers are among the first that will be completely automated away. The other thing to keep in mind, is that we automate tasks not jobs. The effect of this is that workers become much more productive, it is possible to do the same work with fewer people. One truck driver oversees a fleet of trucks remotely, ready to take over if needed. The good news is that these should be higher paying jobs than the original, because they are more productive and higher skilled.
- pydry 6y agoWhether it gets rolled out will depend on the level of liability self driving vehicle operators will face (or be able to avoid). Self driving cars as a concept could in theory be killed entirely by a few high profile crashes and a few successful prosecutions for criminal negligence. Im skeptical that the US legal/political system would kill it, though. The original automobiles were rendered "safe" by criminalizing jaywalking after all.
- willcipriano 6y agoI agree. Passenger spaceflight would be offered widely and more affordably in short order if you remove all liability from vendors for deaths and injury of passengers. That doesn't mean it's ready yet.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- enumjorge 6y agoUnfortunately, it’s good news only for the driver who gets to manage the fleet, but bad news for the rest of the fleet’s drivers who are now unemployed.
- johnathan23423 6y agoOh you sweet summer child. Take the snarkiness back to reddit please.
- wpietri 6y ago
- jussij 6y agoConsider how trucks are used in the mining industry. Go back five years and these trucks would have be driven by a human driver. Today any new mine will be designed to use autonomous trucks and many of the older mines are being retro fitted to replace those human driven trucks: https://www.amsj.com.au/autonomous-mining-truck-safety/ https://www.amsj.com.au/autonomous-mining-truck-safety/ Now replacing drivers for trucks driven on public roads is much harder to achieve, but even here systems that reduce the number of drivers required are well advanced: https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/industry/daimler-trials-convoy-connected-autonomous-lorries https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/industry/daimler-trials-c...
- AntiImperialist 6y agoConsider pilots in an aeroplane. Most of flying is automated but there are more pilots than ever. There will never not be pilots. Same will happen to trucks and trains. You may see some sort of fully automated cars in some small cities in the next couple of decades. But trucks? Nope! Not happening.
- abraxas 6y agoThe problem is that workers get Manna in place of the human management - automated surveillance systems that track every moment of their working life and slice and dice this data to figure out who can be fired or harassed and where to tighten the screws on them. Manna by Marshall Brain is a great short book about this that's available free online. https://marshallbrain.com/manna https://marshallbrain.com/manna
- aynyc 6y agoI think those firms will likely lose their competitiveness overtime. Unless they are defacto monopoly. Boeing is a prime example.
- lotsofpulp 6y agoNot if those firms sell a commodity product, such as delivery or retail.
- abraxas 6y agoWhat are you talking about? Every large company is jumping aboard the automatic worker surveillance, tracking and scoring. Where are you gonna go work? To a competitor who uses the exact same surveillance system?
- aynyc 6y agoName them please. I work for a largish company, this subject was openly addressed in a townhall and stated it's not gonna work by CEO and the board. As for where you gonna go, like everything else, it just creates opportunities for companies that might not paid as much but offer better environment, that's where I'm gonna go.
- Loughla 6y agoI have often complained about my employer on here, for their lack of foresight, their lack of empathy from the top, and (right now) their lack of really giving a shit about us as humans during a pandemic. But. At the end of the day, I stay here for less money than I could make somewhere else for two reasons: A) I don't like moving; and B) They leave me the fuck alone. They don't really know what my office does. They don't really know how we do it. But they do know that we provide massive value for the expense. And they let us do it with as little oversight as they can stomach. That's worth something.
- benrbray 6y agoRelated is David Graeber's article [1] / book [2] / talks [3] about "Bullshit Jobs". [1] https://www.strike.coop/bullshit-jobs/ https://www.strike.coop/bullshit-jobs/ [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kikzjTfos0s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kikzjTfos0s
- DonHopkins 6y agoThe Management Leisure Suit enables one manager to supervise large numbers of remote workers. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yK9Cs_UcTEE&ab_channel=Artren https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yK9Cs_UcTEE&ab_channel=Artre... The Leisure Management Suit Advantages: Remote Ops. Centralized Logistics. Lower Stress. High Fashion. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wj-gisszHM0&ab_channel=PatrickLichty https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wj-gisszHM0&ab_channel=Patri...
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- thelastwave 6y agoWell duh, do you really think robots would take the shit jobs first? Would you? Or if you don't think so, it only makes sense they'd come for managers first, when you think about it. Not that there's anything wrong with that.
- the_only_law 6y agoSuddenly reminded of the “Clueless” from the gervais principal.
- kgin 6y agoReminds me to go back and read it again.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- mattacular 6y agoHaving trouble seeing this trend as good for anyone except owners and shareholders.
- TheOtherHobbes 6y agoIt's one thing to make buggy whips obsolete. Another to make human labour in general obsolete.
- throwaway201103 6y agoSo better be one of those. It's not hard to be a shareholder. Buy some mutual fund shares.
- xenihn 6y agoAny recs?
- chadash 6y ago> "Contrary to the popular notion that robots will replace human labor, we find robot-adopting firms employed more people over time. Any displacement of labor came from firms that did not adopt robots. These non-adopting firms actually lost their competitiveness — and they had to lay off workers." I don't find this very compelling. How many workers were lost by companies that didn't automate vs companies that did? It's entirely possible for Amazon (or another company with heavy automation) to add 50,000 jobs, while their competitors cut 75,000 jobs, meaning a net loss for workers.
- i_haz_rabies 6y agoThese sorts of articles and the subsequent threads always end up nitpicking which job will get automated and which jobs are safe without considering that the more we automate away jobs, the less society will be able to pay for the goods and services that aren't automated. Maybe tradespeople are safe this decade, maybe not... but one thing is for sure, there will be a smaller subset of people able to pay for renovations by 2030 because their jobs will have been automated.
- gcatalfamo 6y agoAssuming your job/role is unmodifiable is a more serious problem that is only slightly aggravated by it being automated. Some jobs are more easily automated than others, sure, but the problem is that some people don't realise the market might render your current job useless much before automation comes, so you should be ready to adapt always, and in any case. We like to talk about pivoting business models on this website, but when it applies to what a person considers "sacred" everything falls apart. (not just here, as the automation discourse is happening globally) edit: typo sacred
- hobs 6y agoprobably sacred
- gcatalfamo 6y agoyes, thanks!
- frockington1 6y agoGlobally it may have hit harder. Most of the simple tasks that were offshored in the early 00's are the first to come back onshore and be automated away
- i_haz_rabies 6y agoI am fully aware that my job as a CRUD API developer has an expiration date and I have no idea what to do about it. At this point, I don't think the onus is on the workers... automation is too widespread and fast to plan.
- op03 6y agoThe managers that survive are robots too. The higher up the ladder the more the constraints and greater the hard coded rules.
- mensetmanusman 6y agoThe 0.1% win again. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/06/the-birth-of-a-new-american-aristocracy/559130/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/06/the-bir... If the FED doesn’t succeed in fixing the productivity to compensation ratio ( https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/ https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/ ), there will be more revolts by people who cant afford to send their own kids to the dentist.
- frockington1 6y agoWell they are protecting against that as well by stripping away the second amendment
- TheOtherHobbes 6y agoEmployers are far more worried by unionisation than by guns.
- monocasa 6y agoGiven how the fight for unionization happened in the early twentieth century, the two concepts might not be separate.
- mensetmanusman 6y agoFast forward to a repeat of the french revolution, they aren’t afraid of union papers :)
- apatil 6y agoThe article's point is that fewer managers are required as organizations become more automated, not that managers are being directly automated. However, I'm not sure I agree with the study author's statement "Because managers, by definition, supervise other human beings, so we really cannot replace their functions until the singularity occurs with artificial general intelligence." This came up on HN a while ago: https://apenwarr.ca/log/20190926 https://apenwarr.ca/log/20190926 . The thesis was: "To paraphrase the book, the job of an executive is: to define and enforce culture and values for their whole organization, and to ratify good decisions. That's all. Not to decide. Not to break ties. Not to set strategy. Not to be the expert on every, or any topic. Just to sit in the room while the right people make good decisions in alignment with their values. And if they do, to endorse it. And if they don't, to send them back to try again. There's even an algorithm for this." All of that sounds automatable to me using current or near-future technology. Managers, especially middle managers, also do many other things; but they universally end up spending a whole lot of time in meetings. I'm not a manager, but my own role in many meetings feels automatable. In a handful of meetings I have to be there because I have detailed knowledge about the subject to share. In the other meetings I think it would honestly be fine for an AI that had learned to emulate my writing and speech to represent me in the conversation and write a summary for me afterward. I'm not arguing that managers _will_ be automated anytime soon, just that AI probably _could_ automate some of the things that take up a big chunk of managers' time.
- potiuper 6y ago"Not to decide." Yet, "[the manager is to decide if] 'the right people make good decisions in alignment with their values.'"
- mkl95 6y agoIn my country, companies are required by law to provide their employees a way to clock-in and clock-out at work. Companies are also required to keep a copy of these records that can be audited any time. This was seen as a great improvement for a country famous for its long workdays and systemic unpaid overtime. The response of many company owners has been to forge their employees records. No way to clock-in and clock-out is provided, instead employers craft all this information and keep it to themselves. Everything is exactly as it used to be. I'm one of those people who think AI could replace many management jobs, since my manager struggles at things a computer does easily, such as calculating annual leave. Many days all my interactions with him could be improved by a well-crafted bot. The main issue is that many companies are actively fighting AI and management automation, since it would expose the schemes that keep their business running.
- blablabla123 6y agoWhen it comes to organizing Sprints, I want to get automation maxed out there. Managers usually want to do things "their way" but I think the mechanics of Sprints are well enough understood to just go by the process and enjoy it. On the other hand I think it's good to have a manager to talk to, also someone that deals with conflicts at work and someone who is able to reverse toxic dynamics. No way this can be automated in foreseeable future and neither do I see that "self-organized teams" find any way to solve this. Also dealing with product requirements is hard to automate.
- throwaway201103 6y agoDaily stand-ups could be automated. For all participants. That's something I'd like.
- TYPE_FASTER 6y ago> Rather, it is “middle-skilled” jobs that are threatened, Wu found. I think this would be a better headline. If "middle-skilled" refers to manually moving information across an organization using people, systems, and spreadsheets, then yeah, those jobs are very much the bottom of the iceberg as far as automation goes. So I guess from that perspective, an employer with many managers who manually manage scheduling/time tracking/etc. could consider deploying an ERM/ERP product and consolidating the org structure an efficiency. Manager as leader though is harder to consolidate, both during growth ("we're adding resources to your team, you should be happy") and through adding offshore teams without a project manager, cutting down on the bandwidth of the onshore manager.
- contingencies 6y agoJust own the damn robots: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15490104 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15490104
- syndacks 6y agoI'm sorry but any article that refers to "the singularity" so casually and cursorily loses my respect. At the very least this needs to be defended and/or explained, because as far as I'm concerned it was a big marketing ploy for Mr. Kurzwel to brand himself with.
- root_axis 6y agoYes, the singularity is science fiction, but I don't think that's a fair characterization of Kurzweil. If you've read any of his books on the topic he lays out a pretty meticulous if flawed case for the singularity, he may be wrong but I don't see any reason to suggest he is anything other than earnest.
- rensc 6y agoI worked as a field construction supervisor (as a junior civil engineer) and remember that the senior supervisor used to told us that we were "his eyes of the job site". Because at the end he was the one who aproved the important things. Of course I also used to take decision in the field and aprove little things. But if placing "video cameras and AI" could replace 70% of my job at that time and pass the rest of the tasks directly to the senior supervisor to aprove it in a faster way, then the junior field supervisor might not be necessary or might have to be retrainned in other areas.
- Animats 6y agoThere's a science fiction book about someone whose boss is "Microsoft Middle Manager 2.0 with passive-aggressive set to low". But, yes. If everything you do goes in and out over a wire, replacing you is easier. Span of control, the number of people directly supervised, has been increasing for decades. Thus the "flattened organization", with fewer middle managers.
- webel0 6y agoI believe the paper discussed is here [0]. I've skimmed it and am somewhat underwhelmed by both the methods and theory: * All of their regressions are in levels. * Look at Table 1, Column 1. * Robotics investment is positively correlated with overall employment. * What this tells me is that, "Large companies, by dint of their being large, make large investments. Some of those investments are in robotics. Likewise for small companies." * To me, it has nothing to do with the claim "More robots => more employment." * Running regressions in first differences would be better (but not enough). * Then you could begin to work towards an interpretation like, "companies that _increased_ their investment in robotics in year X tended to increase/decrease employment/management/turnover by X." You can account for lags and the like via your specification. * Fixed effects _are not_ equivelant to first differences in this setup! * Separate out the long-, medium- and short-term consequences: * Investment in new technology may require hiring new "talent" that is knowledgeable of the tech. * In cases where there is a tech shock and firms are all buying the same machine, demand for a certain skillset will grow quickly. So you'd likely see: * An uptick in turnover among affected workers * A move to a "flatter" organizational structure (various reasons). So maybe fewer people who are managers per se. * Possibly short-term productvity decreases arising from implementation issues. (e.g. have to hire people to check the work of machine in staging manually while still running previous process.) * Over time, though: * Implementation issues/bugs are smoothed out * Rare skills are commidified. The need to hire "superstars" ends. * It is important to ask, "what might have caused investment by a given firm over a given time frame?" * Common industry technological shocks might spur investment. * (And the simplest way to account for technological shocks in this sort of regression you'd want `[industry] x [year]` fixed effects.) * "We went on a manager hiring spree in year 1. Those managers, in turn, bought a lot of robots in year 2. In year 2 we hired fewer managers because we'd just hired a bunch in year 1." * Reverse causation issues are pervasive. * Finally, I think it is important to notice their notion of "robot adoption": * They are talking about physical hardware _only_. * Their measure of investment is coming only from import data. The set of firms that are going to go through the rigammarole of importing physical hardware is probably raher special: Probably: * Larger * Have a high expected ROI from investment At the very least, this paper needs first-difference regressions and a good instrument that can help to disentangle what might be going on. For the instrument, it might make sense to look into changes in tariff duties over time [1]. --- [0] https://content.tcmediasaffaires.com/LAF/lacom2019/robots.pdf https://content.tcmediasaffaires.com/LAF/lacom2019/robots.pd... [1] https://cbsa-asfc.gc.ca/trade-commerce/tariff-tarif/2020/html/tblmod-2-eng.html https://cbsa-asfc.gc.ca/trade-commerce/tariff-tarif/2020/htm...
- visarga 6y agoWe're automating away until our creations become self replicators. Humans are self replicators, so are the other living things, culture (+memes), technology, companies and the economy. If we could have self replicating factories, then all we'd need to do is to import such a factory to a poor country and let it run. Of course automation is just half the problem, the other is raw materials. Presumably we could recycle almost everything and not need an unlimited quantity. I bet we'll reach technological self replication singularity before AGI, and the impact is going to be huge. Robotics, 3D printers, IoT, sensors, computer assisted manufacturing and logistics are going to be interesting in the next decades. I just hope they will be open source and not restricted by patents.
- hnarn 6y agoPerhaps in companies intelligent enough to understand which part of their workforce drives actual revenue: in my job I can say for a fact that there’s more redundancy in management than in engineering, and I don’t think that’s because of intelligence on the company’s part, but rather an engrained culture and assumption of how necessary managers are, often linked to already per-company arbitrary objects like departments or projects. So a more interesting question I think is: how many companies out there are intelligent enough to go against the axioms of corporate culture and investigate value from the recently so popular term “first principles”? I’m unfortunately cynical enough to believe the answer is “not many”.