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As someone who's is directly involved in developing and deploying automation software in complex organisations here are a few thoughts: - I can resonate with t

As someone who's is directly involved in developing and deploying automation software in complex organisations here are a few thoughts: - I can resonate with the author that automation can easily create new tasks (work) that didn't exist before. - These tasks generally speaking are of a more cognitive nature to the ones they replace. - If deployed right automation takes out the robot from the human to allow the human to focus on these cognitive tasks which all being equal are more rewarding and satisfying. - From our own deployment of automation (software in services sector) we have not seen a fall in number of humans in the business where we deploy automation. - However, we have observed these businesses adopting human capital at a much lower rate than they were in the past as their business grows in favour of technology. - Labour costs will have to come down a significant amount for to reverse this trend where business are seeing success through automation. - Automation is a not a one-shot exercise. For it to be effective firms need to establish (literally write down) what their intention are from investing in automation. What is the measure(s) they are trying to optimise and improve. - Firms need to re-evaluate these 3,6,12 months after deployment periodically and refine the automation machinery. This itself is one of the new tasks to emerge from deploying automation and lends itself to individuals who are more analytical and can make sense of vast amounts of data. If your interested in looking beyond the obvious with Automation I can highly recommend also reading 'Ironies of Automation Baindridge 1983' https://ckrybus.com/static/papers/Bainbridge_1983_Automatica.pdf https://ckrybus.com/static/papers/Bainbridge_1983_Automatica...

tuatoru 6y ago
> - From our own deployment of automation (software in services sector) we have not seen a fall in number of humans in the business where we deploy automation. Such a fall in absolute numbers would not be expected if the reorganisation made an organisation more competitive (assuming it's just one of many in its industry), so perhaps you're doing something right.[1] > - However, we have observed these businesses adopting human capital at a much lower rate than they were in the past as their business grows in favour of technology. This also is expected. It's what happened with the introduction of ATMs in bank branches. However those are side issues. One of the major points of the article is that labour shifting is sold as automation. So we need to know: how much labour and cost has been shifted onto the customers and/or suppliers of the organisations you automate? How much has been shifted out to piecework contractors? What has the effect been on the families of the employees? Without answers to questions like these we can't really make a proper asssessment of the full social benefit of your automation efforts. 1. A cynical take on automation projects is that they are often opportunities to shake out some of the dead wood that any large organisation accumulates--accumulates because, as other have noted, the incentives within large organisations act to increase the headcounts in various fiefdoms. The other half of that cynical take is that in other organisations they are opportunities for one group of managers to gather more power over others. This is probably the case in hospitals, where specialist bureaucrats have an advantage over doctors, so "automation" projects shift clerical labour onto doctors (and nurses and patients) while "upgrading" admin work into endless and unnecessary "cognitive tasks".
tharkun__ 6y ago
> - These tasks generally speaking are of a more cognitive nature to the ones they replace. And that's the 'problem' if you ask me. Some of the following may seem to be elitist, which is not what it's meant to be but we have to recognize that not everyone has the same mental capacity. As a software developer, we like the above. We live for it. We are so "lazy" that we'd rather spend 8 hours automating something than do the same 5 minute task once every day. Heck I'd wager some software developers have spent way more than 8 hours on automating a 5 minute repetitive task. Thing is, these new tasks that are left over, are now 'beyond' some of the people in the labour force. They just don't have the cognitive ability to perform them any longer. Take computing and software development or hardware development itself as an example. Almost anyone could be trained to work in a car factory. Sure for some tasks you might be better suited if you're very skilled in certain manual labour functions than someone else. Some of these are taken up by automation now. The people being replaced with this generally would not be able to design and build the robots or design and write the software running these robots though. They're a different set of people. Of course there will be some overlap, because you will have had some really bright people doing some of those jobs that were also bored out of their mind but hey that's the job they could get in 1951... They're probably the guys you will have sticking around to do some of the more mundane but still rather skilled in comparison tasks like 're-parameterizing of the robots' and the like. The other tasks that are left over are now even dumber and repetitive than the ones before. Or take burger flipping. Literally anyone can do that with minimal instruction. How many of the burger flippers (yes I get that there are some really bright university students flipping burgers for tuition money, let's remove those) could program the drive through wait time counter or design the hardware if given some sensors, an Arduino/rpi and some LEDs?
- vsareto 6y ago
  If you only look at someone's skills at an instant in time, they are definitely not qualified for some things, but that's really obvious and not really fair. Ruthless capitalistic businesses don't really give pop quizzes and fire people the instant they fail (that's only in interviews!). A lot of the writing around automation has suggested that there will be a single turning point, or a very short period, where all of this job loss happens (because all businesses will adopt it instantly for profit, right?), but that's not really the case even when you find a good automated solution to a problem. If not a single point in time, they say it will happen quickly enough that people can't re-skill quickly enough and will be jobless. So although fast food workers might fail at programming those things if you show up with a pop quiz, it's not really a good test. What we should do instead is offer them opportunities to be able to learn to do that over time (so long as they're interested in that kind of work) instead of trying to find a way to cull people who can't do it immediately.
deleted 6y ago
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tuatoru 6y ago

> - From our own deployment of automation (software in services sector) we have not seen a fall in number of humans in the business where we deploy automation. Such a fall in absolute numbers would not be expected if the reorganisation made an organisation more competitive (assuming it's just one of many in its industry), so perhaps you're doing something right.[1] > - However, we have observed these businesses adopting human capital at a much lower rate than they were in the past as their business grows in favour of technology. This also is expected. It's what happened with the introduction of ATMs in bank branches. However those are side issues. One of the major points of the article is that labour shifting is sold as automation. So we need to know: how much labour and cost has been shifted onto the customers and/or suppliers of the organisations you automate? How much has been shifted out to piecework contractors? What has the effect been on the families of the employees? Without answers to questions like these we can't really make a proper asssessment of the full social benefit of your automation efforts. 1. A cynical take on automation projects is that they are often opportunities to shake out some of the dead wood that any large organisation accumulates--accumulates because, as other have noted, the incentives within large organisations act to increase the headcounts in various fiefdoms. The other half of that cynical take is that in other organisations they are opportunities for one group of managers to gather more power over others. This is probably the case in hospitals, where specialist bureaucrats have an advantage over doctors, so "automation" projects shift clerical labour onto doctors (and nurses and patients) while "upgrading" admin work into endless and unnecessary "cognitive tasks".

tharkun__ 6y ago

> - These tasks generally speaking are of a more cognitive nature to the ones they replace. And that's the 'problem' if you ask me. Some of the following may seem to be elitist, which is not what it's meant to be but we have to recognize that not everyone has the same mental capacity. As a software developer, we like the above. We live for it. We are so "lazy" that we'd rather spend 8 hours automating something than do the same 5 minute task once every day. Heck I'd wager some software developers have spent way more than 8 hours on automating a 5 minute repetitive task. Thing is, these new tasks that are left over, are now 'beyond' some of the people in the labour force. They just don't have the cognitive ability to perform them any longer. Take computing and software development or hardware development itself as an example. Almost anyone could be trained to work in a car factory. Sure for some tasks you might be better suited if you're very skilled in certain manual labour functions than someone else. Some of these are taken up by automation now. The people being replaced with this generally would not be able to design and build the robots or design and write the software running these robots though. They're a different set of people. Of course there will be some overlap, because you will have had some really bright people doing some of those jobs that were also bored out of their mind but hey that's the job they could get in 1951... They're probably the guys you will have sticking around to do some of the more mundane but still rather skilled in comparison tasks like 're-parameterizing of the robots' and the like. The other tasks that are left over are now even dumber and repetitive than the ones before. Or take burger flipping. Literally anyone can do that with minimal instruction. How many of the burger flippers (yes I get that there are some really bright university students flipping burgers for tuition money, let's remove those) could program the drive through wait time counter or design the hardware if given some sensors, an Arduino/rpi and some LEDs?

vsareto 6y ago
If you only look at someone's skills at an instant in time, they are definitely not qualified for some things, but that's really obvious and not really fair. Ruthless capitalistic businesses don't really give pop quizzes and fire people the instant they fail (that's only in interviews!). A lot of the writing around automation has suggested that there will be a single turning point, or a very short period, where all of this job loss happens (because all businesses will adopt it instantly for profit, right?), but that's not really the case even when you find a good automated solution to a problem. If not a single point in time, they say it will happen quickly enough that people can't re-skill quickly enough and will be jobless. So although fast food workers might fail at programming those things if you show up with a pop quiz, it's not really a good test. What we should do instead is offer them opportunities to be able to learn to do that over time (so long as they're interested in that kind of work) instead of trying to find a way to cull people who can't do it immediately.

deleted 6y ago

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