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> - 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 s

> - 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.
- tharkun__ 6y ago
  I understand and agree. I tried to account for that with the "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... " Those are the people you can train up, to a certain point. Like you said, there might be people in that workforce that were just never given the opportunity but are actually pretty smart. But there's also the ones that just can't do anything above the level of what they were doing in that factory before, even if given the opportunity and training. There's a difference in training someone to perform X mundane manual task vs. Y mundane manual task vs. actually learning something completely new and different that requires 'thinking'. It's the same with "traditional" jobs, like say a shoe maker. Today, you mostly have a few cobblers left that know how to fix your typical "suit's" shoes if they bought proper ones (the Allen Edmonds and the like). When shoe production was automated, the actual job of shoemaker disappeared and the replacement jobs dumbed down significantly, so that "anyone" could do them. You still have some actual proper shoe makers left. The ones that in previous times would have be the master shoe makers that invented new ways of sewing or perfected previous techniques, invented new ways of combining pigments for awesome looking shoes etc.

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.

tharkun__ 6y ago
I understand and agree. I tried to account for that with the "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... " Those are the people you can train up, to a certain point. Like you said, there might be people in that workforce that were just never given the opportunity but are actually pretty smart. But there's also the ones that just can't do anything above the level of what they were doing in that factory before, even if given the opportunity and training. There's a difference in training someone to perform X mundane manual task vs. Y mundane manual task vs. actually learning something completely new and different that requires 'thinking'. It's the same with "traditional" jobs, like say a shoe maker. Today, you mostly have a few cobblers left that know how to fix your typical "suit's" shoes if they bought proper ones (the Allen Edmonds and the like). When shoe production was automated, the actual job of shoemaker disappeared and the replacement jobs dumbed down significantly, so that "anyone" could do them. You still have some actual proper shoe makers left. The ones that in previous times would have be the master shoe makers that invented new ways of sewing or perfected previous techniques, invented new ways of combining pigments for awesome looking shoes etc.