6 ms·

Isn't this the dream of automation, though? That all those shitty jobs are replaced by robots, and the humans are left with only the interesting, creative, ones

Isn't this the dream of automation, though? That all those shitty jobs are replaced by robots, and the humans are left with only the interesting, creative, ones? Those old pictures of banks, where there were huge rooms full of 100's of clerks, all busy doing double-entry book-keeping. Now that's all done by computers and the clerks are doing something else, almost certainly something more interesting. The problem, of course, is that the benefits of automation are accruing to the owners. If Amazon manages to replace all their warehouse staff with robots, then the benefits go to the Amazon shareholders. Which is OK, because the shareholders funded the creation of the robots. But as a society, we need to spread this more. We need UBI.

thendrill 5y ago
Jobs are automated only and only if: If it increases yield by magnitudes while also improving quality by magnitudes. Example from the Pickle factory: You have 4 people putting and screwing lids on pickle jars. 4 people. 2000 Lids a day. With around 40 faulty lids. Lets say you pay those 4 20k a year: total 80k. An automation solution would cost you at least 400-500k. So unless this automation can do 20 000 lids a day and with only 10 faulty lids per day. Then Maybe it will be worth it. But most of the time it would not be automated.
- altvali 5y ago
  That's implying that automation costs that much every year, or that you must get an ROI of 100%. Almost in all cases, automation has a high setup cost but a low maintenance cost.
  - thendrill 5y ago
    No no. What I meant was that, the automation usually costs around 15x-20x annual salaries of the workers, one time cost maintenance comes after . So unless you get MORE THAN 20x - 30x yield per year, no one is gonna care about automating the process.
- onion2k 5y ago
  This is one reason why "knowledge worker" jobs like accounting and legal were the first to be disrupted by automation and AI. It's a heck of a lot cheaper and easier to automate manipulating a spreadsheet than it is to automate manipulating a pickle jar.
  - marcus_holmes 5y ago
    The Industrial Revolution begs to differ
- tarr11 5y ago
  Capital investments occur when the cost of labor is greater than the cost of automation. The rate at which these investments occur is complex. Here is a short example from the agricultural industry. https://ecommons.cornell.edu/bitstream/handle/1813/44561/Manager%20July%202016%2010%2C11.pdf?sequence=2&isAllowed=y https://ecommons.cornell.edu/bitstream/handle/1813/44561/Man...
- jjk166 5y ago
  As a manufacturing automation engineer, I can say that this is an incorrect view. First, employees are way more expensive than their takehome pay. You have benefits, liability, managerial overhead, training, turnover, and facilities costs for every employee. Someone making 20k/yr might easily cost a company 50k/yr to employ. Second, automation is rarely done to simply replace people. You automate tasks, not jobs. Most customers are looking for improved consistency, not increased yield or quality. That improved consistency means they can better predict their supply chains which leads to savings which dwarf the costs of labor. The other major reason for automation is reducing skill requirement - this frees up skilled employees for more valuable tasks, and removes a major impediment to scaling production. Finally, most companies have no problem investing in automation. Interest rates are low so its easy to get cheap financing, and robots are in vogue so many companies will invest in automation even where it makes no sense to portray themselves as efficient. Indeed, most companies are more concerned with their valuation than their profits, and the more automated a company is, the more valuable it is in a sale. It's actually really hard to convince customers that they'ed be better served by a cheaper, simpler solution.
  - thendrill 5y ago
    Yes. Everything you said is exactly on point. I was just trying to make a very simplified example that automation is never done to save human labour.
SyzygistSix 5y ago
>Isn't this the dream of automation, though? That all those shitty jobs are replaced by robots, and the humans are left with only the interesting, creative, ones? Hopefully. But what are the values that we hold that will allow that to come true? It's not just a matter of technology. Engineers, designers, and inventors will be the ones building that world. Do they believe their support staff (direct and indirect) deserve to benefit? How about the financiers, who often feel like they are the ones who deserve to benefit primarily, and give both the support staff and engineers short shrift? Deciding that those who work less important jobs than us do not deserve the benefit of our hard work is a race to the bottom. Whatever the case may be, we can start putting those values into action now. Especially as we see work weeks increasing for people even in an age of abundance.
allochthon 5y ago
And even beyond UBI. UBI provides a way for people not to be completely washed away in a world with a lot more automation. But in a country like the US, where money is readily translated into political power, having increasing differentials of wealth and poverty, even with a UBI floor, will mean that a select handful of people will increasingly be able to shape the information ecosystem and political landscape in the service of their private interests.
whiddershins 5y ago
The past year has convinced me that UBI would be an unmitigated disaster.
- cwmma 5y ago
  i mean it definitely would be a giant disaster, for certain business owners who's business model only works if they pay absolute poverty wages and thus UBI would force them to actually invest in either people or automation.
- dlsa 5y ago
  Ok I'm curious... in what way?
  - whiddershins 5y ago
    There are a lot of people wandering around who really shouldn't have this kind of free time on their hands.
- jimbokun 5y ago
  How so? The very generous unemployment benefits that were part of the US Covid relief bill has led to companies having to rapidly raise wages in order to attract employees. I think this is the fastest growing wages we've seen since the 90s boom. UBI could have a similar effect, but permanently. Push up wages across the board as not working is a viable option. It raises the negotiating power of labor and negates some of the advantages of capital, potentially reducing wealth inequality.
  - danbruc 5y ago
    [...] companies having to rapidly raise wages in order to attract employees. Where does this money come from? Increasing prices? [...] as not working is a viable option. What kind of life would that be? It can not be too comfortable or everyone might decide not to work which will bring down the entire scheme.
    - 5y ago
srmarm 5y ago
> If Amazon manages to replace all their warehouse staff with robots, then the benefits go to the Amazon shareholders. Which is OK, because the shareholders funded the creation of the robots. I pretty much agree, but Amazon do a lot of piggybacking on the work of others - so even those hypothetical robot - how much of them did the Amazon shareholders actually fund? And should they bare some of the societal costs of it? The people ultimately set the rules that capitalism works within - even if it does feel like the power is incredibly unbalanced
kube-system 5y ago
> Those old pictures of banks, where there were huge rooms full of 100's of clerks, all busy doing double-entry book-keeping. Now that's all done by computers and the clerks are doing something else, almost certainly something more interesting. The clerks are now writing CRUD banking apps. Better than monotonous bookkeeping, I guess, albeit less accessible.
Noos 5y ago
the problem is having too many people and too few interesting and creative jobs. Everything will become writing in the end; there won't be enough people to pay people to be creative, and increasingly winner takes all will be the norm. At best you hope there is a UBI where people will just be on welfare for the rest of their lives until birth rates stagnate enough to where population matches the opportunities. But there simply aren't enough interesting, paying jobs being created, and increasingly we have too many people for boring jobs.
- marcus_holmes 5y ago
  But that's not what actually happened when the banks automated. If what you are saying is true, then there should be a fairly large set of educated but unemployed people. There isn't. Unemployment rates are about the same now as they were then. Which is astonishing because we've also added women to the workforce since then. It looks like if there are too many people, more jobs get created. Presumably this is why average salaries have stagnated since 1970 - there are more jobs because employees are cheaper.
- makz 5y ago
  I disagree, there are thousands of rabbit holes to explore, including some that are interesting only to the individual exploring them. Wish I had enough free time.
gher-shyu3i 5y ago
> We need UBI. Islam provided it over 1400 years ago.

thendrill 5y ago

Jobs are automated only and only if: If it increases yield by magnitudes while also improving quality by magnitudes. Example from the Pickle factory: You have 4 people putting and screwing lids on pickle jars. 4 people. 2000 Lids a day. With around 40 faulty lids. Lets say you pay those 4 20k a year: total 80k. An automation solution would cost you at least 400-500k. So unless this automation can do 20 000 lids a day and with only 10 faulty lids per day. Then Maybe it will be worth it. But most of the time it would not be automated.

altvali 5y ago
That's implying that automation costs that much every year, or that you must get an ROI of 100%. Almost in all cases, automation has a high setup cost but a low maintenance cost.
- thendrill 5y ago
  No no. What I meant was that, the automation usually costs around 15x-20x annual salaries of the workers, one time cost maintenance comes after . So unless you get MORE THAN 20x - 30x yield per year, no one is gonna care about automating the process.
onion2k 5y ago
This is one reason why "knowledge worker" jobs like accounting and legal were the first to be disrupted by automation and AI. It's a heck of a lot cheaper and easier to automate manipulating a spreadsheet than it is to automate manipulating a pickle jar.
- marcus_holmes 5y ago
  The Industrial Revolution begs to differ
tarr11 5y ago
Capital investments occur when the cost of labor is greater than the cost of automation. The rate at which these investments occur is complex. Here is a short example from the agricultural industry. https://ecommons.cornell.edu/bitstream/handle/1813/44561/Manager%20July%202016%2010%2C11.pdf?sequence=2&isAllowed=y https://ecommons.cornell.edu/bitstream/handle/1813/44561/Man...
jjk166 5y ago
As a manufacturing automation engineer, I can say that this is an incorrect view. First, employees are way more expensive than their takehome pay. You have benefits, liability, managerial overhead, training, turnover, and facilities costs for every employee. Someone making 20k/yr might easily cost a company 50k/yr to employ. Second, automation is rarely done to simply replace people. You automate tasks, not jobs. Most customers are looking for improved consistency, not increased yield or quality. That improved consistency means they can better predict their supply chains which leads to savings which dwarf the costs of labor. The other major reason for automation is reducing skill requirement - this frees up skilled employees for more valuable tasks, and removes a major impediment to scaling production. Finally, most companies have no problem investing in automation. Interest rates are low so its easy to get cheap financing, and robots are in vogue so many companies will invest in automation even where it makes no sense to portray themselves as efficient. Indeed, most companies are more concerned with their valuation than their profits, and the more automated a company is, the more valuable it is in a sale. It's actually really hard to convince customers that they'ed be better served by a cheaper, simpler solution.
- thendrill 5y ago
  Yes. Everything you said is exactly on point. I was just trying to make a very simplified example that automation is never done to save human labour.

SyzygistSix 5y ago

>Isn't this the dream of automation, though? That all those shitty jobs are replaced by robots, and the humans are left with only the interesting, creative, ones? Hopefully. But what are the values that we hold that will allow that to come true? It's not just a matter of technology. Engineers, designers, and inventors will be the ones building that world. Do they believe their support staff (direct and indirect) deserve to benefit? How about the financiers, who often feel like they are the ones who deserve to benefit primarily, and give both the support staff and engineers short shrift? Deciding that those who work less important jobs than us do not deserve the benefit of our hard work is a race to the bottom. Whatever the case may be, we can start putting those values into action now. Especially as we see work weeks increasing for people even in an age of abundance.

allochthon 5y ago

And even beyond UBI. UBI provides a way for people not to be completely washed away in a world with a lot more automation. But in a country like the US, where money is readily translated into political power, having increasing differentials of wealth and poverty, even with a UBI floor, will mean that a select handful of people will increasingly be able to shape the information ecosystem and political landscape in the service of their private interests.

whiddershins 5y ago

The past year has convinced me that UBI would be an unmitigated disaster.

cwmma 5y ago
i mean it definitely would be a giant disaster, for certain business owners who's business model only works if they pay absolute poverty wages and thus UBI would force them to actually invest in either people or automation.
dlsa 5y ago
Ok I'm curious... in what way?
- whiddershins 5y ago
  There are a lot of people wandering around who really shouldn't have this kind of free time on their hands.
jimbokun 5y ago
How so? The very generous unemployment benefits that were part of the US Covid relief bill has led to companies having to rapidly raise wages in order to attract employees. I think this is the fastest growing wages we've seen since the 90s boom. UBI could have a similar effect, but permanently. Push up wages across the board as not working is a viable option. It raises the negotiating power of labor and negates some of the advantages of capital, potentially reducing wealth inequality.
- danbruc 5y ago
  [...] companies having to rapidly raise wages in order to attract employees. Where does this money come from? Increasing prices? [...] as not working is a viable option. What kind of life would that be? It can not be too comfortable or everyone might decide not to work which will bring down the entire scheme.
  - 5y ago

srmarm 5y ago

> If Amazon manages to replace all their warehouse staff with robots, then the benefits go to the Amazon shareholders. Which is OK, because the shareholders funded the creation of the robots. I pretty much agree, but Amazon do a lot of piggybacking on the work of others - so even those hypothetical robot - how much of them did the Amazon shareholders actually fund? And should they bare some of the societal costs of it? The people ultimately set the rules that capitalism works within - even if it does feel like the power is incredibly unbalanced

kube-system 5y ago

> Those old pictures of banks, where there were huge rooms full of 100's of clerks, all busy doing double-entry book-keeping. Now that's all done by computers and the clerks are doing something else, almost certainly something more interesting. The clerks are now writing CRUD banking apps. Better than monotonous bookkeeping, I guess, albeit less accessible.

Noos 5y ago

the problem is having too many people and too few interesting and creative jobs. Everything will become writing in the end; there won't be enough people to pay people to be creative, and increasingly winner takes all will be the norm. At best you hope there is a UBI where people will just be on welfare for the rest of their lives until birth rates stagnate enough to where population matches the opportunities. But there simply aren't enough interesting, paying jobs being created, and increasingly we have too many people for boring jobs.

marcus_holmes 5y ago
But that's not what actually happened when the banks automated. If what you are saying is true, then there should be a fairly large set of educated but unemployed people. There isn't. Unemployment rates are about the same now as they were then. Which is astonishing because we've also added women to the workforce since then. It looks like if there are too many people, more jobs get created. Presumably this is why average salaries have stagnated since 1970 - there are more jobs because employees are cheaper.
makz 5y ago
I disagree, there are thousands of rabbit holes to explore, including some that are interesting only to the individual exploring them. Wish I had enough free time.

gher-shyu3i 5y ago

> We need UBI. Islam provided it over 1400 years ago.