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Paraphrasing an observation I heard in a podcast some weeks ago: We were promised little robot butlers in the scifi we read as kids, but what we got was human

Paraphrasing an observation I heard in a podcast some weeks ago: We were promised little robot butlers in the scifi we read as kids, but what we got was human servants that act like robots.

danuker 5y ago
I suppose a step towards automating the jobs is to break them down into manageable, replaceable pieces. For example, there have appeared automated boxes for recipients to pick up packages.
- rightbyte 5y ago
  > For example, there have appeared automated boxes for recipients to pick up packages. You mean a mail box?
  - guntars 5y ago
    Yeah, like a mail box, but you have one at multiple addresses in most cities.
  - ThePadawan 5y ago
    (I cannot tell if you're being sarcastic or genuine). Yes, except (before COVID) if you were at work, and the mail carrier tried to deliver a package to your house unsuccessfully, they would take it with them again. Or they would leave it outside the house, where it could be stolen. Then, starting the next day, you could go to the nearest pickup site (and depending on the carrier, this either means the post office, which might be a 20min walk, or a completely-out-of-town parcel distribution site, which could be a 1h15 train ride [based on my own location]) to get it. There, you would take a number, and wait in line up to 15 minutes (because all working people would be there at that time of day). The alternative is an automated postal box, which does not need an employee to operate it. It's just a huge wall of lockers with a central terminal. When you receive a package there, you get an electronic unlock code to unlock exactly that 1 locker with your package in it. These postal boxes can be installed anywhere where spare space is available. Maybe that's platform 5 at your nearest train station, or outside the pharmacy in town. At least it's closer to your home, and open 24/7.
    - pjc50 5y ago
      Parcel delivery is such a classic principal-agent problem; the customer contracts with a seller, who then subcontracts with a delivery company. But because there's layers in the middle the delivery companies can't compete on actual customer satisfaction, just on being cheap for the vendors.
      - ThePadawan 5y ago
        I do my best to tell sellers this. I recently tried to find out where to buy a new mattress online. Usually I get them IKEA and that's fine, but their shipping is so expensive, it's generally only worth it if you boy a whole lot of large items at once. I talked to the customer repo of another shop to inquire what vendor they used for shipping and what would happen if I wasn't home - and they told me they used DPD. Turns out that DPD's "we missed you" service is "you have to go to our distribution center to pick up your package". As mentioned above, that would have been a 1h15min train journey (one-way) with multiple changes. Carrying a mattress. I sincerely hope the customer rep actually understood why I told them that this was an immediate non-starter for me. Especially since I regularly missed packages because the mail carrier simply didn't attempt delivery at all.
        nicoburns 5y ago
        My experience has been that DPD has by far the best delivery service. Not only can you reschedule delivery for a specific day, but you can do so in advance, or arrange a new address for the package to be delivered to. Perhaps this varies by location?
        ThePadawan 5y ago
        Of course it does! It's just that in my experience, rearranging delivery details still requires someone in the chain to give a shit. The delivery person who wouldn't deliver the package on Monday is not going to give a shit if they're instructed to deliver on Tuesday 9am-11am instead, they're going to show up at 4pm and still act like they're doing me a favor. What am I gonna do? I've already paid for the service, so the seller won't care. DPD won't care, they already got paid by the seller.
  - humanistbot 5y ago
    It looks like you're trying to make a clever joke in the style of mocking SV types for reinventing products that have existed for generations, except you're wrong. The parent means the Amazon delivery locker kiosks they're putting in all kinds of retail stores, where you enter a code to unlock the locker with your package. It is secure from theft, has variable sizes, works 24/7 with no waiting for a clerk, and can fill the delivery needs of a neighborhood far more efficiently than apartment-style mailboxes where each resident is assigned their own small locker. I wish that USPS would get into this service, because I'm not a fan of Amazon and package theft is rampant. It is nearly impossible to replicate the Amazon locker experience through USPS and other online retailers. If you want to order a package and pick it up at the post office, the best you can hope for is to beg the seller to send it to you via general delivery, which many do not allow. And even though renting a PO box lets you ship packages to the post office and pick them up, most retailers won't ship to PO boxes. A PO box costs about the same per year as a Prime subscription. Plus, you still have to wait in line to pick up your packages.
    - jollybean 5y ago
      So a mailbox with a lock then? We should have had that in 1980. 5 'large mailboxes' for the apartment building, the postman sets the code, locks it, and leaves writes the code on a piece of paper and leaves it in your slot. This is not 'Silicon Valley' innovation.
      - Telemakhos 5y ago
        I do have that in my apartment building. But, instead of a code, the lockboxes have keys that only the postman can remove from them. He locks a package in the box, removes the key, and puts it in the recipient's box. When the recipient checks his mail, he uses the key to open the lockbox and withdraw his package. The key is then stuck in the lockbox lock and cannot be withdrawn again except by the postman.
        aix1 5y ago
        That sounds like a pretty cool system.
amelius 5y ago
Step 1: Let humans work like robots. Step 2: Develop AI to automate the work using data generated in step 1. Step 3: Convince investors that your AI is close to finished. Use the money to actually build a working version. Step 4: Fire all the humans.
- jessaustin 5y ago
  Step 3 seems like two steps, the first of which has happened many times and the second of which has never happened.
  - pjc50 5y ago
    Step 3.5: IPO and exit before investors discover that step 4 is impossible.
- drdeadringer 5y ago
  Reminds me of a joke: There is a factory at the edge of town which employs one human and one dog. The human's job is to feed the dog. The dog's job is to keep the human away from the machines.
specialist 5y ago
Ya. Gig economy was enabled by IT & AI taking away all the bureaucratic jobs.

Paraphrasing an observation I heard in a podcast some weeks ago: We were promised little robot butlers in the scifi we read as kids, but what we got was human servants that act like robots.

danuker 5y ago

I suppose a step towards automating the jobs is to break them down into manageable, replaceable pieces. For example, there have appeared automated boxes for recipients to pick up packages.

rightbyte 5y ago
> For example, there have appeared automated boxes for recipients to pick up packages. You mean a mail box?
- guntars 5y ago
  Yeah, like a mail box, but you have one at multiple addresses in most cities.
- ThePadawan 5y ago
  (I cannot tell if you're being sarcastic or genuine). Yes, except (before COVID) if you were at work, and the mail carrier tried to deliver a package to your house unsuccessfully, they would take it with them again. Or they would leave it outside the house, where it could be stolen. Then, starting the next day, you could go to the nearest pickup site (and depending on the carrier, this either means the post office, which might be a 20min walk, or a completely-out-of-town parcel distribution site, which could be a 1h15 train ride [based on my own location]) to get it. There, you would take a number, and wait in line up to 15 minutes (because all working people would be there at that time of day). The alternative is an automated postal box, which does not need an employee to operate it. It's just a huge wall of lockers with a central terminal. When you receive a package there, you get an electronic unlock code to unlock exactly that 1 locker with your package in it. These postal boxes can be installed anywhere where spare space is available. Maybe that's platform 5 at your nearest train station, or outside the pharmacy in town. At least it's closer to your home, and open 24/7.
  - pjc50 5y ago
    Parcel delivery is such a classic principal-agent problem; the customer contracts with a seller, who then subcontracts with a delivery company. But because there's layers in the middle the delivery companies can't compete on actual customer satisfaction, just on being cheap for the vendors.
    - ThePadawan 5y ago
      I do my best to tell sellers this. I recently tried to find out where to buy a new mattress online. Usually I get them IKEA and that's fine, but their shipping is so expensive, it's generally only worth it if you boy a whole lot of large items at once. I talked to the customer repo of another shop to inquire what vendor they used for shipping and what would happen if I wasn't home - and they told me they used DPD. Turns out that DPD's "we missed you" service is "you have to go to our distribution center to pick up your package". As mentioned above, that would have been a 1h15min train journey (one-way) with multiple changes. Carrying a mattress. I sincerely hope the customer rep actually understood why I told them that this was an immediate non-starter for me. Especially since I regularly missed packages because the mail carrier simply didn't attempt delivery at all.
      - nicoburns 5y ago
        My experience has been that DPD has by far the best delivery service. Not only can you reschedule delivery for a specific day, but you can do so in advance, or arrange a new address for the package to be delivered to. Perhaps this varies by location?
        ThePadawan 5y ago
        Of course it does! It's just that in my experience, rearranging delivery details still requires someone in the chain to give a shit. The delivery person who wouldn't deliver the package on Monday is not going to give a shit if they're instructed to deliver on Tuesday 9am-11am instead, they're going to show up at 4pm and still act like they're doing me a favor. What am I gonna do? I've already paid for the service, so the seller won't care. DPD won't care, they already got paid by the seller.
- humanistbot 5y ago
  It looks like you're trying to make a clever joke in the style of mocking SV types for reinventing products that have existed for generations, except you're wrong. The parent means the Amazon delivery locker kiosks they're putting in all kinds of retail stores, where you enter a code to unlock the locker with your package. It is secure from theft, has variable sizes, works 24/7 with no waiting for a clerk, and can fill the delivery needs of a neighborhood far more efficiently than apartment-style mailboxes where each resident is assigned their own small locker. I wish that USPS would get into this service, because I'm not a fan of Amazon and package theft is rampant. It is nearly impossible to replicate the Amazon locker experience through USPS and other online retailers. If you want to order a package and pick it up at the post office, the best you can hope for is to beg the seller to send it to you via general delivery, which many do not allow. And even though renting a PO box lets you ship packages to the post office and pick them up, most retailers won't ship to PO boxes. A PO box costs about the same per year as a Prime subscription. Plus, you still have to wait in line to pick up your packages.
  - jollybean 5y ago
    So a mailbox with a lock then? We should have had that in 1980. 5 'large mailboxes' for the apartment building, the postman sets the code, locks it, and leaves writes the code on a piece of paper and leaves it in your slot. This is not 'Silicon Valley' innovation.
    - Telemakhos 5y ago
      I do have that in my apartment building. But, instead of a code, the lockboxes have keys that only the postman can remove from them. He locks a package in the box, removes the key, and puts it in the recipient's box. When the recipient checks his mail, he uses the key to open the lockbox and withdraw his package. The key is then stuck in the lockbox lock and cannot be withdrawn again except by the postman.
      - aix1 5y ago
        That sounds like a pretty cool system.

amelius 5y ago

Step 1: Let humans work like robots. Step 2: Develop AI to automate the work using data generated in step 1. Step 3: Convince investors that your AI is close to finished. Use the money to actually build a working version. Step 4: Fire all the humans.

jessaustin 5y ago
Step 3 seems like two steps, the first of which has happened many times and the second of which has never happened.
- pjc50 5y ago
  Step 3.5: IPO and exit before investors discover that step 4 is impossible.
drdeadringer 5y ago
Reminds me of a joke: There is a factory at the edge of town which employs one human and one dog. The human's job is to feed the dog. The dog's job is to keep the human away from the machines.

specialist 5y ago

Ya. Gig economy was enabled by IT & AI taking away all the bureaucratic jobs.