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In reality automation is about individual tasks, not jobs, which are collections of tasks. The makeup of jobs may change. The paper doesn't start off well, wit

In reality automation is about individual tasks, not jobs, which are collections of tasks. The makeup of jobs may change. The paper doesn't start off well, with its first concrete example being bricklaying. Brian Potter, on his "Construction Physics" blog, has one or more posts discussing the history of attempts to automate that very task.[1] TL;DR: it's not going well, for a variety of reasons. Most tasks are proving far harder to automate than expected, even the "easy" ones, for task-specific reasons that are obvious to anyone who has closely observed the task in the field. These guys write as though they are desk bound. Woo-woo like affirmations? Seriously? How about worker ownership and profit sharing, an improved social safety net, and free retraining? 1. "Where Are The Robotic Bricklayers?" https://constructionphysics.substack.com/p/where-are-the-robotic-bricklayers https://constructionphysics.substack.com/p/where-are-the-rob...

9wzYQbTYsAIc 4y ago
> These guys write as though they are desk bound. Psychology is not as desk-bound of a field as you might think. Industrial Organizational Psychology does get into the nitty gritty of the shop floor, for example.
- tuatoru 4y ago
  Oh, I sort of realized that. I have seen some researchers now and then at work. It was just this paper's style of writing, and the not-very-hidden assumptions and approach in the intro, that prompted me to write that.
  - 9wzYQbTYsAIc 4y ago
    Ah, that makes sense, then. I like seeing assumptions being made and brought to the forefront, as that is the basis for some powerful mathematical techniques. I do wonder, however, if the researchers are fully aware of collaborative robots. I see that a couple of their sources are based on collaborative robotics, but the authors may not have fully distinguished between collaborative and non-collaborative robots. IEEE does appear to be studying the intersection of robotics and psychology though [1]. [1] https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/9515315 https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/9515315
- 9wzYQbTYsAIc 4y ago
  This research is made all the more interesting by their use of real-world data on robot prevalence and comparing that to real-world data on trends in job searches on the internet.

9wzYQbTYsAIc 4y ago

> These guys write as though they are desk bound. Psychology is not as desk-bound of a field as you might think. Industrial Organizational Psychology does get into the nitty gritty of the shop floor, for example.

tuatoru 4y ago
Oh, I sort of realized that. I have seen some researchers now and then at work. It was just this paper's style of writing, and the not-very-hidden assumptions and approach in the intro, that prompted me to write that.
- 9wzYQbTYsAIc 4y ago
  Ah, that makes sense, then. I like seeing assumptions being made and brought to the forefront, as that is the basis for some powerful mathematical techniques. I do wonder, however, if the researchers are fully aware of collaborative robots. I see that a couple of their sources are based on collaborative robotics, but the authors may not have fully distinguished between collaborative and non-collaborative robots. IEEE does appear to be studying the intersection of robotics and psychology though [1]. [1] https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/9515315 https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/9515315
9wzYQbTYsAIc 4y ago
This research is made all the more interesting by their use of real-world data on robot prevalence and comparing that to real-world data on trends in job searches on the internet.