10 ms·

About 20 years ago I was a programmer at a manufacturing company. I worked on a project to automate part of materials requirements planning. The woman who was

About 20 years ago I was a programmer at a manufacturing company. I worked on a project to automate part of materials requirements planning. The woman who was in charge of it was spending about 20 hours per week wrangling Excel spreadsheets to figure out what materials they needed. It was all based on data we had: inventory, orders, etc. A few weeks later, and with a fair amount of her help, I'd automated the whole thing. She was happy, it was her least favorite part of her job and she desperately needed time for other things. I was happy, I was showing that I was worth what they were paying me! (Salaried at the equivalent of $12.50 per hour.) BUT: That project took half a job out of the economy. A decent one at that, a nice cushy desk job. Automation is definitely having an impact on labor demand, with software driving out some jobs much the way cars and trucks drove horses out of our economy. I think it points to an increasing bifurcation, with jobs being high skill / high pay or low skill / low pay, without much in the middle. Of course here in the U.S. this is also being driven by our monetary policy, our tax policy, our trade policy, our labor policy, I could go on. I'm in favor of UBI, but that seems about as likely as the use of any of those levers to reduce income inequality and spread the wealth our society generates in a way that supports most of those contributing to it.

pydry 2y ago
There's plenty of stuff in the middle it's just been moved overseas and the output is sent back to the US on a shipping container. Chinese and Mexican factory workers != robots. It sounds obvious but the establishment, media, and economists do like to blur the distinction.
- K0balt 2y ago
  This sounds a lot like one of the last projects I worked On, where some significant operations were to be assigned to “AI” which was meant to mean Artificial intelligence for marketing slicks but everyone knew it would be “Actually, Indians” for the foreseeable future.
082349872349872 2y ago
> drove horses out of our economy A graph of the process is in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39604784 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39604784 (it also includes a bifurcation: between draft and sport/companion horses)
exe34 2y ago
I enjoy automating the boring parts of my job - plus if I don't, somebody else will. At least now I can just go on to automate the next thing.
capybara_2020 2y ago
Assuming the world is moving towards more automation and high skilled(not sure this is the right term. But places where you need to be more adaptable and think more) jobs. Also assuming for a moment todays adults are the transitionary generation. How do we prepare the next generation for what is to come? It feels like schools are still stuck in the industrial age. How do we teach them not math and science but the actual act of learning/adapting. Our parents could not predict what the world would look like today, neither can we. How do we educate the next generation on the foundational skills rather than specific skills which they can learn on their own depending on what the situation calls for? This is an idea I am thinking about, so I would love to hear other opinions and thoughts.
- Loughla 2y ago
  >How do we teach them not math and science but the actual act of learning/adapting. This is literally what they're trying to do. People complain about the way things like math (concepts instead of rote memorization of facts) and spelling (stems and etymology instead of rote memorization) are taught. People complain that kids aren't learning cursive and other things like that. But schools are trying to teach critical thinking and how to reason your way through problems, rather than blanket "facts".
  - doktor_oh_boli 2y ago
    I, personally think teaching kids critical thinking is great. Here in Eastern Europe they are only taught useless facts and not to think too much on their own, remnant of the past I guess...
    - pixl97 2y ago
      Eh you require a lot of factual knowledge to know how to think. I mean humanity has been pretty smart for the last 10k years or so, but without understanding of scientific laws and a massive amount of world knowledge breakthroughs were very slow compared to the last 300 or so years. We need these facts + philosophy + critical thinking, but it seems like no one knows how to teach this.
simonw 2y ago
I have been contributing to open source software for more than 20 years. My contributions have always been to help save other developers time. How does the impact from that on jobs differ from the impact had by AI tools like LLMs or robotic automation? It certainly /feels/ different, but I'm having a little bit of trouble explaining why.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- mickael-kerjean 2y ago
  With better oss tools, we've been able to achieve more with less people but for a long time there was more demand for skilled developer than what is available in the pool, hence the decent salaries coming from the market squeezing that pool. If robot takes over and the pool of available labor expand instead of shrink, the effect is the exact opposite, pressure on salaries from the remaining participants, worse conditions, ...
wolverine876 2y ago
> That project took half a job out of the economy. A decent one at that, a nice cushy desk job. Or it allowed the employee to shift to more valuable, interesting work rather than menial tasks that could easily be done by a computer.
- Engineering-MD 2y ago
  I would disagree with the inference that menial tasks are automated and interesting work isn’t. I can clearly see a future where the pleasure is automated away leaving the stressful uncomfortable tasks to the human.
  - wvenable 2y ago
    AI is making art, books, poetry, music, software, and movies but I'm still here folding my own laundry.
- 0xedd 2y ago
  But, some already operate at their peak. Then, you automate that and they can only shift to unemployment. The conversation shouldn't be about replacing the most skilled workers. The conversation should be about what happens to the average worker. That has an average IQ level. That can't learn something to compete with the automation. These people have families. These people will suffer.
  - MichaelZuo 2y ago
    Has anyone claimed technological changes will impact every group and subgroup on a literally equal basis? Some will have better prospects and others will have worse. Since roughly half the population must have below median average prospects by definition.
    - starbugs 2y ago
      > Has anyone claimed technological changes will impact every group and subgroup on a literally equal basis? No, but too much inequality is not sustainable. Since in a democracy everyone has an equal vote, there will be a force that balances things out over time one way or another.
Tyr42 2y ago
By that logic every backhoe constructed removes hundreds of jobs of men with shovels. But we instead build.mpre and bigger things using our tools.
zmmmmm 2y ago
> That project took half a job out of the economy. A decent one at that, a nice cushy desk job. It's effectively a form of the broken window fallacy [0]. You don't actually have a closed system when you say a "job was removed". The company one way or another got more efficient - more widgets were manufactured per $ spent. It might be tiny but this saving was then passed on to every downstream purchaser of the widgets who, with that left over money .... could employ someone else to do something. By the time you add all the net effects back to regain a "closed system", economic theory says you actually have more jobs. But the key here really is that this doesn't account for temporal effects, and especially when there is rapid disruptive change, you can absolutely have a huge dislocation and mismatch of labor supply / demand in the economy. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window
- wvenable 2y ago
  > It might be tiny but this saving was then passed on to every downstream purchaser of the widgets who, with that left over money .... could employ someone else to do something. So a company used technology to automate someone out of a job but some downstream company isn't also going to do that with their new money? The reason technology lead to more jobs is because it created exponential growth. The lesson of the last 200 years is that we can grow indefinitely. But that is already falling apart. The growth that is happening now is optimization. And it's happening at every level of society and it's not good for workers.

pydry 2y ago

There's plenty of stuff in the middle it's just been moved overseas and the output is sent back to the US on a shipping container. Chinese and Mexican factory workers != robots. It sounds obvious but the establishment, media, and economists do like to blur the distinction.

K0balt 2y ago
This sounds a lot like one of the last projects I worked On, where some significant operations were to be assigned to “AI” which was meant to mean Artificial intelligence for marketing slicks but everyone knew it would be “Actually, Indians” for the foreseeable future.

082349872349872 2y ago

> drove horses out of our economy A graph of the process is in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39604784 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39604784 (it also includes a bifurcation: between draft and sport/companion horses)

exe34 2y ago

I enjoy automating the boring parts of my job - plus if I don't, somebody else will. At least now I can just go on to automate the next thing.

capybara_2020 2y ago

Assuming the world is moving towards more automation and high skilled(not sure this is the right term. But places where you need to be more adaptable and think more) jobs. Also assuming for a moment todays adults are the transitionary generation. How do we prepare the next generation for what is to come? It feels like schools are still stuck in the industrial age. How do we teach them not math and science but the actual act of learning/adapting. Our parents could not predict what the world would look like today, neither can we. How do we educate the next generation on the foundational skills rather than specific skills which they can learn on their own depending on what the situation calls for? This is an idea I am thinking about, so I would love to hear other opinions and thoughts.

Loughla 2y ago
>How do we teach them not math and science but the actual act of learning/adapting. This is literally what they're trying to do. People complain about the way things like math (concepts instead of rote memorization of facts) and spelling (stems and etymology instead of rote memorization) are taught. People complain that kids aren't learning cursive and other things like that. But schools are trying to teach critical thinking and how to reason your way through problems, rather than blanket "facts".
- doktor_oh_boli 2y ago
  I, personally think teaching kids critical thinking is great. Here in Eastern Europe they are only taught useless facts and not to think too much on their own, remnant of the past I guess...
  - pixl97 2y ago
    Eh you require a lot of factual knowledge to know how to think. I mean humanity has been pretty smart for the last 10k years or so, but without understanding of scientific laws and a massive amount of world knowledge breakthroughs were very slow compared to the last 300 or so years. We need these facts + philosophy + critical thinking, but it seems like no one knows how to teach this.

simonw 2y ago

I have been contributing to open source software for more than 20 years. My contributions have always been to help save other developers time. How does the impact from that on jobs differ from the impact had by AI tools like LLMs or robotic automation? It certainly /feels/ different, but I'm having a little bit of trouble explaining why.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
mickael-kerjean 2y ago
With better oss tools, we've been able to achieve more with less people but for a long time there was more demand for skilled developer than what is available in the pool, hence the decent salaries coming from the market squeezing that pool. If robot takes over and the pool of available labor expand instead of shrink, the effect is the exact opposite, pressure on salaries from the remaining participants, worse conditions, ...

wolverine876 2y ago

> That project took half a job out of the economy. A decent one at that, a nice cushy desk job. Or it allowed the employee to shift to more valuable, interesting work rather than menial tasks that could easily be done by a computer.

Engineering-MD 2y ago
I would disagree with the inference that menial tasks are automated and interesting work isn’t. I can clearly see a future where the pleasure is automated away leaving the stressful uncomfortable tasks to the human.
- wvenable 2y ago
  AI is making art, books, poetry, music, software, and movies but I'm still here folding my own laundry.
0xedd 2y ago
But, some already operate at their peak. Then, you automate that and they can only shift to unemployment. The conversation shouldn't be about replacing the most skilled workers. The conversation should be about what happens to the average worker. That has an average IQ level. That can't learn something to compete with the automation. These people have families. These people will suffer.
- MichaelZuo 2y ago
  Has anyone claimed technological changes will impact every group and subgroup on a literally equal basis? Some will have better prospects and others will have worse. Since roughly half the population must have below median average prospects by definition.
  - starbugs 2y ago
    > Has anyone claimed technological changes will impact every group and subgroup on a literally equal basis? No, but too much inequality is not sustainable. Since in a democracy everyone has an equal vote, there will be a force that balances things out over time one way or another.

Tyr42 2y ago

By that logic every backhoe constructed removes hundreds of jobs of men with shovels. But we instead build.mpre and bigger things using our tools.

zmmmmm 2y ago

> That project took half a job out of the economy. A decent one at that, a nice cushy desk job. It's effectively a form of the broken window fallacy [0]. You don't actually have a closed system when you say a "job was removed". The company one way or another got more efficient - more widgets were manufactured per $ spent. It might be tiny but this saving was then passed on to every downstream purchaser of the widgets who, with that left over money .... could employ someone else to do something. By the time you add all the net effects back to regain a "closed system", economic theory says you actually have more jobs. But the key here really is that this doesn't account for temporal effects, and especially when there is rapid disruptive change, you can absolutely have a huge dislocation and mismatch of labor supply / demand in the economy. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window

wvenable 2y ago
> It might be tiny but this saving was then passed on to every downstream purchaser of the widgets who, with that left over money .... could employ someone else to do something. So a company used technology to automate someone out of a job but some downstream company isn't also going to do that with their new money? The reason technology lead to more jobs is because it created exponential growth. The lesson of the last 200 years is that we can grow indefinitely. But that is already falling apart. The growth that is happening now is optimization. And it's happening at every level of society and it's not good for workers.