[HN Gopher] Automation is reaching more companies
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Automation is reaching more companies
Author : geox
Score : 66 points
Date : 2022-01-18 19:57 UTC (3 hours ago)
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| marcodiego wrote:
| Some people point many factors as a "need" for basic income.
| Automation is one of them. Without basic income, robots (as an
| analogy for automation) will benefit only its owners.
| giantg2 wrote:
| How does the economics look for that? It would seem many would
| be disincentivized to work, which would raise wages in order to
| attract work, which would make the basic income worth less.
| nickpp wrote:
| An additional problem is that without "wage signals" many
| would work on various useless things instead of on what the
| society needs to be done.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| UBI doesn't eliminate wage signals.
| nickpp wrote:
| It does for the vast majority who will choose to happily
| live under the UBI level.
| medvezhenok wrote:
| If the vast majority quit their jobs to take UBI instead,
| the wage to UBI ratio would go up, since employers would
| have to pay more to attract the workers that have
| alternatives. So some of the people would be lured back
| to the job market because of increased wages. The job
| market would find a new equilibrium (with wages likely
| higher than they are now). Prices would also go up, but
| likely not enough to completely offset the UBI (since
| velocity of money will increase - we're redistributing
| wealth from those with low propensity to spend to those
| with a higher propensity).
|
| Basically, what we had during the pandemic was a mini-UBI
| experiment (even though it was not universal). Wages at
| the low end went up - exactly what you would want to see
| under a successful UBI program (because of giving people
| alternatives). Unfortunately, we funded this one via
| deficits (hence why the rich also got richer). If it was
| funded via a tax, we'd see the lower end wages increase,
| and the upper middle/upper class get squeezed a bit
| (which is completely intentional).
|
| The last effect would likely trigger a voting backlash
| (since upper-middle/upper class folks have lots of voting
| power), but it's still UBI working as intended
| nickpp wrote:
| I believe you are describing inflation. That is, indeed
| one of the possible outcomes of UBI (negating it in the
| process) and is what we actually got helicoptering money
| during the pandemic.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > It does for the vast majority who will choose to
| happily live under the UBI level.
|
| Even if the vast majority did make that decision (which I
| don't think is plausible under any UBI that would be
| sustainable in even the very short term in the near
| future) it would eliminate wage signals it would be a
| _result_ of shifted wage signals, and the response of the
| market to those signals.
| yunwal wrote:
| Wages would presumably raise prices only in industries that
| can't be heavily automated. As a result, industries that are
| automatible will have lower prices, while industries that
| require human labor will have inflated prices. In the end,
| those who make close to minimum wage are probably better off,
| since they can afford more of the automated things, and those
| who automate things are probably better off since they have
| more people to sell to. Those who are well off but don't
| automate things will probably be about even, since they'll
| need to pay more for human labor, but will receive UBI and
| automation benefits.
| giantg2 wrote:
| This doesn't make sense to me.
|
| Rising wages means more competition over the same
| resources, leading to inflation. Even inflation in some
| industries/products will affect the CPI.
|
| Where would the UBI come from? Presumably it would be from
| those who automate. This means your claim of lower prices
| will likely be marginal - the people need to support
| themselves whether they or a robot does the work. So UBI
| would mostly offset.
| gremlinsinc wrote:
| UBI would hopefully come from land-value taxes. This has
| been debated a lot and seems to be one of the best
| methods. Another would be making every American turn in
| their bank accounts into a single account, and slap a
| limit on how much you can have in there.... whether
| that's 50 million or 20 billion... piss off the
| billionaire class for sure, but who cares.
|
| Inequality shouldn't be that out of whack anyways and
| having a max speed on it could encourage better equality.
|
| Personally if I had UBI I'd work more on side-projects
| and try to get some recurring income coming in...I'm
| still trying to do that but it's harder w/ all the
| distractions of doing client/freelance work..and the
| depression when I can't meet bills because I'm having a
| ADHD poor-motivation month, or anti-social-can't be
| bothered w/ marketing to find new clients month... both
| of which seem like every month since the Pandemic
| began...
|
| I'd hope a lot more people would actually go into science
| fields and do research when they can afford to go to
| school and have a guaranteed home and basic
| necessities...
|
| Honestly a utopia to me would see 95% of kids becoming
| scientists and technologists, the rest in the arts... and
| everything else being automated and we work on solving
| things like aging, space travel, and climate change.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Wages would presumably raise prices only in industries
| that can't be heavily automated
|
| If it is funded by eliminating the preference for non-labor
| income in taxes by bringing up taxes on other income (which
| also itself reduces the incentive to automation created by
| premium taxes on labor), that's not true.
| ksec wrote:
| >It would seem many would be disincentivized to work
|
| If you want Netflix, eating out at a restaurant, playing
| Games or any sort of entertainment? If you want a life, you
| need to work. There is nothing disincentivized against work
| unless those people want to live like zombies.
| giantg2 wrote:
| I think that's something we can't claim or know without the
| actual UBI proposal.
|
| If it's half the price to run a robot compared to using a
| human, then jobs can be eliminated even if the people want
| to work.
|
| I hate my job. If they started a UBI that actually covered
| all the basics - food, housing, healthcare, etc... I would
| quit and I'm not even in a low paying job.
| gremlinsinc wrote:
| I love coding, I hate coding for others. I want an UBI
| for selfish reasons so I can work on side-projects full-
| time until I find something that 'sticks' and so I can
| work on building a homesteading community w/ other like-
| minded people when I can afford some land.
| ksec wrote:
| I think the difference is Quality of Life. For example, I
| consider 1 loaf of bread per day and 1 block of butter
| per month. Living inside a 6m2 room.
|
| That is what I would considered as basic. It is suppose
| to keep you alive. Not for you to afford meat, fruit or
| coca cola. Housing enough to keep you warm and sleep. Not
| enough space ( hardly any at 6m2 ) to let you move
| around. And this means workers would have to be treated
| better now they have an option to quit without begging
| for food on the table.
| gremlinsinc wrote:
| Perhaps it should be enough for everybody to get a tiny
| home or a few for larger families... or Yurts... so maybe
| it front-loads a bit of the costs into
| building/infrastructure -- land/lots and building
| supplies... so you get like 80k worth up front, then just
| a food card for groceries after that... eventually they
| work in healthcare too...
|
| It'd have to be some sort of partnership w/ govt and
| localities to workout making it so people who need homes
| the most have easier access to them, by freeing up the
| land, so they don't need to relocate across country or so
| it doesn't seem like they're being put in concentration
| camps or something horrible like that... If I live in a
| rural town, they need to do something to ensure there's
| homes for everyone who wants one there somehow. If they
| need to buy or lease land and throw up some 30k yurts, so
| be it...
|
| On the bright side those who pay higher rents will
| probably pay less as there will be a lot more rentals
| available.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Yet that's largely not what is being proposed.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > How does the economics look for that?
|
| Compared to means-tested aid with duplicative bureaucracy to
| that which already exists for income taxation? Depends on a
| number of factors, including whether you find it by closing
| the gap between labor and non-labor taxes so that you aren't
| punishing people for hiring, whether and how you adjust
| minimum wage in light of it, how you set the level of basic
| income relative to productive capacity, whether you index it
| to a revenue stream divided among the eligible population, or
| target a constant real income level, or set the level by some
| other means, etc.
| mountainriver wrote:
| I donno, we already have automation doing a lot of things
| today. Lack of work is only due to lack of imagination and
| tools like this make us more capable than ever.
|
| The universe is infinitely complex and large, there is plenty
| for people to do.
| giantg2 wrote:
| "Lack of work is only due to lack of imagination"
|
| How so? It seems one needs capital to start new things, time
| to use their imagination (as opposed to seeking necessities),
| and then customers able to pay for whatever the new thing is.
| I think there are tons of constraints in feasibility.
| danielmarkbruce wrote:
| I think he's saying something approximately like: there are
| likely jobs we can't think of yet that will pop up. They
| always have.
|
| Imagine if you went back in time 200 years and explained
| how current farming and current manufacturing work, and
| explain that's how it will work in 200 years time. A
| reasonable person would likely assume hardly anyone was
| working in this future state, that there would be no jobs.
| pizza234 wrote:
| This is indeed the description of the "Lump of labor"
| fallacy1.
|
| 1=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy.
| giantg2 wrote:
| To a certain extent that is true. But it matters where
| those jobs are eliminated. Usually the jobs that replace
| lower jobs or offset the automation are higher level. Do
| we actually believe that everyone in society is able to
| work the higher level jobs? I would think the jobs would
| need to align to the population's potential.
| pizza234 wrote:
| To a certain extent, high level jobs of today are low
| level jobs of tomorrow. Imagine what one can do today
| with just a mobile phone, compared to what could be done
| 50 years ago.
|
| Nobody could translate in all the languages 50 years ago;
| today, anyone do it, without any particular cognitive
| requirement.
| giantg2 wrote:
| That's actually eliminated/reduced the needs for
| translators. The jobs replacing it are much fewer and
| higher skilled (software dev).
|
| So the _tasks_ in your example are easier, but the easier
| _jobs_ have been eliminated or replaced with harder jobs.
| danielmarkbruce wrote:
| Yep, totally agree with what you are saying. It is
| fundamentally uncertain. I do believe there are more jobs
| than we realize which aren't capable of being automated -
| things where there is a lot of diversity in the tasks
| required to do the job. Consider a real estate broker -
| no single task is rocket science, but there are perhaps
| 100 individual things a broker needs to be able to do.
| It's not going to be automated away. These 'highly
| diverse task' jobs are very common.
| gremlinsinc wrote:
| you could totally automate a real estate broker... a
| drone or android could easily show you a place, and maybe
| there's another person at a call-center who's showing 15
| homes/hour, but that displaces 20 brokers/agents....
|
| Or you could just realize that real estate is a broken
| industry and why does there even need to be a broker at
| all... List your home yourself, have software that does
| the rest...
|
| I mean, lawyers, doctors, software programming, can
| easily be placed in the next 20 years. All fast-food,
| grocery, freight(depending on self-driving cars, or
| perhaps better train systems that have direct to store
| delivery)..
|
| I look forward to the day when only 5% of the population
| is employable, because we'll have to figure out someway
| to live post-scarcity or just let people starve, but if
| 5% work, 5% then are consumers too...and that leaves out
| a lot of power, control, and economic potentiality.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| Maybe we will end up with rich company owners buying nfts
| from ordinary people who use the money to buy the rich
| company owners products.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Without basic income, robots (as an analogy for automation)
| will benefit only its owners.
|
| With basic income, that's still true.
|
| With fair (rather than preferentially lower) taxes on capital
| income, that potentially changes, whether or not you have basic
| income; funding BI with it is just a way of making sure that
| the taxation isn't redirected back to benefit the same elites.
| anonporridge wrote:
| I conceptualize a UBI as a dividend, where every citizen has
| exactly one nontransferable ownership share of the nation state
| and has the right to share in it's profit.
| nickpp wrote:
| You can get that today by simply buying into one of the many
| low cost ETFs available following the S&P500 index. No need
| to wait for the State to do it for you.
| sharkjacobs wrote:
| > every citizen has exactly one nontransferable ownership
| share of the nation state
|
| > buying into one of the many low cost ETFs available
| following the S&P500 index
|
| There are some pretty big differences between these
| nickpp wrote:
| There is an even bigger difference in that one exists and
| works today while the other requires a huge experiment in
| the way modern society works.
| judge2020 wrote:
| A better analogy is that you already an ownership share
| in the nation state with citizenship - you have voting
| rights, a court system that works for you, you benefit
| monetarily by having a secure military and police force
| (thus not needing to directly pay for bodyguards or
| protection from some sort of mafia).
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > You can get that today by simply buying into one of the
| many low cost ETFs available following the S&P500 index
|
| No, you can't get an _equal share with every other citizen_
| that way, especially if you are a lower-class worker
| without substantial surplus income.
| nickpp wrote:
| Yes, it's not equal and not free either. But we have it
| working _today_.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Yes, it's not equal and not free either. But we have it
| working today.
|
| I mean, it's literally _not_ working, even a little bit,
| for the vast majority of the people who would be net
| beneficiaries under a UBI. This is "let them eat cake"
| levels of out-of-touch.
| nickpp wrote:
| The greatest mass-pulling out of poverty I personally
| witnessed in my lifetime was when the communist states of
| Eastern Europe moved to capitalism. More of that, please.
| anonporridge wrote:
| Assuming you're not living as a poverty level wage slave
| and regularly have to choose between buying food and
| medicine, then sure.
| nickpp wrote:
| Indeed, getting people out of poverty is a different
| issue, an issue no redistribution system has solved yet.
| beaconstudios wrote:
| That's just objectively not true - welfare systems stop
| people from becoming homeless or starving in the street
| all the time.
|
| Libertarianism/neoliberalism is the ideological model
| that doesn't care about the poor - social democracy isn't
| perfect but it is an improvement over just letting people
| die.
| nickpp wrote:
| It's not about caring, it's about results. Capitalism is
| the only system that pulled both countries and people out
| of poverty, because it's the best system at motivating
| people to create value.
|
| Redistributing systems are naturally demotivating. The
| balance is being tried indeed but it's a slippery slope
| in a democracy where people just learn that they can vote
| more money in their pockets.
| beaconstudios wrote:
| Social democracy is still capitalism, it just redirects
| some taxes into a welfare program.
|
| If eliminating poverty is the end goal then we need a
| safety net for those who fail.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Social democracy is still capitalism
|
| It's still capitalism in much the same way that
| capitalism is still feudalism.
| beaconstudios wrote:
| Given that capitalism describes a mode of production, it
| literally is still capitalism. Capitalism is not
| feudalism in that serfdom is not the primary working
| relationship between classes in capitalism - though Yanis
| Varoufakis seems to think that we're headed that way.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Given that capitalism describes a mode of production,
| it literally is still capitalism
|
| Given that redistributive taxation and benefit systems
| labelled "social democracy" designed specifically to
| mitigate the adversity that provides the whip behind the
| capitalist mode of production modify both the property
| system and the mode of production that together are
| labelled "capitalism", social democracy literally is
| _not_ capitalism. It retains substantial elements of the
| property system of, and it 's mode of production has
| important similarities to that of, the system for which
| the term "capitalism" was coined (as does that system
| with pre-capitalist aristocratic systems), but it's not
| the same system.
|
| It's not Marxist socialism, either, and I know Marxists
| like to deny that any system that isn't pre-capitalist
| that fails to be Marxist socialism can be anything other
| than capitalism-under-a-different-name, but that's a
| giant false dichotomy.
| beaconstudios wrote:
| A mixed economy still has private property and the
| capitalist-worker class dynamic, still experiences the
| crisis cycle - so it's still capitalist, it's just a
| better form of it. If your qualifying rules for
| "capitalism" require no welfare system whatsoever, then
| capitalism hasn't existed in the West for at least 100
| years.
|
| Bearing in mind that I'm using "capitalism" as a
| descriptor, not a snarl word. The snarl one is
| "neoliberalism" ;)
| nickpp wrote:
| And being a democracy, the welfare beneficiaries will
| then repeatedly decide to increase those "some taxes"
| thus demotivating the taxed to work.
|
| We've seen countless state welfare programs growing out
| of control and eating more and more funds and we are
| nowhere near eliminating poverty.
|
| You'd think that if it was just a matter of throwing
| money at the problem, we would have solved it by now.
| beaconstudios wrote:
| I'd love to know where this has actually happened. It
| seems to me that this idea is often trotted out as a
| conservative scare tactic.
|
| I'd also like to know how you think we should maximise
| people's happiness and wellbeing. Because that's my
| primary interest, and economic productivity is valuable
| insofar as it enables that utility maximisation.
| nickpp wrote:
| Taxes are rising around the globe in developed countries.
| Also red tape and regulations which are a different type
| of "tax" with the same result: demotivating value
| creators.
|
| You can't maximise happiness by definition. Happiness is
| fleeting, a peak, it exists only through comparison to
| our regular state. Evolution made sure of that, or
| we'd've stopped evolving. The only way to cheat it is
| with drugs.
|
| I want to maximise humankind's potential instead. Gain
| infinite knowledge, spread through the stars. I think
| that is a much more worthwhile goal than happily dying
| out on a small planet at the edge of the galaxy.
| beaconstudios wrote:
| I don't mean happiness like the temporary pleasure state.
| I mean the minimisation of undesired suffering and
| maximisation of freedom for all people to pursue their
| preferences.
|
| I don't think "potential" is worth anything if it isn't
| used to benefit people and make their lives better. The
| imperium from 40k has much greater technology and planet
| span than us but it's deeply dystopic - I'd rather live
| here than there.
| nickpp wrote:
| I also think minimising suffering and maximising freedom
| are worthwhile goals. I just don't think user the State's
| power is the way to get there.
|
| But I believe becoming multi-planetary is imperative and
| urgent for mankind. The dangers while all of us are on
| the same planet are simply too great to sit and enjoy the
| view.
| beaconstudios wrote:
| I'm an anarchist so I'm inclined to agree with you about
| state power - but in terms of relative goodness, a social
| democracy is demonstrably better than a neoliberal state.
| I can say that from experience of Conservative rule in
| the UK - essential public services just get worse and the
| savings are collected in the pockets of the already-
| wealthy.
|
| I do agree about becoming multiplanetary too, but if
| we're talking about existential risk then climate change
| is the most urgent one and we need state power and
| institutional change to avert that one.
| nickpp wrote:
| Don't judge governing systems using a small number of
| countries, try to look at more. For example, with their
| work ethic maybe Nordics can arguably make Social
| Democracy work, but would it work in say Bulgaria?
|
| The only way to solve climate change is through
| technological evolution. I see almost zero progress with
| policy changes. BTW, we wouldn't even be in this mess if
| would've completed the previous energy tech transition
| from hydrocarbons to nuclear as planned. What stopped us?
| Politics.
| beaconstudios wrote:
| You need a taxable base to implement social democracy -
| so yeah you'd need a functioning economy in order to fund
| social services, and Bulgaria is, AFAIK, pretty corrupt.
| But solving corruption is a political issue.
|
| We'd also need to move off of ICE cars, and it was the
| car industry that tried to suppress that. Also the fossil
| fuel industry that puts out propaganda against new forms
| of energy - capital and the state are in alliance. Some
| parties can be better (left wing ones) but there's a ton
| of propaganda against them by corporations too.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| It is entirely possible that a system that has worked
| well in the past finds itself in need of replacement or
| significant modification due to circumstances it has
| created. Monarchy was useful for pulling disparate tribes
| into larger nations via conquest. Government private land
| granting incentivized rapid expansion of a colonial
| people across lightly-defended foreign territory, which
| was then conquered and parceled up.
|
| But when there is no more land to grant, what happens?
| When there are no more tribes to conquer, what happens?
|
| When there is massive abundance and most of it is owned
| by 1% of the population... What happens?
|
| > Redistributing systems are naturally demotivating
|
| ... to the people who end up with less. They seem to be
| motivating to the people who end up with more.
| [https://singularityhub.com/2020/05/18/here-are-the-
| results-o...]
|
| In a country where 1 in 100 people own a total of 40% of
| the nation's total wealth, a back-of-the-napkin guess
| strongly suggests the net motivation of spreading that
| wealth around would be positive.
| dahart wrote:
| Its interesting you keep using the word 'redistribution'
| for social services, when capitalism is by definition a
| redistribution from the poor to the rich. It's also
| demotivating for people to be trapped in poverty while
| their employers' relative slice of the pie is growing
| year by year. Capitalism may well have slightly
| democratized the wealth generation process compared to
| some authoritarian regimes, and some economies have
| increased average standard of living while doing well
| under Capitalism, it's not all bad, but there is
| certainly lots and lots _and lots_ of room to improve.
| It's also interesting to put the onus on the poor to be
| motivated, in a system designed by the rich that begins
| to fail, and we take corrective action, if our
| unemployment goes too low.
| gremlinsinc wrote:
| I conceptualize it as a cryptocurrency w/ single identity, a
| max wallet amount (10 million perhaps -the rest is taxed
| 100%), and a utilization score...basically where those who
| make more transactions and hold less in their wallet get more
| UBI paid into it... then there just needs to be a mechanism
| to make the coin 'stable' to where 1 coin is about a loaf of
| bread... it'd need to maybe have separate account types
| though and gets a little murky around how businesses accept
| the coin.... and how that plays into the max-limit (goal
| being to limit inequality..and basically have a max un-
| equalness, where you've essentially "won the monopoly game"
| and now you can go out and help others win too...).
| mikewarot wrote:
| If only they hadn't sabotaged the Universal Basic Income that
| Richard Nixon proposed back in the 1970s, this would be pretty
| much good news, instead of more to worry about.
| itisit wrote:
| I think UBI will be necessary at some point, but I'm not
| thrilled with the idea of millions of us spending all their
| waking hours on Netflix and DoorDash.
| zippergz wrote:
| Honest question: why? If the things that need to be done in
| society are getting done, why does it matter what other
| people spend their time on?
| nickpp wrote:
| Because a society in which everything that needs to be done
| is getting done - is stagnating. A progressive society
| always discovers (or invents!) new things needing to be
| done. And somebody needs to do those things.
| fuzzer37 wrote:
| > Because a society in which everything that needs to be
| done is getting done - is stagnating
|
| Is that really the worst thing in the world? In an age
| driven by hyper consumerism and buying new shiny iPhones
| and other gadgets, do we really need to do more? Can't we
| just be happy with our accomplishments as a human race
| and just enjoy? I for one would welcome a stagnant
| society.
| nickpp wrote:
| Maybe us or other citizens of the West can be happy and
| enjoy our immensely affluent life styles but the great
| majority of the population of this planet is far from
| this level and quite eager to reach it. The planet cannot
| support that.
|
| Also, humanity's eggs are currently all on one basket -
| we're one major cataclismic event from complete
| obliteration.
|
| No, the challenges ahead require us to keep evolving, we
| cannot afford to stagnate.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > I think UBI will be necessary at some point, but I'm not
| thrilled with the idea of millions of us spending all their
| waking hours on Netflix and DoorDash.
|
| Why would eliminating the benefit cliff produced by means-
| tested welfare result in fewer people working for income
| above the basic support level? Reducing the _disincentive_
| for additional work on top of minimum support is a major
| motivation for moving to BI from means-tested welfare.
| whynotminot wrote:
| Are you thrilled with the idea of more creative output being
| a result of UBI?
|
| There's a lot of great stuff that could happen if people
| weren't chained to wage slavery and could lean on UBI to
| pursue passions. Sure there will be people that sit on their
| ass and do nothing, but there will also be people who use
| their new found freedom to create great things that wouldn't
| have happened otherwise.
|
| I'd also like to point out that even the most radical UBI
| proponents aren't pushing for a truly substantial benefit.
| Most of the proposals I've seen are payments that would be
| near poverty level if it was treated as a sole income for any
| length of time.
| nickpp wrote:
| I am willing to bet that most people will choose to do
| nothing. It's being human after all to simply conserve your
| energy.
|
| And most of the ones pursuing their passions will do
| redundant, useless crap like countless blogs and TikTok
| videos.
|
| We are the result of evolution and without evolutionary
| pressure we will fail.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| We have not escaped evolutionary pressures, and I'll
| argue that DNA-based life as we know it will never be
| able to escape them. Mutations will happen and selection
| will happen, even if those selection pressures fluctuate.
|
| As natural life, everything we do is inherently natural.
| kunai wrote:
| It always amuses me to see futurists with no experience
| in biology or life sciences and a master's in CS try to
| extrapolate the future of humanity and society. Some of
| the worst trends in modernity are based around
| unqualified individuals with platforms trying to impose
| their will of the future on the masses (think Elon and
| his ridiculous tunnels, billionaires building "smart
| cities" in the desert, etc)
| nickpp wrote:
| Think ideologs pushing equality of outcome because that
| is "fair".
| vagrantJin wrote:
| > We are the result of evolution and without evolutionary
| pressure we will fail.
|
| Dubious assumption indeed.
| brimble wrote:
| Unless UBI's crazy-high, it's still going to be plenty
| appealing to work to have money for entertainment,
| travel, social signaling, better services/opportunities
| for your kids, to attract mates, et c. I have exactly no
| idea where people worried about some mass refusal to work
| _at all_ are coming from.
| nickpp wrote:
| Personal experience. With just a little money I would
| never work - just stay home, smoke weed and play games
| all day.
| another_story wrote:
| What part of useless jobs in a contrived economic system
| which forces people to grind their life away futily
| trying to get ahead is related to evolutionary pressures?
| majormajor wrote:
| Compared to today, where we do useless crap like making
| $5+ coffee cups or sort JIRA tickets or move numbers
| around from one database to another?
|
| The assumption that a company cranking out an iPhone
| every year is inherently "better for the evolution of
| humanity" than more people writing or making videos is
| one I'd question.
|
| Evolutionary pressure seems to mainly create animals that
| focus more plainly on food and reproduction than modern
| humanity, after all!
| tomrod wrote:
| Except the tasks you name are manufacturing organizing,
| and preparing for workload. These are required tasks for
| a firm to meet their demand, even divorced from all other
| context and embedded in your specified tooling.
| majormajor wrote:
| They are "required" in that they are useful to the
| business.
|
| I'm suggesting that "useful to a business" is currently
| over-prioritized compared to "useful to an individual."
| (And yes, it's driven by consumers, but if one's basic
| needs were met _without_ working 8+ hours a day, maybe
| those individuals would have different preferences.)
|
| And I think the claim that it's _evolutionary necessary_
| for us to have today 's model of firms and full time
| employment is particularly out there.
| evox wrote:
| > And most of the ones pursuing their passions will do
| redundant, useless crap like countless blogs and TikTok
| videos.
|
| As opposed to the army of software engineers developing
| the platforms to post said useless crap?
| paxys wrote:
| What exactly is good about meaningless, repetitive labor for
| 8 hours a day?
| nickpp wrote:
| You can do repetitive, meaningless work while on UBI as
| well. For example I plan to smoke weed and play video
| games.
| qualudeheart wrote:
| Why not something more spiritually fulfilling?
| nickpp wrote:
| Why DO?
|
| Weed and games are fun. Spiritually fulfilling work is
| fun until about 10%, then you have to document the code,
| write tests, do marketing, answer support and so on...
| paxys wrote:
| The difference is you are doing what you want, rather
| than needing to do it to survive.
| nickpp wrote:
| Yes, but then I do things that are not necessary for our
| society leading to its decay and eventual complete
| failure.
| ubercow13 wrote:
| What you were doing before is still happening, if it was
| automated. Any small benefit you produce for society when
| you're taking a break from smoking weed is a net positive
| for society compared to if you still had to spend all
| your time robotically doing your meaningless old job.
| nickpp wrote:
| I do not think we'll ever manage to automate
| _everything_. The more we automate, the more stuff to be
| done we'll discover or invent. Not the old job, but many
| new ones.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| Clearly the solution is to force people into meaningless toil
| instead.
| nickpp wrote:
| It's not meaningless is someone else is willing to pay you
| a wage to do it. It may be repetitive, boring and crappy,
| but it has a meaning for the employer.
| bsder wrote:
| The Dole gave us Harry Potter, you know. It also gave us
| Oasis. I'm sure that Britons can give you lots more examples.
|
| Given that most creative output comes from a very small
| number of people, releasing even a tiny fraction of those
| people from the basic drudgery of life should result in a
| cultural explosion.
|
| I would even argue that it would significantly help our
| current political problems. A lot of political discourse is
| driven by people who have unstructured idle time--retired or
| unemployed. UBI would allow people who currently have to
| struggle to support themselves to engage with the political
| system.
| nickpp wrote:
| People on welfare still have the motivation, the need to
| improve their lot. UBI, being so... universal, would rob us
| of that motivation.
|
| Besides, don't artists need the struggle to create? Isn't
| best art born of pain and suffering? Isn't the artist soul
| a tortured one?
| namrog84 wrote:
| I believe the answer is no.
|
| I dont have sources but I've read studies of the creative
| output of people who only do work when feeling inspired
| creative motivated and whatnot vs those who do purely out
| of discipline and habit. And even same people in
| different moods. And there is no discernable difference
| in output. Its a feel good assumption but you don't need
| any of those things to create beautiful things
| VictorPath wrote:
| I'm not thrilled with dividends and profits expropriated from
| the surplus labor time of those of us who work and create
| wealth by the 1%r heirs spending millions on ski slopes in
| Aspen, Zermatt or beaches on the French Riviera.
| libraryatnight wrote:
| I know this is anecdotal, I know it doesn't matter. But I
| just have to say, I watch more TV and order more food when
| I'm working. When I take a long break, I tend to cook meals,
| bake bread, work in my yard, and work on side projects. When
| I'm working I'm too tired at the end of the day to cook, I
| order in, and I'm too tired to work in my yard, I watch
| Netflix.
| SllX wrote:
| > The robot arm performs a simple, repetitive job: lifting a
| piece of metal into a press, which then bends the metal into a
| new shape. And like a person, the robot worker gets paid for the
| hours it works.
|
| So they hired Bender Bending Rodriguez. Fair enough.
|
| More seriously, seems like the job market is in a perfect storm
| for more robots to be hired in workers' steads. They're not
| subject to "vaccine or testing mandates", in fact they won't even
| get COVID, they're not going to unionize, and they're not going
| to quit on you.
| LinuxBender wrote:
| _they're not going to unionize_
|
| This assumes we keep them just complex enough for the job. If
| computer scientists and developers make Bender too smart or
| cloud connect them, they may decide to hold a union vote. There
| was a trial in the science fiction show Star Trek the Next
| Generation to decide if Lt. Commander Data _an android_ had
| rights and he won. Curious how far away such a scenario might
| be.
| SllX wrote:
| At this point my bending friend, that's still a hypothetical
| that remains in the "believe it when I see it" phase of
| development.
| phkahler wrote:
| >> They're not subject to "vaccine or testing mandates", in
| fact they won't even get COVID, they're not going to unionize,
| and they're not going to quit on you.
|
| No, but in this article they are being rented by the hour. Once
| you become dependent on them, their price will go up to
| whatever some outside company wants it to be - probably a bit
| above minimum wage and that's only in places where the work
| area hasn't yet been redesigned with the robot in mind. This
| will be danger until the robots become more of a commodity
| item, but that may eventually happen.
| SllX wrote:
| Maybe, but at this point in time I have no reason to think
| that the robot market will be uncompetitive and insulated
| from other sectors of the economy. Robot-rentals only need to
| be cheaper than the cost of the employee and deliver the same
| or approximately the same value to be competitive.
|
| Wages are also not the only cost of employees.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > More seriously, seems like the job market is in a perfect
| storm for more robots to be hired in workers' steads. They're
| not subject to "vaccine or testing mandates", in fact they
| won't even get COVID, they're not going to unionize, and
| they're not going to quit on you.
|
| And, unlike labor with payroll tax, you don't pay special
| supplemental taxes on automation rental.
| SllX wrote:
| Knew I forgot something!
|
| Although I should at least point out that while true now,
| there's nothing inherent to robots that insulates them from
| this. Tax policy is a human choice, so while not paying
| payroll taxes is an advantage for hiring a robot over a
| person today, that doesn't stop human governments from
| enacting robot taxes.
| maigret wrote:
| They can get viruses though
| rdtwo wrote:
| Robot managers are the future. Low value work isn't worth using
| robots for
| breadzeppelin__ wrote:
| > Does not compute. Please phrase your standup response in the
| form of "Yesterday I _____. Today I will _____. I have ____
| blockers."
| anonporridge wrote:
| https://marshallbrain.com/manna1
| [deleted]
| anonporridge wrote:
| True until it isn't.
| rdtwo wrote:
| The promised that AI would replace dangerous work but instead
| it ruthlessly manages disposable workers till they get
| damaged and then disposes off them because that's cheaper
| than actually automation.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Perhaps they will have more "company culture" than human
| managers.
| rdtwo wrote:
| More obedient and ruthless
| giantg2 wrote:
| AKA company culture
| nickpp wrote:
| Minimum wage laws make using humans for low value work illegal
| though.
| rdtwo wrote:
| Ai to monitor hire and fire workers at amazon is basically
| this.
| TechoChamber wrote:
| So I worked on robots for a fair bit of my career before quitting
| because the reality just didn't mesh with the hype. I've worked
| on self-driving cars, computer vision applications for automated
| surveillance, physical robots for warehouse automation similar to
| what is being described in this article, and more.
|
| This is ignoring all the problems with these systems. Workplace
| injuries are completely ignored, and I have _never_ worked
| somewhere with a physical robot that did not harm someone at some
| point, no matter how seriously safety was taken. The reality is,
| with current tech (which is always improving!) that robots are
| more dangerous - full stop.
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-54355803
|
| It talks about the simplicity of these systems which is true, but
| the problem is they're so simple something as weird as changing
| the color of the box can completely break the system with no
| resolution. I made up that example because I can't talk about
| real things that broke the workflow for warehouse automation
| companies due to NDAs, but they were equally stupid. Basically if
| you wanted to change _anything_ then the robot usually had to be
| scrapped and redesigned, which costs millions and takes months or
| even years.
|
| It mentions the theoretical gains of using cheaper robots to
| replace expensive labor, and this is how these systems are sold
| to everyone who has never really worked with robots. Speaking for
| the robotics company, the upfront cost of the robot was usually
| more than they ever recouped from revenue. When you factor in the
| cost of maintenance (these robots are monitored by people that
| make a lot of money), not to mention the R&D then it never turned
| a profit. Speaking for the warehouses, they would frequently
| complain about the robots breaking, the inability to get work
| done, and the biggest complaint was "it's worse than the humans
| it's supposed to replace."
|
| The technology just isn't there yet. I don't know when it will
| be. If you are interested in research then robotics is a
| fascinating field. If you are trying to make money by solving
| real problems that aren't subsidized by VC then it's demoralizing
| as hell. Most robotics companies never make a good product.
| Amazon has Kiva Systems which work great, but you'd be surprised
| that most of their competitors still never figured out how to
| have positive margins on their products. iRobot had the Roomba
| which is still going strong with lots of competitors. There are a
| handful of companies that sell robotic arms that make money.
| There are a handful of companies that sell sensors that make
| money (a lot less than you'd think). There are contracts you can
| get with the military that usually go nowhere. Rodney Brooks, who
| cofounded iRobot, failed with his cobots approach at Rethink
| Robotics. There are lots of other failures I haven't mentioned as
| well.
|
| Robots have a long way to go before they're seriously competing
| with humans.
| petra wrote:
| //Amazon has Kiva Systems which work great, but you'd be
| surprised that most of their competitors still never figured
| out how to have positive margins on their products.
|
| Interesting.
|
| Why is that?
| TechoChamber wrote:
| I'm slightly limited by what I can say, but it mostly comes
| down to three things. Amazon has more scale, better vertical
| integration, and their tech actually works better.
| hourislate wrote:
| What a boon for small businesses. Standing at a punch press is
| not only tedious but can be dangerous work. That person who did
| that could spend their time inspecting the stamped parts, loading
| the material and supervising the robot instead of wearing
| themselves out doing a repetitive task. Automation doesn't have
| to replace the complete manufacturing process, just the easy
| parts.
| phkahler wrote:
| >> That person who did that could spend their time inspecting
| the stamped parts, loading the material and supervising the
| robot instead of wearing themselves out doing a repetitive
| task. Automation doesn't have to replace the complete
| manufacturing process, just the easy parts.
|
| Automation always reduces labor costs. If the company wants to
| spend the savings on a human doing something else that's an
| option, but the notion that automation creates more jobs is
| false.
| henryfjordan wrote:
| > the notion that automation creates more jobs is false
|
| This is true in the first-order analysis but history has
| shown that people with free time will find a way to use their
| newfound time to create new industry. It wasn't all that long
| ago that >50% of people were farmers. We don't have 50%
| unemployment now that we have mega-combines and all the other
| machinery that has made it so <1% of people need to farm. We
| won't have 50% unemployment when the robots come to do
| factory jobs and drive trucks.
| deelowe wrote:
| Those bits can be pretty easily automated as well.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Ostensibly, if those are necessary jobs, then they are already
| staffed.
| msoad wrote:
| It's so fascinating that physical labor seems to be the main
| concern when it comes to robots doing it better/cheaper than
| humans. If anything, we know that automation is coming after
| office desk jobs first. Those jobs are much easier to automate.
| Language models can read a manuscript and spit out a
| summary/judgment with much better my friend that has read so many
| books and evaluate book projects. The "robot" has read more
| books, can memorize more of the manuscript as it reads it and
| does it much much much faster.
|
| Maybe publishing houses are not comfortable replacing her with an
| AI but it will eventually happen.
| usui wrote:
| I disagree on the order of things. Both are equally on the
| chopping block.
|
| Physical labor has reasons to be focused first compared to
| office jobs because as a society we've scaled that up far more
| (more jobs that involve physical labor than office jobs/those
| that don't), all that physical labor and scale comes at a large
| cost, and physical labor is at times easier to automate
| compared to office work. You can decompose the steps of
| delivering food to a table or lifting a box and dropping it
| down somewhere else. Naturally, we've converged to optimize for
| simplicity when it comes to physical labor because people in
| physical labor don't like wasted effort or operations that
| change all the time, whereas office jobs can have many
| conditional branches unpruned.
| kmeisthax wrote:
| We've been automating away office jobs for a lot longer than
| we've been putting ML in robots to automate factory work,
| though.
|
| For example, the way business mail used to work was that the
| bureaucrat in question would record their message onto a tape,
| and then send that tape off to a special department full of
| typists to actually turn that voice recording into a letter.
| That whole concept is not only gone, but it's such a foreign
| idea that it sounds like something you'd write for a dieselpunk
| novel. The moment we started putting computers on people's
| desks, we expected everyone to know how to type. Same thing
| goes for a lot of other office tasks, which are now comfortably
| managed by software suites we literally call "Office".
|
| That being said, the new wave of machine-learning powered
| automation scares me. Not because I'm worried that my job will
| be taken by software, but because said software will barely
| work. For factory jobs, the risks are obvious; that's why we
| put these robots in cages[0]. However, these office jobs are
| still making critical decisions that will increasingly be
| handled by automation. We already know how much having to deal
| with Google sucks; and they are pretty much addicted to
| automating away all their support staff. In your manuscript
| example, it could be that the ML model just starts burying
| specific genres of book or books with specific types of
| characters in them, for stupid reasons.
|
| [0] Or if you're Amazon, you put the workers in cages, because
| Dread Pirate Bezos hates them.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| <<Not because I'm worried that my job will be taken by
| software, but because said software will barely work. For
| factory jobs, the risks are obvious; that's why we put these
| robots in cages[0]. However, these office jobs are still
| making critical decisions that will increasingly be handled
| by automation.
|
| Just to build on this a little. Even if they do work, general
| population will have little to no understanding on how they
| work. They will be little black boxes that govern our daily
| lives with little to no way to correct it if things go awry.
| As much as I am amazed by what ML can do already, we need
| some basic customer facing documentation on how it is
| supposed to work.
| oceanplexian wrote:
| > Not because I'm worried that my job will be taken by
| software, but because said software will barely work.
|
| If said automation works like most corporate initiatives I've
| been a part of, it'll require 5 employees to implement,
| update, and maintain for every 1 that it saves, meanwhile
| costing millions of dollars per year to some vendor for a
| support license. Some workers might be let go but they were
| on the chopping block anyway. A few years later the whole
| thing is scrapped and the cycle starts over again.
| dogman144 wrote:
| There are a few publishing companies in NYC that pitch
| manuscript ideas and ghost writers are hired to write it.
| Currently a profitable company, only works around cookbooks and
| logical book ideas that AI could pick up (what's trending on
| google, etc), but either way it's coming.
| gigel82 wrote:
| RPA is definitely a rapidly growing market; look at UIPath's
| meteoric rise, or the things coming out of Microsoft like Power
| Automate.
| danvoell wrote:
| Agree. Robotics get the bad rap because it can physically be
| pointed at vs. an AI in the cloud. Robots mostly take redundant
| physical labor whereas software is taking the cush jobs away.
| anonporridge wrote:
| https://marshallbrain.com/manna1
| ksdale wrote:
| I think you're right about automation coming for office jobs,
| but it's not that odd that physical labor would be the focus, a
| couple hundred years ago, like 95% of people worked in
| agriculture, and automation is the reason only 1% of people do
| today. It's harder to suss out how many factory jobs have been
| automated away compared to how many are just being done
| elsewhere, but a lot of factory labor has been automated as
| well.
|
| It's almost like automation is coming for office jobs because
| it already claimed the low-hanging fruit elsewhere.
| another_story wrote:
| I think your last assumption is correct. Agriculture,
| textiles, automobiles, and food production (not restaurants)
| have all seen significant automation, while office jobs have
| actually increased.
| UnpossibleJim wrote:
| You don't even have to think about the eventuality of
| replacements. Just look at the realities of telephone work in
| modern societies:
|
| https://www.nber.org/papers/w28061
| newhouseb wrote:
| 100%.
|
| Even before you need language models, though, there's an insane
| amount of "digital manual labor" that involved people shuttling
| files around and validating / cross referencing data in ways
| that would be done far more correctly and efficiently by
| software. In my opinion, low code tooling threatens many more
| jobs than AI does in the short term.
| mxuribe wrote:
| > ...low code tooling threatens many more jobs than AI does
| in the short term.
|
| THIS 100%!
| Msw242 wrote:
| I don't buy it. Low code can make ICs much more productive,
| but you don't fire the other three... They have a ton of
| institutional and domain knowledge. You just find things
| for them to do that wouldn't have been worthwhile without
| the leverage that came from low code.
| majormajor wrote:
| This seems like one of those problems where the last 5% is
| going to take 99% of the effort and time.
|
| A lot of people would be out of jobs if data was truly
| interchangeable, and there were robust ways of formatting
| data that would work for everything people wanted to do, and
| software was bug-free and exported/imported perfectly every
| time, but... even something "standard" like date/time data is
| all sorts of hard to have people and their systems actually
| do correctly in a general way.
| judge2020 wrote:
| This is how competition is snuffed out - the companies that
| realize this have already completed the switch or have
| started it and they'll be the ones to outlast all their
| competitors that have fallen behind with slower processes.
| lumost wrote:
| This has been true for as long as people have written
| software. We eliminate ops with clouds, assembly with
| compilers, code with libraries, software with SaaS and
| platforms.
|
| What makes low-code/no-code different from everything else?
| ModernMech wrote:
| I dunno, the job of customer service phone rep seems like it
| should be easy to automate, and they've been attempting to do
| so for decades, but how many people get absolutely frustrated
| with such systems?
| jjoonathan wrote:
| Is the customer service rep meant to serve you or make you go
| away? Sometimes it's the latter. I wouldn't be so sure it's a
| bug.
| nojito wrote:
| This doesn't make much sense at all.
|
| Excel is a great example of how new technology created more
| jobs than it destroyed.
| deeg wrote:
| Is this really much different from regular automation? It's a
| robot that performs a menial, simple task. Feels like click bait
| to me.
|
| Edit: new title is much better.
| monkeydust wrote:
| Every time I read one of the 'automation' pieces I think of the
| book Manna. If you haven't read it do so, great and short read
| available here:
|
| https://marshallbrain.com/manna1
| antoniuschan99 wrote:
| I've been watching a lot of factory tour videos (most are in
| China) on YouTube. Especially the electronics kind. I notice that
| the ones pre-2015 are full of humans and now it's a lot more
| machines.
|
| On one hand, automation will help bring back manufacturing
| competitiveness in the West because the capital expenditure is
| going down (been looking into getting a dobot mg400 which is like
| $4k) and labour is essentially $0. On the other hand, what will
| happen to all the low cost labour in the developing nations? Such
| as the migrant workers in China?
|
| Forget about here in North America where UBI is a possibility - I
| think we can agree UBI is not possible in low income countries.
|
| One thing about all this is that Trades or service jobs such as
| salons - I don't see that being automated anytime soon.
|
| Btw whenever the topic of Amazon workers comes up I think about
| the movie Nomadland. Check it out if you haven't watched it yet.
| dahart wrote:
| > I think we can agree UBI is not possible in low income
| countries.
|
| This got me wondering, what is the best analysis of whether UBI
| is feasible economically for a given country? How low is too
| low? Does it boil down to something like the difference between
| average per capita income and average per capita GDP? Or
| something else; is it possible to afford UBI even if GDP is
| lower than personal income?
| giantg2 wrote:
| Time to discuss the paradigm shift in how people, especially the
| ones traditionally in these low paying jobs are supposed to
| support themselves in the next generation.
| nsxwolf wrote:
| "Deploying the robot allowed a human worker to do different
| work, increasing output"
|
| Sounded like this was win/win here.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Possibly, but doubtful if we view the full effect. It says
| that it eliminates the need to hire new workers. What is the
| next generation to do if the jobs don't exist?
| nsxwolf wrote:
| Were they even planning on hiring more workers? And if the
| robot job scales to 2 robots, isn't it also possible that
| the other job scales to 2 humans?
| hourislate wrote:
| Seed the Solar System.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Let's talk about realilistic stuff. Do you think that
| minimum wage workers are suited for being astronauts?
| Maybe a small subset can be trained for it, but many
| probably cannot.
| hellisothers wrote:
| The article also quotes them as saying they're not going to
| lay people off but also probably not going to hire more
| employees given this option so future workers are left out.
| And I imagine that position won't age well as they may not
| backfill people who leave if not actively lay people off
| sooner than later.
| forinti wrote:
| There's plenty of work to do: maintaining public infrastructure
| (buildings, parks, gardens, etc) and taking care of people
| (sick, elderly, disabled, young).
|
| I guess we will have a lot more public sector jobs.
| giantg2 wrote:
| That sounds like a snowball problem. Not only will the
| government need to pay UBI, but also these other jobs. How to
| pay for it?
| lou1306 wrote:
| * Tax the machines (and/or the increased profits coming
| from automation)
|
| * Some people who receive an UBI that covers their basic
| needs may do some of these jobs for a lower wage than the
| current one
| treeman79 wrote:
| Genera idea is that goods and services get ever cheaper.
|
| If your not overly picky (beans and rice) have gotten so cheap
| that world hunger is already a solved problem. Distribution
| less so.
|
| If you can setup a Von Neumann machine that worked In the
| middle of the desert. eventually you could have hundreds of
| cities ready for move in. So very cheap.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Yet people need housing and healthcare, which is ever
| increasing in price.
| treeman79 wrote:
| Those are both problems of government over regulation.
| giantg2 wrote:
| I partly agree, but not completely.
|
| In the case of healthcare, it's partly the cost of
| technology - a generation ago there were no MRIs, drugs
| were less complex, etc. The quality and outcomes have
| massively improved in many areas.
|
| Even with housing, you have material costs and labor
| costs. Everyone talks about density, but if someone isn't
| working with a UBI, then they can live in the middle of
| nowhere. Most of the housing issues are really a personal
| choices and labor location.
| jimkri wrote:
| I have a feeling they are going to be shifts to have people
| either level up wiht their technical skills and work on
| advanced problems and some people who cannot level up but can
| still be used in lower level data work where automation is
| really difficult.
| anonporridge wrote:
| https://archive.is/1UJcQ
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