‘Robots’ Are Not 'Coming for Your Job'–Management Is

https://gizmodo.com/robots-are-not-coming-for-your-job-management-is-1835127820

by ourmandave • 7 years ago

44 30 7 years ago

This is a very semantic argument and ultimately it does not matter if the robots are coming for your job because management invited them to or otherwise.

There is, however, a more fundamental argument to be made against the notion that this kind of technology is neutral and that you can somehow stop management from making these kinds of decisions. It's not and you can't.

If technology exists to lower the operating cost of a type of business through automation, it's only a matter of time before one of the players in that business adopts that technology, to get ahead of their competition. As soon as that happens, all other players are pressured to follow or face the consequences. Often they cannot avoid adopting the technology as well.

The flip side of this is that if you can be the first to create and market this kind of technology, there is a good chance it will be very lucrative, so there is a lot of pressure to do so. It's almost like the technology wants to be born.

As a result, if it is possible for a robot to be created to take your job and do it cheaper, it is very likely that someone will do just that at some point. We could of course all agree to not create such technology or use or buy it (if we think this is better for everyone), but this makes it even more lucrative for some other company to come along and break that agreement (prisoner's dilemma).

So far, robots are mostly taking menial jobs that most people do not enjoy a lot. I am not convinced we should prevent that. What I do believe is that we should offset the loss of income so people who lose menial jobs can be compensated and pursue another occupation that is – hopefully – more meaningful than what the robots took.

imtringued• 7 years ago

What? Robots taking jobs is definitively a net positive. The only problem is that the displaced workers get the short end of the stick because of the decisions that management made. If the job loss was somehow compensated in a way that makes people want their jobs to be automated then everyone would win.

jeena• 7 years ago

At 19 when I started working at a factory which right before my eyes replaced a brigade of humans with big machines which were all operated by one human I wondered why we're not taxing the machine work as we taxed the human work before. I still haven't found a answer to that. Don't the humans lose a lot of tax income when machines replace humans? And couldn't that money pay the replaced humans at least a decent life outside of what we call in German 'Erwerbstätigkeit'?

(Google Translate calls it 'gainful employment', no idea if it's the right translation. What I mean is work for which you're getting paid money which you need to use to survive.)

Kalium• 7 years ago

We do tax them! We tax the value of the factory, we tax the company's profits, and we tax the goods the robots when they are sold. The robots were also taxed when they were purchased.

As I understand it, the human work probably wasn't directly taxed. I'm guessing that what was taxed as the incomes of the humans. This may seem like a meaningless distinction, but the humans have other opportunities to earn taxable incomes.

All that said, you seem to be getting at the notion of a Universal Basic Income. It's an increasingly popular idea in some political circles.

dahart3• 7 years ago

this decision is not made by ‘robots,’ but management. It is a decision most often made with the intention of saving a company or institution money by reducing human labor costs

Right. And the same is true of immigrants and outsourcing. The idea that foreigners are "stealing" jobs is a narrative that intentionally deflects from the conscious decisions company managers make to reduce costs.

Ultimately, the cheaper solution will win, but why be angry at the rich people making these decisions when we can take it out on robots and poor people just trying to get by?

ndiscussion• 7 years ago

Not defending this mindset, but I think people against immigration are angry with the rich people.

It would take a real idiot to be angry with someone that needs a job and is allowed to have one by the government they voted for. There are some of these idiots, but not too many...

mbrumlow3• 7 years ago

I don't think most people have a problem with immigration. A term that gets used to cover many things these days.

If you listen closely, you will find that people don't like two things. 1) Mass immigration (we probably need to further define that). And illegal immigration. I think most people understand (at least in America) that we are founded on immigration, and we enjoy amazing food, and cultures because of it.

Mass immigration - large number of people immigrating and displacing the existing population within a short period of time (probably also needs defined). I think when places and areas change slowly it is much smoother. Its like boiling a frog. Regardless of where you are from it can be upsetting to see your culture displaced by another. And that is why we have limits on how many people can immigrate to America every year. Some say they are too high, some say they are too low. I am sure we will find just the right amount one day.

As for a short period of time - that is mostly defined in generations. For immigration to work I think it needs to happen slow. Both sides need to adjust. The existing culture needs time to meld with the arriving culture, and the arriving culture needs time to adjust to the new culture. Both sides will need to be willing to give and take to form a NEW culture. Neither side can force full respect of the entirety of all parts of either culture. Doing so will result in generational disputes and battles.

I think most things can generally be solved with culture clash by having a potluck and enjoying each others food. Fat bellies of tasty food can bring people from all walks of life together.

rightbyte• 7 years ago

Conveniently the de facto immigration policy in the US for professions like physicists, lawyers, politicians, board members is such that the control is tighter for illegal immigration than Walmart clerks.

brighter2morrow• 7 years ago

Anti-immigration thinktanks like Numbers USA and The Center for Immigration Studies are well-aware the problems of.immigration are not about the immigrants themselves but rather about the corporate powers that import them.

conanbatt5• 7 years ago

I do find some perversion in the way the market tackles this issue: the market attacks the lowest paying people first, trying to automate the low-skill jobs, as opposed to attacking things like CEO compensation at 100 million, or software engineers making 200k in silicon valley.

I think the market is being inefficient here, and I don't know if its a market failure (lowest paying people have the lowest bargaining power, cultural power, etc) or a regulatory challenge (you cant automate away doctors, lawyers, VC capital, management, investment votes, etc).

Probably both.

notme772• 7 years ago

It's targeting what is easiest to automate. This happens to be mostly low skilled workers.

Software engineers constantly cannibalize their own jobs, but there are so many positions for software engineers available (or potentially available) that we (software engineers) don't feel the affects.

pixelrevision• 7 years ago

It's people relying on the market to fix everything. It works quite well for some things but not so much as a social contract. CEOs in the past were not making the same kind of percentages but most of that was not based on the market, it was based on push back such as unions and not wanting to appear greedy.

aeternus• 7 years ago

Many companies are becoming increasingly data-driven so in some cases it's actually not the "rich people" making these decisions. We are increasingly seeing contracts that commit a company to whichever solution produces better KPIs after a trial period.

Companies generally act very logically and seek to maximize their future cash flows. If economic incentives change, such as labor becoming more expensive, automation becomes cheaper relatively, and we should expect a well-run company to invest more in automation.

It makes little sense to blame the managers. We live in a market economy and policy-makers should look to economic incentives as the main way to drive behavior.

chewz• 7 years ago

And the same is true of immigrants and outsourcing.

You are right but from certain perspective immigrants and outshoreing (as available economic resource not as human beings of course) are a sort of Dutch disease. Instead for innovation and increased productivity companies reach for imported labor and outsourcing which will hurt the economy in the long run.

fearai• 7 years ago

the software robots informing the humans will come for your repetitive job

barberousse• 7 years ago

Quite frankly, most of American politics is deranged by the fact there is almost a ban on class discourse, my guess a remnant of McCarthyism since there was a strong socialist discourse prior to WWII which almost disappears afterwards.

jandrese2• 7 years ago

What a shock that the multi-millionaire owned media companies don't want to discuss class except to rile up hatred of poor immigrants and minorities. Something like Occupy Wall Street gets only lightly covered, and mostly to discuss how smelly and filthy the bums are.

‘Robots’ Are Not 'Coming for Your Job'–Management Is

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