What did the tech CEO say to the worker he wanted to automate?

http://www.marketplace.org/topics/wealth-poverty/what-did-tech-ceo-say-worker-he-wanted-automate#.Uh6EtAC_2Bw.facebook

by jamesjyu • 13 years ago

192 222 13 years ago

Yep. If your job could conceivably be done by an automaton, eventually it will be. Since we are just automatons, that means that every job could eventually be automated. Which is ok. I'd rather not have to work. But it's also basically proof that someday we'll need socialism because there will be no jobs at all.

wheels2• 13 years ago

That's ok. The other animals in the zoo won't have to work either.

benologist• 13 years ago

You realize most of us are in that zoo too? There's nothing inherently magical about being able to make CRUD web sites and apps that protects us forever.

FreeFull• 13 years ago

I think a big turning point in human history will be when computers will finally be capable of everything and more that a human can do.

adisbladis2• 13 years ago

Considering how far the research into EEG has gotten the line between you and the computer will eventually blur out.

lukifer• 13 years ago

If you want to talk about replacing jobs which are done more effectively by software, managing scarce resources to maximize utility and happiness seems like a pretty good candidate.

seiji2• 13 years ago

From 1994 (I welcome any earlier references too):

An easy change in the United States could be through the social security system. Social security was originally presented as a government-run pension fund that accumulated wages for retirement, but in practice it transfers income from workers to retirees. The system will probably be subsidized from general taxes in coming decades, when too few workers are available to support the retiring post World War II baby boom. Incremental expansion of such a subsidy would let money from robot industries, collected as corporate taxes, be returned to the general population as pension payments. By gradually lowering the retirement age towards birth, most of the population would eventually be supported. The money could be distributed under other names, but calling it a pension is meaningful symbolism: we are describing the long, comfortable retirement of the original-model human race.

from http://www.frc.ri.cmu.edu/~hpm/project.archive/general.artic...

prostoalex4• 13 years ago

The problem with "general taxes" is that they don't fall from the skies.

In the economies with large percentage of makers and small percentage of moochers things work out decently, as the moochers category includes babies and elderly, so the work by makers is almost a social contract, a "thank you" to the society for support while being a baby, and a rainy day fund for one day when the maker himself will turn elderly.

Having a large population of working-age moochers violates the social contract, and creates incentives for the makers to optimize their revenue generation, if not quit altogether, Atlas Shrugged style.

The perverse incentives are apparent in post-Soviet economies, where under Soviet ruling government-owned enterprises frequently supported a vast infrastructure of company towns - everything from kindergartens to hospitals was included in the balance sheet of the local plant or factory.

Fast forward a few decades ahead, when the government-owned enterprises are now privately-owned, and typical pattern you see is profit-less plants and factories now selling their products at cost, avoiding profit sharing, to a Cyprus or Cayman Islands affiliate, with affiliate (incidentally controlled by large shareholders and top management) pocketing all the profits in tax-efficient manner.

adisbladis2• 13 years ago

A thousand times yes! Automating away a lot of jobs as the economic system is now be disastrous, just think of Detroit at a very large scale.

"Wouldn't that be perfect if she could actually pursue her hobby?" is a very ignorant statement if you start to consider the implications of industry automation for all of the workers who have been automated away.

I believe that if we don't fundamentally change the economy through reform this will eventually lead to the next large revolution.

smacktoward2• 13 years ago

Yeah. Not a lot of laid-off auto workers doing backflips with joy because now they can devote more time their stamp collection.

The "hobbies" line is also infuriating because it practically drips with condescension. "I'm sure you have a hobby, don't you, dear? Of course you do! Why don't you go and spend some time on that while the grown-ups do the important work." All it's missing is a little pat on the head at the end.

ams61103• 13 years ago

Why would people even be necessary in your view of the future?

wyager4• 13 years ago

When you replace someone with a machine, the cost of creating whatever object or service they worked to create goes down.

Either the customer gets a better deal (and has more money), the shareholders get more profit, or some combination of the two.

Either way, the customer buys more stuff or passes the benefits onto their customers, and the shareholders buy more stuff. All of a sudden, there is more demand for labor, and over time, the displaced humans get hired again.

You are invoking the luddite fallacy.

Daniel_Newby2• 13 years ago

Detroit collapsed because of the 1967 African insurrection, not automation. The engineers and executives fled to less lethal cities, where their automated car factories are thriving just fine.

tartle4• 13 years ago

we'll need socialism much earlier than when all jobs are gone. the only problem is how to marry this transition with incentives for further technological development.

technological elites enjoying fruits of the economic growth, while the majority gets gradually reduced to TaskRabbits - that's really a disgusting picture...

diminoten2• 13 years ago

We'll need less people, or smarter people, not socialism.

Socialism, as a whole, leads to Bad Things. Sprinklings of socialism help and are good, but if you subscribe fully to any specific socialist doctrine, history shows your group will be harmed by it.

ams61103• 13 years ago

We've never tried socialism where all the workers are replaced by automation. I suppose it could work, but I'm doubtful. People just aren't meant to live that way.

_ak2• 13 years ago

Socialism is such a harsh word.

All it really needs is a welfare program for the general population that doesn't punish those whose jobs have been automated.

A system how to solve that has been discussed in Germany by left-leaning parties. The idea is simple: give everyone a certain salary per month that allows them to rent a flat, buy groceries, and have a social life. Without the fear of losing their job, not being able to afford food or just becoming poor, people will do whatever they like: some will continue their job (which earns them extra pay, obviously), some will try out a business idea they have, some won't work. Or that's the idea, at least, with the assumption that people aren't lazy by nature and thus must be punished if they neither work nor actively seek for jobs (i.e. the current unemployment benefit system in Germany), but instead would like to work, except working on the stuff they like working on.

prostoalex4• 13 years ago

This already kinda exists in the United States, except not in the salary form. Food stamps + subsidized housing + disability pay.

azernik• 13 years ago

I don't know why you think socialism is a "harsh" word - those same leftist parties in Germany and the rest of Europe call themselves Socialist or Social Democratic and are proud of it.

It's only on the US where Socialism is such a term of abuse on even the left of the political spectrum.

gaius4• 13 years ago

he idea is simple: give everyone a certain salary per month that allows them to rent a flat, buy groceries, and have a social life

The cost of the welfare system in the UK is such that it would actually be cheaper to just give every man, woman and child in the UK 3000/year no questions asked, no strings attached. Could a single person live on 3000/year in London? Well it was a long time ago now, but I did, as did millions of others, when we were students. Could a family of 4 live on 12000 somewhere like Wales, today? Sure, especially if it was supplemented by a little casual work from one or both parents. And we'd need to stabilize the population too.

People say I'm a fascist because I want to abolish the welfare state, but it's not true: I merely wish to abolish the department that runs it and go direct!

smsm4212• 13 years ago

If there would be no scarcity, who needs socialism? If there would be scarcity, there would be jobs in producing scarce resources and delivering them to whoever wants to consume them.

But if you are not happy with this, I can easily offer you a job creation program. Take two people. One would dig the ditch for 8 hours, the other would come next day and fill up the same ditch. Since you claim "jobs" are something we should pursue, this is a perfect example of jobs that can be created cheaply and abundantly. Of course, these jobs would provide zero value, but if you don't care about loss of value from employing people to do things that can be done with much higher value, then why should you care there? Just tax "the rich" and dig the ditch, and the jobs would be there forever.

Hint: google "broken window fallacy".

kordless• 13 years ago

Just because you have a distinct view on the future doesn't mean it's OK to push that view into others. Telling someone their job is going to be obsolete is akin to saying, "If you don't make the choice to get a new job in the next 15 years, it's likely you'll be out of a job." Honestly, if someone told me what I do for a living would be not needed soon, I'd probably go on a Tweet bender myself. It's a frightening proposition, even if it is interesting and exciting.

iaskwhy• 13 years ago

Just because you have a distinct view on the future doesn't mean it's OK to push that view into others.

I guess that's why he didn't. The conversation seemed to be very calmly introduced even when that lady had no idea of what was coming.

NoPiece• 13 years ago

Yes, and it isn't doing anyone a favor to not talking about the reality of the future.

snom3804• 13 years ago

Well he did push it on his blog and on twitter?

smacktoward2• 13 years ago

It's also a great way to take your smugness out for a walk. The unspoken corollary to "your job will be obsolete in 15 years" is "but mine won't." It's casting judgment on the person: I'm smart, you're stupid; I'm successful, you're a failure. (Even though your job isn't obsolete yet! Don't be fooled by the decent life you have today; your inherent loser-ness is going to flush all that down the drain, you see. It is inevitable.)

kansface2• 13 years ago

You certainly believe some jobs will not exist in 15 years? For instance, I assume you can see the writing on the wall for truck drivers and cabbies? No matter how unpleasant it may be to say to those people, "If you don't make the choice to get a new job in the next 15 years, it's likely you'll be out of a job", not saying is not a service to them and does not make it any less true. What do you propose we do instead?

martinshen• 13 years ago

If you read some of the comments on the article they simply cite automation techniques that are focused on decreasing costs for merchants like grocery checkout. It's true, these are arguably worse than the human alternative. However, this is extremely short sighted as in time we will have automation that is superior to the human alternatives. Grocery checkout will be replaced with self-stocking kitchens (which decide on a menu based on the FitBit in your blood stream) delivered by self driving cars. Instacart is a good example of the "hack" version of this.

With that being said, I think there'll still be room for the "human touch" in leisure oriented businesses like restaurants or high-touch pricey services like high end wealth management.

You can see that this article appears to have an anti-futurist, anti-technology sentiment. Its opinion represents the vast majority of the world's view which tends to only forecasts out 3 to 5 years out. Significant change is a scary concept especially to those subject to the change. I believe that wealth disparity will continue on the trend that it has been and likely "get worse". But it is my hope that someday a high standard of living will be so affordable that the poorest will have a very high quality of life.

Currently, we technologists are building products that improve the quality of life of the wealthiest 25%. I see this as a good testing ground. Take a page from Tesla's strategy with products and services for the wealthiest to later understand how to bring those products/services to even the poorest.

A note to the technologists/futurists here: as much fun as it is to be "disruptive" especially to large enterprise and put ourselves against them, this is not the most pragmatic approach for middle class jobs. Instead, let's emphasize that automation/technology will ultimately improve everyone's lives so that the middle class lifestyle will be the new "poverty". That's the type of "poverty" I'm happy with.

EDIT: reworded/reorganized/clarified

tartle4• 13 years ago

"let's emphasize that automation/technology will ultimately improve everyone's lives so that the middle class lifestyle will be the new poverty"

except there's no reason to believe it will happen. possibly new poverty will be good, old poverty as we know it - just extended to what used to be middle classes. when mass labour is no longer needed, those who possess the wealth have no incentive to share it. last 30 years fly in the the face of the "trickle down" narrative. when those who sell their labour will face further weakening of their negotiating position, this trend will rather accelerate.

rodgerd• 13 years ago

Well, there are incentives. Unfortunately history suggests that, unfortunately, wealth and the wisdom to share enough of it to avoid bloody revolutions rarely go hand-in-hand. There are more 1917s and 1789s than Bismarks.

andrewflnr• 13 years ago

I think this is related to another trend that's a little closer to home for us hackers: software that solves common problems tends to become free over time. Eventually an open-source option picks up steam, and proprietary vendors find their product has been commoditized. This is nearly identical to having their job automated away.

I think customization and support are the future. Just like the woman in the article was able to provide specialized help for the other person who couldn't figure out the ticket machine, there will always be room for someone to fit a generic solution more closely to some company's specific needs. It will at least be the next phase before strong AI (possibly) takes over and makes people completely obsolete.

chrischen2• 13 years ago

In my opinion the BART kiosk employee is a bad example of a job that can be automated. The fact is her job is already automated and probably why we don't have 10 of those kiosk workers per station handing out tickets and processing them by hand.

Her job is really just catching the 10-20% of people who don't know how to use tech that need hands on support at the stations, and random other odd jobs at the station that in fact can't be automated or automated to the same level of quality.

yaddayadda• 13 years ago

"Her job is really just catching the 10-20% of people who don't know how to use tech..." or people that need something that current tech simply doesn't provide.

The last time I traveled to another big city I actually sought assistance from the metro kiosk worker - information that wasn't limited to metro data. Could I have gotten the info I needed in other ways - yes, but it would have taken me longer than the time I had available. The kiosk worker was familiar with the area and the metro and was able to address my needs in a way that technology simply can't (at this point).

NamTaf• 13 years ago

Precisely. The job is already automated; the worker is a value-add resource. That's not entirely unlike what many other 'advanced' roles do, just in a different form.

The same applies to technical support - for the most part, there's FAQs and the like to resolve common problems, but also additionally there's tech support people who can value-add by solving the more difficult, fuzzier issues.

shubb• 13 years ago

The thesis of the audio clip appears to be that an unsolved problem with automation is what becomes of the automated workers.

My girlfriend works in a government job, at a regulator.

Most jobs there exist because they insist in dealing with paper forms instead of internet ones - for most employees, half the work is in correcting invalid forms (e.g. no contact address).

The other half is in applying rules that they have to know because they have never been codified in a database (instead living in large regulation documents).

Recently, they have been downsizing. One of the employees that was fired was primarily responsible for sorting emails that arrive in a centralized inbox, allocating them equally to staff. She also ordered stationary, and watered plants. When she left, she was entirely replaced by 2 Outlook rules, one to allocate the mail, the other to periodically order stationary by automated mail.

I wonder what will become of that lady. She had a fear of technology, not even mastering how to send email though it was her primary role for 5 years. She regularly cried in the office, and when asked to do anything outside that small role, approached a nervous breakdown.

There are a lot of people who are not able to cope with advanced roles, by which I mean normal jobs a normal person could perform. Either we are willing to pay for them to be comfortably unemployed (as the CEO implies we should be), or we are not. I suspect we are not. So they will be punished, and made to feel terrible, until they are diagnosed with something and can be disabled. At this point, their livelyhood relies on not being able, and this seeps into the soul.

fnordfnordfnord3• 13 years ago

Yes, to be provocative about it, here are some options for what to do:

1. Support them comfortably for the rest of their lives, retrain the ones who wish to be retrained. (too crazy?)

2. Euthanize them in a kindly fashion, ie with laughing gas. (obviously ridiculous)

3. Euthanize them in a cruel way, ie humiliate them by making them beg their families for care and resources, starve the ones with no family. Let them die of exposure if they haven't saved a fortune and can't cope gracefully with rapid technological progress. (the way we've been doing it)

drivingmenuts• 13 years ago

#1 won't happen - there's too many people who want to toss unproductive people aside like so much dead wood. Unproductive people cost money and there's a whole school of thought in the US that really, really (and I do mean really) resents that.

#3 is already being done and it's working as intended (not that it is a good thing by any means), although it seems to be inefficient as far as that first group of thinkers is concerned.

wyager4• 13 years ago

You did a very good job of making it sound as though it is someone else's fault, even intention, when someone fails.

Of course, calling failure "euthanization" is ridiculous fallacious bullshit.

omgsean• 13 years ago

Optional number 4: Turn them into resources in the for-profit criminal justice system when they eventually turn to using and selling addictive drugs.

bradleyjg6• 13 years ago

How many people died of starvation caused by the inability to acquire sufficient calories (i.e. excluding anorexics) last year in the USA? How many people are living on the streets who simply can't find anywhere to spend the night (as opposed to simply too mentally ill to look)?

Being first-world poor is certainly miserable and can have deadly consequences but this type of bs exaggeration just hurts the point you seem to be trying to make.

AndrewKemendo2• 13 years ago

This is why the idea of a basic income has taken off within the futurology crowd (including myself).

We have to do something about these folks and fairly quickly because it will be upon us soon I think.

ekianjo• 13 years ago

I like how you construct your 123 answers to support your own opinion. You would make a good politician.

coopdog• 13 years ago

Maybe I'm just optimistic but she must be able to do something productive. Even if it's sewing toys together for children or making sure the elderly don't fall over. To me that's one of the benefits of a basic income, to help people find their niche, as humble as it may be for some

chrischen2• 13 years ago

Human ability is not liquid enough. She has already been mistrained/miseducated by the time her skills have become obsolete.

Either she's going to end up jobless, poor, and constantly fighting the change that took her job away, or she's going to educate herself enough to join a new career.

In the former, there's a loss of economic value because she's going to be working against progress while at the same time not contribute economically because she keeps fighting for keeping the things the same old inefficient way.

In the latter, she's being punished for picking the wrong career path that society probably partly encouraged her to pick.

TheRealDunkirk2• 13 years ago

People like this -- and I've known several -- are suffering from an acute case of knowing their situation perfectly well. They know that they don't warrant the salaries they're receiving for the work they do. They fight against any improvement to their systems because the inefficiency is their job security. They feel constantly threatened because they understand that people coming up behind them just don't need them. That's why their nervous and irritable. The biggest problem with these folks is that they grew old between the ears, and think they can't adapt to their changing circumstances. If they would, they could learn to be more valuable in other ways.

rrwhite6• 13 years ago

You're spot on with that thesis. Automation is inevitable. How we react to it is what's going to matter. I tried to encapsulate that here: http://rrwhite.com/on-the-inevitability-of-automation

akjetma3• 13 years ago

It seems like he doesn't understand the complexities of her job. Automating repetitive tasks isn't hard, but automating a person is.

snom3804• 13 years ago

Yes, and he's not the only one. Just look at how many people are convinced that pilots can easily be replaced by autopilots.

akjetma3• 13 years ago

Yeah, but then again there are services like Siri that do a phenomenal job at understanding complex user input. I don't think I've ever experienced Siri not understanding my intended query and then giving me a generalized response that has nothing to do what I asked for, so maybe people in roles like this woman's can be easily automated. It's probably trivial to encompass every function that she performs. Maybe a weekend project!

reginaldjcooper3• 13 years ago

Can't they be? I read the autopilot can land a plane in an emergency, and engineers have got them to fly model planes with a whole wing broken off.

heurist2• 13 years ago

The hardest part I noticed while reading was automating empathy and helping someone calm down when they are stressed out. The rest of her job could be done with better maps and UI design.

akjetma3• 13 years ago

It's short-sighted to think that you have an understanding of a person's job after reading a tangentially related article and thinking about it for five minutes.

shitgoose• 13 years ago

automating unions? good luck with that... not before they automate you with the crowbar.

alukima• 13 years ago

It's interesting to watch the SF tech vs. blue collar debate as someone who has lived in both worlds. It was almost impossible for me to read an article during the strike without cringing.

It's easy to forget that there are people who know nothing about technology through no fault of their own. My nephews go to low income schools that still don't have computers in the classroom and their parents can't afford them.

On the flip side, many people assume that tech workers are all smug bastards who work 10 hours a week who have had everything handed to them. Even if they had many advantages there's still hard work involved, sure it's not manual labor but that doesn't negate someone putting in 50 hours a week and spending another 20 keeping up with their trade.

ssivark5• 13 years ago

Amara's Law: "We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run."

Not to seem like a luddite, but let me play the devil's advocate here. 15 years, IMHO, a huge exaggeration. The standard technology of today: IVRS systems suck so bad that they make me want to slam the phone down after 2 minutes, if I cant talk to a human. Siri or GoogleNow aren't much better. When you force a human to interact with a computer, you are handicapping them and taking away most of their expressiveness. Guess what, humans don't like that. You reduce them to the level of the computer which can only understand a few pre-programmed options. That seems like a far cry from human communication which it will try to replace. And we don't even know if that's possible even in principle. All we have is the hope from a bunch of people who are generally excited by technology, and the ensuing hype.

Keeping Amara's law in mind, I would imagine that such a drastic change would take a longer time (almost 1 generation's working life?). Incremental changes summed up might displace jobs over decades, but if someone can adapt to those incremental changes, I would imagine that they can manage their whole working lives. At least as applicable to people born till (say) 2000 and would presumably live till 2100 or so. Any "predition" beyond that would be a wild leap. As for humans being born circa now...

However, I believe that a few questions are still of supreme importance and we need to tackle them for the sustenance of mankind (pun unintended).

1. If a computer/robot could exactly replicate a job (and do it on a macroscopic scale), will such a solution be energy efficient? [Assume that you already have a population of X billion whose needs you will have to meet]

2. What is the real aim of automation? Is it to save costs from the perspective of the business owner, or to give people leisure?

3. Let's say robots/computers replace a large segment of jobs. Presumably, a small number of people will own and operate those systems of scale (you just have to make a 3D printer which can print other 3D printers). Then what is the role of the "unemployed" humans? And most importantly, any such structure we come up with, must lead to a stable society.

snom3804• 13 years ago

I find it interesting how many smart people seem to truly believe that things will just work itself out. Kind of like the idealist libertarians or communists, only with technology as the solution to every problem.

fnordfnordfnord3• 13 years ago

Most engineers/technologists probably never see the inside of an ethics or philosophy course.

Ilverin• 13 years ago

They generally also believe in the invisible hand of the capitalist market.

wyager4• 13 years ago

That's probably because there's no good reason things won't just work themselves out.

JulianMorrison2• 13 years ago

The answer nobody's facing is that the system of working for a living is going to have to stop. We all retire, or we're all sacked, pick one. Because eventually ALL jobs, without exception, will be automated. Even in the near term, a lot of jobs you wouldn't expect, ones that look "creative" or "decision making", will be automated.

guard-of-terra4• 13 years ago

Playing in a band isn't exactly a job today, but I can't see how it can be automated. It can become less popular or forgotten altogether, but not automated.

JulianMorrison2• 13 years ago

Yeah, there's stuff that nowadays is phrased as "a job" because it has to be, that would become "a vocation" when jobs went away. Programming is another obvious example.

icebraining5• 13 years ago

It depends on how you define "playing in a band", but I'd say that's what Hatsune Miku does.

staunch• 13 years ago

One thing I thought was funny was when he suggested that perhaps the information desk worker might instead work remotely via video chat. She laughed at the suggestion, saying that was a long way off. I saw this exact use case, and I mean exact use case, in Japan a couple weeks ago. It's technically trivial at this point.

guard-of-terra4• 13 years ago

It's not much cheaper but much more limiting - you no longer can help people out.

It's an example of false economy.

hershel• 13 years ago

They used it in japan. It's probably economic. Why, because you could:

1. Outsource the job.

2. Use dead times more efficiently/share loads.

3. Now it's easier to automate more stuff. For example, after hearing you're request , the lady could give you a map+text+video explanations and move to the next customer.

icebraining5• 13 years ago

It depends on the volume. Often you can handle the 80% case with VAs, and then have just one or two people to handle the rest.

A good example is banks: mine still has tellers, just much, much less than before ATMs were common.

gbog• 13 years ago

Seen from China this debate becomes at the same time epic because of the proportion and in a way easily solved. Here if you have no salary you just borrow a few tools from a relative and choose a street corner where to fix passers by's bicycles.

ajays• 13 years ago

I feel that often such discussions tend to the extremes: either do nothing, or replace everyone with robots. The happy middle ground, for example, is left out because it's the least controversial.

There are some jobs that are best automated. The BART "train operator", for instance; it is _already_ automated! People don't realize that the BART train runs by itself; the "operator" just hits the "close door" button when needed.

Or, for example, the cleaner who is (purportedly) supposed to clean the cars. A Scooba-like robot would do just fine.

On the other hand: a customer-service job is best done by humans (for now), because when we need help, it is reassuring to speak to a person instead of Siri.

So casting this debate as one between "replace all humans" and "keep the current inefficient system" is wrong.

wtallis8• 13 years ago

There's a difference between "replace everyone with robots" and "replace everyone with robots now". We can't really say what the limits are to what kind of jobs can some day be done by robots, so we all have to live with the knowledge that our jobs might be automated before we're ready to retire.

codexon4• 13 years ago

Then White was the one smiling. “See?” he said. “Wouldn't that be perfect if she could actually pursue her hobby?”

I don't understand how this person could be the CEO of uservoice. How can she pursue her hobby if she loses her job?

alcari• 13 years ago

He's thinking a few steps further: she loses her job due to advancing automation (along with a large segment of the population), _and_ guaranteed basic income becomes a reality.

codexon4• 13 years ago

That's a pretty big assumption given the current status of welfare in the US.

bradleyjg6• 13 years ago

Given that part of her hobby is buying and selling real estate in one of the most expensive markets in the country I think she'd be fine.

kumarski• 13 years ago

I'm waiting for fast food to be automated. http://momentummachines.com could be on to something huge.

smsm4212• 13 years ago

One interesting nugget from Superfreakonomics book: whaling industry in the US at the 19th century was fifth largest (think all the insurance industry right now) and employed 1% of the total workforce (think twice the auto industry now). It has almost completely vanished now and yet US economy did not collapse (for the smarties out there - I know about the Great Depression, has nothing to do with it).

I deduce from this that even a huge market shift can be absorbed by a healthy economy and healthy society without too much harm. Now, for the people that get caught in it, it can suck big time, and means must be found to help those of them that can't help themselves (the toll booth lady from the article who has a hobby of buying and selling houses probably is going to be fine anyway), but economically if you say we can't do without some industry or sector, more frequently than not it's just a failure of imagination.

TheRealDunkirk2• 13 years ago

"... can be absorbed by a healthy economy and healthy society..." Are we playing Spot the Problem with the Argument? Because I think I have a possible winner.

smsm4212• 13 years ago

If you're implying that US economy and society is hopelessly sick, it is not. If anything, we have wastly more support programs for needy than in 19th century, and vastly more opportunities for mobility and career change.

nraynaud• 13 years ago

The real problem here is the working people, chasing the slackers, mocking holidays, praising people with long weeks. Nobody will want this free time if it's stained with stigmata. There will be the work alcoholic saying "I'm working more than him, I don't want to pay for his free time". Moreover we work more now than before. So the free time thesis is just a joke, it might me economically feasible, but to sell it to the society will be hard.

The idea that the maximum output of a system is very not often achieved when all of its components are at their individual maximum is already impossible to act on in a company (ie. it might be better to have some slackers), I can't see that happening with money directly involved.

kaa2102• 13 years ago

What if AI, automation, and the goal to maximize short-term profits leads to robots only making things for other robots?

fchollet• 13 years ago

Two remarks about taking the booth lady as an example:

1) Her job has already been automated, thus validating the automation thesis. Her job has/used to have two aspects: ticket sales, and information. Tickets are now being sold by automatons, and she only has to handle the edge cases of people unable to use the machines, or the machine failings. As for information, most people will now use convenient smartphone apps to navigate BART, and she will only handle the few people who don't --tourists or people unwilling to use smartphones.

2) She was a terrible example in that you cannot automate her, since she is precisely what is left after the automation of her job. The work that comes to her is what did not fall into the automated use cases.

The value of some jobs is the human contact, or human interface they provide, and she falls into this category. This is also why we won't automate, say, barmen, or waitresses.

But what CAN be automated about BART, are train drivers (absolutely unnecessary in our day and age), and train dispatchers. They don't do consumer-facing human interaction, and machines would do their jobs better. And in time, they will get automated.

bliti• 13 years ago

At the time of this comment, there is a post on the HN front page titled "More Connected, Yet More Alone" (link: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6312076 ). One thing that automation like this misses is the much needed human interaction. Yes, humans are not as efficient or dependable as machines (not yet). But we are now entering a rather depressing period in history where human interaction is set aside in favor of digital and mechanical efficiency.

wtallis8• 13 years ago

http://xkcd.com/1227/

Your complaint is nothing new. People will always be able to romanticize the past.

marknutter2• 13 years ago

Y'know, I may be missing something but I don't feel like I get much out of the fleeting interaction I have with checkout people. They are almost always "tuned out" and any kindness they dispense is completely rote. If we're worried about human interaction, fire the checkout people and hire more greeters.

AndrewKemendo2• 13 years ago

I think this was excellent observation - one that I did not make the first time around.

I am unsure if I find it compelling that there is some utility in having a person there for the human contact piece. If you were able to remove the person and retain the usability within a non-human interface (to an equally useful or better replacement) would people say "I wish there were a person here?"

I would like to say no for most cases, I think there are a few people who would prefer that almost in spite of the efficiency gain.

ssivark5• 13 years ago

The whole reason her job remains is that it is very difficult to have the same usability in a non-human interface, in a manner satisfactory to human users. So, from a practical point of view, such an "if" is kinda pointless. Ask yourself if you prefer IVRS interfaces on the phone, or talking to a human.

xyzzy123• 13 years ago

Often the staff you see "standing around" or doing menial jobs have more complex roles than one might appreciate at first.

People say "I wish a person was here" in emergencies and on their worst days. When a dress gets stuck in the escalator, when the disabled need assistance. When people are impaired or confused or just looking really distressed. When the station needs to be evacuated.

Some of this can be outsourced to the general public (although I find it a little callous to do so), some cannot.

616c• 13 years ago

An interesting counter-example to your point is the DC Metro system. There are human train drivers, but the driver operates a single switch varying speed/brake. The system automatically starts and stops when operating normally, and the centralized management system can operate the trains more or less against the will of the conductor.

In summer 2009, the outdated trains had a massive crash killing eight people, and there was a great amount of debate as to why, even if the driver engaged the manual break, the automatic control software failed to stop the train when a head-on collision was imminent. [0]

The fact you do not reference this event makes me think this was not headline news outside of the Beltway (where I lived at the time). But I do presume this will help support Luddite, anti-automation views in transportation industry, especially in other places where similar accidents occur.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/June_22,_2009_Washington_Metro...

robryan2• 13 years ago

It seems driverless trains will be held to a much higher standard than ones with a driver. As with driverless cars we are willing to accept a certain percentage of accidents, the second a driverless car runs someone over though it will be a massive controversy.

clicks2• 13 years ago

This is also why we won't automate, say, barmen, or waitresses.

Hold on there -- it's already being automated in Japan (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0Z1EaFFICI ), Germany (http://www.engadget.com/2007/08/27/fully-automated-restauran... ), etc. Here in America there'll be some resistance but I'm pretty sure we'll go through automation in restaurants/bars as well. The driving force is economic benefit, sooner or later when these robots keep get less expensive, it'll start to make more economic sense for restaurant owners to have a robot server instead of a human server (no wage to pay, no health insurance to pay, no pension to pay, no risk of accidents or inconsistencies, no fear of getting things stolen, no fear of tension between BOH and FOH (common problems in a restaurant)). Savings will likely be passed on to customers, they won't have to tip, and so ultimately a large subset of consumers will eventually accept it. Except of course, a very small minority that is interested specifically in the human interaction... so, much like the lady in the article, the server job will not completely disappear, but it will be heavily minimized. And like there are tools with which customers can buy tickets by automation, customers will be able to order on things like E la carte ( http://elacarte.com/ YC-funded by the way). A server's job is cut in half with E la carte. Restaurant owners will realize that servers are doing half the work, so you need half of them now anyway (or alternatively, they now need half the pay... which will make the server job half as attractive).

sliverstorm• 13 years ago

Restaurants maybe, but I think more than any other food service job, bars see people who just want to talk to somebody. The bars know it too- you can tell, when they learn your name after just two or three visits.

smsm4212• 13 years ago

One novelty restaurant != all-around automation. Computers are unbelievably, mind-bogglingly stupid, compared to pretty much any human capable of putting his pants on without outside help. So I wouldn't count on robots replacing humans in actual customer service - on the contrary, I expect companies that do not provide proper human interface start losing customers to those who do.

>> Except of course, a very small minority that is interested specifically in the human interaction.

It's not like pubs/bars are universally known as places where people go to socialize... No, of course nobody actually needs any human contact, everybody is a hikikomori nowdays.

cjensen• 13 years ago

BART was originally designed to run without train drivers. That was rethought after the automation system launched the "Fremont Flyer" into a parking lot.

You really need drivers for safety reasons.

tomflack2• 13 years ago

You really need drivers for safety reasons.

One incident does not a point prove. There are many completely unattended trains in operation, several of which are in the United States.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_driverless_trains

patio11• 13 years ago

My uncle worked for a large railroad in Chicago, in their switching office. "You need a train engineer because that means someone not in management or the switching office is the guy whose hands were physically on the machine right before poor Mrs. Milly died. There is no other purpose to have them on the train. People like to think that having eyes on the ground stops accidents, because they think eyes on the ground stops physics, but if you are on the train track and the engineer can see you then physics says you better get off the train track because neither the engineer nor anyone save God Himself will stop the train from reaching your current location."

The train engineer's job is to hit the start button when the switching office says to. It's drive-by-wire, and he's not only just a wire, he's statistically speaking the most bug prone wire on the train.

He also had some sharp words for management on the topic of encouraging engineers to think they were responsible for accidents, claiming that it caused preventable suicides after unpreventable ones.

kalleboo2• 13 years ago

So we're on the cusp of having driverless cars and driverless airplanes, but driverless trains are impossible?

I've ridden the driverless train systems in Singapore, Tokyo and Copenhagen and they're all great.

grey-area• 13 years ago

The DLR in London operates fine without drivers:

http://www.visitlondon.com/traveller-information/getting-aro....

I'm sure there are plenty of other examples.

VLM• 13 years ago

This is also why we won't automate, say, barmen, or waitresses.

For rich people, obviously not.

The direction of the economy is to eliminate the middle class. Has been for multiple generations. A horde of middle class machinists and bean counters can easily financially support a waitress at a lower class level of income. What happens when all those middle class jobs go away and they're unemployed or people greeters? There is no way the same people, now much poorer, will be able to support the waitress unless her income also shrinks by more than half, which can't happen given the fixed costs of living. Therefore either most restaurants will go out of business other than those serving the few remaining rich, or the now poor ex-middle classes will be served by robots aka fancy vending machines.

One other remark you may have missed is there is a huge, and growing segment of the population who can not and never will be able to afford a smartphone. And this fraction of the population has been growing both as a quantity and as a fraction of the population for generations as the economy permanently declines.

rrwhite6• 13 years ago

It seems that smartphone ownership (which is steadily increasing) is more of a factor of age than income (though both are a factor): http://www.nielsen.com/content/dam/corporate/us/en/newswire/...

xarien• 13 years ago

Robots aren't cheap. Complicated systems aren't cheap and neither is the maintenance required to ensure an up-time of near 100%.

However, will there be markets where the high investment will be justified as the return is also high as well? Yes. San Francisco is a prime example.

But, with that said, much of the argument here isn't actually technological, but political. Take wages for instance, many of our current policies such as minimum wage actually muddle the ground between an economical policy and a social policy.

If we are able to separate the two types policies, human resource cost reductions such as automation and out-sourcing would actually make much less sense given that labor rates would be more closely tied to output and required skills of a given worker. Of course, as a society, we would need to implement policy including a minimum universal health care to ensure a sustainable life style even in our large metropolitan areas.

thret• 13 years ago

I recommend http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm

A nice little dystopian story about runaway automation and the effect that might have on society.

francispedraza• 13 years ago

Next time, don't do something automate-able. You're a human, remember? Do things that only humans can do.

marknutter2• 13 years ago

I reject the idea that there will suddenly be a shortage of jobs due to automation and technological advances. It didn't happen after all our agricultural advances, it didn't happen after the industrial revolution, and it hasn't happened in the information age. Think about the types of jobs people have today and compare it to the types of jobs people had 100 years ago, or even 50 years ago. I would argue the majority of today's jobs not only didn't exist back then, but didn't even seem conceivable.

As long as something exists that someone else doesn't want to do, there will be work. Even when robots handle 90% of our labor intensive work, there will be new annoyances and problems that require a human element. Artificial intelligence is a long ways away from being better than even the most simple human mind for most creative tasks, and the more information we have to parse the more opportunity there will be for people to help curate and manage it. Or maybe, once we've run out of jobs that are aimed at making our lives comfortable we'll create jobs aimed at making our lives more exciting. More immersive video games and cinematic experiences. Missions to mars and space tourism. Extreme sports. Nature restoration. Etc, use your imagination.

We can't possibly know what the jobs of the future might be, but I'm pretty sure there will be enough for everybody.

lsc• 13 years ago

I reject the idea that there will suddenly be a shortage of jobs due to automation and technological advances. It didn't happen after all our agricultural advances, it didn't happen after the industrial revolution, and it hasn't happened in the information age.

Many people believe it's happening now.

We can't possibly know what the jobs of the future might be, but I'm pretty sure there will be enough for everybody.

That's the thing, there aren't enough jobs for the unskilled and semi-skilled right now. And those that exist provide dramatically lower pay (relatively speaking) than the unskilled or semi-skilled jobs of our parent's era.

It's hard to quantify unemployment, but it's been historically bad for more than half a decade now.

Of course, you are going to have a hard time pinning that down on automation (or any other one cause) - but the point remains, there are a lot of folks who would like jobs, who would have had jobs in the '90s, who are unemployed now.

The valley is a huge exception right now.

Now, on your overall point? I... am sympathetic to your view; My view on the unemployment problem (and I recognize that this is... insulting, and that my view comes from a place of privilege.) My view is that something is wrong with the economy; Nobody has spent enough effort figuring out how to make money off of semi-skilled labor.

I also think that we have a cultural problem. We have generations who were trained to "do your job" - e.g. the boss will tell you what to do and how to do it. You follow those steps, and you make money for the company, and the company pays you.

Most job growth that I've seen has been in jobs where the boss kinda waves in the direction she wants and you do something reasonable. Sometimes, you get to participate in deciding which direction in which to wave. There's a big difference in the way of thinking.

hoi• 13 years ago

A good example is the docklands light railway in London, already automated railline that serves the financial district - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Docklands_Light_Railway

ryguytilidie• 13 years ago

Stories like this always assume that the benefits of things like automation are equally shared. As if because business A saves X amount of money doing Y, they will divide that money up by the whole of society and just cut us a check. However, as we've seen, automating BART would now be done by a private company who would pocket all the profits. Pretending that this theoretical world where LaNesse does her hobbies is great seems to miss the point that she will join the ever growing ranks of Americans living in poverty. I don't even understand how statements like that are taken seriously.

ssivark5• 13 years ago

Let alone distributing the benefits among mankind. For starters, you'd want the displaced ("obsoleted") workers to get a share of the benefits. You might ask why they deserve a share of the benefits when somebody else designed a system to replace their jobs... These are people who signed up for "risky" jobs, those which could be obsoleted within their working lifetimes. If we refuse to compensate them for that, we would face problems with people running away from any field which is "soon" to be automated, well before the jobs are actually automated. It's like asking them to hold the door open so someone could kick them out. To not compensate them (and hence ensure a smooth transition for everyone) would be tatamount to exploitation. It is interesting to note that a union of sorts will preserve employee interests in such a situation, by giving them bargaiing power.

StandardFuture• 13 years ago

That Richard White guy has a blog post of his thoughts on the topic:

http://rrwhite.com/on-the-inevitability-of-automation

And for a shameless self-plug I made a recent blog post on the same topic of automation a couple of weeks back (although from a different angle):

http://standardfuture.com/post/58571196148/a-fully-automated...

Automation in society IS something we (especially as hackers) should feel responsible for discussing, planning for AND acting on.

I know we are some fairly smart people, I just hope that we are all smart enough to take this seriously. :)

TheZenPsycho• 13 years ago

I bet I could write a program to automate away the job of a start-up CEO. Think of the vast amount of money we'd save!

And the start up CEOs of the world, freed from the burden of making any money, could pursue their personal hobbies of... what is it exactly that they contribute to the world other than smugness anyway? I'm a bit unclear on that.

chris_wot• 13 years ago

The first job I would automate would be the job of Tech CEO.

lhl• 13 years ago

The problem with the arguments of people like White are that they ignore the fundamental negative consequences of automation. When workers (lets call them the "proletariat") are displaced by automation, they don't see any of society's productivity gains - those benefits are instead captured and concentrated by a smaller and smaller set of owners/capitalists (lets call them "bourgeoisie").

Yes, everyone who's displaced is now free to pursue their "hobbies" but let's not forget that the IRS (rightly) defines hobbies as unprofitable activities. It's one thing to say that you should pursue your passion, but another thing to also not provide any method to ... you know, pay for stuff.

This should worry White (and us a lot more) because economic/technological logic is no doubt going to drive this displacement, but it's not going to address the resulting social instability creating a massive and literally unsustainable underclass.

juliendorra• 13 years ago

I'd like to point the most excellent Automation Song (1964) by Phil Ochs as still relevant here: http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=WbSTnuXv_3Y&desktop_uri=%2Fwatc...

What did the tech CEO say to the worker he wanted to automate?

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