We all believe our job is so challenging and has such special requirements that it _can't_ be automated. It requires someone with the kind of experience learned with wisdom over a long time. Blah blah blah.
Where I used to work I was asked to automate one very time consuming but relatively simple database swap. Every month we needed to move data from an internal database to one that was open to the public. It was simple but it took lots of time so we thought it could be automated. Well it turned out to be very unreliable. There was always some point were it would fail. Someone had to babysit it. We couldn't ever be sure if it work.
My suspicion is that most jobs that seem like they can be automated will not be fully automated and someone will always have to make sure it's working right. Real life is too varied and machines are unlikely to cope with it.
I doubt a few years from now we will see any fully automated fast food places.
It's a triumph that we're automating these kind of jobs. Why are we wasting human talent on inane jobs like store checkout or junk food production? Every person in one of those jobs is a wasted mind. If we could put those minds to work on something meaningful think what we could achieve.
It would clearly be more human to automatize a task that is characterized by low wages, permanent performance pressure and short term contracts.
A few years ago while discussing with a cashier about the automated cash registers they had just installed:
-Dont you fear losing your job?
-You call that a job?
-...
Automating tasks is freeing humanity of some amount of necessary labor to achieve (assuming any task is useful).
This means, in a society were things are correctly organized, more average free time for humans, more things we can achieve. Which is desirable, if we are not achieving self destruction or the destruction of our neighborhood. But I'm optimistic, I'm sure we will be able to figure this out at some point that I hope is not too distant in the future.
This is my feeling.
Also, if people like to do something that can be automated, they will still be able to do that. Just not as a job maybe... Or maybe not. Some people still paint pictures that are pretty close to actual photos. And, in my opinion, in a well organized society, people have enough free time to do what they like to do.
Not automating things we can automate is maintaining useless work for humans.
We should just be sure about what can be automated, which is not so easy.
If you replace a cashier by a machine, you may free this person from risking serious injuries in some cases, and from a task that can be dull and repetitive. You also remove some human interactions that people may appreciate (and maybe even rely on) and that a machine cannot provide. I've already gone out of a shop happier just because I had a nice or funny exchange with the cashier, or even a smile. At the end of the day, this kind of things is useful.
I believe we will always need human interactions, some jobs might not be automatable for this reason.
So cashiers might be better replaced by machines in many places for a lot of good reasons, but human interactions have to be maintained somewhere. This may not have to be part of a job however.
And i agree that sometimes, you just want to buy your stuff and go out without having to expose yourself to any human interaction.
Every profession thinks this. Doctors, lawyers, plumbers, chefs, tour guides, carpenters. Some jobs are actually likely to be automated away, but most jobs have a last 5-10% that’s non-obvious and very hard to automate.
Very cool, now the last step, automate the picker. So no humans are required to do this work. Saves a lot of money. And Amazon can be cheaper still.
This is what IT is all about. Automate the humans away.
Now what are we going to do with all those humans that are not capable of doing work that cannot be automated away?
Driving and farming I can agree with having automation potential. But the issue I have with cooking is that automation for the culinary area is limited to McDonalds’ type assembly of uniform pre-made food items that require the absolute minimum in terms of culinary ability. I can comprehend robotic prep machines, slicing, dicing, maybe even butchery. But it is a significant step from there to a robot following even a well written recipe for demi-glacé or for a custard, let alone being able to tell when potatoes are roasted to the right fineness and have a sufficiently browned appearance. Maybe my kids won’t work at Burger King in high school, but I can’t see line cooks at any real restaurant being replaced any time soon.
Because they're aiming to have things automated. They don't want to pay people to do these things when they feel that they should be able to automate it.
One problem with automation is that the people in upper management themselves rely on having lots of people to manage. Getting rid of those people puts their own position and standing at risk. Also, we don't yet have humanoid robots with full feature-parity to actual humans, so automating some jobs might require a change of process to convert it to one that is amenable to automation - in doing so, it may arise that the entire process is pointless and this would obsolete the jobs of a lot of paper-pushers, raise an uncomfortable question and ultimately be a politically unpopular move.
A second problem is that non-tech companies lacking competent in-house technical expertise will always choose to outsource it to a shitty consultancy which will take advantage of them, waste years and not deliver anything viable or cost-effective in the end.
My dad automated cooking meatballs ages ago. I can't imagine a hamburger would be too much harder.
There's folks on YouTube already who can automate the assembly of a hamburger using Lego. It's just slower than having a person do it in a semi automated manner.
Per the article, we have automated some of bricklaying (for roads), and I've definitely had ads show up for tools that reduce the skills needed to do bricklaying.
We've also automated parts of driving - staying the same speed, parking, etc. The automation all changes which skills are important, and steadily makes high skilled jobs into less skilled jobs.
> it wasn't a warehouse amazon job that was automated away, but a white collar desk
This has generally proven true. The hardest jobs to automate require hand eye coordination and the ability to grasp and pick up arbitrarily shaped and positioned objects. Rote data manipulation, organizing, or scheduling tasks are most easily automated (or pushed to the end user) using modern tech.
The classic example is that uber automated taxi dispatching, not driving.
Not trolling...legitimate question. Seems like a lot easier task to me.
reply