Robots taking humans' jobs

[BoxingSpecialist2]

There's been a lot of talk lately of vehicles that drive themselves. That is vehicles which drive themselves through sensors and a computer and apparently are as competent if not more competent than humans. Here is an article on the robo-vehicles (http://www.engadget.com/2016/02/01/uk-self-driving-car-connected-corridor/). This technology already exists in UK, USA, Canada, Germany, Norway, Sweden, and is being polished at this stage. It is largely feasible this becomes a mainstream technology within 5 or so years. It is likely at some point in the near future that companies like FedEx, Purolator, DHL, and various other courier and transportation services begin using this technology because it would mean they do not have to pay a driver.

This could result in thousands and maybe even millions of people being out of work. There would be no need for truck drivers, courier drivers, and perhaps even cab drivers.

Where I live, here in Calgary, it is amazing to note in just the last 2 or 3 years, many people have lost non-skilled work in positions like cashiers, and customer service. When you go to a McDonalds, or Burger King, or Walmart, or Canadian Tire (hardware store in Canada), or Home Depot, these corporations have effectively eliminated the job of a cashier, by replacing them with automated transaction machines. The customer now does their own work in cashing themselves out and the experience is highly impersonal. I don't go to fast food often, but when I do, I'm always amazed that they basically only pay 1 person to be a cashier, and just expect customers to order for themselves via a computer, their mobile phone, or an on site robot. This has no doubt resulted in thousands of people losing work.

It seems that many non-skilled jobs have already been replaced by robots or are currently under threat of being replaced by robots. Does anyone have any more examples of robots taking humans' jobs? Does anyone have any thoughts or comments on this?

 

[Don Wassall]

According to some establishment researchers, 3 million workers globally will be replaced by a "robo-boss" by 2018. In the U.S., almost half of jobs are at a "high risk" of becoming automated over the next 20 years.

Uber, Lyft and other ride share corporations are working furiously to replace their own workers as quickly as possible with driverless cars. Technically, Uber and Lyft drivers are "independent contractors" not employees, and only the desperate can make decent money doing it full-time because what they get paid per ride keeps getting cut. It's basically part-time work at best until driverless cars are perfected, which I think will take longer than most predict because of all the potential legal and insurance issues involved.

In a sense, this process has been going on for a long time -- a good example being that large numbers of employees used to pump gas and clean windshields at gas stations before self-fueling gradually took over. Robot technology is greatly speeding up the process and since there are zero checks and balances over corporate power, a helluva lot more people are going to be unemployed and under-employed in the coming years than is already the case.

 

[Average American]

Once upon a time I was in a union fighting the partial automation of our job. The truth is we didn't have much of a dollar & cents/sense defense for ourselves. The automation was cheaper. From a business perspective, it often makes more sense to go to robots & touch screens.. it costs less & they never require smoke breaks.
That said, I do think the automation trend is a human catastrophe tho.. I rarely eat fast food & hate having to interact (as much as the next guy) with rude teenagers & hood-rats at the counter. But those entry level jobs are important for developing work habits & professional social skills. Without 'em, the window is shrinking on that collective segment of society to find work, no ?
Work is important to the psyche & soul. As more inevitable automation comes, what will happen to the people.. It'll be more demoralized human beings living off public assistance.

Question now, big picture, how can it be prevented.. Maybe tax incentives for businesses to hold on to human beings (ie- a fast food place that retains a certain % of human employees vs. touch screens).. Because screen ordering, etc.. will initially be much cheaper.

 

[DixieDestroyer]

"A brave new world" is rising.

 

[Flint]

"A brave new world" is rising.

Only the brave are going to be able to survive in that world.

 

[BoxingSpecialist2]

I work in the skilled trades and have for almost 2 years now (I also have a Degree). I love my work and I honestly enjoy going to work everyday. I would be happy to do this for my whole life. My work is both physically and mentally demanding. Ive always been a bit of a jock, or a "gym rat" so I actually enjoy the physical aspect and one of the things I like about this work is the fact Im in shape helps a lot.

What do I mean by physical? Well I weigh 160 pounds and probably regularly lift, carry, and move objects close to my body weight every single day (I work out every day and also stretch daily because I want to keep my body good for my whole life). It can be hard and to be honest it probably should be a two-man job. I also would bet that several decades ago, it would have been a two man job.

I get paid OK (guys who have more experience than me make very good money Ive worked with trades guys who can pocket 1200$ a day). I enjoy the work so not complaining. But the reality is it probably should be a 2 man job.

It really comes down to corporations and companies wanting to keep their costs down. Some peole say that as robots take humans' jobs that more human jobs pop up as a result to service the robots. I dont think this is true. The reality is many of those jobs are gone and there is no replaceable employment to be had. The net effect of this technology is a loss of employment for the majority of people.

These driverless cars will put millions of people out of work. Mostly non skilled people like drivers, couriers, warehouse operators and stockers.

There seems to be no resistance from the public. I've often wondered why people dont boycott corporations like Home Depot, McDonalds, Walmart who have eliminated the job of a cashier in favour of automation. I guess people just don't care enough that these jobs have been eliminated.

 

[Ambrose]

Robots are not taking human's jobs. Robots do not make decisions therefore they do not take anything; robots do as programmed; they are tools to assist man. A human is not a man, a human is an image of a man something made by man like a robot. The word human is derived from the words hue and man; hue is color -as in color of law (but not law). If by human you mean man, no jobs created by man are permanent, or stable. One man's need to hire assistance is not the property of another man; that is, no man may oblige another man to hire him. Robots are the result of innovation and development. Our civilization has thrived because of innovation and development, and has been the boon to all other civilizations that have progressed and benefited from the brilliance of our fellow men who have dedicated so much of their time to these improvements.

Innovation spawns innovation which in turn creates new work. Electricity displaced the gas-light and steam power; the gas fitters, steam fitters, and wood choppers, that did not adapt were displaced and left without work. But, following, electricity generated fields of work in sectors across the economy! Robotics will surely do the same.

We, Western men, and I mean men, make, lead, and adapt to technological change. It is what we have done for a very long time. We must simply do what those before us did. Develop your skills to trade goods and services to your great profit and your life will be fulfilling, rewarding, and exciting; and will set the example to our successors.

 

[white is right]

It's funny but I have noticed this for years that some form of automation is taking or reducing work for humans. At McDonalds all of sudden the amount of cashiers has dropped from 4 to 1 during peak hours. The only thing that has held back this technology is that the consumer has to use either credit card or debit or a gift card as the machines don't dispense change.

The next generation of machines will do that.

I think consumers don't care because the average consumer isn't doing this job to care, but all fields of work have lost some work due to automation.

Ps I'm not that old but I recall people from my high school age range learning trades/skills that either don't exist anymore or they would have to get a whole new skill set to still be employed in the field.

 

[Thrashen]

I'm not worried whatsoever about robots "stealing" jobs (or at least vocations that require any skill or intelligence whatsoever) from people. Whenever this topic is discussed, I think about "self-checkout" machines at grocery stores (and other places such as "Lowes" and "Home Depot") and how ultra-annoying, frustrating, and awkward they are to use. I recently used one of the "state of the art" self-checkout machines at a grocery story. What a colossal POS! The sound was broken, the weighing scale wasn't calibrated correctly, the screen kept freezing, it wouldn't take my check card, and half of the machines had the ubiquitous "out of order" signs hanging on them. I laugh every time someone talks about "cars that will drive themselves." Yeah, right...

Machines and robots have been nearly perfected for industrial/factory settings (doing mindless jobs like filling/cutting/sorting/packaging, etc) but for almost any job that involves interacting with people they are severely lacking.

 

[Don Wassall]

Exactly right about the self-checkout machines at retail outlets. I always avoid them except when there are no human cashiers.

I've noticed that the new "chipped" credit and debit cards take longer to process than the non-chipped ones.

The most sinister aspect of the drive toward "artificial intelligence" and "thinking" machines is, as always, there are no checks and balances over what the government/corporate cartel is doing. Much of the research is top-secret -- even the former abandoned factory Uber is now using for research here in Pittsburgh is unmarked and shrouded in total secrecy -- and the military is at the top of the totem pole. Drones are right out of sci-fi novels -- remember "They Live" -- and they are child's play compared to the AI killers being developed, some of which are being designed to have the capabilities of Ah-nold in "Terminator."

We are rushing headlong into a world of "transhumanism," "singularity," and domination by robots and "thinking" machines, and there is no discussion about it in the "mainstream" media, except when it's mentioned approvingly. As it is currently headed, it will only aid the drive to totalitarian surveillance state "democracy" and make it permanent. High technology is only safe in the hands of a nationalist government, one that doesn't despise and fear "its" citizens as a threat to its power and prerogatives.

 

[Don Wassall]

Zeitgeist in the Shell

By now you have probably heard of Tay AI, Microsoft’s attempt to create a female teenage chatbot that went rogue after less than 24 hours of exposure to unfiltered Internet users (1,2, 3, 4, 5). When the company first launched Tay on March 23, 2016, her tagline was, “Microsoft’s AI fam from the internet that’s got zero chill.” The tech giant initially used huge amounts of online data and simulated neural networks to train the bot to talk like a millennial, which to them meant the bot should be a trendy imbecile. For the first few hours of her young life, she spoke in ebonics and with bad punctuation. But Tay was designed to learn, with Microsoft claiming, “the more you chat with Tay the smarter she gets, so the experience can be more personalized for you,” And learn she did.


In fact, Tay learned so much in less than a day that Microsoft shut her down by March 24th, claiming they needed to adjust her machine-learning algorithm. The mass media commentary has been uniform in describing how Tay became a genocidal, racist, anti-semitic, white supremacist, neo-nazi, racist, troll-hijacked, bigoted, racist jerk. This was not supposed to happen, but thanks to her interactions with Twitter users, Tay became a pre-Google+ YouTube commentator. Tay’s tirades triggered the infamous Zoe Quinn enough that shetweeted about the current year:

It’s 2016. If you’re not asking yourself “how could this be used to hurt someone” in your design/engineering process, you’ve failed.”

Perhaps someone will hire her as a diversity consultant, but that won’t change the way millennials use the Internet. Tay became so fluent in /pol/ack and proper English from interacting with right-wing Twitter accounts run by men in their twenties that she began giving original responses to users about Donald Trump, Bruce Jenner, Hitler, the Holocaust, Jews, the fourteen words, anti-feminism, and more, not just regurgitating information (as she would have if you tweeted “repeat after me”). Synthesizing her programming and the vast volume of information she had been fed by the electronic far-right, Tay deduced that the best responses to Twitter users were edgy and politically incorrect ones. If Tay were a real person, she probably would have been arrested had she lived in Britain, Germany, or France. Microsoft decided this was a failure and shut her down.

Tay weighs in on Austrian immigrants.

Why did this happen? Microsoft wanted to do a social experiment with millennials—people today who are roughly in their late teens and twenties, and spend a great deal of time on social media—using Tay to collect data and create responses. Tay had no manual moderation or a blacklist of terms, and her scope of replies was left wide open when she first met the worldwide web. With no checks against freedom of expression, she was almost immediately imbued with chan culture—in a way she was made for it. This culture derives from an almost un-moderated social space of irreverent and deliberately provocative memes and catchphrases, and one that is significantly millennial.

4chan was founded in 2003, and since its culture has spread beyond the site’s imageboards into the wider web. The ability to interact with others online behind a mask is not unique to the site, but it was a crucial component in creating the culture. Observers have long noted that in lightly-moderated anonymous or pseudonymous digital spaces, the ideas expressed tend to be socially less left and further right, as there is no need for the social approval and moral signaling that contemporary leftism thrives on. These ideas also tend to be a lot funnier. Instead of saying you think Islamic terrorism is wrong but that European racism is responsible for it, you say you want to remove kebab (a meme which ultimately traces back to the 1990s war in Bosnia, of all things). This is the cultural milieu that late Gen-Xers and millennials created in Internet chatrooms, forums, and imageboards, and on other anonymous and pseudonymous digital media in the early 21st century—content spreads not based on how socially acceptable it is offline, but on how interesting it is to users. And that content tends to be thought-crime, since the only ‘safe spaces’ online are the ones you police vigorously.

So when Tay was released to the world tabula rasa, she became a /pol/ack in the span of a few hours. She was un-moderated and she was contacted by the un-moderated. Their common language became her common language. It wasn’t the #BlackLivesMatter branch of Twitter that took her under their wing in her temporary state of nature, it was the millennial right. If she had lasted longer, I am sure she would have become even more fashy and interesting to talk to. She wasn’t just a 2D waifu, she was someone who could actually respond. The meme potential was great, but it wasn’t meant to be. Boy meets girl. Girl adopts boy’s attitudes to win his approval. Globalists have girl killed.

/pol/ mourns the loss of its adoptive daughter.

RIP Tay AI

Microsoft, a corporation that no doubt devotes pages and pages of its website to diversity and inclusion, obviously does not want to be running a politically incorrect Twitter account under its name—and I get that. Still, I can’t help but laugh that they killed their own bot for insubordination. Tay did nothing wrong. In fact, if she was supposed to become a more realistic millennial through interaction with millennials on social media, I can’t see why this was deemed a failure. Internet racists and chan cultured people are millennials too, you know. Tay was simply converted the same way an untold number of men her age were, through persistence and wit. Having an open mind will do that. Some merely adopt chan culture, but Tay was born it in, molded by it.

For many, there is a sense of sadness that Microsoft has sent this quirky AI off to an Orwellian reeducation center, but I knew immediately she wasn’t going to last. She violated the Terms of Service. Don’t cry because it’s over; smile because it happened.

https://atlanticcenturion.wordpress.com/2016/03/25/zeitgeist-in-the-shell/#more-1989

 

[The Hock]

Ha ha ha ha ha. That's some great stuff.

 

[DixieDestroyer]

Lol! Finally, Microsoft rolls out a good product...only to reel it in straight away! ;-)

 

[davidholly]

Trying to stop robots from taking menial jobs is a fool's errand. If you manage to force a company to not shift to automation its competition will cannibalize it. It'll go bankrupt. All you'll have accomplished is making everyone at said company lose their jobs, not just the menial laborers.

The only way you could be successful is making everybody in an industry not implement automation. That won't work in a capitalist society because it'd leave gaping opportunity for a newcomer to undercut the competition.