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Fears of employee displacement as Amazon brings robots into warehouses
(www.theguardian.com)
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this post was submitted on 20 Oct 2023
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How did we get to a place where awful jobs are the only ones available for people to take? How does holding back the use of technology to keep these awful jobs around help those who are worn out and tossed aside in the long run?
There's a difference between being idealistic and quixotic. With the introduction of machanization, the problem is not unemployment due to not enough jobs but there won't be any job at all. The real question is how to accommodate these people when there won't any job for them? The seemingly scary solution is this current real capitalist world is to leave them on the street. Unless you can provide the better solution to this real world problem, I suggest to keep your utopian world in your dream.
Just head up: the future is scary for the next generation inline. Even the white collar job won't be spared.
Oh I know!
Let them build more homes, big neighbourhoods of high-density living spaces. And give them for free to everyone.
Then focus energy on growing and distributing enough food.
While we're at it, give everyone healthcare.
Then watch those 'unemployed' people generate 'value' like we've never seen.
Housed fed healthy people will have great ideas and all the time to implement them.
The kind of answer I've already expected. Keep dreaming, dear Don Quixote.
It's not like there is any other answer that's going to amount to anything workable.
You get this situation in 50 shades of bad, but never solve the real issue any other way.
Automation moves our society forward.
It's been happening since the industrial revolution.
When electricity was becoming widespread people feared for the lamp lighters. When the automobile was invented people feared for the farriers.
Jobs will be created in new spaces. That is how it has worked in the past. This is at a level that we younger folk haven't seen. It can be scary to some. I also won't deny this will happen at a faster pace than most other changes.
The genie is out of the bottle.
Your likely know everything I've said up to this point. Here's where we differ.
Most businesses in developed countries revolve around selling things to the middle class. Those businesses that don't directly, usually play a role to that end. Without a middle class to sell things to very few businesses will exist. If you don't believe me, browse the fortune 500 list. The Fords, GEs, Home Depots all depends on a middle class.
Philosophically, if the middle class ceases to exist were fucked. If it gets to a point where ford is failing (again) those people with political influence will be asking for ubi. We don't need to stress over this. I have no political influence. I can't call in favors with senators. Over half the country is opposed to ubi. Let it play out a little. See what happens. We'll get through this.
Not a word that you wrote I didn't agree upon. In fact that leads to whay I am very cautious about in the future.
What you pointed above covers my last sentence.
The way the world is moving right now is roughly: agriculture -> industrial -> service. Now, when the service sector is dominating the market, agriculture and industrial sectors still play big roles but with a different twist - the utilisation of automation. So now we have drones, GPS-equipped agriculture machinaries, big fully automated factories to do the works more efficiently that require less and less workers. The more. automation we get, the less low-skill workers we are going to need. So the job markets will shrink and we will need less and less people for a particular work. Thus, we are going to need new kind of jobs to cater for workers where previously their jobs has become obselete. Just imagine that a container tanker that is the size of a football field will need the same amount of. crew members (around 30) as compare to very small ship decades before.
Fortunately, more and more people were able to access education and become the middle-class, and propel industrialization and service industries further. The middle-class during this time will be relatively safe and enjoy quite confortable lives. But, those lower skills are under threats because more and more of their jobs are taken by machines. They have nowhere to go simply because they have no education. Right now there are still safe. They can works with amazon, they can drive ubers, ride door dash etc. And the ability to have this kind of odds jobs (I forget the term) and gain easy and fast money will make them complacent and dependable on these jobs and less eager to gain education. This is the trend that we are seeing more and more happening to generation Z.
The problems is this kind of jobs will not stay static. Somewhere along the ways, automation will come in their way and grasp the jobs from them. We are still in the infancy period, but once we are able to perfect the technology, automation is going to stay. So the pioneering tech that we see happening in California like self-driving ubers, automation in amazon warehouse, self-flying drones are going to be prevalent scenes, not in the near future, but somewhere in the future. When that happens, we need a new kind of jobs to cater for the low-skill workers. What kind of jobs? I don't know. But we need to have them. Or we need a different kind of society, more social oriented. If not, they will be doomed.
However, the middle-class won't be safe at all, for the same reason that happens to the low-income class: automation. In the future, automation will complement service industry by the utilisation of AI. Certain jobs will become obselete. We are going to need less workers, analogous during the industrial period. It will be easier to write a book, writer will be less dependent to proofreader/editor, less. teachers, less lecturers, less customer-facing workers etc. It is slowly happening now. More and more we will be using automated system (e.g. bots in chat apps) and will liaise with less human. Internet itself is a great example. Those who would be safe maybe are scientists and researchers, system maintainers, or technology developers. Simply say AI will take over many jobs. It won't be happening now, as the AI technology is still in infancy but I bet will happen sometimes in the future. During that time the middle-class will be fucked up. Rent will no longer be in parity with earnings, life will become harder, in fact middle-class will cease to exist and merging with low-income class as a result of automation.
Where will automation have the greatest impact? Sorry to say, but the developed nation will first suffer the consequences due to higher level of competition, high wagers and disparity of cost of. living wrt earnings. The developing nation will slowly learn from that.
That's my take: The impact of AI if the development of technology is not in parallel with the development of societal values.
That why I really disagree with the top OP - nonchalantly trivializing the impact of automation towards the low-income workers. Automation can be a gift or a curse, depending on how it is utilised.