Automation is really upon us, threatning more jobs than ever, what next?

[Red Squirrel]

I keep hearing quite a lot about automation actually being put in motion, for example those kiosks at Mcdonald's. Foxconn just laid off 60k employees to replace with robots, just to name a few recent ones. It's innivitable this will continue as tech grows and enables automating even more complex jobs. The rest will be outsourced.

What happens then when more than half the population can't find a job? It's already bad enough as it is because every company is cutting and on hire freezes, spending cuts etc... The good dream jobs just don't exist anymore. I have a feeling in the next few decades things are going to get really grim. How will society cope with this? Will we end up with having a bunch of rich guys running everything then everyone else is practically living off the street or sharing super crappy run down houses? It seems to me the wage gap is only going to get worse with time as companies continue to find ways to eliminate jobs. Governments are also going to do everything possible to ensure that people can't try to be self sufficient, such as making it illegal to go off grid (this is already happening in lot of places) or even make it illegal to grow your own food etc. It seems we are slowly heading towards a disaster due to capitalism. Oh, and Microsoft just laid off a couple thousand people too. Even the prestigious companies arn't all that secure to work for anymore if they ever even were.

Meanwhile cost of living keeps going up, and if you do have a job, salaries arn't moving.

 

[Elixer]

They will all find a job repairing & programming said robots.

The problem is not capitalism, it is the unrestrained control of government bureaucracy, where they think they are the ones that are always right, and never make mistakes.

 

[Imp]

I've been practicing sucking on synthetic materials and metal objects...

 

[Red Squirrel]

They will all find a job repairing & programming said robots.

The problem is not capitalism, it is the unrestrained control of government bureaucracy, where they think they are the ones that are always right, and never make mistakes.

Those jobs will be very few, and probably even outsourced. For example say McDonald's fully automates the entire operations, you don't need a dedicated tech for each McDonald's, you have a contracting company that flies to all the sites to do maintenance. Heck a lot of stuff is like this already, take advanced hospital equipment for example, you don't have a tech who goes around fixing the equipment, they'll have a vendor that takes care of many hospitals, and they will fly in a guy from India to come do maintenance.

And yeah government bureaucracy does not help either as that often actually makes it easier for companies to do this stuff. If you hire someone, there's all this red tape involved, or you can just make a machine that does that job or outsource it and not deal with that red tape.

 

[Chiropteran]

The problem is not capitalism, it is the unrestrained control of government bureaucracy, where they think they are the ones that are always right, and never make mistakes.

Capitalism works fine without that annoying government attached to you:

That is, the government that prevents the poor from rising up and killing the 1% to redistribute the wealth.

 

[spacelord]

Learn how to program robots. There are never enough guys in the plants that know how to do it well. I've been with a major robot company for > 15 years. We are coming for your jobs. Just kidding.. they usually take the jobs that are too tough for people to do, either too heavy of equipment or dangerous.

 

[sportage]

Catch 22, that is what will happen.
Automation is fine, fine for McDonalds as an example.
But.... if no one has a job because of automation, who then will buy those burgers?
When companies become so greedy they put themselves out of business, we will have come full circle.
Call it the cycle of life, or the food chain.
Remove a link and the entire chain fails.
Will a robot hand out the food stamps?
Hand out the welfare checks?
Probably so.

 

[Ruptga]

This sort of thing affects us over decades and generations; nobody that's alive to post now will literally be unable to find any work because of pervasive automation. That's actually sad, because I would love to not need to work ever, but social change is even slower than technological change so it's a moot point. A few generations after the singularity has eliminated the need for human labor there will still be haves and have-nots, and I'm not talking about people with phones that are four generations out of date.

Current unemployment has far more to do with decision-makers being insulated from the consequences of their fuckups, their gambles can change things in just several months to a few years. On a timescale between those two, there's also the entire global restructuring that has been going for the last 30 years or so, as China and Asia continue to mature economically and Europe grapples with meshing PIGS with global stars under one economy. There's also the rolling clusterfuck from Libya to Turkey to Yemen to Pakistan that keeps the world economy interesting, and Latin America has seen some changes too. Robots should be the least of your concerns.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Learn how to program robots. There are never enough guys in the plants that know how to do it well. I've been with a major robot company for > 15 years. We are coming for your jobs. Just kidding.. they usually take the jobs that are too tough for people to do, either too heavy of equipment or dangerous.

They're only going to need so many people for that though, and once they're programmed, they're programmed. Might need to tweak them here and there but that's about it.

They might also just outsource that to the vendor. But I imagine it will be a hot job compared to other jobs. PLCs and stuff is probably something decent to get into.

If I was to do it over again I would have went for electrical and/or plumbing, or other trades. Until prefab gets to the point where a house is basically like assembling IKEA furniture there will always be a need for trades. I took computer science, and there are barely any jobs in that anymore, most of those tend to be outsourced or simply don't pay much or are down south where it's a crappy style of living, and super expensive to boot, which means you may as well stay where you are and work minimum wage.

Don't get me wrong I actually have a good job right now, it's an awesome gig, but hearing all this news about layoffs everywhere just has me thinking how grim the outlook is for anyone actually looking for a job these days, or anyone graduating from college/university or God forbid if they were to close us down. Especially when even entry level jobs want 5 years of experience and barely pay enough to pay rent.

 

[madoka]

I was just reading about this issue:

http://www.businessinsider.com/mcdonalds-ex-ceo-takes-on-minimum-wage-2016-5?yptr=yahoo?r=UK&IR=T

Fast-food industry veterans are coming out against raising the minimum wage.

"It's cheaper to buy a $35,000 robotic arm than it is to hire an employee who's inefficient making $15 an hour bagging french fries," former McDonald's USA CEO Ed Rensi said in an interview on Tuesday on the Fox Business Network's "Mornings with Maria." "It's nonsense and it's very destructive and it's inflationary and it's going to cause a job loss across this country like you're not going to believe."

According to Rensi, rising labor costs are forcing chains to cut entry-level jobs and replace workers with machines. Currently, Wendy's, McDonald's, and Panera are rolling out kiosks across the US, in part because of the rising cost of labor.

This isn't the first time Rensi, who served as McDonald's USA's president and chief executive from 1991 to 1997, has spoken out against increasing the minimum wage.

"I can assure you that a $15 minimum wage won't spell the end of the brand," Rensi wrote of McDonald's in Forbes in April. "However it will mean wiping out thousands of entry-level opportunities for people without many other options."

Rensi isn't alone in this belief.

"With government driving up the cost of labor, it's driving down the number of jobs," Andy Puzder, CEO of Carl's Jr. and Hardee's, told Business Insider. "You're going to see automation not just in airports and grocery stores, but in restaurants."

 

[Chiropteran]

Learn how to program robots. There are never enough guys in the plants that know how to do it well. I've been with a major robot company for > 15 years. We are coming for your jobs. Just kidding.. they usually take the jobs that are too tough for people to do, either too heavy of equipment or dangerous.

Good strategy until AI development starts to take off... which could happen very soon. At that point, even the "thinking" jobs like programming will be done by robots.

 

[Imp]

I was just reading about this issue:

http://www.businessinsider.com/mcdonalds-ex-ceo-takes-on-minimum-wage-2016-5?yptr=yahoo?r=UK&IR=T

Currently, Wendy's, McDonald's, and Panera are rolling out kiosks across the US, in part because of the rising cost of labor

Ya, "in part." It's probably already cheaper to use a self-serve kiosk than a $7/hour minimum wage worker.

You could probably make a self-order kiosk with an app and a tablet with a fancy mount. The app is essentially an online store order program with a card reader that sends orders to a screen 20' away.

One employee at $7/hour at 7.5 hours = $52.50/hr or $262.50/week. Over 52 weeks, that's an easy $13.65k + various taxes/benefits. Can a cheap tablet mounted to a fancy box possibly cost more than ~$14k/year at this point?

The robotic arm will probably take longer.

Edit: Math fail. Regardless, even a slave probably costs more to feed than a self-serve kiosk at this point, so bullshit on the minimum wage currently driving change for kiosks.

 

[piasabird]

3D printing to make buildings. There is a company in Amsterdam that builds canal houses with 3D printers. Maybe it is time to say goodbye to carpenters and masons.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RPGK-F74-dI

 

[Humpy]

Once they come out with a moody AI that won't answer the phone, and doesn't work when the weather is nice, I'm gonna be out of a job.

 

[master_shake_]

pick a trade.

any trade and try to imagine a robot doing it.

i wonder if they could make one that fixes a car...

 

[JSt0rm]

basic income for every human being or we will end up with a Elysium type world.

 

[Humpy]

pick a trade.

any trade and try to imagine a robot doing it.

i wonder if they could make one that fixes a car...

I had to look at a list of tradesman but airplane pilot, baker, medical transcriptionist, equipment operators, brickmason, machinist, painters, can all be replaced with robots right now.

There are a bunch of others, dental hygenists, mechanics, that could seemingly be replaced given a little more advancement.

Any type of repair and maintenance, on a relatively large scale, of things not designed from the outset to be worked on by robots seems unlikely anytime soon.

 

[Humpy]

basic income for every human being or we will end up with a Elysium type world.

Too soon for this.

 

[Svnla]

My job (analyze of gathered facts and data) is safe from automation ...for now <crossing fingers>.

 

[Imp]

basic income for every human being or we will end up with a Elysium type world.

Need to invent flying city or space/moon station first... Otherwise 7 billion people can still Zerg rush rich people.

 

[Elixer]

I rather have a robot pack my order than someone who doesn't want to be working there.
Just look at all the vids of people pissing / spitting / doing other pretty gross stuff to food...

Robots can do lots of dangerous work as well.

 

[MongGrel]

It's been happening a long time now, I was working on robotic arm manufacturing robots in 1986.

 

[Exophase]

Too soon for this.

Better to be too early than too late on this one.

 

[John Connor]

Don't worry, when society was a major farming community people thought their jobs would disappear as well.

 

[Carson Dyle]

Don't worry, when society was a major farming community people thought their jobs would disappear as well.

????

But those agricultural jobs did all disappear, didn't they? How many people today are out picking sugar beats by hand, or working over at the old sugar beet mill?